So, I think I left off right around the time the Shannon was to set sail to the Cook Islands from Tahiti. We said goodbye to our friends on 'Aura', or at least attempted to as we tried to shout over the sound of their running engine from 80 feet away, and motored out of the lagoon. There were some surfers tearing it up on the break to the south of the pass, and we got a great view as we glided by on the outgoing tide. We set our course for Rarotonga, 600 miles to the southeast, and were immediately met with a fresh breeze right in the teeth. After tacking back and forth all day, we'd only covered about 2/3 of the 8 mile distance between Tahiti and Moorea. I spent most of the day lazily reading a sail magazine from the book exchange on the side deck, trying to keep my pillow from catching too much spray. It's going to be a long passage, I thought to myself. By dinner time, the wind had finally clocked around about 150 degrees and we were rolling along on a nice broad reach in the direction of our intended destination, barely squeaking by the southern tip of Moorea without having to jibe. We had decided to completely forgo the rest of the Society Islands in leiu of the fact that we were running out of time before hurricane season started. The Societies looked gorgeous, but judging from the reports of other cruisers, and the frightening number of mega-yachts we'd seen heading down the chain, we decided there were many other more remote and untrammeled islands to see in this big ocean. We still had two and a half months left, but with the Cooks, Tonga and Fiji to see, there just wasn't time for everything.

After dinner, I turned the watch over to Britton, and crashed for the night. When I woke up, we were plodding along at 3 knots on a rapidly calming sea. We made 110 miles that first 24 hours, followed by 60, 30, 10, -12, and so on, as the wind and swell became absolutely non-existant. We've been becalmed before, but never so absolutely as this. Usually, when the wind stops, the boat rolls incessantly from the lack of the lateral stability of filled sails and the residual swell in the water. This time, the sea was so flat that we were able to cook gourmet meals, play jenga, and build card houses.. No wind means no wind generator, so our battery bank took a huge dive and we had to go into power rationing mode. Only one cabin light at night, intermittent computer charging (no watching 'Weeds' during night watch), and no music. God forbid we should be without all our electronics in this modern world. It's always nice when mother nature brings you back down to the basics. So, we read huge quantities of books, gazed at the horizon longingly every couple of minutes, and made friends with the spider that had set up its web between the boom and the topping lift (to me an indicator of being truly becalmed). And, as it always goes, after luffing around for several days, a light breeze filled in from the north and we cruised into Rarotonga around dawn on the 9th day at sea.

We puttered around outside the mouth of tiny Avatiu harbor, waiting for the harbormaster to roust himself from bed and come on duty so we could gain clearance to enter. There are no anchorages on Rarotonga, being that it has a very steep forereef, so the only place to get any shelter is inside the harbor. After making contact with the overly-chipper radio operator on VHF, we dropped sail and motored in. Only about 200 feet wide at its widest, Avatiu is built around supply ships and local fishing boats, not cruising sailors. That said, I liked the rusty grittiness of it all, having a soft spot in my heart for places similar to Keehi Lagoon. We dropped our bow anchor just off the nose of a NZ navy patrol boat and drifted nicely back into a slot between that and another sailboat. A couple of other cruisers came to meet us and handled the two stern lines that we heaved across to the 8 foot seawall. I guess you would call this the 'Med moor' style, and this was our first experience using this technique. We positioned ourselves just far enough away from the wall to make coming and going from the boat a serious ordeal. Just to our stern was a tide gauge station, complete with solar panel, and fancy NOAA sticker. I was so proud! Although it looked like the Rarotonga representative to NOAA had been slacking off recently- rarely (or never) painting the thing, and apparently overlooking the rather fatal-looking rusty gashes and dents where some hapless cruiser's boat had bashed into the main upright of the gauge. Maybe somebody should give Dole Street a call about that one.

