Raiatea

Saturday we sailed the 20 mile passage to Raiatea Island. This is the second largest and most populated, next to Tahiti, in French Polynesia. There are two haulout facilities and this seems to be the main center of boat maintenance in the S Pacific. But we have decided to postpone our haulout and hope to make it to NZ and do a major refit there.
We had a 15 knot tail wind and sloppy seas but managed to get in behind the reef and motor down another 5 miles to Baie Faaroa, a deep bay with a river at the end and lots of houses along the shores. Moorings and/or Sunsail have mooring balls in the bay as well where they park their charter boats, mostly catamarans from what we can see. It is a large bay though and we anchored off the mouth of the river in brown silty mud. The holding is good and just as well because the wind came up overnight
and funnelled through the bay at 30 knots or more. We swayed around and listened to the hum of the rigging but held fine. Today was cloudy with showers and the wind continued till mid afternoon when it stopped completely.
So we did boat chores and read books and relaxed. Tomorrow we go in search of propane!