Friday 25 August – we are off!

We had a very good night’s sleep, I think because we were so relieved the engines were working properly. A smallish cruise liner arrived in the bay early, a good sign that we should move on. Seems surprising the liner comes in as it is a fairly narrow pass and there are no docks for anyone to get off at. Rowan thinks they may just come to dive and snorkel. It was glorious sunshine in the morning and the water was flat as a pancake, with no wind it was boiling hot. We decided to do a snorkel at the dive site which is out the pass and the other side of the reef. It was quite deep for snorkelling but the visibility was brilliant so it did not matter. The coral was in pretty good shape and there were loads of little fish plus we saw two turtles. We had a lovely long snorkel all along the reef, which has these canyons like dry river beds coming from the reef, maybe they are old lava flow paths. We saw no black tipped sharks which I was surprised by.

Couldn’t believe this monster arrived in the bay early this morning

We got back to PolePole and slowly prepared for departure. The clouds rolled in, the sun disappeared and the wind picked up, so we really timed our snorkel well. It is a 10 hour passage to Huahine, there was no point going too early as we didn’t want to be doing the pass through the reef in the dark. But we also wanted to leave early enough so that we could return in daylight if we needed to – if we had more engine problems. Thankfully it all went like clockwork, the engines purred into forward gear, no diagnostic sirens wailing and we were off to sea. By 4pm we had got our Baby Spice Spinnaker up, after a second attempt, but not bad in about 17 knots of wind. We cruised along comfortably with her up, going way too fast meaning we would arrive at about 4am. As the winds were forecast to pick up a bit, Rowan made the decision to take Baby Spice down before it got dark and we continued to sail with just the jib (Posh Spice!), bringing our speed right down.

Rowan so happy to be back sailing, headphones on for getting Baby Spice up

Leaving the lovely anchorage behind

Flying Baby Spice, and if you look closely a South African flag!

Leaving the island of Moorea behind

Dramatic sunset, sailing with just the jib

I’m on the first shift, I’m going to try and do until midnight, all is going well, a few gusts peaking at 25knots, we are averaging 5knots speed over ground so that will bring us to Huahine in the morning light. I have the glow of a passenger ship behind us, they are also going slowly, most probably for the same reason as us. Rowan called him up on the vhf before heading to bed, the captain in a very English accent confirmed they could see us and would go around us!

It feels very good to be off and heading somewhere new.