Before we'd even finished adjusting our lines, we were descended upon by customs and health officals, both of whom were quite possibly the friendliest people we'd met in the south pacific yet. The customs official, whose name escapes me now, sat us down at a picnic table and leisurely filled out some very unofficial looking forms and scribbled something unreadable every now and then in his notebook, all the while giving us a rambling lesson on the linguistic structure of the Maori language, and the differences between even local dialects in the Cook Islands. We were interested to learn the tonga means 'south', and Rarotonga means 'more south'. I like their system of nomenclature. Kia orana means hello, very similar to the Iaorana in Tahiti, or Kiaora in NZ. For the first time on our voyage so far, we spoke the local language, and it was like a whole new world opened up to us. We could ask questions! Make friends! Say stuff like "what do you do with your garbage here?" and not get a blank look in return. My favorite Mark Twain quote (thanks Molly!) pretty much sums up our experience prior to Rarotonga: "In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language." -MT

After the customs offical had answered more than his share of questions, the health offical took a turn. We paddled him in the dinghy across the 15 foot gap to the boat, and he (with difficulty) clambered aboard. We sat in the cockpit and chatted casually for about 5 minutes, as if jumping right into business would have been rude. His name was Jeff, age 25-ish, and he had come from the small island of Mauke to the northeast to find a job in the big city (Rarotonga, administrative capital of the Cook Islands, population 20,000). As health inspector, he was obliged to give the boat a cursory inspection, and a cursory squirt of aircraft insecticide. His tiny sprayer, the size of a silly string can, yielded feeble asthmatic little poofs of chemical (that smelled like peaches) and was wielded with such timidness as to suggest that he rather liked insects. Bugs fell from the ceilings in laughter. Afterwards, he asked for $15 New Zealand for the inspection fee. I told him I didn't have any New Zealand money yet, so he took a US $10 bill, which he stuffed into the cap of his insecticide and hopped in the dingy. His parting words were "Rarotongan women don't like us locals. They like the white dudes! You're lucky man, but you gotta find a fresh one." I assumed he had breathed too much insecticide.

After we got the boat in order, we all went out to explore the town. Much to our surprise, we were among many white, foreign-looking people walking down the sidewalks. Little did we know, but Rarotonga is to the Kiwis what Waikiki is to Americans. Tourist traps abounded. Restaurants were plenty. Bars outnumbered the people, and everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE, tourists were riding rental mopeds. Despite the touristy nature of the place, Kiwi touristy is vastly more tasteful than American touristy. The knick knacks in the giftshops were of slightly better quality, (which usually means the carved wood has less laquer on it), the bars actually had locals in them, the signs were hand-painted, and I didn't see a single ABC store anywhere. Granted, this place had about 10x less population than waikiki, so some adjustments have to be made. After a week and a half at sea, we could not resist the rows of little lunch wagons and food stalls that were set up in the park, and immediately sat down and had a delicious lamb roll, served by a very sweaty but jolly local woman who somehow managed to make three plates of lamb rolls and a smoothie in less than 45 seconds while holding her phone to her ear with one hand.

Usually, we all prefer to travel more or less off the beaten track- seeking out the more remote places, getting around by foot or bike, cooking all our meals on the boat, saving money, meeting local people. But in Rarotonga, we just forgot all about that stuff and kinda went tourist crazy. Naturally, we rented motorcycles. Not just the cheezy mopeds that the rest of the tourists were riding, but honest 125cc Suzuki motorcycles, able to hurtle a rider along the highway at at least 35 mph with a tailwind. At around $20 US per day, we splurged and rented them for two. Ken's was black, new, and shiny and said RAD on the license plate. Mine was older, red,kinda rusty, and said RAB on the license plate. Can't win em all, I guess. Alina rode on Ken's bike, and Britton rented his own moped, as he wasn't familiar with using a clutch (although he learned in the parking lot in about five minutes). In a moment of super-cheese, Ken and I posed for photo after photo, trying to look as tough as we could while straddling our steeds. Helmets were not compulsory, which was a moot point because not a single helmet seemed to exist on the whole island anyway. So, we rode bare-headed. On the wrong side of the road. Remember, this is part of the Commonwealth. In a stroke of genius, some Cook Island bureaucrat, decided it would be a good idea to require all operators of motor vehicles on Rarotonga to obtain a Cook Island drivers license. At $20 a pop, and doled out at a rate of 120-150 per day (I asked), it seems to be a major contributing factor to the country's gross GDP. Always being the straight shooters that we are, we all popped for the licenses, and now have one more thick plastic card taking up space in our wallets. My wallet is roughly the thickness of a big-mac, and has ceased to even fold up anymore. The good news is that my smile is huge in the license photo (I learned that from you, Sean Gould).

