Day 1 - 134 nautical miles. Sailing a course of 245. Wind 15 knots from ESE. Seas mixed 1-2 meters. Left Bora Bora yesterday morning at 8:30am. We took off to the West towards the northern Cook Islands atoll of Suwarrow. Sockdolager took off to the SW on their way to the Southern Cook Island of Aitutaki. It was sad looking back and sailing away from Bora Bora. It is very beautiful there and we wonder way we have to leave at all. The mountain peak at Bora Bora was visible almost all day before it disappeared below the horizon. Oh, I almost forgot...we caught a 25 pound dorado about three hours after we left. Sushimi dinner - yippee. After the sun went down the full moon rose directly behind us. It was so bright it lit up the cockpit casting lights and shadows everywhere. I kept having the feeling that a car with it's brights on was approaching us from behind. The seas last night were confused so it wasn't the best sleep I've ever had. Don and I are now trying 4 hour shifts through the night. Tomorrow morning we'll sail between the last of the French Polynesian islands/motus of Manuae and Motu 1.
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Comments [3]
We really liked it here. But - we've already checked out of French Polynesia and it looks like our weather window starts tomorrow. We've topped up our water tanks and our diesel tanks. We re-provisioned yesterday and I made a huge pot of spaghetti for the trip. Our next stop is Suwarrow Atoll in the northern Cook Islands. It's 683 nautical miles from here, maybe 6 days. Not really looking forward to 6 days at sea but the forecast is looking good and it's a nice big full moon right now to keep us company at night. Bora Bora has been a fantastic experience. I wish we could stay longer. But it's time to move on and we've heard Suwarrow in incredible too. See You There! Oh yeah...Suwarrow IS in the middle of nowhere so we'll be able to post the blog remotely but no pictures until we get to American Samoa in 3-4 weeks. Wish us luck.
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The sign says, "Shoes Not Required". You can even check them at the door.
The company we were with was great (Sockdolager and Morning Cloud) but even though they say they welcome cruisers, on this night it felt like the restaurant was interested in a higher level of clientele.
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We so happy to be hanging out with our friends Karen and Jim on 'Sockdolager'. They sailed here from Mexico (originally from Washington State). Their boat is a 24' Dana Pacific Seacraft. Compare that to that big yacht behind them. Whoa, a completely different experience.
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Here's me and Don just finishing up with a great snorkel out by the outer reef. I saw a couple of pipefish this time which I've never seen before. Tiny little seahorse heads with long skinny bodies. Very weird. The water was only about 7 feet deep, easy to just float along the surface and see lots of smaller fish and creatures directly below.
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We and Sockdolager took our dinghies out to the edge of the outer reef. It's really calm weather right now but even so the waves just crash onto the reef and some our quite big. Kind of scary being out so close to them.
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Here's Bob and Anne on 'Charisma'. We had a dinghy raft-up for sunset and cocktails with them and a few others. A wonderful evening filled with great views, laughter and fun.
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Buena Vista is one happy yacht. The crew is pretty happy too. The weather turned fine so we moved from the yacht club mooring out to the lagoon. The color of the water in the Bora Bora lagoon is just incredible. Those are probably $1,000 per night villas in the background. We snorkeled by the boat in 20 feet of water. There was a few low lying corals beneath the boat. I dove down and came face to face with a huge moray eel. I thought it was a sea cucumber at first...glad I didn't try to poke it.
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