Pitufa.at

We’ve spent a week now in Rarotonga. The main island of the Cooks is a beautiful mountainous island with a fringing reef that is too shallow and narrow for navigation (apart from a tiny lagoon on the eastern shore). The main town Avarua is a bustling place with plenty of souvenir shops, clothes shops and little cafes. The Cook Islands are theoretically independent, but have very strong bonds to New Zealand, so the numerous tourists are mainly from New Zealand and the local Polynesians sound also very ‘Kiwi’.

We explored the island hitchhiking and found that the coastal stretch is full of hotels and ressorts, but the mountainous interior remains lush and untouched. There are many hikes up the summits (most of them around 500 m) and we did two of them walking up steep ridges under high trees and many varieties of ferns.

Unfortunately we don’t have much time to play tourists (as much as we enjoy it), because we are busy with errants. The friendly island mentality stops where bureaucracy starts and we still haven’t managed to fuel up Pitufa with duty-free diesel and to organise duty-free fuel (booze) for the crew, despite several days of efforts.

So far we’ve been lucky with the weather, the harbour’s rather calm in the mainly southeasterly winds, but it’s chilly during the nights (18 degrees, BRRRRRRR) and cool during the days. It’s cumbersome to take the dinghy underneath stern lines to the rickety ladder on the dock and lowering provisions down is precarious. With each trip the dinghy gets more dirty and now a construction crew has started a building site on the dock. Two guys are tearing down a concrete wall with jackhammers just upwind of Pitufa–not just the cockpit, even the kitchen sink just below the companion way gets filled up with grit in the 20 knots gusts…

It looks like we finally have a weather window to sail down to Rarotonga. We leave tomorrow morning–140 nm to go!

We’ve been in Aitutaki for a week and most of the time the weather was grey, cold, stormy and rainy. We’re rolling in the rough weather, don’t get much sleep and are all a bit cranky.

Today we’ve had the first day with blue skies, so we played tourists, rented bycicles and explored the other side of the island, Aitutaki’s quite pretty and relaxed, but the description in the ‘lonely planet’ as ‘one of the most beautiful lagoons in the South Pacific’ seems a bit over the top. Maybe the writers haven’t seen too many other lagoons It’s very shallow and the water’s rather murky, which means it gleams in mint, but there’s not much live coral in so much sediment.

Generally Aitutaki is a much more touristy place than expected. They have about 30 flights a week (some planes from Rarotonga), the shores are dotted with resorts and bungalows and you see more tourists on the roads than locals.

On the passage down from Tongareva we expected cold weather with every degree we sailed south, but it stayed surprisingly warm. Now with the strong SE wind seriously cold air is coming up and we’re sneezing, drinking tea, wearing socks and hoodies. In the meantime the tourist boats drop snorkelers and divers outside the reef and we pity those poor guys in the water

We have humpback whales around the boat every day, today a group of three came close to Pitufa, but somehow we can’t bring ourselves to jump in and swim with them. The water’s not even extremely cold, but just thinking of coming out again into that howling cold wind sends me into a sneezing attack…

After exactly one month we’re leaving Tongareva this afternoon. During all that time we were the only sailboat here. We’ve had a great time here, but we’d like to explore more of the Cook Islands. On arrival we got 31 days in the Cooks, apparently our application for another 31 days got approved (we’ll see when we arrive in the capital), the weather forecast looks good and we’re ready to go. 610 nm to Aitutaki!

When we’re sailing on passages we always use our hydrovane to steer the boat. ‘Wayne Vaney’ is a simple mechanical device that steers the boat with a little auxiliary rudder just by keeping the wind angle on its vane in the angle we set.

We also have an electric autopilot, which we only use when we’re motoring, so only sometimes in lagoons and when we’re becalmed for a longer time on passages. This autopilot quit on the way up to Tongareva. Christian found out that the steering mechanism was fine, only the control unit had a loose contact, but as the whole box is moulded he couldn’t just repair the button that was suddenly randomly switching between modes. Searching the internet we found that the control unit is no longer produced…

Christian found a solution for our dilemma. We don’t use any of the fancy functions the control unit offers (sailing according to wind angle, etc.), we just want the autopilot to hold a given compass bearing. He therefore replaced the unit with an on/off button and we can still correct the course with the remote control (also self-built) in the cockpit. Today we tried it out while crossing the lagoon and voila–we have a working autopilot again

Last week a strong Southeasterly wind (maramu) was blowing all over French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, so we decided to sit it out in the Eastern corner of the atoll. The anchorage was nicely protected and we could still take some walks ashore, but mainly we stayed home and spent the time on the computer. We finished a few articles, prepared a photo gallery, etc. and now that we’re back in Tetautua village we can use the internet to send everything off.
Christian did a 2-day internet marathon trying to get everything done with the slow connection, but now it seems that all our articles and pics have made it out. The maramu did us a favour by keeping us away from the village where a flu epidemic is going round–thanks to the people who arrived from Rarotonga and brought the virus with them.

We are getting restless and have been looking at weatherforecasts for windows to sail south. First the strong southeasterly made a departure impossible, yesterday’s grib files showed yet another maramu for next week, today’s forecast threatens with clocking winds next week. Both options would ruin our plans to stay on the outer reefs of Aitutaki and/or Atiu… We’ll get Pitufa into passage mode anyway and hope to be off soon!