We have been at sea now for 4 nights and still have 100 miles to go before we reach the island of Suwarrow; a remote atoll in the northern Cook islands.
Although its only 685 miles from Bora Bora – it seems to have taken ages to get there, probably one of our slowest crossings to date. The wind has been mostly from the east, which of course is right behind us and difficult to sail in variable wind conditions and a lot of rain squalls.
We were hoping to make it in 4 days, but because it looked as if we were going to arrive in the dark we have slowed down to arrive the next day so we can see the reef in Suwarrow as we enter the pass through into the lagoon.
There’s only one person living on the island, a park ranger, so I can’t imagine there will be many navigation aids to chart our passage through to the anchorage.
In the end it became quite difficult to leave Bora Bora and French Polynesia – there always seem to be a reason to stay another day – either a party on the beach, a local function that you couldn’t miss, or some more of your cruising buddies that had just arrived in the harbour.
Bastille Day was well worth staying for – there was the usual parade through the streets, where each local organisation decorated a float and was presented to the President of French Polynesia in the main arena. The cruisers even put a float in with everyone dressed up as Pirates. After the parade there was the banana humping race. Penny was going to enter, but decided that it wasn’t quite in her league. Most of the guys looked as if they were all tri athletes with their rippling biceps and pecs and looked as if they had been training for months.