2) Rarotonga To Pago Pago

July 2008: South Pacific

Offshore passage from:  Avatiu Harbour, Rarotonga, Cook Islands (S 21.12-W 159.14)

To: Pago Pago, Tutuila, American Samoa (S 14.17-W 170.41)

       

Just to put this in perspective; we willingly put food, water and fuel on board and left this place.

The morning of the departure we figured it couldn’t hurt to get a local coffee and some breakfast food.  Plus, I needed to get in some last minute trinket shopping.  Everything closes at 4 and I seemed to have taken too long drinking my NZ beers yesterday and time got away from me.  Come on, it doesn’t look like much but the Whatever Bar & Grill has a great view!

        

  Life offshore on passages settles down pretty quickly into a routine.  There are only three of us on board and we were only going to have one person on each watch with 5 hours on in the day and 3 hours on at night.  I chose the 3am to 6am slot as I was still on California time and with a 3 hour time difference this 3am was my 6am according to my body clock.  After that watch I would not have to be back on again until 4pm to 9pm.  I was able to see sunsets and stars every day.  The stars offshore are impossible to put in words.  The Milky Way is so well defined that it looks like a thin cloud.  The Southern Cross in the southern hemisphere….  It’s nice to lie down, yes we lie down on the job, and stargaze at night and usually there are several shooting stars to spice it up.  A couple times I saw the moon rise in the sliver below the clouds on the horizon and on first impression it looked like another vessel.  The clue is that it has an orange tint.  And sunsets, since there in no pollution to speak of out here the colors are generally gold and yellow and not much else.  Another spectacular site is the opposite end of the sky with its soft pink and blue during a sunset.

We did not have consistent wind on this passage and ended up motor-sailing quite a bit.  As we got farther north the air and water noticeably warmed up and it was quite nice around the clock.  The other Dave put out a fishing line and trolled for a while and caught a Dorado.  Yes, we had Dorado that night.  And, uhm, the food on board is uhm, it’s a floating restaurant!  Dave is a great cook and the meals are fantastic!

          

A little bit of excitement for the natives.