Never arrive on a Sunday on a Cook Island. We saw about 10 churches for 1,200 inhabitants. Everything was closed, shops, restaurants, fuel station. The biggest highlight was that we didn't have to go through immigration and customs (they don't work on Sunday), and that the local 2 Cook Islands Dollar coins are triangular.

In any case, the main objective of the stop over was to watch the Germany-Argentina finals football game. It took us the whole first halftime to find the sole (!) TV on the whole islands that was showing the game. Then, as soon as the game went into overtime, they stopped the transmission and started showing some local dances instead. Very funny.

The pass into the lagoon is very tricky, only about 10-15m wide, minimum depth of 1.4m, and strong outgoing current. In addition, our GPS plotter was about 300m off and the channel is poorly marked. We ended up leaving the boat outside the reef.

So off we are again, next stop Niue (some island nation between here and Tonga) after about 570 Nm of mostly close reach sailing (a depression is coming through).