And the wind doth blow & blow & blow
'Sarf & West mate, Sarf & West'
Pete Bernfeld
Sat 11 Sep 2010 17:12
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Spent yesterday getting checked into Palmerston, a
very easy procedure particularly as we have already been 'cleared into' the Cook
Islands, although there is some ocal interpretation on the rules and
regulations.Everybody is very friendly and keen to be of whatever assistance
they can. We stayed on the boat as we were both quite tired after a long night
getting on the mooring, today we're going ashore for a look around and a chat
and lunch with our host family (Edward Marsters). All the families now seemingly
live on one island in the atoll, and Terry (Customs & immigration) told me
there are about 6000 members of the Marsters Family world wide, with around
about 50 on the atoll at any one time. Interesting tio hear him refer to William
Marsters as 'Father'. I won't repeat here the story of Palmerston, for those
interested do a 'G' search, it's a fascinating story.
The forecast for the next 4 or 5 days is not
encouraging: winds not too bad, gusting up to 30 kts but the swell is allegedly
going to be up to 5 metres, not a time to be at sea if you have the choice. We
get the full blast of the wind here because the highest things on the atoll
are trees, about 15 metres high! We are sheltered from the swell, so although
you couldn't say it's flat calm in the anchorage, there's less than 0.5 metre
swell, more of a 'Solent Chop' really.
The plan now seems to be wait out the worst of the
swell here, then go directly to Tonga to be in time for the Festival there. Time
does seem to be slipping away and of course Tonga , although to the East of the
International Date Line, has adopted NZ/Fiji time so we 'lose' a day and about
22 hours on arrival, so if I was planning on arriving on the 22nd (the start of
the festival) I would actually have to arrive on the 21st our
time/date.
There may be a wifi link here in which case I'll
try and post some pictures, but I believe it's a 56k dialup link so may not be
able to.
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