Cycling Round Moorea
21 August 2020 | Cook’s Bay, Moorea, French Polynesia
Graham Walker
An early start yesterday to collect our e-bikes, and then we were off for a tour of Moorea. The island is volcanic (as they all are here) so it has tall peaks in the middle and falls off steeply all round to the sea. The road goes around the edge with just one or two spurs inland, and there are some amazing peaks and spires poking up across the middle of the island. It is stunning to look at. The coast road is fairly flat so it makes for a relatively easy cycle. We managed 60 km and made it all the way round. Our only issue was a very heavy rain shower that delayed us for 45 minutes - which meant that when we got to our much looked forward to lunch stop we found it was Firmly Ferme. However, a picnic on the end of a village pier had much more local charm in the end.
After our exertions it was lovely to be invited over for sundowners on UK SV Zan. We have communicated with Zan in the past but never met face to face, so it was very good to put the faces to the boat. They have a lovely big catamaran and we always come away from visits to big cats with a bit of entertainment-space envy.
Mark (one of our readers) was asking about distances to destinations. If we go west, we have two main legs to sail. The first leg, from Tahiti to Fiji, is 1,900 nautical miles due west and will take about two weeks. After that, we have to wait for a weather window to complete the next 1,080 miles, pretty much due south, to get us to North Island, New Zealand – a leg that will take about 10 days. Normally the trip from Tahiti to New Zealand would be broken up into lots of short legs, using all the islands in between – but the Cooks, Samoa, Niue, Tonga et al are all closed. And normally yachts take a mid-passage break in the deserted Minerva Reefs, between Tonga and NZ, but Tonga (which contests Fiji for ownership of the reefs) has put a warship in place to prevent yachts stopping.
If we end up on the easterly plan then we would have to sail 890 miles south east (upwind) to the Gambiers or 800 miles back to the Marquesas Islands. There’s still no word from our agents and time is getting tight.