Sailing to and experiencing Palmerston Island... in the Cook Island chain.

Sailing to Palmerston. David decided that we should do more than one Cook Island so Palmerston became our next choice.
The wind...hmmm what's that? we haven't seen any lately... sigh... so we're creeping along at about 2 knots and at times when the wind dies completely we put the engine on, get the batteries charged and get a little further down the way at the same time. At least the weather is warm, nice a balmy actually. Our distance covered from dusk to dawn was a whopping 28 miles and 18 of those was done under engine :-( Thank heavens this isn't a long trip.

Dawn at 06:44

A little later at 07:05

Sunrise at 07:11

Half a Paw paw for breakfast.

So finally in the late hours of the second night the wind came to visit. I could switch the engine off and set the genoa. At last we were sailing at a decent speed. 6.5 knots.
By the time I handed over my watch to David at 02:00 the wind seemed here to stay. About time! We arrived at Palmerston at 11:30 after experiencing a Squall of note.

David writes in the log book "As we closed on Palmerston we were met by a 6 mile long rain cloud. I got nervous as the wind squall rose to the mid twenties and I dropped the main - but this was as strong as the wind got - we could have sailed it, especially if we had payed off onto a broad reach - or we could have put in 2 reefs when we first sighted it - but then I thought we were going to miss it. As it was we were basically lying abeam with the genoa out ( flapping) going nowhere."

I was chuffed though because I'd made this rain catcher and when I heard the rain thundering down I leapt out of bed and started to catch it in jerry jugs. We caught at least 10 gallons .. yay!

Once at Palmerston we were hailed by radio by a chap called Simon who directed us to a great mooring. It had two pick up lines that we could attach, one to each hull. The lines were attached to chain which was wrapped around coral on the sea bed. The water is crystal clear and it's easy to see way down. David went for a swim to check out the mooring and make sure it was in good nick. It was in very good nick, they also kept the chains from damaging the corals by tying a buoy to them and so lifted them off the bed. The sea bed is coral as far as the eye can see. We swam, snorkeled for an hour, experienced no end to the corals and a lot of amazingly huge parrot fish, amongst others. I saw a Moorish idol that was at least as big as a dinner plate. Definitely the largest I've ever seen. So beautiful.

Arriving at Palmerston island.

Anyway I digress :-) Edward, who is Simon's brother, came out in a motor boat to make sure everything was okay. He then told us that he'd be bringing the officials out to the boat to check our paperwork. I made a Key Lime Pie and put it in the freezer to chill.
Eventually they arrived and proceeded to sort out the paperwork. When all was done we offered them a cool drink and a slice of pie. They invited us ashore right there and then, so we went.

Gorgeous Beach.

Facing the other way...

On palmerston you cannot go ashore yourselves, Edward will come and get you and deliver you back to your boat. There are other people who act as hosts on the island but with us it was Edward. The reef around the island is rather convoluted and seems rather difficult to negotiate as it's not marked, so I reckon that it's safer to leave it to the locals. The island is inhabited by 65 people who are members of three families. 29 of them are children in school. Their school is great, cool and airy and seems well equipped. They have a computer and internet so that the children can search for information online and recently each home has now got a telephone. They make their living with fishing. Catching and freezing the fish in large freezers, storing them till the boat that does the rounds around the Cook Islands, drops by to collect it all.

The people are friendly and hospitable. We were invited to lunch that first day. It was a very tasty meal of fish with onions and rice.

A boat that was recently 'lost' on the reef when it's mooring broke.

The mooring is free, but it's sort of expected of you to 'donate' various 'unwanted' items off your boat to the island. We were assured that if our hosts had no need of any of the items given to them that they would filter it down the line to the rest of the islanders. Later we learned that this is not the case if you give the stuff to Edward. Sadly he seems to be a bit of a pack rat and he hordes everything for himself, so in the end you leave the island rather disillusioned. Otherwise it's a beautiful place with lots of trees that shelter the homes from the worst of the cyclone winds that sometimes tear through there.

Beautiful tall trees.

A lovely walk.

Shady and cool.. David looks really tiny next to these trees!

A classroom at the School.

Some more classrooms and they have a good internet connection here too.

When we arrived and were chatting to the officials, we were told that there was another English girl on the island. Wow, cool, we were dying to meet her. Somehow though we didn't get to see her till we were leaving to go back to Puddytat and she came walking down the beach on her regular evening walk. We didn't have much time to say anything, I think I called out to her that we'd like to get together and chat. Next day was Sunday. We'd had a rough night as the wind had decided to pick up and the rain fell, making me get up and swap jerry jugs as they filled. One of the mooring balls was continuously knocking on the hull, so David was up and down trying different methods to quiet it, so by the time the sun rose we were still sleeping and for the first time in ages we slept till 09:15. After 11 am we called Edward and asked him to ferry Rose out to us so that we could meet her. We knew that she wanted to leave the island and were considering taking her along with us. This they duly did later that afternoon. Rose who is really Ros, (pronounced Roz ) seemed such a nice person so we told her that if she wanted she could sail with us the next day. She did want and so next morning after some tearful farewells from people who'd grown to love Ros very much, we dropped the mooring lines and sailed off toward Tonga. West. Sailing off into the sunset. :-)

Our Trip from Tahiti to the Cook Islands.

