13"14S, 163:06W
Kachina
Richard and Rachel Caswell
Fri 14 Aug 2009 20:14
|
Suwarrow. Here at last !
We left Bora Bora in good tail winds, so made great
progress the first two days out, with the second 24 hours being our fastest on
Kachina yet - 183 NM ! What a great old Gal she is ! And that's with just poled
out headsails, the genoa being well reefed in the end. Seas were quite
rolly, but keeping the speed up made it more manageable. Then the wind started
to die out on us and we ended up motoring for 30 hours, and not making it in
time to get there during daylight, so we ended the trip with our slowest day
ever as we only had to average 3.5 knots an hour to arrive the next morning as
we only had 88 miles to go.....lucky it was nearly a full moon, and calm
seas, which made for a very pleasant night indeed. My kind of
sailing.
So Suwarrow gave us very calm weather the
first week and then very blustery conditions for a few days. We haven't seen
much wind at all, it's taken us some adjustment to get used to a few days of
over 20 knots of wind, getting up to 40 at times, with rain squalls, so cabin
fever is setting in, but hopefully a reprieve tomorrow in the weather before the
next front arrives, which shouldn't be as bad.
When it was calm we walked along the reef,
snorkeled the coral heads near our boat, and visited Bird Island, which is very
populated now since they did a rat eradication programme here 5 years
ago.
There's also been some fun BBQ's on the island
with the Caretaker and his family and the 15 - 20 or so yachts in the anchorage.
We were number 54 to clear in this year, they get about 200 boats here now. A
far cry from 11 years ago, when we were here for a month last time and saw only
7 boats during that whole month. Many boats this year have come here due to the
weather further south being quite windy.
We'll celebrate Richard's Birthday here this
Saturday, and then see what the weather brings next week as to when we move
along to the Va'Vau group.
|
