Aitutaki, The Cook Islands

Kia Orana! Nov 9 to Nov 13 we got to hangout on this cool little island. Finally a place the speak English!!! My friend Chris Hornbeak told me about this little jem and we decided it sounded the coolest out of all the cook islands. And man we couldn't have picked a better place. It took us 7 days to get there and pretty much down wind sailing.

 This is an aerial view of the island. I didn't take it. I found it on google but it gives you a better idea of the island. At the top is the main landmass where all the people live. The highest elevation is like 200ft. Not very tall... Everyone there pretty much rides motorbikes since it is a very small island and any where you want to go is pretty close. We rented some and I had way to much fun just riding around looking at the palm trees while playing white horses by the Rolling Stones over and over.  Also you can see in this picture is that there are some motus (lil islands) and between them and the main island there is a HUGE pretty lagoon. All of that area is beautiful. Tons of pretty coral and fish! They also have giant clams.

 

Again we found such humble and friendly people and got invited to a bunch of events with tons of yummy food. This was by far my favorite place besides Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas. Its pretty unspoiled out of all the islands I've seen in the Pacific. I highly recommend visiting it someday! We realized though that it was pretty late in the season for us to just be getting to the Cook islands and having so much more distance to cover to get out of the hurricane belt that we randomly decided lets head to New Zealand and go adventure "down unda" so we left on the 13th and had to cross 1900 miles!

Bora Bora

"The most beautiful island in the world"

Man does it live up to its name... The entire outer reef around the island is filled with crystal clear turquoise water lagoons.  But in the middle of this entire beautiful island stands two beautiful peaks. Which allow you some hiking if you have been missing a little bit of land ;) We tied up the boat on a bouy in front of this cute little hotel that also acts as a marina for sailors called Hotel Marina Taina. They had an infiniti pool and free wifi for us to use, I felt a little spoiled. There are several little motus sorounding the main middle island. Everywhere you look you see the classic little villas on the water where you can jump right in from your back porch. Its cool but that’s all the people seem to build as hotels and they are everywhere. Which is kind of ugly in my perspective but hey that’s what people dream of staying in. One of the days my dad and I packed up a cooler with a few beers and some snacks and decided to motor arround the entire island in our dinghy. One of our stops was at The Meriden Hotel. They have a turtle clinc here just like the one on Moorea, BUT they allow you to swim with the turtles!!! As long as you don’t touch. There is a huge lagoon where they keep turtles that are being healed. There are about 20 in there from tiny babies to big adults. It was so cool. One even climbed on to my back and scared me real badly. I was afraid I was going to accidently hurt it.

We had been planning to leave Bora Bora on the Nov 1 but some how it just turned out to be a holiday and we couldn’t check out of the country. We had moved our boat to Vaitape the only boat harbor. A bunch of kids were hanging out on the end of our dock and we got to talking with them. Pretty soon our boat was overloaded with 20 kids jumping off and paddling around on our kayak and surfboards. We all hungout the whole afternoon playing ukelele and having soccer matches. It was really fun hanging out with people a little closer to my age. (No offense dad) It was still difficult to really talk to them because very little spoke much English and when 20 kids are yelling at you in french to do things with them it gets overwhelming… But me managed and ended up staying there for the weekend till Monday when we could check out. Monday came we got everything done and just left immedialty. We felt like our stay was over in Bora Bora and needed to get moving.  We were also excited to get to a place where people speak English. AITUTAKI, COOK ISLANDS!!

Huahine

Well the crossing over to Huahine from Mo'orea wasnt what we were expecting... Leaving there we were going 7 knots and ended going that fast the entire time! We got there a lot quicker than expected which was awesome but the ride over was terrible. My mother was sea sick the ENTIRE time haha and we were surfing/sailing down 20ft waves. Which freaked me out a little bit at times. But the Catnip pulled on through and my father and I sailed her her into the north west pass. On the way we saw some more whales!

