Update 13 -- Port du Phaeton...

Orca Update 13:

Hi everyone,

Thanks again for all the love from home.

Picking up where we left off last time, we went to check out the mysto reef-pass at Port du Phaeton and found it to be sunny, light offshore, a very pretty few feet overhead, and extremely life threatening. 3 waves were more than enough; we felt lucky to get out of there alive. The wave wraps in, sucks off the reef, hollows out and reels off onto 6” of water rapidly draining to dry reef. There was also the nearly inescapable dry reef close out section, which seems to be fairly ubiquitous around here. A few locals came out on body boards wearing full suits and helmets—always a bad sign.

Escaping to Pape'ete, we found a nautical traffic jam – 100's of cruising boats packed into a relatively small area, all anchored in a 100' of water. The attraction? McDonalds, among other things. The price of a cheeseburger? $4.00. The taste of home? Priceless.

Never fond of the big cities, we were out of there pretty quick. A light air sail over to the N side of Moorea took all day, but found us in Robinson's Cove, one of the more famous sailing stops. The water was deep right up to the trees, so we dropped the anchor just off the sandy beach and took a short line ashore to a palm tree to keep Orca from swinging around under the overhaning trees and fouling her rigging. The surrounding mountains looked prehistoric: massive, craggy, and superlatively tropical with massive old growth hardwood wreathed in vines. It didn't take much imagination to see dinosaurs roaming the island. We ambled up a dirt path that took us to the base of one of the huge spires disappearing into the clouds. 5 hours later we stumbled back to the boat covered in mud lugging 15 pounds of fruit we gathered during the hike.

An overnight sail brings us to Raitea and Taha'a, a pair of islands which share a fringing reef. We've been here for a while; we're not sure how long. Time...seems unimportant. We spent a bit of time reconnoitering the various reef passes with good exposure to SW swell before latching onto the gem; a gorgeous left with an idyllic anchorage just behind it. The wave is fairly long, and has three distinct sections. The deep takeoff, at size, is a top-to-bottom classic reef pass drainer which has spit out many an intrepid explorer. The end of this section leads into a few hundred yards of bowly, jucy shoulder. Then you reach the good part of the wave, where the inside section can double in size as the swell that wrapped into the deep reef pass hits the shallows and thickens into a long reeling hollow section. Don't forget to kick out before the dry reef closeout section, though. The paddle back out is quick, since the offshores and the outgoing current help. There area few gnarly locals around who surf in the afternoons– big guys, lots of tattoos. They can be very intimidating, especially as they paddle straight up to you at top speed, an unfamiliar look in their eye. When they reach us, we wait, cringing, for.......a handshake and a polite introduction. They are very happy to see us, welcome to the lineup, would you like to tie up your dingy to my panga, as it has a big anchor? We hope you enjoy our waves, stay as long as you want. Please, no pictures though.

We've met another sailing/surfing couple from New Zealand, who have been surfing the left with us. They have gotten us really excited about NZ; they keep talking about all kinds of good Kiwi stuff. As an example: they thought it strange that we would consider buying local beer at $3/can. They asked why we didn't just stock up on the 'brew kits' from our supermarkets in the US...? Apparently, in any local supermarket in NZ you can buy a beer brewing kit 'cheap as chips.' Our friends, Ron & Mim, brew it 25 liters at a time, once a week. In the tropics, it takes less than two weeks and tastes like nectar.

Needless to say, we're going to burn through every last day of our visas right here, before heading the 12 miles west to Bora-Bora to finish our clearance paperwork. We're not sure of our next stop, but we've got a couple of possibilities bouncing around. Wallis island has a number of nice looking reef passes with good surfing exposure. After that, we've heard that the Fijian government has opened Tavarua to the public, which means that we could be some of the very first cruising sailors to surf Cloudbreak. We'll see.

Thanks!

J&K