Our passage to Niue was uneventful except for 1 night where the wind picked up to about 28 knots. Not to put too much pressure on the wind vane we reduced the genoa to quite small. We arrived in Niue at 03:00 am on Monday morning 8 th August. The bay was totally calm and with the light from the moon we had no problem seeing the mooring buoys. Our friends from Cool Cat and Micromegas arrived the previous Friday.
At 09:00 am Monday morning we all went ashore for customs and immigration clear in. It was great seeing our friends again. We were all greeted by Keith the commodore of Niue Yacht Club at the wharf. He took our laundry to be washed and dried, this was great as we got quite wet on the passage. We went for fish and chips after all the paper work was done to catch up on each other's news.
We were invited to have supper onboard Micromegas as Cool Cat was leaving Tuesday morning for Tonga. We had a lovely time. Tuesday morning Dinis pumped the dinghy so that he can fix the wind vane permanently. It was quite a bit of work, but he did managed to fix the problem.
We rented a car together with Chantal and Fredy for our day tour around the island. We picked the car up at the wharf and started our trip. We had enough food and was looking out for papayas as this fruit grows abundantly on the island. A person is allowed to pick papayas as long as it is not on private property. We manage to get quite a few papayas, some still green, which should be ready for eating in a couple of days. We also got some coconut and cut a palm tree to make our own millionaire salad (heart of palm). We had a very good picnic lunch and supper. We visited several sightseeing locations and snorkel in beautiful caves.
Niue is very beautiful, reminded me of Galapagos as far as the wildlife is concern. The bay where the mooring buoys are, are also the bay where the humpback whales come to breed and have their calves. They swam meters away from the boats, very spectacular.
We were 4 boats in the bay. Another Canadian boat came into the bay on Sunday 14 August, what a surprise to meet our friends Larry and Kim from sv Magenta again. The last time we saw each other was about 4 years ago in Vancouver. We all went for a snorkel to see if we can see the water snakes. We did see the snakes, apparently they are poisonous but there are no incident on record where anyone was bitten.
Unfortunately the wind was changing and the anchorage was becoming uncomfortable. We all are preparing to leave on Monday morning after we clear out. Unfortunately for Magenta the weather forecast is not in their favour and they will not be able to go ashore Niue unless they want to wait for better weather and be uncomfortable.
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