I saw these guys as we came up toward a mark just inside the pass. They were surfing the wave in their Va'a... as we motored up to leave the mark to starboard, one of them crossed in front of us and stopped, just out our track... "what the heck"

He gave me a surfers wave, so I held my course, suddenly realizing what he was up to.

We had seen the Va'a do it with other boats...

As we came by they slid into position. We were doing 6 knots and they still had to pull to stay with us. The one on the left had the sweet spot, right in our draft. The other is trying to stay on our stern wave, which is not very big. They grinned at us a couple times, and turned down a drink of water... they were training.

As we passed the Va'a Club in Uturoa, they pulled away from us, waved and sat back for a drink from their water bottles

The south end of Raiatea is well marked but poorly charted... so we kept a pretty good eye out as we worked our way around the south end.

Coral looks black, shallow sand looks light blue and sand that we will run aground on has a yellow tinge to it.

Lara stands on the bow pullpit, it is mid day so the Tropical sun it straight overhead giving us really good visability.

Isobel prefers to stay in the shade (which we left up as there is no wind...zero, zippo) and eat Pomplamoose...

So, we couldn't bring our selves to leave Sunday, so we arose at 5 am and we were underway soon so we could have Isobel at school at 7:45.

Does she have any idea how funny it is to make faces about brushing her hair in the morning... when she is in a place like this?

The only problem... there was not a breath of wind, so we had to motor back the Marina Apooiti. Ah well, used about 2 1/4 gallons of fuel for a weekend out...

Navigation in French Polynesia:

Like many things in the US, most of the rest of the world has a different system for navigation marks. Entering passes it is Green Right Returning. Once inside an atoll or reef ringed island, the channel is marked by green on the reef side and red on the island side. If there is an obstacle then there is a mark similar the the one in the photo. Two triangles pointing up is “Stay North of the mark,” two triangles pointing down is “stay South of the mark.” Two triangles pointing at each other (makes two Ws on their sides) “stay West” and two triangles pointing away from each other, “stay East of the mark.”

The little hut is someone’s weekend retreat. Already a casualty of Climate Change and sea levels rising, although they are still using it! The peak on the island hints at its volcanic origins and is the peak we climbed a couple weeks ago with the kids…

Isobel reads statistics off the instruments. She is remarking that our speed over ground is above 10 knots!

One of the things I wanted to do while in Portland was go back through photos and thoughts from the past 6 months of sailing and write some things and post some things. Some of you know that we made the passage between the Galapagos and Fatu Hiva in 18 days. This is remarkable. We had planned 25 to 30 days. We know boats that took 50 plus days. So, we were lucky to find some current at the equator. Here is a fun video:

About an hour before sunset we dropped the mooring and poled out the genoa on one side and the Spinnaker on the other (didn't want to disturb the three year old who was asleep in the hammock strung from the boom!) it was a beautiful sunset cruise...

The wind kind of died as we turned into Hawksnest... So we ghosted along depolying the Spi when the wind swirled over the mountain and came from behind, snuffing it when it was on the nose. The little girl, now awake, had lots of suggestions: "pull it in Papa... Quicker Papa... Mama, head for that mooring over there... Papa put the sail out, NOW... Grab the mooring Papa, loop the line through... Can I have dessert now?"