Cook Islands, Here We Come!

Note: I forgot to publish this a while back so it is out of order. This was from early May.

After sailing in French Polynesia for the past two years, it was exciting to be heading out to a new country, the Cook Islands. They are their own nation but linked with New Zealand who is in charge of defense, foreign policy and sends quite a bit of funding support. And they use NZ currency as well.

Our first port of call was Aitutaki. It is known for the long, narrow entrance in through the reef and for a gorgeous lagoon. The passage was 3 days of pretty nice sailing. Wind and waves were a bit high (wind 16 to 25, waves 2.5+ meters), but mostly behind us, so not too uncomfortable. However, we did find that the stbd engine was not working again, due to salt water having been forced in through the exhaust system. Again.

We arrived early on May 7. There was a current of about 2 knots exiting the pass. Because we only had one engine and the pass was too narrow for us to turn around part way, we had to be sure we could make it all the way before entering. If the outgoing current had been 4 knots, we would not have attempted it, especially with just one engine. After checking with binoculars, we decided to go for it. Peggy did a masterful job piloting us in, and soon we were inside the protected harbor. My job was to stand up front and yell if anything looked too shallow. I had the easy part! 🙂

Once we got in, the harbor did not look like we expected from the charts or the satellite views. There is a lot of work going on, including dredging. But they don’t have a dredging barge, only big backhoes on land, which means they can only dredge about 15 ft away from the land. So to dredge the center of the harbor, they filled in a spit of land for the backhoe, right down the center of the harbor. See the long thin rectangle (the ‘spit’) I drew on the satellite image.

When we arrived, there were already 3 boats lined up on the south side of the spit, using an anchoring technique I had never seen before. Their anchor was dug in to the far side of the spit, with the chain stretching across the spit. Then they put out a stern anchor to keep them away from the spit. This worked well enough with the wind blowing right across the spit, so we did the same. The other boaters helped by grabbing our anchor and dragging it across the spit.

Once we got settled, the first order of business was to get the stbd engine working. This time I went through the process without Hio to help. It was slow, but after about 6 hours, I had the engine working again. And those jumper cables I mentioned in an earlier post came in handy as I was able to use my spare Lithium Ion battery to crank the engine over long enough to get the fuel into the cylinders.

After that, it was time to meet the people on the neighboring boats. It was a fun group in the harbor. A boat from Germany, one from Poland and two from the US. One that we really enjoyed was, Garrett, a 19 year old American, single-handing his 27 ft boat from Hawaii. He has a YouTube channel, Garrett’s Adventures if you want to check him out. He is easily making enough to fund his travels and save some. Next to us was Kasia and Lesheck who we had met in Raiatea.

Right in the harbor was a coffee shop where people gathered in the mornings. There was also a dive shop, and several small stores within a few minutes walk.

We did quite a bit of shopping at the various stores, went to dinner at a Wok place and had time to invite the others in the habor over for drinks one night.

I said earlier that the lagoon at Aitutaki is famous for the clarity of the water and beauty of the coral. The problem is that in the past decade they let tourism run amok and degrade parts of the lagoon. So they have clamped down hard. Only trained, licensed tour operators are allowed to take people into the lagoon. If we tried to go out in our dinghy, like we have done every other place we have been, we’d get hit with a BIG fine. So, unfortunately, we never did get out to see how beautiful it really is. We will take it on faith that the lagoon is still beautiful.

The anchoring situation worked well as long as the wind was blowing straight across the spit. But the forecasts showed the wind backing to the north and getting pretty strong. That would have pushed our stbd bow against the rocks on the spit, so we decided to move to the other side of the spit and drop our anchor the normal way. We could only stay there for a couple days because we’d be blocking the supply ship when it came in but the timing worked for us.

Soon, it was time for everyone to head out. Some to Fiji, some to Niue, and then Tonga.

But I had always wanted to see Palmerston, another one of the Cook Islands. So on May 18 we left Aitutaki on the overnight trip to this small island with a unique history. All about that in the next post.