Bird Island, Suwarrow

(continuation of the day we arrived in Suwarrow) We were excited to be on land and decided to walk around the island. Like the Tuomotus, some of the shoreline was dark, jagged lava rock, some was rocky broken coral and shells. There were a few small stretches of white sand with the small bits of shell and coral. The foliage was thick and went all the way to the edge of the water in a lot of spots. We spent most of our time walking in the water, sometimes as deep as Christi’s mid-thigh.

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Welcome to Suwarrow, Cook Islands

13.14.9S by 163.6.5W – When we first planned our itinerary, after leaving French Polynesia we were going to go to a couple of islands in the Cook Island chain that were literally right on the way. When we started researching the islands, we found that none of them had decent places to anchor the boat. If we wanted to go to the Cook’s, we would have to go to islands farther north or south, both of which were out of our way. So, the revised plan was to skip the Cook’s altogether and go straight to Niue. But several cruisers told us that we really should not miss Suwarrow. Everyone had such good things to say about Suwarrow that we added it to the itinerary, even though it is a two hundred mile (round trip) detour off our route. Continue reading

Passage from Bora Bora to Suwarrow

We had a decent passage from Bora Bora to Suwarrow with seas at a rocky 6 feet when we left, working and slowly mellowing out a little each day to nice 3 foot seas by the last day. Up until that last day we were running at 1600-1700 rpm and doing about 6.4 knots. The last day the wind and current both picked up in our favor and we had to slow down to 1400 rpm to keep our speed at 6.4 knots. Why slow down? So we could arrive at daylight in Suwarrow. Continue reading