It was an uneventful night with winds in the low teens, so a lovely sail for a while. The chop and swell meeting and colliding did make things a bit bumpy just when it was my turn to have a sleep. By midday the winds had dropped below 10 knots and progress was slow, so we put the engines back on so that we could make the anchorage by day light. I had a very productive day creating my Boer War photo book and Rowan kept busy, so the day went by in a flash.
It was lovely to see the jagged high mountain silhouette of both Tahiti (2240m high) and Moorea (1200m high), from at least 3 hours away. We were definitely ready for a change from flat atolls! We finally made it in by 4pm, an absolutely stunning bay, it must be an ancient Caldera, it has soaring high peaks, and some really extraordinary eroded steep ridges. Some have holes through which is quite amazing to look up to from down here. There were not many boats so it was fairly easy getting the anchor set although it is a deep bay and we had to put out nearly our entire anchor chain of 70m. First time the anchor didn’t catch so we had to do the whole thing again. We got there in the end.
We were greeted by the 3 Arc boats who have left the fleet, Lorraine from Far invited us for drinks, with Andrew the Scottish guy who is now sailing solo on his Oyster boat, Voyager 2. Loads of news and gossip to catch up on the fleet, the main thing being the boat Salt got infested with rats in the city marina in Papeete. They ate through endless, food, clothes, shoes, but the worst was they chewed through all their sewage black water pipes and the bilges all filled with raw sewage. Sounded an absolute nightmare! We have definitely decided not to go to that marina.
We were persuaded to stay for a bite of supper on Far, I was impressed with our stamina as we are usually exhausted after a night at sea.
We spotted the high mountains above the clouds on Taihiti
The skyline of Moorea coming into view
To put it into context, we are not far from the island Tahiti, with the city Papeete
This is Moorea, to show you how deep the bay is where we anchored. Called Cook’s Bay as this is where Captain Cook landed in 1786
Our anchorage in Cook’s Bay
Craggy skylines and cloud, it already feels cooler
Well sculpted ridge lines
The afternoon sun catching the one side of the caldera
More of the anchorage
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