Saying goodbye to our friends on Pitcairn was difficult. Everyone on the island came to the landing to wish us well on our journey and many of them came with us in the longboat out to the ship. They sent us off with many gifts, especially bananas, oranges, lemons and pumpkins. The stern of our ship looked like a banana orchard with stalks of bananas hanging everywhere. When we got out to the ship we had a party that the on-ship watch had prepared to thank our Pitcairn hosts for their hospitality. After a couple of hours of celebrating our new friendships, we finally had to say goodbye and watch them climb back into their longboat. As they pulled away from our ship the Pitcairners all sang one of their island songs for us. We fired up the engine and headed West towards Mangareva.
Our passage from Pitcairn to Mangareva was only two days. Since the winds were not favorable, we motored most of the way. Occasionally we set some of the fore 'n aft sails for added power. Since we were at sea only a short time, we did not change our watch schedules, so I was still on the 8 to 12 watch.
We arrived at Mangareva on Friday, August 12th late in the afternoon. Fortunately it was sunny that day and we had enough light for the Captain to pilot the ship through the passage in the reef. The color and clarity of the water is amazing: crystal clear shades of blue, green, aquamarine through which you can see white coral and black algae covered rocks and coral. We anchored in the outer harbor because daylight was already waning and the inner harbor is more difficult to navigate without sufficient light. Captain Moreland, Kimberly (ship's Purser) and Jeff Hicks (who speaks French quite well) went ashore in the skiff to clear us through Customs.
Since we would be moving the ship closer in toward shore in the morning, nobody was given shore leave on Friday evening. We all stayed aboard and at 6am we were awakened with a call for "all hands on deck" to move the ship. Ten of us started heaving up the anchor with the windlass; another dozen or more people stood by to substitute in as people got tired of heaving on the windlass. It's a lot of work to bring up three shots of chain plus the anchor. The most difficult part is when all the slack is taken out of the chain and the anchor has to be pulled free from the bottom.
Once we got the ship secured in its new location, shore leave was granted to anyone who was not on watch. It had started raining earlier and by the time we went ashore it was pouring torrentially and the wind was blowing quite strong. We seem to have a knack for coming ashore on rainy days. The rain does not deter us; we just have fun regardless of how wet we are. And this day even the foulies we wore did not keep us dry. We walked up and down the main street of Rikitea, Mangareva's port town, getting wetter by the minute. Most of the shops were closed because it was still their mid-day break (in Spanish they call it "siesta"; I don't know the word in French). We did find one cafe that was open and sat on the covered terrace, mostly out of the rain...except for the rain that came in sideways under the roof.
While we were sitting in the cafe, the wind picked up steadily. Since we are always tracking the force of the wind as we sail (that 's one of the items we record every hour in the ship's log), we have become pretty good at recognizing the feel of it as it changes. Within minutes the wind increased from Force 4 to Force 5, then 6, and 7. It might have even gusted up to Force 8. The big wind was too much for the anchor we had set. The anchor dragged and everyone on board the ship heard and felt a thud as the ship's stern went aground. Fortunately she hit a sandy bottom, not the reef, so there was no damage and they were able to motor off to deeper water. The starboard anchor was pulled up and a larger anchor that we carry on the port side of the bow was set. After that stormy day, the weather settled down and we had no more problems with the anchor...until it came time to heave it up a week later. Then we just had to apply a strong team of muscles!
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