Rarotonga is very small, only 6 miles across the middle, so you can ride around it nonstop in about an hour. If you like taking the scenic route, however, there is a little country backroad that parallels the main highway just a little further inland that will also take you the majority of the way around the island. Every now and then there are roads that cut up into the mountainous interior. This is where we spent our hours riding. Once off the main drag, Rarotonga was one of the more beautiful islands we visited. The local farming community is healthier than any we'd yet seen, with all kinds of diverse crops being grown- tomatos, pumpkins, arrowroot (a main export), greens, taro, noni (also a main export) etc. We passed farm after farm after farm. All small. All looked to be family-run. It was nice to see regular people out working in the fields. The local grocery store had a nice big local produce section.

Exploring the mountain roads was definitely the most fun. One partiular road led quite a ways up into the mountains. It had long since turned to gravel when we encountered a smiling young kid of ambiguous gender riding a moped. The kid excitedly indicated that he/she would love to ride with us and show us the way up the mountain. Sure, why not? We thought. With a high piched "wheeeeee!" our androgynous young friend took off like a shot up the road. Soon we passed a pack of mud-splattered ATV riders heading in the opposite direction. With a questionable look at Britton's overloaded looking moped, they wished us luck and continued downhill. Our friend, who we'll call William, just for the sake of clarity, was very exited at the prospect of being our guide. For no reason other than the sheer novelty of it, he would command us to halt at periodic intervals, after which he would giggle furiously, hoot and holler and take off again in a spray of gravel. By the time we decided to turn around (much to William's chagrin) we'd forded three streams, cracked the underbody of Brit's moped, and stalled out numerous times attempting to navigate across wet slippery boulders. On the way down, William was summoned back to his little house by an unseen bellowing parent, and was gone without a word before we knew what had happened. "What a weird little girl.." Ken said.

The next day, we decided to try the cross-island trek, which is just simply a hike from one side of the island to the other. We were feeling a little less than chipper, due to meeting a fun crew of young cruisers in the harbor the night before, and discovering the local micro-brewery (which we toured). The hike was fantastic, and led up to a sheer rock spire in the interior of the island, and followed a stream through a Cretaceous-era fern forest back down the other side. There were so many awesome plants- enormous ferns, epiphytes, elephant ear taro, gigantic flowers of unknown species, that I took a ton of pictures and wrote a Reach the World post on "awesome jungle plants" Coming soon to a website near you.

After an awesome solo ride around the island the next morning, watching the sun come up over the taro fields (while simultaneously freezing my butt off), I returned my bike and hopped across the street to the Saturday market. Which, in comparison, was busier than the Punahou carnival. It was too tempting to stay there very long, what with all the food stalls and delicious smells wafting about, so I took off to go fill up a jerrycan of diesel and set about prepping the boat for sea. (At $22/day mooring fees, we could only afford about 4 days). I bummed a couple of hoses from some other sailors and bridged the long gap from the spigot out to the boat, all the while thanking my lucky stars that it reached and that we wouldn't have to ferry jerry jugs.

