With the last red buoy that passed the boat, we officially said our goodbye to French Polynesia. We’d had a great time in this part of the world and fully enjoyed its beauty, people, food and culture. I’ll miss it, but as always is the case in cruising life, there are always new places, experiences and memories to exchange for the old ones. It’ll be weird not hear my favorite jingles on Radio Polynesia every day or not to be having nems and Cokes at Snack Rotui for lunch, but we're ready for the next thing on the horizon.

It felt great to be blue water sailing again! After months of living the anchored life though, you really have to get used to sailing again – the maneuvers, the rhythm, the daily life things you do at sea. Even with more than 8,000 sea miles under my belt, I have to admit that it took a little bit of time (and a couple of seasickness pills!) to get my sea legs back. Sailing for two on a long passage was new for us as we’d always been three to seven people on board. I have never been more acutely more aware that each of us matters! Not only was safety and harnesses even more crucial, but I was also now an integral part of every sail maneuver, from putting up an unwieldy spinnaker pole on a rolling boat to changing sails on deck in the pouring rain. Plus, dividing 24 hours by two makes for longer nights and a lot less sleep. Good thing it would only be 700 miles until our next landfall because I think the skipper always gets the short end of the stick, especially with a crew (me) who needs her sleep!

The ocean had us rocking and banging unrelentlessly for five days with big swell and strong wind. While that was hard to take, strangely enough the 36 hours of calm we had as the winds were shifting was worse. The heat becomes oppressive without a breeze to cool us off, and the banging of the rigging and rolling of the boat in the swell without speed was even more nerve wracking than ploughing through big waves. We actually took all the sails down at one point and just went to sleep, waiting for the wind to come back. Why fight it?! It’s a funny sensation to be in the middle of the vast ocean, just floating. It’s really no different than if you’re moving at five knots, but somehow you feel a bit more exposed. The wind finally picked up again after a quiet night and it came back with a vengeance! We were excited knowing that we were going fast and would be arriving at our destination even sooner... until we realized that Urios was too fast. Arriving at Suwarrow involves a potentially tricky pass, exposed reef and tide tables, so timing was everything, we had to get there in daylight. Of course, no matter how we calculated it and how much I just wanted to get there... we had to force ourselves to slow down. Heaving to at 1 knot when you know you could be going 7 knots is total buzzkill.

After a long bumpy night, Urios entered the lagoon at daybreak with a large black rainstorm on our tail. A big bright rainbow arched over the island against a dark grey sky as we sailed through the pass... picture perfect. What a welcome!

Suwarrow (aka Suvarov) is a place that only sailboats can get to, a blip of reef in the middle of nowhere in the Northern Cook Islands. The magic is in the remoteness. Suwarrow is wild and one-of-a-kind; it’s a playground of nature and wildlife that you are free to touch and touch. Sharks abound, as well as big fish, graceful turtles, colorful coral reef, palm trees, motus, birds of all kinds... it's the ultimate island experience. Only a lucky few ever get to this amazing place, so you feel special just to be here.

We rowed ashore and the first thing we saw was a heavyset older Polynesian man in a floral shirt sitting in a shack on the beach, grating coconuts in the shade. Just the image you can imagine! This was Baker and he was making pancakes for tonight’s BBQ. Papa Joane was out fishing for the feast and Totoo was hunting coconut crabs. What a wonderful cast of characters that would be a big part of a very cool memory.

Papa Joane is the official caretaker on the island and has been watching over Suwarrow for the last 20 years. You would never know that he’s 72 by the way he dashes around the island and takes care of everything. The same fingers that skilfully spear fish and weave coconut palms also nimbly pluck out wonderful Polynesian melodies on his guitar every afternoon when it’s too hot to do anything else. Baker is his nephew, who is himself about 50 years old, and I’d have to say he’s probably a bit too sedentary to do much else but make coconut pancakes. Baker’s always got a big toothless grin on his face and with a few rum drinks under his belt, he’s the resident John Travolta dancing with the ladies to the sounds of ukeleles on the boom box. Peter (aka Totoo) is Papa Joane’s 16 year old grandson and is the best partner-in-crime if you want to go hunting for lobsters and crabs, or learn how to shuck a coconut. This wonderful trio make Suwarrow their home every May to November, and arrive on the island with little more than their clothes, a couple of drums of fuel, and some staples of supplies. Mother Nature gives them all the food and water they need.

