29 July 2019 Bora Bora Bloody Mary's

Gendarmes cleared us to exit French Polynesia and we decided to celebrate with lunch at Bloody Mary's. Classy place until we arrived just ahead of a bus load of cruise boat guests. John shared his French fries with the local HeyHey but I ate all my tuna sashimi. Talk about name dropping; they have boards outside on the street listing celebrities who have visited since the 70's. Includes both Buffets. LOL

So back at sea which is usually good space but a bit of nausea with the pitching and rolling in 4 meter seas. Wind is good between 20-25 behind us from the East so hopefully swell improves now that the 35 knot winds have subsided. We made good miles for a 150 nm in 24 hours. We had hoped to check out Maupiti just 30 miles from Bora Bora as we heard it is the garden island but the 15 ft swells at the entrance were sending waves and mist visible 5 miles out all across the entry bar so aborted and heading now for Aitutaki in Cook Islands then to Palmerston to break up the 1,000 mile trip to Niue. We pre-plotted several trip options and uploaded and filled out the entry paperwork for each country while we had wifi in town or at the BB Yacht Club. Niue�'' form is 8 pages!

Rainbows all day long but just as we changed course away from Maupiti this small, low full span rainbow perched above the water just ahead and behind us for a brief time. I thought I was hallucination, we seemed so close, but John saw it too. Makes me smile to take part in Creation every day in some special way out here.

Our Garmin trip history says we have traveled just over 12,000 nautical miles since we started the day after Christmas. However it also said we had a boat speed of 21 knots at some point but the average speed of 6 knots seems realistic. We are not done yet and can slow down now that there is no absolute deadline in the next few countries.