Niue

Approaching Niue from the northeast. The waves have laid down in the partial lee of the island but the winds are still a-blowin’.

Niue is basically a small rock in Polynesia. It is one of the largest upraised coral atolls in the world and one of the smallest countries in the world. The population living on the island is about 1,100 with many other Niueans living in New Zealand. Niue is an independent country in free association with New Zealand. Now I’m not that up on my international law, so I’m not too sure what ‘free association’ means but I’m pretty sure it means they are more than just casually dating. Since our Supreme Court has given corporations the constitutional right of free speech, perhaps soon they will give corporations the right to marry, then New Zealand can make an honest women out of Niue.
  We are moored in deep water on a really well maintained mooring in front of the main town, Alofi. The humpback whales seem to like this indentation on the coast – can’t really call it a bay. They stop by to calve when pregnant or with a little luck get pregnant if they aren’t already. You hear these guys blowing at the surface at night between us and the shore. Pretty cool.

The spinner dolphins also like to cruise through the anchorage in large pods.

Checking out the coast line from the pier

The Niuean outrigger canoes have a slightly different style from these we saw in French Polynesia. They are shorter and narrow. This is a classic example of one made of local mahogany. The locals are friendly and it is good for Chris and I to start practicing speaking New Zealand.
Captain Cook anchored 3 times in Niue near the current mooring field. On his third attempt to land he planted the Brit flag. He got an unfriendly greeting by the natives with red painted teeth. In a less than tourist-friendly slight he named the place ‘Savage Island’. Besides the natives not being happy with him, I’m sure the fact that there are zero decent anchorages on the island played into his plans to exit quickly. In this picture you can see them launching a large fisheries boat from the the main pier with a crane.  The boom to the right of the crane is where we take our dinghies in. Hook them with a harness and haul them out of the water anytime we want to go to shore. The mooring we are on is in 125 feet of water. Anchoring here would be tough. If the winds crank to the west at all, then even the moorings become untenable and the cruising yachts have to take off.
Paul

Nuie

Made it into Nuie this afternoon almost exactly 6 days after we left. Pretty fast trip for a 1,000 miles. Cleared in with customs --- easy. We'll figure out the town tomorrow after a good nights sleep. They say the humpbacks are sleeping in the bay that the moorings are in. Haven't seen one yet -- but we're looking.

Paul


----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Niue's Near

We are about 140 miles away from Nuie tonight. It is cold on watch -- 72*F, or an even colder 22*C. Overcast and the moon hasn't come up yet. As one boat described it on the HF radio, its like being in the English Channel. Except we haven't seen a ship or another cruising boat in almost a 1,000 miles. We've been making really good days sailing, typically 180 miles days. We should make it into Nuie before dark tomorrow. It will be tomorrow our time, but day after tomorrow Nuie time. Nuie is past the dateline which means at some point soon we loose a day. Hope it s not my birthday we loose.

Paul



----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Enroute Niue

Sunrise has us currently about 50 miles north of Palmerston Island. The sailing has been pretty good and we are going to keep going to Nuie and skip Palmerston. Nuie is about another 420 miles or so. It looks like today will be the first day that we get some blue sky. Its been a fast sail -- we are about 600 miles from where we started. The winds have been well behaved most of the time. They get a little rambuncous for a few hours in the middle of the night. We are mostly cruising along at 7 to 8 kts with some 9's thrown in with the wave pushes. We expect to make Nuie on Monday evening. That would be Monday evening on our time, but we will loose a day heading into Nuie -- some kind of calendar black-hole thing. So we will actually most likely arrive Tuesday evening. Friends there tell us the humpback whales are hanging near the anchorage, so it should give us another opportunity to take lots of pictures of the water with the title 'this is where the whale was'.
Paul


----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

The SPCZ

The South Pacific Convergence Zone, aka S-P-C-zed, is hanging low over us. It brings 90-100% overcast skies and light drizzle. This just didn't seem like the best conditions for visiting Suwarrow and there are no real hints that the convergence zone was going to move off somewhere else. It apparently likes to hang further N and E in El Nino conditions, moving it closer to the equator and where we are. So after sailing for two days in a line mostly pointing toward Suwarrow we changed course this afternoon to head to the island nation of Niue. Its about 750 miles away. We'll pass close by Palmerston Atoll, a part of the Cooks. We may decide to stop in there for a few days. This island is populated by three families, all descended from one Englishman (or maybe Scots) and his three Polynesian wives.
The winds are 15-20kts and the seas are small, making for some comfortable sailing.

Paul



----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com