Raivavae, Austral Islands We were a bit disappointed to leave Raivavae. Indeed, we decided to cut our stopover short because a minority of the population is frankly hostile and sometimes threatening toward sailboats. There were abuses by some boats during last year's lockdown, and even though everything was fine before with the thirty or so boats passing through annually, it seems to have been enough to generalize. We are clearly not welcome, and this atmosphere doesn’t allow us to fully enjoy the island, with the rainy weather not helping. A shame, but Polynesia has enough islands not to linger here! We still managed to anchor in the beautiful "motu piscine" for 24 hours. Hopefully, tensions will ease over time.
After 3 days of calm downwind sailing, we arrived in Raiatea on Thursday evening just in time to celebrate Diane's 6th birthday! In the morning, we caught a nice dorado that we shared with our neighboring boats. They even came back to offer a scooter for the birthday!
Technical stopover, initially unplanned, to permanently repair the boom damaged during our passage between Noumea and the Gambiers.
