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. :-)

Aitutaki Island, The Cook Islands and the Giant Clam

We arrived in Aitutaki early in the morning but only finally made it into the anchorage at about noon. You can read the reason for that HERE. Or you can just page down to the last post.

So after all that we were rather knackered. We sat on Puddytat and waited for the Customs and Immigration bods to arrive. Finally at about 14:00 David went ashore to find out why they hadn't been around. It turned out that the Customs office was closed so we'd have to wait to see him tomorrow. Okay, so do we have to stay on the boat till then..No! he was told by the harbour office, go and have some fun. We did! we went ashore and explored the little town. It was well spread out up and down the coast road. We looked at prices of foods and alchohol..phew rather expensive.. we were charged NZ$8 for 12 eggs. Told that they were imported..what? that we didn't believe, there are chickens running around everywhere, they're as prolific as flies.
On our walkabout we ran into another couple and stopped in the street to ask them some question, I forget what it was now, but we got to talking and eventually we invited them onto Puddytat for sundowners that evening.

The little safe harbour where we are anchored.

A huge canoe we saw parked near us.

What our guests, Jim and Annie saw when they came for dinner.

When they arrived they were surprised because we'd cooked dinner for them, fresh caught wahoo and roasted vegies. They'd said, that afternoon, that they'd not been able to find any fish for sale. :-)
We had a great time that evening and in passing told them that we'd be hiring a motorbike the next day to explore the island. Next morning we arrived at the hire place to find all the bikes were out but we could get a scooter. David went into the office to pay for the day NZ$25.00 not bad..and guess who were there... yeah Jim and Annie.. ha ha they'd looked into hiring bicycles and decided that a scooter would be more fun. We joined up and explored together. First we went up to the lookout at the top of the highest mountain... what an amazing view! On the way up our scooter ran out of oomph and as I was getting off to walk the short distance up the hill, my leg caught on David's shorts and down I went.. great... I had a lovely scrape all the way down my left calf, just super. Did I have my gentian Violet on me? no..what a doris I can be ;-p anyway I washed it down with some drinking water and tried to forget about it.

The view is like this all around the island.. wow

Ahhh sweet.

After the lookout we went to the Institute of Marine Research where Charley Waters is trying to reintroduce Giant clams back into the lagoon. We had ourselves a lovely snorkel and a picnic on the beach, and then met up with Charley to be educated about the life of a clam. Believe me, they are wonderful creatures, most fascinating. It seems that the peoples of this island need extensive education to stop raping the lagoon of life, because there is not a whole lot to see here. When tourists come here they complain that it's nothing like the Great Barrier Reef. Well if they want to see the Great Barrier Reef, then they should go there. BUT what the locals are doing, is feeding the fish at certain spots, then they take the tourists there, the tourists see loads of fish and are happy. (I think they are feeding the fish WHEN the tourists are there .... they probably even let the tourists feed the fish as is done in several tourist snorkeling sites).
Except that this weekend a group went out to see the fish. It had been raining for about 4 days previously, so the fish had not been fed ... they were hungry... A tourist decided to go for a snorkel  and take pictures with an underwater camera. There was a large trevally in the area who was used to being hand fed. The trevally thought the camera was food and went after it, striking the man's hand instead. He was cut to the point that he thought he should check with the hospital where he was bandaged. Not fun.

Its important, if you are wanting to take a tour, ask if the company feeds the fish..if they do, don't book the trip. The tour operators will realise that we don't accept that sort of behaviour, that we expect them to take care of their ecology not rape it and then try and manipulate it for monetary gain. If they looked after it properly there would be no need to go to the extremes of fish feeding. Refusing to book a tour with a company who does this is a good way to educate them to stop raping the lagoon and let the fish alone so that they can breed. Surely it must be more rewarding to see the fish behaving naturally in their environment rather than this? If you were in Africa, wouldn't you prefer to spend a day or two searching through the bush to see a lion, elephant, etc rather than have them lured to a convenient location for a photo shoot? You may as well go to an aquarium or a zoo.

