We left Maupiti the same day as Miss Behaving and Tinkerbell, and stayed in contact with them with the SSB radio for the four-day, 700 mile sail to Suwarrow. Shine and Family Circus came in a couple of days later.

Suwarrow in the Cook Islands, is a beautiful, remote coral atoll, with nothing really within 300 miles of it. The lagoon is about 12 miles by 5 miles, with 20 small motus (islets) on the fringing reef. The only permitted anchorage is just inside the main cut or pass, in front of the motu where the two National Park caretakers live.

We had a very relaxed time there, with usually about half a dozen boats in the anchorage, snorkelling each day despite the plentiful sharks, potluck dinners on the beach, and fresh tuna shared between the boats depending on who had been lucky fishing in the pass. One of the successful fishing trips was by Alec and Roan and George from Shine, who took our dinghy and went trolling the pass late in the afternoon. They came back having caught a 10+ kg tuna on a hand line. There only comment was that they were a bit worried that they wouldn’t be able to pull it in before the sharks got it!

After only 11 days we decided it was time to move on as the season was moving along, but could easily have stayed another week or two!

We were heading on to Neiafu, Tonga with Miss Behaving, Tinkerbell, Shine and Family Circus, while some of the other boats were going via Palmerston Island, though we would meet up with them again shortly. The 4 day sail to Tonga was mixed, with good wind for the first 24 hours, but after that some very light winds with lots of motoring. We played leap frog with Family Circus for a day, them motoring past us in the calms and then us sailing past once we got enough wind for the spinnaker.