Sunset in the Tuamotus in French Polynesia

Two Years in Two Pages
I'm not sure how this happened, but it's quite literally been 2 years since the last Inmate Update. I ended that 17-page tome that took us from the Galapagos to French Polynesia with, "The next will be shorter, I promise!" So the pressure is on: The last one covered 23 days in 17 pages; I'm shooting for 2 years in 2 pages here.

This is truly a case of "if it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done" since today may well be our last day in NZ. If the weather cooperates, we will sail out of here tomorrow, June 1, for Fiji. But we've been trying to do that for at least 2 weeks, so we're not saying goodbye to anyone yet....

We arrived in NZ in Nov. 2007 after a mostly-terrible trip down from northern Tonga. The cruising fleet pretty much vacates "the islands" (as they're known here)--Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia--in November to get out of the Pacific cyclone belt for the season, heading south either to NZ or Australia, or north toward the equator where cyclones don't bother to go. Not wanting to miss anything along the way, we opted for NZ, knowing that the trip across those rough waters can be, well, rough. We were rewarded with the full passage experience: a couple days of glorious sailing, a couple days of flat-calm motoring, and many days of being pummeled by a couple of low pressure systems that moved through, menacing the southbound fleet. There were lots of us traveling at the time; some decided to race the weather and try to get in. About 18 of us opted to divert to let one of the low pressure systems pass, and as we headed west (instead of south) and north (instead of south) to avoid a good pummeling, we dubbed ourselves The Hindsight Fleet, because, of course, in hindsight we all agreed we should have just kept going on the rhumb line to NZ. As a result of our 2 dalliances (one a lovely stop at Minerva Reef to snorkel and sleep, the other our twirl to avoid the bad weather, which we got anyway), what should have been a 9 day trip from Tonga to NZ took us 15!

Members of the relieved Hindsight Fleet (get it??) celebrate their arrival in New Zeland

Before that ugly slog we spent 6 lovely weeks in Tonga. Funny little country--a collection of far-flung islands, many small and uninhabited; the only country in the S Pacific never to have been governed by a foreign power; a strong monarchy with a beloved (mostly) royal family whose visits to small towns still prompt a flurry of painting anything that doesn't move and lavishing the already-wealthy visitor with gifts the locals can't afford; pigs roaming the streets and church lawns like dogs would anywhere else. Friendly people, good snorkeling, great whale watching (we swam with humpbacks!); phenomenal church choirs, where the whole congregation is the choir, singing with gloriously rich harmonies that they all learn by rote from the time they're kids because they don't read a note of music.

After church in Vava'u, Tonga. Both women and men wear the woven "mats" around their waists to show respect.

Before Tonga we spent 10 days in the funky harbor of Pago Pago, American Samoa. The island itself is lushly beautiful, but the large, deep natural harbor suffers from the effluent of two huge tuna canneries on its edge and years of being treated as the local rubbish bin. Holding is terrible in the anchorage and several of our friends dragged in windy nights. So why did we go there, you ask? Part of it was weather patterns that favored a northerly route to Tonga rather than the more southerly alternative, (and part of it was that the guys liked the outfits...)


but also it was the last place we could get parts and other stuff for 110 boats. That is, 110V electrical systems. Headed to the land of 220 as we were, several of us decided to make the stop there. In the Ace Hardware store we found the best thing we ever bought: a transformer for 220 to 110 (not to mention all kinds of other American goodies we thought we couldn't live without), which has sustained us on shore power here in NZ the entire time.

We arrived in Pago Pago from Suwarrow Atoll, on the northern end of the tiny country called the Cook Islands. The atoll, a national park, is so remote that we didn't even officially check in to the country. It's uninhabited except for a care-taker family who lives there 6 months of the year to watch over and protect it from cruisers and other ne'er-do-wells who sneak in and denude the reef of its bounty of lobster and crabs and annoy the nesting bird populations.

The Suwarrow caretaker's family with the Inmates.

We loved it there--the isolation, the gin-clear water and spectacular snorkeling, the small sharks circling under the boat looking for the good bits that cruisers throw overboard (because of them and their larger relatives there's a strict "no cleaning fish on board" rule), the beach BBQs with fresh caught snapper and music almost ready for prime time. A week wasn't nearly enough there, but the need to keep moving and a good weather window to do it had us setting off way before we wanted to.

Before Suwarrow we had lingered in Bora Bora, at the western end of French Polynesia's Society Islands. This is magazine and postcard territory--where the private little thatch-roof bungalows perch over turquoise water.


We had our own bungalow perched over about 10 feet of turquoise water with our own private reef just a few strokes away, where we actually got to know individual fish in our daily visits. Although a little bit touristy, Bora Bora nonetheless had all the benefits of a French isle: good baguettes, good cheese, good wine, and, amazingly, fairly laid back customs and immigration officials who didn't seem to care that our visas had expired 4 days before we got around to leaving. (Sometimes "waiting for weather" isn't a bad thing.)

