O Y S TER NEWS
“Only as we fi nalise details of our fl ight to the UK to catch up with family and friends does it slowly begin to sink in, that in safety and comfort, we have actually sailed our new home half way around the world.“
No wonder we seemed to be the fi rst sitting on deck with sundowners on Friday, Saturday or whatever day it was!
It is late on Saturday night (Sea Rover time) and we now know the wedding is at noon tomorrow. We’ve just got back from the engagement party, gossiping with all the other cruisers in the anchorage, comparing notes on places and passages.
Once again, I told my story of our visit to Easter Island, how several years ago, sometime between signing on the dotted line for our new Oyster and remortgaging our house, we had spent the weekend with friends who had circumnavigated in the nineties. Usual form, he had dragged her across oceans to help him fulfi l his dream. As we relaxed in the West Country farmhouse they are doing up before she takes him back to sea, we mused on routes, seasons, favourite anchorages and they talked about their regrets at not spending more time exploring the Pacifi c, something you oſt en hear. T en innocently I asked what seemed like an obvious question: “Why hadn’t they gone to Easter Island?” I might as well have suggested sailing to Mars. I can still remember his face and the incredulous tone in his voice: “Do you know where it is!” My geography was, shall we say, imprecise!
Our friends had sailed the classic route that fi rst timers take through the South Pacifi c. Sometimes disparagingly called the ‘Coconut Milk Run’, it joins up many of the most famous bits; Galapagos, Marquesas, Tuamotos, then Tahiti and other Society Islands before heading down to New Zealand or Australia. It is a run of over 7000 miles from Panama so when you do fi nd Easter Island on the chart, you see why so few boats detour over two thousand miles to a small, volcanic island where no anchorage is completely sheltered from the constantly changing winds and ocean swells, which don’t always come from the same direction.
At the engagement party I discovered that we weren’t the only guests to have visited Easter Island, Bruce and Alene the newly engaged couple had not only visited the island on their trimaran, Migration, but written the anchoring guide we had downloaded and used from Noonsite. Now, I jested, we certainly know where Easter Island is having sailed there from Ecuador (light winds, oſt en only force 2-3 and motoring through the all too frequent holes). We fell in love with the island although we did have to move fi ve times as the changeable weather made each place we were anchored untenable. Our planned 10-day stay morphed into three weeks, in
beautiful anchorages overlooking stark statues (moai), which we oſt en enjoyed on our own.
We thought we knew Easter Island’s history, how the endeavour to construct massive carved statues had depleted their natural resources until the society imploded, perhaps as some have suggested a parable for the vanities of this century. One surprise was that there are far more statues than we had appreciated, more than 900, spread around the island. On the sides of the Rano Raraku volcano was the ‘moai factory’, where carved fi gures still lay, many unfi nished, no longer required as the islanders moved away from ancestor worship. At the other end of the island another surprise awaits as the Rano Kau volcano gives glimpses of the new religious and socio-political order, which emerged later with the Make-Make cult and its daring Birdman ceremony.
Late at night aſt er the engagement party, we hoist the fl ags to dress Sea Rover overall, a breakfast surprise for Migration and the fi rst time we’d fl own them since the start of the ARC in Las Palmas, just under a year ago!
Midmorning, and there is a buzz of activity across the anchorage. Many of the boats are now decked in bunting, one dinghy is visiting
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