Chez Fay adds rotating view

Out of the marina and into Cook's Bay on Moorea. Door to door it was about a three hour trip, but what a change! Chez Fay has always had great food, but now she's added a rotating view!

The bay is ringed with mountains that rise dramatically from sea level to 3,000' - 4,000'. The mild katabatic winds swirl within the bay and cause the view to constantly change as we rotate around the essentially placid water. Upon arrival we shared the bay with just two other boats, and the one in this photo departed this morning, later replaced by a large catamaran.

Last night Chez Fay started with an appetizer of feta, kalmata olives and Rustic Bakery flat breads while I enjoyed a gin and tonic and Fay had a glass of Chilean chardonnay. Then moving on to dinner she served a lovely risotto with a side of zucchini and tomatoes, complemented by a white Burgundy. This restaurant never disappoints!

Quick trip

Tuesday evening I took a quick trip to Raiatea to help another cruiser. The trip was mostly uneventful. We encountered a large rain squall between Tahiti and Moorea, and another as we approached Raitea, but during the night we had almost completely clear skies. There was no wind, the calm before the storm, so we motored the entire 120 miles.

While I was away, Fay was able to do a "wreck" dive in the lagoon at the end of the runway in Papeete and got this great shot of an Anemone fish, aka Clown fish.

I was glad we departed Tuesday as the forecast for deteriorating weather on Wednesday was quite accurate. It was cloudy and actually felt cold in Raiatea. There was cloud cover for the entire flight back and it was blowing 25-35kts in the marina when I returned to New Morning. The wind was right on the beam and while New Morning had no problems, the mega-yachts behind us (120' - 150') were not only heeling (as were we), they were pulled far to leeward and looked a bit precarious. Sunny skies and light winds when I awoke this morning.

We plan to depart for Moorea tomorrow morning.

Back in the marina

We had a great visit back to the states. We visited the kids, caught up with friends, enjoyed the summer fruit and reveled in the offerings at the Ferry Plaza farmer's market. Now we're back in the marina in Papeete and anxious to be back on the open water.

Being in a marina is always a mixed bag. On the one hand we enjoy the unlimited electricity, water and shopping. Here in Papeete there is a wide variety of groceries, great wine shop and pretty good boat supplies, although the prices are very high for everything.

On the other hand we've had barking dogs and the crews from the mega-yachts congregate about 10' from our transom to smoke since they are not allowed to do so on their own boats. And yesterday we learned that the boat next to us was very close to having a major fire when a battery leaked, shorted some wiring and was smoking when the owner discovered it. Boat fires are rarely contained and usually a total disaster. We would have been scrambling to get New Moring out of harms way.

Sunday we drove about half way up the mountain behind Papeete to an altitude of about 2,000'. A great view of the harbor and Moorea. We also walked through a training facility for the local special forces with lots of obstacles courses and all manner of climbing facilities. A bit odd to stroll through that on our hike up the mountain.

I spent quite a few hours up the mast the last few days doing some maintenance on our foredeck and steaming lights. Then I installed a guard over the steaming light to keep loose reef lines from fouling it as we have experienced a few times before. We're also catching up on a variety of other maintenance projects with all the parts we hauled back from the states. We have enough parts and projects now to keep us busy for a few weeks while we're at anchor on Moorea and Huahine.

One of the other cruisers here in the marina has found himself without crew. I'm going to help him take his boat to Raiatea, about 120 miles away. We'll take his boat to the CNI storage yard, the same facility where we'll also store New Morning in October. It should be a fairly short trip, depart this afternoon and arrive tomorrow morning. With luck I'll catch the late afternoon flight from Raitea back to Tahiti and be home for dinner!

Then Fay and I hope to depart on Thursday or Friday for Moorea.

Deja Vu

We got home and were barraged with email from friends who had seen New Morning in Sunset Magazine. This was a mystery to us since we had no idea how Sunset could have photos of New Morning. The mystery was solved when we bought a copy of Sunset and saw that it was our prior New Morning, a Swan 44. This was a photo session we did with Abner Kingman back in 2005. She's still berthed just three blocks away and it's great to see she's still newsworthy.