June 2016

Hello everyone,

This letter will be short, because on this day of May 31, we are happily tossed by the trade winds, 180 miles still to Fakarava, which we should reach tomorrow night. Yesterday, after sailing about 180 miles, of excellent albeit somewhat bumpy, it became a bit chaotic when the autopilot and the hydraulic steering simultaneously proved unfit to steer the boat; we had to take down sail, to heave to, and reorganize all that; probably only, and again, a desynchronization of the two rudders; in any case it went right again, and we sailed on in the dark of the night.

So I'll just review some memories of that brief stopover in Raivavae, where we've been able to:

- anchor once again in my favorite small anchorage at the southeastern end of thewell protected lagoon that surrounds the island; on that day, the island was not deserted, as residents of the central island came to harvest coconuts to ship to the island of Rapa, which is too far south to have palm trees. Vaimiti was able to reproduce the picture of her on the beach that I had taken there ten years ago, and to show te place to her boyfriend Stéphane.

- visit the island known as Motu piscine or swimming pool islet, where Vaimiti filled a complete SD card of photos of the spot.

- climb the island's highest peak, Mount Hiro, only 423 m high , but a devilishly steep path: the inhabitants have installed a kind of ramp there, a thick sheathed electric cable, very convenient both for climbing and coming down; we took photos of the views that open to the south and to the north of the island, before coming back down, in large part, for my part, on my backside, sliding on a real a slide of Iron tree ( filao) needles .
- Finally, stock up on fruits: after the gendarmes' grapefruit, a nice native of Raivavae made us got his daughter to deliver a full wheelbarrow of grapefruit, oranges, bananas, lemons; another brought us we taro roots and frozen pahua (large clams), quite a lot for a three-day crossing, we'll give some to our friends in Fakarava.

Why leave Raivavae so quickly, when it's so beautiful and welcoming, you may ask?
I also wonder, let's say the months of June to September are a little to cool to my test.
And I'm preparing the coming of Francette in Fakarava.
So much for today, I wish you a good month of June.
Antoine