We nearly overslept, so it was a mad dash to grab our bags and head into town to get to the market at 7am. Rowan had seen the supply ship at the dock last night so we knew there may be new stock and we had heard you have to get there early or it runs out. Han and I went to the fresh produce market while Rowan and Meghan went to the supermarket to get supplies there. There wasn’t much on display when we arrived, mainly cabbage and Pamplemousse. Soon boxes were trickling in with goodies. Han made a valiant grab for the only two lettuces and the only bag of tomatoes which people kept trying to get off her! Aubergines and Pak Choi were plentiful surprisingly. Every time I finished paying another box would arrive and I would have to get back in the queue to pay. We had just given up on gettting eggs when a lady arrived with 5 trays, a bunch of Danish girls took 3 trays and luckily we were right behind so I got the last two trays. We all met back at JeldiJeldi and loaded her up with all the groceries plus the big Parasail bag. I was balancing the eggs precariously, when suddenly the heavens opened and we had the most enormous downpour. We got drenched and the cardboard tray for the eggs turned to mush, making egg carrying even harder. The very blonde Swedish family on Blue Sunshine were so disappointed not to get eggs that we went and dropped a dozen off on their boat on the way back to PolePole. We unpacked our drenched purchases and managed to get all the eggs safely into my big plastic egg trays from Suffolk.
There was nothing to keep us here so we decided to start our passage to the Tuamotus, it was about 10am when we got the anchor up and set sail. Rowan got the mainsail up and heard a rather nasty tearing sound and found that the sail had ripped near the mast at the bottom. What a pain, but he realised if we put a reef into the main sail it would take all the tension off that area, so it was not a catastrophe. It turned out to fortuitous too as we were out about half an hour when we had huge squalls all around us. The wind was getting up to 33 knots and we were flying at about 15 knots. Too fast so we headed into the wind a bit more and continued at a more sedate 10 knots! Pleased that we had a reef in too. We had a couple more downpours and the wind kept up until we were past Oa Pou. We passed a couple of the Arc fleet boats, including our Dutch friends on Pippin who were considering to go into Oa Pou if the wind continued, there was quite a chop too, so particularly uncomfortable for monohulls. We also passed Nevil who is now on Cepa, it is just him and the German guy, and they crawl along in their Catamaran, not sure it is going to prove a happy boat.
About half an hour the other side of Oa Pou the skies cleared and we were having a very comfortable sail with Sporty Spice (Code Zero sail), the wind was blowing in the low teens and we were averaging 7-8 knots boat speed, so we were very happy.
We soon slotted back into our shift time table so early to bed for us.
Leaving the rain behind over Nuku Hiva
Downpour over Daniel’s Bay
Another great sunset
The girls keeping up their exercise routine
The pink clouds on the opposite horizon to the sunset
I couldn’t believe the sunset could get more and more dramatic
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