The people aren't starving on the island, not by a long shot... they live very well, drive new cars, and new bikes,.. live in nice homes... even the youngsters are driving around on bikes and carry cell phones... they don't need to eat the reef fish, and they don't need to eat the baby giant clams either.. but they do!! So funding is needed to do an extensive program of education and to make efforts to reintroduce giant clams to the Aitutaki marine ecosystem easier. Charley is a volunteer marine biologist at the Aitutaki Marine Research Centre in the north of the island. He is desperately trying to get the giant clam back in decently large numbers into the lagoon. I learned that a clam takes 9 months to get from egg to just about 15mm!(just bigger than 1/2 an inch) These guys need time, years and years, to get really huge and they are so unbelievably beautiful! I'd like everyone who reads this to tweet, facebook and whatever else we can do to get the word out about the efforts to reintroduce giant clams to the Aitutaki marine ecosystem.  Maybe someone could donate a domain for a website for these clams... hmmm anyone out there?

The photographs supplied here are Charley's.

Air view of Aitutaki.

Two razor corals with a clam tucked in between.

A clam.. so pretty.

Taking Clams out to the wild.

In they go.

Setting them up.

Hanging out.

One that is slowly getting there.

Amazing colours.

How can you eat this?

Or this?

These guys are old and still so small, about 6 inches long!

Aren't they fantastic? They are taken of the life in the lagoon at present, and may look as if there are a lot around but we've snorkeled here and the photo's are only showing tiny pockets of life, in a huge lagoon as you can see by the aerial shot. This place should be teaming with life.

Here are some other photo's of what we saw that day whilst traveling around the island.

David and Jim

Where Jim and Annie stayed.

Annie outside their cabin.

View from their cabin..nice and private.

Inside a cabin.

Another view from a cabin.

Driving through a banyan tree archway.

Annie standing under the tree... whew it's huge!

Lush.

Beautiful beach.

Cool shady roads, lovely countryside.

At the time of writing this we're on our way to Palmerston Island. As usual there is no wind. We're flying along at 2.2 knots in 4 knots of wind.. ho hum.. the ocean has barely a ripple on it.. it's 01:15 am the moon has just risen, a huge half moon in the inky black star studded sky. It's a lovely night and it's almost my bed time.. yay.

Pretty fish.

Okay folks please don't forget send this blog out, attach it to your blog pages, (click on "blog this" at the bottom of the post), whatever it takes, lets try and help efforts to reintroduce giant clams to the Aitutaki marine ecosystem.

Aitutaki Island, trying to get in.

We arrived at the island at about 08:00 and were very pleased that we'd managed to get there during the daylight hours. We knew that navigating up the small channel they had was not going to be easy as it was very shallow in places and not very wide. We have a beam width of 23 feet so we have to be careful about where we go. :-)

A reef all around the island.. where is the entrance?

We motored around trying to find the channel by eye. We could not see any marker buoys or posts anywhere, so we decided to follow the chart plotter.

As we neared the entrance marked on the plotter I got more and more jittery. David was standing on the bow and i was following his directions. First he told me to drive to starboard and then to port. The plotter showed no reason to be taking these deviations. I got more worried. The surf was pounding on the reef around us and sounded ominous. we could see a dark stretch of straight water ahead, indicating a long deepish channel, but just before that the water looked really shallow. It was hard to tell the depth because the water was so crystal clear. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. you can be in 40 ft of water yet the bottom looks as close as 1 or 2 feet, very disorientating. Just then I noticed that the depth sounder was not reading a bottom.. great I thought just what we need right now... I wanted to get out of there but David said to go on, and then it happened. We hit the reef. An loud awful grinding and bashing, bumping sound. I started to shake, oh Shit I thought. David yelled at me to get us out of there, I yelled back that he should come and take the wheel and I'd guide him out. He is way better at the helm than I am. So we swapped places.

It was just as well. I was showing him the direction he needed to go when he yelled that he had no steering.. Oh Shit I thought again. He worked the engines and propellers hard and managed to swing us around and out of danger. As soon as we were clear and in 30 feet of water we dropped the anchor. We needed to assess the damage and figure out what to do.

David donned his fins and snorkel and jumped into the water. He took a look at the rudders. The port one had bent it's shaft a tad and was jammed up against the hull. What to do. He came up on deck and we discussed our options. One was to disengage the rudder from the system and try and go in with only one rudder, the other was to drop it out, dinghy ashore and get it straightened there. There was another option and we thought we'd give it a go.

