Raiatea  Thursday, 31/08/2023

Have spent a few good days here on Raiatea, connected to a public mooring ball about 1.3 nautical miles out from the island’s main village, Uturoa. Quite an extraordinary place to be, right out at sea, but it is sheltered by two reefs. You enter through a pass between reefs a little way down the coast, and head northwards. There are two very narrow passages through an inner reef, taking you out seawards, but still inside of the East Barrier Reef. The result is that you are well sheltered from waves, which are breaking several hundred metres further out. It’s a long dinghy ride into Uturoa, approaching 20 minutes with my 3.5hp engine, but it’s wonderful being in such a beautiful setting.

The photo above shows a different pass, further south, but it gives a pretty clear picture of a break in the barrier reef through which you can sail. All-in-all, it’s a fantastic place to be. Where we’re moored, just off the northeast coast of Raiatea, we are almost half of the way north to the island of Taha’a. Looking east, in the distance is the island of Huahine, while looking north northwest I can just see the western end of Bora Bora, which protrudes a little beyond the western end of Taha’a. This area I think is the archetypical Pacific island scene. All the islands are mountainous because they were formed by volcanoes, and they are heavily forested with beautiful coastlines, including numerous small islands (“motus”) – the stuff of shipwreck legends: a bit of sand and a couple of palm trees! 

I delayed writing this until I had a bit more to say. This morning I hired a car and drove around Raiatea. There’s a circular road about 100 km (62 miles) long, which follows the coastline, with one relatively short road that traverses the southeastern part of the island. Some great views from it – in one place you can climb up to the rim of the original caldera, getting great views in two directions.

Down on the southeastern coast is the most famous marea (a site of religious and communal activities) in all Polynesia, which is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Raiatea is regarded as the spiritual home of Polynesia, and it is from here that the Māoris are thought to have set out to settle what is now New Zealand. Everything beautifully maintained – and, even better, free! Opposite the marea is a trail going uphill 130 metres (430 feet) through forest to a point where I took the photo at the top of this piece. A brilliant place to sit and cool down after the walk, taking in the staggering view before me. 

When I arrived my friend Patrick was here. He left yesterday and is sailing straight to Fiji, which is likely to take him 15 days or more. There he’s leaving his boat for the cyclone season and returning to Perth to do some consulting work. He’ll return to the boat in late April, the end of cyclone season.

I will be here until at least Sunday, possibly Monday, before sailing on. I still have to make up my mind whether to sail southwest to Rarotonga, the capital of the Cook Islands, or to head in a more northerly direction through the northern Cook Islands towards Samoa. I’d prefer the more southerly route, but there can be a lack of wind due to the Intertropical Convergence Zone (the doldrums) sitting around this area. It all depends on the forecast – sometimes there’s no problem. Anyway, it’s quite a nice problem to have, deciding whether to go Rarotonga, Niue, Vava’u (Northern Tonga), Fiji, or to loop northwards closer to the equator: Suwarrow, Samoa, Wallis, Fiji. Whichever route we take will bring us to Fiji by mid-October, and then will run south to New Zealand in early November to (hopefully) avoid cyclone season – although New Zealand is well south of the cyclone belt, it does get hit by the remnants of cyclones, bringing high winds and rain.