My mom rented us a car one of the few days that we were there. We drove around the entire island and checked out a pearl farm! Also we had heard about these blue eyed eels in one of the rivers so we just had to find them! They were longer than me and whats cool is they don't have teeth so they don't bite. We didnt stay long in Huahine and it was also close to the time my mom had to be back in Papeete for her flight to Hawaii so we left her there and headed off to Bora Bora

Mo'orea

Only 30 miles away from Papeete lay a little island called Mo’orea. There are two big bays that boats can anchor in and cruise ships stop there as well. Our journey there was really smooth, we motored the whole way from lack of wind, which was a bummer. The first bay you come upon in Cook Bay and we only spent a day there. The next is Opunohu Bay. Both look very similar because lushes’ peaks surround you. We anchored so far back in the valley that no wind or waves could reach us so it was like a lake all around us.

 

I had read about a turtle sanctuary near this town called Papeto’ai which also had a stingray feeding ground near by so we though lets just go check out the area with the boat and see if we can find a place to anchor. 

We found a nice little anchor spot in 3ft of water in a sandy lagoon. The perks of having a Catamaran ;) Our spot was right in the hub of the area. There were kite boarders zipping by us doing all kinds of tricks. I’ve always wanted to learn so I swam ashore and found a teacher.

Later that afternoon two kite boarders came and hung out with us. Their names were Toarea and Tamatoa. Tamatoa Gillot is a professional kite boarder and has traveled all over the world for it but his true home is Moorea lives here most of the time. Toarea ended up showing us all kind of cool things in the lagoon. He showed us how to get clams and green turbans.

Which are super yummy and showed me how feed fishes the clams so they will swarm around you. Tamatoa ended up taking me tandem kiteboarding and than gave me another lesson the next day. I am addicted to this sport now.

One of the days we all went out on Tamatoas little boat to see the stingrays. There were tons of sharks, fishes, and stingrays everywhere, which really freaked my mom out. The trick to getting the stingrays to rub all over you is to hide a piece of fish in your hand and they sniff all over you. They don’t have teeth but very strong flat jaws.

I was sad to leave our new friends and such an amazing little town but you gotta keep going or you’ll never experience all those other cool places. So we left for Huahine

Tahiti Nui

Ia ora na! (Hello in Tahitian)
Such an accomplishment getting to Tahiti. The place my dads dreamed of for 40 years. Now we can finally say "Hey we've sailed to Tahiti!" So on Oct 7th we came up on to Tahiti from its east side of its little island. The island is made of two islands connected with an isthmus. The little island area is called Tahiti Iti which means "small tahiti" and the main big island which has its bustling capital Papeete is called Tahiti Nui.

 We decided to sail around the south east side to check out Teachupoo. Which is one of the most famous surf spots in the world for its huge waves. The spot wasn't getting its big swells like usual but it was just cool to see it and surf in the area since this was the first place we've been able to find surf!

After spending a few days on the south east side of Tahiti Iti. We sailed to Papeete on Tahiti Nui. Its a bustling little city. It was nice to be able to get parts and supplies that we weren't able to get any where else but we realized quickly we did not want to be there. My mom (Maurene) flew in on Oct 12th from Hawaii and decided she'd stay in French Polynesia for two weeks and travel with us to some of the other islands. From Papeete you can see the island of Moorea. Its only 30 miles and looked pretty so we immediately headed there! 

Fakarava!

So after Nuku Hiva we headed to Fakarava which is part of the Tuamotus. It took us four days which was so nice compared to our 30 days at sea voyage. We had enough fresh food to get us there. The thing about the Tuamotus is that they are all atolls. Look that up on google images for a better understanding but they are all super flat and extremly hard to see untill you are about 8miles away from them. We went through the south pass of Fakarava

And man was it pretty!! The most beautiful place I've ever been.  The water is so clear and you can see black tip reef sharks all around you and tons of fish.

We brought with us one of the friends we made on Nuku Hiva his name is John and he lives in Japan with his wife Tomoko. But gets out and travels every year and returns to his loving wife after a few months. He and I took up the amazing diving opportunity they have in Fakarava. They have a dive called Wall of Sharks and you down about 60ft. You literally see hundreds of sharks grey, meiko, black tip and white tip. It was the coolest dive Ive ever done and I'm still a beginner diver. John has his master diver card and he said he has never seen this many sharks while diving.

