Skinny Dipping and Moturua to the Cavalli’s

Another beautiful morning and the warm sea beckoned. The ladies decided on skinny dipping and the gents made themselves scarce, leaving them to enjoy an ocean dip. Pearl excelled in the galley again cooking up porridge as well as bacon and egg rolls giving us much needed energy for our walk around Moturua Island. We found the island deserted and had a delightful walk over and around it. There is an established 4.6k footpath around the island with lots of ups and downs. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so but by the time we had all stopped to enjoy the bird song and to take in the wild bush and amazing views it was more like two hours. At the top of the first hill Ross had decided to return back the way we had come whilst the rest of us kept going with the circular walk. We arrived back at our starting point to find Ross playing in the dinghy and quoting Ratty “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats”. Oh, so true.

Then with anchor weighed we set off on a broad reach sailing close past Sharky Rock and on to the Cavalli Islands, so named by Captain Cook after what is believed to be a misunderstanding over the name of a type of fish that he purchased from the Māori in the local area. Cook thought he was buying Cavalli but this is thought to be Trevally although this makes little sense as the Māori word for the fish is araara. You can picture the scene, the local Māori describing the fish in their language, a translater passing on the info in English maybe to Cook directly or possibly one of his sidekicks and then maybe to Cook. I guess something got lost in translation!
Anyway, to cruise down the coast on a broad reach in sailing tranquility was most enjoyable. Ross read, Juliet relaxed and shared stories and Pearl sat quietly over the bow anchor, legs dangling just above the ocean waiting for dolphins to materialise but only getting a glimpse of a penguin, maybe tomorrow.
We arrived at Waiiti Bay, the first truly sandy bay of the cruise, proper sand, no gravel, super soft, just perfect. It’s a large bay just over a quarter of a mile across and there were only two other boats there, so we had it in relative isolation. We swam SUP’ed, kayaked and dinghied to shore where some went exploring whilst others relaxed or swam. Whilst we were out, the chicken had been left roasting in the oven so it was a wonderful smell we returned to and not long before we all sat down to a yummy roast chicken with all the trimmings. With the table cleared we shared stories and watched the sun set. Another wonderful end to a beautiful day.