Commodore
November 1, 2024

Saturday 2 November – walking over the hill to meet friends for lunch

We woke up and were able to fully admire the gorgeous bay we were in, last night was getting a bit dark when we entered. By the time we had finished breakfast most of the 6 boats had departed. We paddled in the kayak to the beach and pulled the kayak high onto the grass, before heading up the path to the cafe/restaurant on the other side of the island, to meet our new Belgium friends. The landscape is so like the Lake District with sheep grazing bright green lawns of grass. The cafe has a huge jetty which obviously has some ferries and tour boats coming over regularly. There is also a camp site and little chalets, so a much bigger set up than we realised. Quite a few backpackers with tents arriving on the ferry, off to camp at the 3 camp sites on the island. Our beach where we are anchored has a camp site, but think it is too cold as we didn’t see any tents. Vivienne and Luc were waiting for us, they left shortly after us last night, it was getting too rolly for them as well. They anchored the opposite end of the island to us, and had a longer walk to join us. The island is a crisscross of walking paths which we look forward to exploring. Rowan’s 3am board meeting went well, which having had a very sober Friday night, we celebrated with a couple of bottles of delicious NZ wine. We heard loads of stories from Vivienne about their sail to NZ. They were caught in Mexico in Covid lock down, they headed to Hawaii, and then ran out of US visa time so headed back to Canada and had a great year sailing down the coast to Vancouver, from there straight to the Marquesas and around to here. Fascinating listening to their time in Burundi, she is a Flemish farm girl, and went out to teach there, he is an architect who went out to lecture there, they met out there. They have also lived in Brazil for a couple of years, she is obviously a great linguist.

It was good to have a steep walk back and a paddle to work off lunch. On our way back we came over the rise and spotted there was only one other boat in the bay with us and we recognised the name. When I checked my phone we had a message from the couple on the Cat, Second Wind, it was the NZ couple we had met in Kadavu, Fiji, with Wendy and Phil, a remote little bay, where we were given a wonderful reception by the school. Sadly Wendy (yes another Wendy!) on Second Wind, wasn’t feeling too well but we have planned to meet up in Opua where they live, when we go back to the marina. This cruising sailing world is pretty small!