The collection of Society Islands also includes the lovely Moorea and the overrated Tahiti. We did manage to be in Tahiti during the annual La Heiva festival, a week of local cultural competitions that included dance troupes to rival the Bolshoi, out-rigger canoe races, lance-throwing at coconuts mounted on very skinny tall poles, rock lifting, racing with heavy yokes of fruit, and other odd but entertaining contests.


In Tahiti we also tucked Asylum into a marina for a few days and flew to Easter Island to visit that very interesting--if a little creepy--place. Having been warned by a couple of intrepid cruiser friends who actually took their own boats there that the anchorages were difficult at best and downright dangerous sometimes, we opted for the wussy way to visit it: on a 747. I'm glad to know that archeologists still scratch their heads over those big goofy statues (the Moai) because we sure didn't fully grasp the rationale behind a civilization that effectively wiped itself out carving and lugging them all over the island, only to knock them all over (because the statues hadn't taken care of them) before they essentially starved to death. I need to read more of the book...

Moai who didn't make it all the way down the hill from the "rookery" where they were carved.

Much of our time in the Societies was spent in and out of dentists' offices as I tried to deal with a deteriorating tooth problem. In the end, I had my first root canal ever in the quaint but apparently adequate office of a French dentist on the island of Raiatea. Between his 10 words of English and my long-dormant college French, we were able to conclude that after everything else that had been done, I had no option but to succumb to a root canal. Amazingly (to me and our dentist cruiser friends) it was painless and took barely half an hour. Gotta love the French. Of course it was also a French dentist who said to me (also to the amazement of our dentist cruiser friends), "You Americans and your flossing!" when I pointed out to him that the filling he'd just reinstalled didn't allow me to floss between the 2 teeth. Seems a shame that dentist offices and tooth pain are my main memories of the exotic Societies, but it gave me greater appreciation for all the toothless people in the world who at some point gave up (or had no other option) and cried, "Just pull the damn thing!"--a thought that crossed my mind several times!

Before the Society Islands and after leaving the Marquesas where we made landfall in the South Pacific, we gingerly explored the Tuamotu Archipelago--known to early explorers as "The Dangerous Archipelago," and for good reason. These are low lying reefs and atolls spread across an enormous area of the Pacific and if you didn't know they were there and happened to run into one of them, it would make a terrible mess of your boat. Apparently this happened often back in the days before GPS and hence the name. Even though we knew where they were as we approached them, it didn't make us any less wary of them because not only are the center lagoons ringed by boat-eating coral reefs, the narrow passes into the lagoons have ripping currents that will twirl an unsuspecting sailboat like a top.


A bevy of cruising beauties with the pass into Rangiroa in the background. (Laura from Chantelle, Liz from Scholarship, and Katie)

We didn't enter or leave the lagoons except in broad daylight at slack tide. Twice we hove to (put the boat essentially in "neutral") and waited for the sun to come up and the current to slack before trying to enter. In the dinghy it was a different story. For that we waited till the current was ripping, went out the pass against it, jumped overboard in our snorkel gear, each clinging to a line from the stern, and essentially fast-forwarded through the pass letting the dink and the current drag us along and do all the work while we watched the abundant sea life float by beneath us. Once inside the lagoon, we'd haul ourselves back into the dinghy, motor back out against the current and do it again. Sharks, rays, big fish, little fish, red fish, blue fish. What a rush! In addition to boasting world class dive sites, the Tuamotus are a major area of black pearl cultivation in the world, and many of the cultivators were happy to trade pearls for, well, mostly they wanted booze--hard to get and very expensive there. We traded one old bottle of scotch and some regular old cash for a couple of pearls, but mostly I thought the pearls kinda looked like ball bearings...

With that we're back in the Marquesas, where we made landfall from the Galapagos in May 2007 when the last Inmate Update went out. Six months and another 4700 nautical miles later (just whizzed thru above), we made landfall in New Zealand. While the Inmates roamed here, in the States, and in Australia during the past 18 months, Asylum was poked, prodded, rerigged, revarnished, rerefrigerated, repainted; sails were repaired and a new one made; many of the electronics were replaced in just the past 2 weeks after being fried by a way-too-close lightning strike; and the self-steering device has been repaired after being hit a week ago by a drunk trying to get into his slip at 2 a.m. in a swirling current. With all that, Jim's already-expired visa, and NZ winter settling in, we gotta get out of this place! With any luck, that'll happen early Monday afternoon. Next stop Fiji.

Whew! Bottom of page 2! Stay tuned for more. The Inmates

(There are more pictures from this trek across the Pacific in the Photo Gallery called "Polynesia to New Zealand."