17:08.09S 153:51.45W One day out from Bora Bora

Zoonie
Wed 31 Aug 2016 19:40

17:08.09S 153:51.45W   One day out from Bora Bora

While waiting for our clearance document to come by email from Papeete in Tahiti we contemplated the next stage of our journey as Zoonie sat at anchor under the towering Mt Pahia and an invisible caged bird made a sound somewhere between the rusty hinge on a swinging gate and a puppy that had trapped its paw. The only consistent thing about it was its irregular squawk.

Our next planned landfall is Niue, a large, round lump of coral with no anchorages and little shelter but 18 substantial mooring buoys off a friendly club on an island which was the first in the world to have WIFI internet.

You can see the attraction. If we turn up and there are no mooring buoys free we will have to continue to Vavau in the northern Tongan Archipeligo two days further on.

We appear to have caught up with a number of sailing vessels heading west and eventually to New Zealand, so there is a nice feeling of comradery and we have spent an evening in the bar with 8 other couples sharing our plans and experiences. We will invariably meet some of them again.

Yesterday morning we started to raise the 75 metres of anchor chain and the windlass gave up the effort in a cloud of smoke. We have never had so much chain out before and raising the weight of 25 metres of chain off the bottom proved too much for the old Sea Wolf windlass. So we rigged the preventer line from the chain along to the port hand big winch in the cockpit and while I winched up the chain from there Rob tidied it away into its locker on the fore-deck.

I was just glad that thanks to the winch I was able to help in what would have been a hernia making job for Rob to lift it manually.

My unsettled tummy attests to the confused sea state but the wind is good, though less than yesterday, and Zoonie is doing her best on a near run with the genoa pulling well.