Day one. 09/11/11. Wednesday Afternoon 16:00. Exhaustion! thats all we could feel. Leaving an anchorage when you're ready to drop with exhaustion is not a good idea, but we had to leave, we'd already stayed one day over the limit and this morning we'd been slowly checked out by some officials on a small boat as they drove by. They could see that we were working hard at getting Puddytat ready so I suppose that's why they let us be. Finally at 15:45 we motor sailed out of the safe harbour area at Papeete, Tahiti.

Sunrise the next morning.

As soon as we were clear of all danger and we'd eaten our meal of lasagna, I went down to our cabin and crashed. David woke me up at 21:00.. groan groan groan I was still tired. He collapsed into the bunk and I sat upstairs trying to get some enthusiasm going. Nope nothing .. sigh... I sat my whole watch, gave David and extra hour till 03:00, like a zombie. Thank heavens for radar.

During David's sleep we were hit with a rouge wave and it found the half open porthole we'd left open in our cabin. David was woken, from a dead sleep, to a torrent of water cascading all over the place. He had to go and shower to get all the salt off him. All the sheets and things were dumped on the floor and towels draped onto the bunk and he want back to sleep... It rained and gusted and we flew along even with the main dropped... oh yes we decided that with both of us being so knackered, we'd drop the mainsail and only use the genoa. That way if we were hit with one of this areas infamous 70 knotters that spring up out of nowhere, we'd be able to furl the genoa till only a tiny corner was visible and run downwind with it. But lucky us, nothing happened and I handed over the watch to a slightly refreshed David and crawled into the damp bunk. Bliss!

Day two. Thursday. I came up in the morning and soon afterwards David went down to sleep. A couple of hours later he emerged, feeling much better. The day went along with alternating wind and no wind, but nothing over 20 knots, I rinsed all the bedding and hung it out to dry... a lovely calmish day. I baked bread and started to make a courtesy flag for The Cook Islands. It's a blue flag with a Union Jack in the top left corner and 15 white stars in a circle next to that. Again after our late lunch, smoked chicken roast and veg this time, (we eat at about 16:00), I slept and later that evening David woke me from a totally dead sleep, for my watch, then he went to sleep, in a much dryer bed this time :-) I wasn't so tired tonight, thank heavens. My body was catching up and getting into this new routine. I carried on with the flag and finished it just before my watch was over.. nice ;-D  We'd had hardly any wind the whole night, we were crawling along at 3 to 5 knots... in  5 to 8 knots of wind. Nice and peaceful.

The Cook Island flag I made.

Day Three. Friday.. 11th of the 11th of 2011.. ha ha nothing was written in the log book during David's watch... hmmmm.... I do remember that it rained and squalled pretty much all day. We were either dropping the main or lifting it again and catching water.. lots of lovely rain water.. what did we eat.... oh yes Kedgeree from some left over fresh caught Wahoo that we were given by another sailor... who's name is Ding.. true! :-) Everyone calls him that.

Day four. Saturday...Wonderful winds. 17 knots once for all of 7 minutes, yeah I was out there in the rain watching the wind speed and our speed wondering if I was gonna have to do some fast work if we were hit by a biggie.... then it died down to 12 knots and we went from scooting along at 11 knots to a more sedate 8 knots. The wind stayed pretty constant all day. So it was nice and uneventful. We haven't seen the sun for two days now... It's constantly overcast with occasional huge black rain clouds that make the radar shriek out it's warning.. then we look at the clouds and decide whether to carry on or drop the main.

A large storm ahead.

The center is where we are. This is the storm above as we see it on Radar. It is about 9 miles wide.

During this storm the wind whipped up to about 35 knots, David had dropped the main and he was furling the genoa when it hit. There was a lot of rain, we collected scads of water and then it was gone. The sails were reset and we carried on.

Day Five. Sunday.. No wind... we motored last night till almost 01:00 then it came up.. 11 knots yay. better than what we'd been having. I set the sails and switched off the engine. So when I handed over the watch to David at 02:00 we were sailing. It seems though that at 04:18 the engine had to be switched back on as we were going nowhere. From then on he was switching the engine on and off dealing with gusts of wind and dead calms. The log book has this note : "Wind 10 to 3 to 10 knots. The drizzle is now set in. The water is calm - just 6 inch ripples on the 3 to 4 foot ocean swell. The unsettling part is we never KNOW what the wind is going to be. We have a radar that shows us the size of the system, we have eyes to see the wave conditions and the darkness of the clouds and wind instruments to keep track of the wind changes.... But I can't tell, yet, when we are about to get clobbered by a 30 knotter, in the back of my mind is the capsize of the Chris White Cat last year... they didn't see it coming either."
So there you have it. This weather is sure keeping us on our toes.
It's now 22:00 (10 pm). I've just had a look outside and seen stars. The moon is rising and for a change I can see it. SO lets hope that we are done with all those storms for a while.

We expect to reach our destination, Aitutaki Island, at about 07:00 tomorrow. So I'm on watch till 01:30 instead of 02:00, because I'll have to be awake just before 7 to take the boat into the pass. I always get the job of taking the boat into our new anchorages. David stands point and scans the depths for coral heads, especially in places where we are going tomorrow. It's reported to be very shallow so we're going to have to be really careful. The Island's GPS position is 18 deg 54'S and 159 deg 47'W according to the guide book. If you have "Google Earth" you can have a look at it.:-)