Sailing against the wind is definitely something we try to avoid. However, as we had to make our way back to Tahiti and fly home to Norway for the memorial service of Bruse’s mother, we now had a more westerly starting point for our passage to Gambier than we originally had planned.
We really wanted to reach Gambier in good time before Christmas, leaving us a month to explore the archipelago before our son and his girlfriend visit us there in January.
We spent three days in Marina Taina after returning, and prepared ourselves and the boat for the passage. We stocked up some more food from Carrefour, and enjoyed one last sunset and the beautiful views of Moorea. The captain also prepared a lovely Norwegian Christmas dish, pork ribs with crackling, for the last evening before we set sail.
As we were beating against wind and waves, it was not a comfortable sail at all. We therefore spending most of the passage doing very little, sitting on a couch each, watching movies and reading books. The admiral experienced some sea sickness on some days, but not too heavy.
We had several squalls on our way as well. Some of them were quite heavy, where everything turned white around us, and the sea and sky seemed as one. Slowly, but surely, we discovered that it was getting a little colder as we ventured further South. It is still 27 degrees Celsius in the water, and the air can get to 22 degrees Celsius during rain.
It is 900nm from Tahiti to Gambier, but with the wind against us, we had to tack most of the way. It ended up becoming a 1,300nm passage as a result. In terms of number of days (10), it was our second longest passage, a day longer than our sail from Namibia to St Helena. We reached the capital of Gambier, the town of Rikitea on the main island Mangareva, on December 2nd.
We were fairly tired after the strenuous passage, and stayed very still the first few days, only with some shorter trips to town and a small hike. We even didn’t discover that the time had shifted to an hour earlier than Tahiti until our neighboring boat told us so on day 3… We are really looking forward to start exploring Gambier!