Good Bye French Polynesia, Hello N. Cook Islands (Ginger) 7/9/07 4PM 15 deg18 min S 156 deg 26 min W

We enjoyed our time hiking and exploring Moorea. We also spent our time ordering a few things to be sent to American Samoa to pick up on our way. In Seattle when ordering from Amazon it took weeks to get our orders. One way to speed up the process seems to be just to have things sent to American Samoa. They sent everything to arrive within 3 days of ordering! So, our deadline to get to American Samoa is firm as the post office will only hold mail for us for 30 days. On Saturday June 30 we
hauled anchor from Moorea and set out for Bora Bora. The seas were were fairly big: 4 to 4.5 meters, recently down from 5 meters. We had a lumpy overnight trip and arrived at first light at the pass to Bora Bora. It was an intimidating transit of the pass as the seas were now 3.5 to 4 meters and they were coming from a direction to hit the entrance head on. We made it through the pass and immediately caught a large piece of hard plastic in our prop. It must have been floating just below the surface
as we were both on deck scanning the water and never saw it. We shifted to neutral immediately and the engine died. We quickly unrolled the jib and sailed to a mooring at the Bora Bora Yacht Club, jumped in the water to clear the prop and then took a nap. Later we went ashore and met a man named Rapa who is in charge of the moorings. He was born on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and is a very interesting guy. As there is a fee for the moorings we decided to leave Monday morning to anchor downtown.
We held our breath as we turned the key, luckily the engine started immediately.
We moved downtown to be closer to the grocery stores as well as closer to the Heiva festivities. The 2 week celebration leading up to Bastille Day is celebrated on all the islands and Bora Bora makes a huge production of the event. They had built a temporary restaurant city out of bamboo and with about 6 restaurants, a disco and numerous arcades and booths. There were several roulette booths where people bought numbers to win lots of household goods such as rice and cooking oil. The atmosphere
was that of the Puyallup Fair on a smaller scale. We watched a singing and dance competition and enjoyed a dinner ashore.
After our downtown stay we moved about a mile south and anchored in front of Bloody Mary's Restaurant. We had sandwiches ashore to celebrate Auntie Mary's birthday and enjoyed a bike ride around the island. There were very strong winds while we were there and we are sad to report that the outboard that was rescued by the crew of Baloo in Mexico was re-claimed by the sea as our dinghy was flipped in a monster gust of wind. Peter was able to right the dinghy and drift down wind to reclaim both oars
but the outboard was not to be cajoled into starting this time.
Bora Bora was a great stop to catch up with some boats from Zihua and we were treated to a fantastic dinner aboard Volare on our last night there. Friday morning we headed west but as forecast there was no wind. We motored the 25 miles to Maupiti and anchored in the lagoon after transiting the notorious pass with no problem. We anchored off a sailing day camp and were treated to clear water and the happy voices of the campers while we were there. We had planned to spend a couple of days exploring
but the wind came up as we were finishing our swim Saturday afternoon and we were just able to haul anchor and exit the pass before sunset.
We're now 48 hours into our passage to Suwarrow (Cook Islands) and after some light winds the first night we've got trade winds again! We're averaging 7 - 8 knots and enjoying a relatively comfortable trip now. Saw lots of shooting stars and a very bright flash (space debris?) last night.
We plan to stop at Suwarrow for a couple of days and should be in American Samoa by 7/23 or so. We are checking in with the Pacific Seafarer's Net on passage.