The Apia marina dinghy meets you in the bay and escorts the yachts into their marina berth, they have been known to direct sailors to share a berth with a bommie , yes a bommie one of the large coral heads that can put holes in a glassfibre hull. The game starts when the [...]

[Read more →]

We would all like to thank you for all the emails you sent during the last couple of weeks, they meant a great deal to us. Replies will be coming out but as you probably guess life was a bit hectic, we were exhausted physically and mentally. We could however sail away, I [...]

[Read more →]

We are still on our own here in an idyllic anchorage. It was very quiet yesterday as all the schools and businesses were closed in the aftermath of the Tsunami warnings. Savaii had next-to no damage and no tsunami wave on the north coast of Savaii . Upolu didn’t fair as well [...]

[Read more →]

Hot news which we have got from the SSB radio and VHF is that there has been an earthquake and Tsunami in Samoa.
As often happens, we felt nothing in this anchorage.  Some damage on the south coast has been reported.
Hopefully the boats in Apia Marina and Pago, Pago in American Samoa were OK.
Position: 13°31′S  172°38′W [...]

[Read more →]

Its a compulsory marina for the first stop in Samoa.  The authorities and the Samoans are very friendly.  As they say - I’m sure they don’t have a word in their language indicating the same level of urgency as the Spanish “manana”.  A great welcome from all the cruisers in the marina.  A lot of [...]

[Read more →]

Finally the wind has died off and we motored for few hours while the sea dropped.  Back sailing now at 4 knots and the current is making us 5 over the ground.  This trip from Bora Bora has been a series of higher winds and no wind for as long as I have been monitoring [...]

[Read more →]

Too many of the Cook islands are hard to enter with a normal draft keel boat.  There is a small harbour at [-21.204,-159.785] on Rarotonga the main island well to the south and you can get into the Northern Cook, Penrhyn [-9.024,-158].  Some boats stop at Suwarrow [-13.275,-163.127] but stopping there we would have lost [...]

[Read more →]

We got our third ship very soon after the first two.  The three bus rule obviously works for ships as well.  This one was the Niu Polynesia on route to Apia, Samoa.
We have had a stowaway since we left Oban.  He is a LEGO man that Mary found on the final tidy up of the [...]

[Read more →]

You know the rule that says when you are exasperated waiting for a bus, then three will come together.  Seems ships work to the same rule.  We are expecting our third any moment now!  We have gone for 4 days with nothing.  Today the Atlantic Crown on its way to Panama altered course to give [...]

[Read more →]

Over night we had 25 knots which was bringing the occasional splash over into the cockpit so no dozing up on deck!
Wind has dropped now to 18 knots and its excellent trade wind sailing.
I have just finished Berth Leonards’s Blue Horizons which paints vivid pictures of what its like to cruise the higher latitudes - [...]

[Read more →]