The next day, I tromped off to the other side of town to clear out of immigration and customs. Both were housed in an enormous wooden firetrap of a building, 4 stories high. It reminded me almost exactly of the commercial building at the Missoula county fair. The immigration office was on the third floor, and hadn't appeared to have changed much since the Carter administration. The carpet was orange, there was a vinyl couch along one wall that looked like it belonged in the back of a '78 Eldorado, and everything was mildewy. There was no air conditioning, and being on the third floor, the air temp was approaching triple digits. A couple of sleepy looking people labored among stacks of moldy immigration forms, and glanced up at me with glazed eyes and beaded brows. Nobody seemed to know what to do with me. After arguing with her co-worker about what was the proper procedure for me, one of the women disappeared into a back room to look for some forms. She promptly returned 17 minutes later. After I filled out all my passport information and muddled through the rest of the form, she stamped all our passports and sent me off to Customs with a weak but genuine smile. Customs was on the second floor, on the side of the building and had a powerful air conditioning system. They even had a sliding glass door/airlock with a big sign on it that said "Please keep door closed". I walked in, and the woman right behind me left it wide open. Nobody seemed to care much about that. Again, there was no real streamlined procedure for clearing out of customs. A short, surly looking woman was dispatched to deal with me, as the receptionist had no clue what to do. After looking perplexed for a while, and digging around for a form for me, she reviewed my documents.
"I see here your next port of call is Palmerston Atoll"
"Yep, that's right"
"Are you bringing anything with you to Palmerston?" she looked hard into my eyes.
"ummm, what do you mean?"
"Are you bringing any illegal substances with you?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Are you bringing anything ELSE with you?" she stared into my soul.
"Like what?"
"Are you bringing any people with you?" her eyes narrowed.
"You mean like passengers?"
"Local people wanting to travel to Palmerston."
"Uh, no. Just these three other people that are part of my crew."
"Ok, then!" she said with a warm smile. "You can be on your way."
"That's it?"
"Yep"

Later, I related the tale of my immigration and customs experience to my friend Lee, a nice young guy we met in the harbor who is singlehanding around the world. I mentioned to him my distinct impression that it seemed like no one had ever attempted to to clear a boat out of the country before. I couldn't figure out how so many yachts (probably on the order of 100 every year) come through Rarotonga, and yet no one I talked to appeared to have ever even seen a yacht captain, let alone know which form to give them. He said, "Oh yeah man, they just changed the policy last week. The harbormaster used to handle all customs and immigration themselves. You're probably the first boat to ever clear out that way.


I reflected a bit on Rarotonga. Perhaps it was the absence of the language barrier, but to me, the local people in Rarotonga were the friendliest we'd yet encountered. Everyone was stoked to meet you, to find out all about you, to serve you food, to give you directions. Even the poor guy who was sweating over the hot grill in the back of the burger stand took the time to give us a smile. The Rarotongans seem to have struck a happy balance between the tourist economy and local subsistence agriculture. Despite the large numbers of foreigners on the island at any time, the Cook Island culture did not seem to be diluted like you might find in Hawaii. A modest way of life and a sense of economic autonomy combined to give a feeling of cultural security to the place. We hitched a ride with a local guy who was a member of the Cook Island Voyaging Society. Just like in Hawaii, there has been a resurgence of the traditional methods of ocean navigation, and the Cook Islanders have built themselves 7 large ocean-going canoes. (One of which they'll be sailing to Hawaii for a rendezvous this year). He was so stoked on this revival, even though he didn't really know how to sail. His enthusiasm was contagious.

We left Rarotonga around dusk and listlessly drifted along at about 2 knots on a glassy sea. The weather report on the door of the harbormasters office had that morning forcast 10 days of calm winds. By 8:00 we were very nearly at a standstill. Ken poked his head up from the cabin and said "At this speed, we'll reach Palmerston in a little over 15 days"... I grumbled to Brit about what a drag calm weather was. "I'd rather have 30 knots over 2 knots any old day" I blurted arrogantly. I knocked off watch and turned it over to Alina for the 10-2am shift. Right around midnight I awoke to a change in motion of the boat. I lay there for a minute or so trying to get a feel for what was happening. Soon, a timid voice called down the companionway.
"Kev? Kev?"
"Yeah?"
"We're going really fast."
When I popped my head up, I was blasted full in the face by 30 knots of wind, and immediately helped Alina drop the main and furl half the headsail. It blew 25-40 knots for the next 9 days.
Palmerston was such an interesting place that it deserves its own entry. There is a certain lag time for writing these posts. Sorry, it's not exactly real-time. Currently, we're riding on a mooring just off the town of Alofi in Niue, and will be headed for Tonga this afternoon. In the mean time, I've posted all our Tuamotus photos in two different albums, along with Tahiti photos and shots from Rarotonga. I didn't have time to write captions for all of them, but I'll get back in there and update them next chance I get internet.
Hope everyone is doing well!