David went into the water with a long line that we'd draped over the bow roller where the anchor chain normally goes, he swam it back to the rudder and tied it around the blade. I attached the other end to the windlass, ( the machine we use to pull the anchor up), and then I slowly tensioned the line. I had to release it a couple of times while David did some adjusting but eventually we managed to pull the rudder straight again. What a huge and profound relief. We sat in the cockpit marveling at our narrow escape for a lot of extra work and inconvenience.

While sitting there David decided to go through the information we had for these islands. We have several cruising guides, and in one of them we found a note to say that the Chart plotted entrance for this island was false... well we knew that now ;-p ...  anyway this chap gave us some way points to follow to get into the anchorage. David plotted them and they were quite far from where the plotter had told us to go.

The marked channel and then the triangles where we actually ended up going.

We decided to take another chance. I'd calmed down now and was determined not to let this place beat me. So there I was once again at the helm with David standing at the bows directing me a little left and then a little right.... Before I knew it we were in the channel, which by the way was marked with thin maybe 10 mm black sticks that you could hardly see till you were almost upon them. I was still nervous but I didn't feel the foreboding that I'd felt before, even when the depth got down to 2.5  feet. :-)

It didn't take long and soon I was turning us around, dropping the anchor and backing Puddytat towards the shore so that David could tie our stern to a tree. This was the way that these folks liked our boats to be anchored apparently.

We sat back and relaxed, taking in our surroundings. Whew what an ordeal. It was 12:33.

Tied up and looking at our new back yard.

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.:-)

Putting the mast back on Puddytat

Puddytat looks so forlorn without her rigging.

A sad Puddytat.

Somehow she just doesn't seem very happy. But the good news is that soon she will be getting it all back. Yup they have finished the work on it and have booked a date and time with the crane. They have had the mast for 5 weeks, the crane was booked for Friday, but on Thursday it was cancelled and the date moved to Monday. They had not finished the swaging and were now going to leave it till Monday morning and quickly do it before the crane arrived! David went to them and got angry with them, they'd promised to have the job done and were now slotting other work in front of ours!  They then they knuckled down and finished the swaging on the rigging. He wanted it done in his presence so that he could make sure it was done correctly. It's awful to have to get angry to get a job done that you have waited 5 weeks for... especially one that takes a few hours to do.
So early Monday morning we release Puddytat from our anchor rode and tie it to Limo, the dinghy, to our anchor rode and off we go to the commercial docks. We didn't want to haul the anchor up because the crossbeam was unsupported without the crossbeam in place. By nine am we are ready and waiting. David has gone off to see what is happening.

The mast is pushed into sight on trolleys and here comes the crane. They tie a fat webbing to it and start to haul it up.

Up she goes.

Over and onto the boat...

Settling it down..

Attaching the forestay and roller furler.

The strap is still attached to the crane.

Alex goes up to detach the strap.

It's nerve wracking it is! But all goes smoothly and soon the mast is sitting in place. It seems though, that they are having a bit of difficulty attaching the turnbuckles on either side. Everything seems a bit short. They haven't left much room to loosen the rig if it needs it!

.

The rigging wire is too short in the turnbuckle.

David is not happy about this! But, the mast is back on. Our genoa sail is still being worked on, it should have been finished weeks ago. They promise to deliver before we leave the dock... but our time is limited .. They've finished the work on the main.. We get our genoa back and where there was a metal ring at the tack, there is none now...just two straps of webbing.. Another thing David is not happy about. We cannot argue though, our time in this country runs out tomorrow and we have to get the boat sorted to leave. We wondered later, if API works the deliveries of sails and such to boats just before they have to leave the country so that we don't have time to argue or demand work to be redone.

Anyway, what's done is done but we're still not happy and will not recommend this company to any of our friends.

We motored back to our anchorage and worked solidly for the next day and for most of Wednesday, getting the sails back on, the davits refitted and all the electrical equipment re-wired.

Finally at about 15:30 we lifted the anchor and motored out towards The Cook Islands.

Personally... neither of us are in a hurry to revisit Tahiti. Our time was very limited, definitely not enough to see anything of the surrounding islands, and our boat problems were genuine, the powers that be were reluctant to extend my visa and then when they did,  I was limited to the boat and the Marina, so I couldn't even do any grocery shopping for us. David had to do everything! Also each time David had to beg for an extension on the visa it took two or three days out of his work schedule. He did say however, that the lady in the front office of the High Commission was very helpful.
We may visit Bora Bora and a few other islands though... maybe.....