1 October - Windward Passage

0600 position 16-43S 151-02W. At anchor in 20 feet, sand bottom, Fare,
Huahine

On Monday morning Lori and I sailed up to Uturoa to get fuel at the Total
station. Sometimes it can be a traumatic experience with folks jumping
the que, getting on to and off of the pier which is on a lee shore, and
processing the duty free fuel paperwork. We had an easy time of it though
and by noon we were at anchor on the barrier reef off of the Raiatea Lodge
where we planned to have dinner.

The Raiatea Lodge has a lovely facility between the Carenage Marina and
Raotoanu Pass, the lagoon pass at Raiatea's northwest corner. We ate
there once during our 2011 cruise and wanted to try it again. We dinghied
in to their dock and had a great meal.

Tuesday looked like the best day to make the crossing to Huahine. The
wind would be right on the nose, but in the low teens so pleasant sailing.
We exited Raiatea's lagoon at 9AM behind three other boats headed in the
same direction. The two catamarans ahead of us, probably charter boats,
disappeared quickly powering straight to Huahine, but we had a great race
with the forty foot monohull and beat him in by about half an hour. It
was the first time Moku pe'a had been on the wind since we were in Tonga.
The normal and best anchorage in Fare is just west of the town, right off
of the beach. It was completely empty when we arrived, but the overflow
anchorage out on the barrier reef had twelve boats in it. Strange. So we
found the perfect spot in the main anchorage and dropped the hook at 2PM.
Our companion monohull anchored just behind us, and this morning when we
woke up we found that two others had come in and anchored during the
night. Looks like we seeded the anchorage.

We are in Fare to meet my best friend David Schaefer. We grew up a few
houses apart on Kaneohe Bay Drive and have been pals since the first grade
at Aikahi Elementary. We graduated from Punahou together, swam down the
north shore of Molokai, and put my car back together after it caught fire
in Death Valley at the end of a cross country trip. David taught me to
brew beer and he is a founding partner in the Coconut Island Brewery. He
was supposed to join me in Bora Bora for two weeks of cruising when we
were there on my Ranger 33, Eleu, in 1986, but a last minute work snafu
forced him to cancel, so this is a twenty eight year later do-over. We
have history, and I am looking forward to cruising with him.