And when I said hundreds of sharks I really mean we saw hundreds of sharks!! I was a little sad to leave Fakarava because of its perfect clear what and beautiful corals but Tahiti is next!

Nuku Hiva

Kaoha! Like Aloha but in Marquesian language.  We have been eating tons of cheese and fresh bread every day. Everyone speaks French and some people a little English. On our first day we met a bunch of other people that had sailed to Nuku Hiva. Walking down the main road of the town we met Alba (Spanish), Mattis (Chillean/Spanish), and Matt (Australia).  All three are so friendly and love to travel. The four of us made friends with a local guy named Lido while hitch hiking around the island. He took us to many cool bays around the island, bought us local treats and than set us up to hike into a little town called Anaho to meet his friends. Anaho bay is one of the most beautiful bays in the world supposedly and it sure does live up to its name.  We hungout with three families and became real good friends with them all. They made us tons of good local food. They taught us how to find octopus at low tide and we caught 5 of them! Here's one of them on my head it’s cool thing to do these days ;). We had a lunch the next day before we hiked out of there. We had roasted goat and pig that had been cooked underground all night, breadfruit, and roasted octopus. The people on this island are seriously the friendliest people I have ever met. Everyone loves their island so much and they want others to enjoy it as much as they do. One day I’m for sure coming back.

30 days at sea!

Sorry guys that this hasn’t been updated. We ended up being at sea for 30 days! Way longer than expected.  The winds kept changing on us and we had to sail really east to be able to reach the Marquesas.  On the 4^th day it started pouring and didn’t stop till a week later. But the 7^th day it stopped for two hours and was really sunny. The pod of 20 dolphins came and joined us during that time and swam with the boat for an hour which isn’t very common. We stopped the boat and  got in the water to swim with them. A week later we were in the doldrums.  There wasn’t any wind for a few days so we just motored. The ocean looked like a huge lake and the sky reflected off it perfectly.

  On Sept 11 we finally reached the equator!! A huge accomplishment and headed into the southern hemisphere! The whole 30 days we pretty much slept ate read and sailed.  Finally saw our first landfall on Sept 16^th. We reached Eiao Island, which is the most northern island of the Marquesas chain. No one lives there but there is a nice cove to anchor in with a red beach! We went exploring and found a waterfall. Since its so small we decided to leave the next day to Nuku Hiva. It took us a little less than a day to get there.

Big Island and Off to The South Pacific

For the past week we have been on the Big Island also known as Hawai'i. We got a rental car and went exploring around the island.

One day we got up at 3am to see the sunrise on Mauna Kea. The top is around 13796ft above sea level but it is supposedly taller than Mt. Everest when measuring from the bottom of the ocean. Also on our adventures we went to a black sand beach and a green sand beach. Ive started to collect sand from different beaches in the world and will continue too along this trip. We are leaving tomorrow morning to head to the Marquesas which are 2300mi away from here or if we cant sail that east we will be sailing straight south to Tahiti which is 2600mi away. It will take about 3 weeks maybe less depending on the wind.

Crossing to Lana'i

We left on Aug 2nd around 12pm and arrived to Manele Bay on Lana'i around 3pm on the 3rd.  It was really tiring to sail all night but totally worth it. The crossing wasn't to rough compared to times when we cross to Molokai instead. During the night of the crossing I spotted something glowing in the water. All of a sudden we were sailing through Bio luminescence (lil glowing plankton). I totally felt like Pi from the book and movie "Life of Pi". I found this picture off the internet it looks like what we saw but ours was green!

The Boat and The Plan

This is the Catnip! Its 34ft long and my home for the next year. We have three little rooms on board. But only two people living on board, my father and I. Dwight Streamfellow (Daddyo) has been dreaming of sailing to the South Pacific since his early twenties and now finally has the chance.

We are leaving from Oahu (our home) and sailing south towards the big island as our first big stop. We have been trying to leave but tropical storm Flossy has been keeping us on Oahu. We hope to leave in a few days. From the Big Island we will be heading south to Tahiti and from there just island hoping all the way to South East Asia or however far we can get before I have to go back to college in Fall of 2014.