One of the coolest families I ever sailed with in Hawaii bought a boat in Fiji, sailed it down to New Zealand and asked me to fly over and help them sail it to French Polynesia. Usually people sail the other way downwind, but this is where the boat was and that’s where they wanted to go. The ancient Polynesians sailed that way upwind so this great opportunity to sail with Tore and his sons on their Leopard 46 catamaran s/v Gobe would be an amazing experience to see how the ancient voyagers did it.
I flew in to Aukland New Zealand, where I met Tore and we drove a few hours to Opua, where s/v Gobe was docked. Opua near the Bay of Islands is a wonderful beautiful place that has a very nice sailing and yachting scene. Several boat yards and chandleries and nice marinas, it’s hard to leave New Zealand. But that’s what I came here for so we got the boat ready, stocked with provisions and Tore, his two sons and I set sail across the South Pacific.
Planning this trip, we wanted to go at the right season, before the southern hemisphere winter. The plan was to get to the Marquesas islands where Tore’s wife would join the family and they would sail down wind and take their time exploring the islands together. My job was to help them with the “hard part” of sailing upwind. However the hard part wasn’t as hard as it could’ve been since we were lucky to have a good weather window with favorable winds to sail a rhumb line instead of going south. The voyage started off cold but soon got warmer as we pointed mostly north east from New Zealand.
The main thing that made this “hard voyage” actually very easy was that the boat was equipped with Starlink. Tore installed it and had a roaming plan for basically unlimited internet use in the middle of the ocean so it was crazy… we actually had full internet access the whole voyage which meant we had Premium Predict Wind subscription, which we checked everyday and kept us on the safest, straightest course. Having full internet access at sea meant that we could also check our emails, do our land based work and even video chat with our friends and families on shore. Starlink is a total game changer! Honestly it sort of takes the fun out of sailing if you don’t truly disconnect, I almost felt like we were cheating. But just for fun though we did practice celestial navigation and got some interesting sights on southern hemisphere stars.
The plan was to just sail straight for the Marquesas but looking at the chart and our route, you know what… this island called Rarotonga was just right in front of us. Rarotonga was almost exactly halfway along our route and after about two weeks of sailing we were itching to get off and explore so on the fly we decided to make a port visit. In times past it would’ve been a hassle to make a port visit on the fly like this but with Starlink we were able to research the formalities, got in touch with the Harbormaster, sent them our paperwork and we were welcomed when we got there. Another boat that came after us without prior permission wasn’t so lucky.
Approaching Rarotonga we had the worst weather on the trip and had to wait out a storm in the lee of the island before entering port. Add to that drama we had an issue with engine oil alarm giving a faulty reading, gave us more of a scare, but we managed to safely enter port. In Rarotonga we were lucky to have a nice med mooring in the main harbor, which was a convenient walking distance from everything. We stayed in Rarotonga about a week, rented a car, explored the island, checked out some beaches and did an awesome hike across the island. I was even able to go on a dive trip and got a tattoo. Rarotonga is an amazing place and we felt like we could’ve stayed longer but we had to continue the voyage.
The second half of the trip across the South Pacific just got warmer and nicer as we approached French Polynesia. We sailed past Tahiti and through the Tuamotus. The Tuamotus atolls are a little scary to navigate through, especially at night and I don’t know how sailors did it in times past. I’m sure there’s lots of shipwrecks around there, but with accurate GPS and chart plotters it’s easy to navigate. We wished we could’ve stopped to check out these beautiful atolls but the Marquesas were our goal and final destination and the larger island of Nuku Hiva was just about 3 days sail past the Tuamotus and on our horizon one morning when we woke up to a glorious sunrise.
Nuku Hiva feels like the edge of the Earth. One of the most isolated places in the world, it is still very much stuck in time and even though they’re not small islands, they have a small population so you feel very remote and exotic. The island is green but surprisingly not the kind of green you see on other tropical islands, as the Marquesas are out of the prevailing winds and have more of the trees you see in higher latitudes. The anchorage was wide and protected with high mountains on each side, with quite a few other visiting boats, big and surprisingly small joining us. Taking the dinghy to shore, the dinghy dock was right by where they clean the day’s catch of fish and discard the rest of the fish into a feeding frenzy of large sharks right by where we tie our dinghy- don’t fall in.
Nuku Hiva was amazing. We found some nice beaches, went for a swim, found a nice restaurant overlooking the bay and a nice local market selling all sorts of local wood carvings and artwork to bring home. After exploring Nuku Hiva a bit and taking a long drive to the smallest airport I’ve ever seen, I flew to Tahiti, explored a little more and caught my flight back home to Hawaii.
