Au revoir

Finally it was time for Cathe to head home... See you soon Hon. 


It was an emotional farewell. Enough said. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Matuku, surfing shallow reefs, and some guests

Image
We had a final feast with our extended host family after church on Sunday; followed by a very chilled overnight passage to Matuku, arriving midday on Monday.  After a decade of obsessively poring over google maps and ambiguous internet posts, I knew Matuku has waves, but of unknown provenance, other than the main wave was pretty full on. I'd had a long hiatus off the boards and my fitness was starting to look questionable. But when it's on it's on.   Brett and Tash from SY Complicite stopped by to say hello and check out the boat, so we decided to go in with them to complete what turned out to be a very chilled Sevusevu and a tour of Lomati village. We then headed back to Evenstar for some shuteye.  At dusk we were roused by a local boat coming over to say hello. On board was an Aussie surfer, offering a tour of the waves the next day. Guy is almost a Matuku local, having visited 3-4 times, staying on land with the local chief. He has a love of remote surf, piercin...
Read more

On edge in Moorea

Image
It's 9.30pm. We are all on edge and sleep is likely to be light and interrupted. This new-to-us boat has already presented a few challenges in the short time we've had on board. There are many unknowns yet to be revealed; we hope tonight will not prove to be another unwanted lesson in the pitfalls of inclement weather and an ageing craft.  Over the weekend we waited out the forecast monster south swell in Opunohu Bay on the north coast of Moorea. One of the postcard anchorages of the archipelago, it was idyllic and afforded me a chance to rest my battered ribs after a particularly violent encounter with the shallow reef at Vairao on Friday.   ; We motor-sailed westward around the island in perfect conditions yesterday, whooping our further good fortune in finding we had the beautiful stretch of water inside the Haapiti surf break to ourselves. We anchored politely to one side of the narrow channel about 1 mile south east of the pass and each made good with our variou...
Read more

Closing the loop

Image
  We motored to the outer reef past Tavarua and Cloudbreak, for a final farewell in the grey and stormy conditions. The forecast was for a rough first night, with wind in front of the beam, followed by a few days of reaching in more settled weather. A change of some sort was forecast coming through just as we approached the North Island. This change could have involved some nasty weather; so we thought it would be good to get into the passage a day earlier than the rest of the southbound Fiji cruisers and beat the queue at NZ immigration: there were at least 20 ready to go.  As we exited the pass, the south east wind started to kick in. Evenstar began to plunge into the short period swells. Just as things started to get a bit woolly, Rob had a strike on the big reel. I slowed the boat in the rough conditions as he and Paul fought to land a good size skipjack on the pitching aft deck. After a tussle they got it on board and cleaned it up. Night was falling, and the conditions w...
Read more