Traveling About Huahine

June 22, 2008-On Thursday morning, we headed south for Avae Bay using the channel between the island and the reef, which is well marked with buoys. It was a short trip; however, we had a decent rain squall on the way down. I was keeping watch on the bow, and by the time we arrived at Avae, I was drenched but at least I wasn't cold. Avae Bay is on the southwest tip of Huahine, and it is a lovely spot. When we pulled our anchor at Fare, the windlass wasn't working, so Steve had to raise the anchor by hand. Luckily, we had just 80 feet of chain out so it wasn't too hard to pull up. We had talked about anchoring in Port Bourayne; however, the least depth is around 75 feet, which means a LOT of chain. So we bypassed Bourayne and went directly to Avae, where we were able to anchor in 40 feet of crystal-clear water. There was a small resort on the beach in front of us and a few homes.

Friday morning Steve worked on the windlass, thinking that the motor had burned out-not a good thing. After checking the motor and not finding anything, we discovered that the bus bar termination had corroded, so he cleaned it, and then the windlass worked just fine. We ran the generator to charge the batteries, and I did a small load of laundry, which was piling up because we had had rain showers almost every day. Steve needed to relax, so he went out fishing for awhile but had no luck at all. He is becoming quite frustrated. In the evening Scarlet O'Hara invited Island Time and us to dinner. We had a wonderful dinner and stayed until midnight-we couldn't believe it!

Saturday morning we left to walk to the village about 2 miles from the anchorage. We stopped at several maevas along the way. We reached the town and took a circle route going by lovely homes whose properties were beautifully maintained and stopping at the church to listen to a hymn being sung by the congregation. It was in their native language, and it sounded absolutely beautiful. The children were outside the church playing, and they were so cute that we took a picture. On our way back, we stopped in a small shop in which all the items were hand made, and we found some lovely items to buy. We headed back to the boat to get ready to have Gordon and Jenine from Vari over for dinner. We did not stay up until midnight!

On Sunday morning, we headed back up to Fare so that we could cross over to Raiatea on Monday. We did stop in Port Bourayne and dropped anchor and then left in the dinghy to explore the large bay, go under a bridge to the bay on the east side of the island, and then enjoy lunch. The Maltese Falcon (check it out on the Internet) was anchored in the bay. It is the largest sailboat in the world, and it is amazing, although we don't think it is all that pretty.

We continued north to Fare and got anchored just in time to prepare for a large rain squall that was moving up from the south. There were large black clouds all across the southern sky, so we put the dinghy on the deck and pulled down any items that might be blown away, including more laundry. When the squall hit, it wasn't nearly as bad as it looked-we had some wind at 20 knots and also had a nice rain shower that washed off the boat.

When we get to Raiatea, we will have the boat hauled out at the yard so that we can inspect the rudder. The shaft and bearings are worn, which causes it to make noise. That in turn makes us nervous, so we need to fix it before we leave the Society Islands. Other than that, all is well.

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