Mo’orea

We moved from the island of Tahiti to the next island to the West – Mo’orea. Cook’s Bay, on the northern side of the landmass to be specific. It was a simple 45 mile, 9 hour, passage. All of which we motored as Tahiti itself gives a large wind-shadow to the prevailing westerly winds.

Why come here? Well, mostly to meet up with another cruising couple to rid ourselves of an ice-maker that Kerri purchased some time back. While it did get a few uses out of it, it mostly just sat in our already over-packed quarte birth gently tugging on my irritation nerves of having such a bulky appliance that serves only a single purpose. For months I have been asking when we can just toss it overboard, but Kerri’s social media prowess found someone whos ice-maker had just broke and was in need of one. And so we bid goodbye to that burden, and anchored in to relax our Tahiti-born illnesses away.

Since I was mostly incapacitated during our short stay in Mo’orea, I will leave it to Kerri to fill you in while I offer up a few images.

At three nights, it was far too short of a stay in Mo’orea. The anchorage at Cook’s Bay was calm and protected, and the quiet bustle of the easy life of both humans and birds from the shoreline was soothing. But, it seems like cruisers have a better chance than not of coming down with a bug after leaving Tahiti, and Tim succumbed to a bad head cold that knocked him out for most of our stay. So we missed so, though I got to explore the island a bit more than him, we did miss some good hikes, a juice/distillery tour, etc. The last night he was feeling better, so we got to finally have a nice happy hour and dinner out. Our first restaurant in all of French Polynesia that wasn’t just a “Snack” place, as they’re called here.

We left in the morning, stopping at the tiniest dock we’ve ever tied up to top off the diesel tank and cans. this was the first time since arriving in French Polynesia in May that we’ve been able to fill the tank directly rather than hauling Jerry cans to shore and to a gas station and back. Turns out, though, that now I have the bug. I actually thought I got it *before* Tim and fought it off, but it hit me in full the morning we weighed anchor. Tim was a trooper pulling off all but one four-hour shift of our 24 hour transit to Raiatea, where we’re now finally getting our propane filled. We have SO much to get done (from checking out of the country to final provisioning to minor boat repairs) in the five days before our Visa runs out, when we make a ten-day passage to the tiny island country of Niue, then another long passage to Tonga where we actually might be able to slow down a bit before the final, most challenging, passage to New Zealand in October. – Kerri