The island is known for being the place where New Zealander Tom Neale lived for 17 years like a hermit, and his book “An Island to Oneself” tells about his experiences here. It’s also well-known in the yachting community (because only yachties can get here) and a “Yacht Club” naturally evolved, of which Papa Joane is Commodore. The Yacht Club BBQs are a definite highlight. It’s the perfect time to socialize and meet the other boats in the anchorage but more importantly it’s a feast of Polynesian delicacies, courtesy of the islands themselves. Crabs, fish, breadfruit, and coconut everything. Talk about living off the land! I could eat coconut crabs forever. They’re ugly big creatures with enormous dangerous claws; they look like aliens, but taste like heaven. Not long after hammering open my first claw was I shown how to open up the hind part of the crab to get to a wonderfully nutty dipping sauce (nutty because the crabs only eat coconuts). Yum yum yum! Who knows what the gooey stuff actually is, but with a nickname like “butt butter,” which is so appropriate, I’d rather not know. Accompanying Papa Joane and Totoo on a crab hunt is quite the lesson in island life. They know exactly where to find the crabs underground or in rotten tree trunks by just the feel of the ground as they stomp around the island. For us others, the idiot method involves tying coconut halves to trees and then going back at night to pluck the crabs right off the coconut “lures.” Less technique for sure, but who cares as long as you get the crab in the end! The bountiful lagoon served up huge barracuda, rainbow runners and yellowfin tuna which were baked in a traditional “umu” oven and served with a coconut sauce that was squeezed from the flesh of a coconut minutes before. Papa Joane also spent hours roasting breadfruit on an open fire, before pounding it just right and then baking it in palm leaves. There’s nothing more tropical tasting than breadfruit with coconut cream! While the scenery and sights of Suwarrow would come to leave a huge impression on me, I have admit I’ll always remember the food!

There has been a record 27 boats anchored in Suwarrow at one time, but we were lucky to have paradise all to ourselves for a week – a storm sent everyone packing the day before we arrived and would keep boats from coming until the front had passed. With only three boats in the anchorage, we all got to be great friends exploring the island together. Hibiscus was a French family of four that has been sailing around the world for six years. Growing up seeing the world on a sailboat gives children such a great sense of adventure, perspective and confidence that no classroom could provide. Victor is a worldy rambunctious six year old that goes spear fishing with dad and has no fear. He swims towards sharks instead of away from them and climbs on the mast like a monkey! Adorable three year old Marie dives off the boat cannonball style, swims like a fish, and loves kneeboarding on huge waves with her dad. She’s the perfect image of a Coppertone baby who’s going to grow up to be a beautiful tomboy teenager. Lobo was a boat from Chile (you don’t see many sailboats from Chile) with a very cool family our age from Santiago who were definitely on the unbeaten path - they were making a South Pacific loop from Chile to Tonga... Just when I thought their 4600 miles across the Pacific Ocean was crazy, I was reminded of the long bumpy 6500 miles it would take them to get home!

Our week in Suwarrow was idyllic. When we were hungry we spear fished, when we were thirsty we shucked coconuts. When we were lazy we laid around in the hammock, when we were ambitious we played volleyball on the beach. And, when we were hot we just jumped into the ocean... life doesn’t get much more complicated than that!

Gregory’s spear fishing ability ramped up tenfold here. The abundance and size of fish was astonishing and Gregory would just have to dive underneath the boat to catch our lunch and dinner every day. The fish were so big and unafraid of humans that we pretty much got something good every time, and what a luxury to have fresh food whenever we wanted it! I laugh thinking back to the six-inch parrotfish we were so ecstatic to spear in Huahine now that Gregory was bringing up nearly three-foot-long coral trout and grouper! The guys would usually gather for a fishing expedition in the morning and it was always exciting to see what we’d be having for lunch. It was also good to have others around because being on shark watch here was an understatement. They were everywhere! Our snorkelling companions were just black-tipped reef sharks that were up to 6 feet long but normally harmless, but as soon as you speared a fish it, they would be circling you within minutes! It’s always a mad scramble to get the thrashing fish up to the surface before the sharks sensed the agitation or smelled the blood. There is no funnier sight than Gregory swimming madly towards the boat with one arm and fish in the air to keep the sharks at bay, or me grasping the back of Urios with one hand while splashing the water excitedly with the other… and willing Gregory to swim faster. The shark feeding frenzy is always fun (and makes for cool video footage and photos) when you’re throwing fish guts overboard, but definitely a freaky experience when you’re in the water with a dead bloody fish! A loud slap on the water or lots of commotion usually scares them off, but we’ve also had to actually jab the shark on the nose multiple times with a spear as it was coming within inches from Gregory and was about to chomp our fish... I had to save Gregory, and our lunch of course! By the end of the week we were pretty accustomed to having the sharkies around, but you never quite get used to the dangerous grey sharks that you have good reason to be scared of.

A fun day exploring and spear fishing on the reefs in the pass turned into quite the adventurous afternoon for us. The visibility was great, the corals were bright, and fish were enormous and everywhere! The boys went fishing in pairs and it wasn’t long before everyone was shooting away. I saw Raoul nail a huge rainbow runner and before he could get very far with it, two grey sharks emerged and ripped it right off the spear. It didn’t help that Totoo had just shot a grouper that proceeded to get stuck in the coral. Not only was the fish thrashing frantically to try and get unstuck from the spear, it also had a large moray eel trying to devour it at the same time. Total chaos! This didn’t bode well for the fishing expedition because before we knew it there were six sharks circling us looking for food. Even the gutsiest and most experienced of spear fishermen know then that it’s time to go! You don’t have to ask me twice – I was already in the dinghy at the first sight of these sharks! Lucky I did... Gregory and Juneyt were in the water retrieving a stuck dinghy anchor for our departure when all of a sudden there was mad thrashing of water and bodies underneath me and my heart started pumping. What was going on down there?! Before I knew it the guys were hurling themselves into the dinghy with speed and force I’ve never seen before, making sure there were no toes left in the water. I guess a couple of grey sharks mistook the shiny stainless steel and metallic noise of the anchor for prey, which therefore extended to the guys holding it. The sharks had come in for a closer look and were showing signs of aggression (shaking tail and body) as they turned away and were about to come back... The guys were lucky for this split second of hesitation on the sharks’ part or otherwise this “shark incident” would have not been as funny to tell... Thankfully the thrashing I heard weren’t limbs getting eaten, but rather, it was Juneyt showing the shark that he was more aggressive as it can dangerously close to Gregory. They say you have to bluff with the sharks to scare them away, and Juneyt was full-on lunging right at them! Needless to say, one close encounter with grey sharks is all it takes to make you believe that what you see on “Shark Week” can be real! Note: I’d laughed at the big fishhead that Papa Joane had caught trawling in the pass that day. It was a funny sight until I realized that the whole body of a large 20 pound tuna was ripped right off at the gills by a shark in a single bite!

We enjoyed many a picnic on the beautiful motus around the lagoon with their huge flocks of birds, untouched beaches and clear blue water. Potluck meals of Chilean ceviche, homemade French bread, fresh fish from the lagoon on the fire, coconut milk, and of course coconut crabs went well with weaving palm fronds for plates, beachcombing and exploring, and having hermit crab races with the kids! We discovered the Blue Hole which was another amazing phenomenon of the reef. It was literally a hole through the reef right into the ocean. You could crawl right up to it and stick your head in to see the amazing sealife living in a tube of reef within a vortex of water. A whirlpool was created by the tide going in and out, and when I went in for a look, Gregory had to hold unto both feet so I wouldn’t get sucked into the ocean!

From afar the motus are the picture perfect deserted island with white sand and palm trees, but it’s not until you get up close that you see the reality of it all. I was more than shocked to see the litter that had washed ashore – everything from bottled water from Korea to huge Styrofoam blocks to broken scuba fins. While it was “funny” to hear that Papa Joane “goes shopping” on the motus (for useful things like fishing buoys and plastic crates), the litter was truly disheartening to see. Baby bird nests would be perched right above the heaps of plastic trash that covered the island. If this immense amount of plastic trash can accumulate on such a tiny motu, then I hate to think about the exponential amount of garbage is heartlessly and irresponsibly tossed into the ocean. Don’t do it!

After an intimate week of island existence, a big ketch came sailing in one morning. It was none other than Big Reef, the South African boat of four young old guys that we’d been rafted to through the Panama Canal. That was seven months and thousands of miles ago, and here we were in the same place at the same time again! While it was great to see them, we also knew that the bottleneck of boats in Bora Bora that were waiting for a window of weather was on its way. Surely enough 13 boats showed up the next day and the anchorage got a lot more crowded...

Our last night on Suvarov was the perfect grand finale for an awesome island experience. We’d spent all day in the lagoon and Gregory had speared a bounty of grouper and carangue for a BBQ on the beach with Totoo, after a rousing volleyball match at sunset. In the darkness of night, Totoo’s huge copra bonfires lit up the beach around us, and the zillions of stars glowed in the sky. Papa Joane came down for a visit after hunting coconut crabs and told us stories about being attacked by a tiger shark and his early days on Suwarrow. We were so lucky to be hearing such great stories and history firsthand that could only be told by this man. As we were saying our goodbyes later that night, Papa Joane pointed up at the white clouds that were lit up by the full moon. “Clouds like fish scales,” he said. “It means that new wind is coming.” And that was that – it was our time to go.