On the "speed of travel" scale sailing is at the low end of the scale by two orders of magnitude. Air travelers can average 500 miles per hour, automobile travelers can easily average 50 miles per hour, sailors are lucky to travel at 5 miles per hour.

Think about going to visit friends 75 miles away. If you could drive your car no faster than 5 MPH, instead of taking about an hour and a half, that trip would be a 15-hour drive one-way. You would probably be on the road for two days, and spend the night in a motel along the way just to make a 75-mile trip. And you wondered why this trip was taking so long. Well there you have it.

It has been two weeks since my last report and in that time we have been in three countries. We lost Aaron and Anton, our additional crew that we picked up just three weeks ago. And we are making plans for our final run to New Zealand.

We are moving fast now; if that is a statement a sailor can use. In my last report, we were leaving French Polynesia on the 22nd of September. We arrived in Rarotonga, Cook Islands to complete the 515 mile run five days later (remember, we travel at about 5 miles per hour, but we travel around the clock). The trip was most leisurely for the Cosmos regulars, Joe, George and Don, who are used to standing watch on a three-man rotation. With Aaron and Anton in the watch rotation, I believe it might have been possible to sell a watch to one of the Cosmos regulars who wanted something to do. To us, it was a bit like being on a luxury liner.

We sailed and motored (mostly motored) on this leg of the trip. We left Bora Bora with 25-knot winds on our stern, but they died within 5 hours. We ran one engine or the other for 88 hours. We sailed for 26 hours in 7 to 10-knot winds. We were hoping for more wind on this leg, particularly because it was the long run for Aaron and Anton. They got in some good sailing, but we wanted more.

I was a little more upset about the fishing on this leg than the other legs. I have been dragging lures since we left the Galapagos. I have tried every lure and rig they sold in Fort Lauderdale and I bought some new ones in Tahiti. With perhaps hundreds of hours of trolling, not a single fish has been brought aboard. One straightened a hook for me, and one bit through a steel leader. That is it.

A few hours out of Bora Bora, Aaron asked if he could drop the lure in the water and I said sure and good luck. One hour later, Aaron pulled in a 58-inch Mahi Mahi. He wasn't even holding the rod. It was in the holder. Did the fish sense it was him and not me that would wind it in, so it bit onto the lure?

Just to prove how frustrated I should be about the fishing, on this same passage, some huge, unseen fish that would not get on my lure, tried instead to swallow our water turbine that we drag 100 feet behind the boat to spin our AquaAir electric generator. The water turbine consists of a steel propeller that is on a three foot long 3/4 inch diameter solid steel shaft that is tied on to a 5/8 in rope. The fish bent the 10-inch long steel propeller and left deep teeth marks in the solid steel shaft. This steel propeller spins fast and the steel is hard stuff. The fish must certainly have gotten one heck of a dental rearrangement.

Well, thanks to Aaron, we ate fish for three days and had lots left over.

The night before entering the harbor at Roratonga, we were hove to outside of the harbor waiting for dawn. That same night, there was a big celebration that we wished we could have attended. We heard about it from several locals, travelers, and yachties.

The travel guides do not say all of the nice things about the Cook Islands that they do about Tahiti and all of French Polynesia. Therefore, we did not expect very much of Rarotonga. We were pleasantly surprised.

The price of everything is much lower (perhaps half) than in French Polynesia, the islanders are welcoming, the shopkeepers are friendly, everyone speaks English, and the island is beautiful. Clearing in and out of immigration, customs, and port control was the easiest so far. The harbor was amazingly small, even though it was the largest harbor on this capital island. It was mostly for commercial ships, and would not have held more than 15 sailboats, but Don, the Harbor Master was very nice to us, and let us stay tied along the commercial dock, where we wanted to stay.

On Saturday night we all went to the Edgewater Resort to eat a buffet and enjoy a cultural dance and music performance. The performance was excellent. The highlight of the evening was when Anton caught the eye of one of the dancers and was selected for the dance contest. The Cosmos Crew was proud of Anton's Polynesian-Elvis performance. The dancing is mostly leg and hip gyrations.

On Sunday, Aaron, Anton and I went to service at one of the famous Cook Island Christian Churches. It was a lovely island cultural experience that I will try to cover in some detail because it was so interesting to me.

The Church must have been 150 to 200 years old. It had two-foot thick walls of stone covered over with stucco. The ceiling was patterned tin painted bright turquoise. The walls were yellow beige, and the windows were solid stained glass. The floor was stone.

We were embarrassed to arrive 1/2 hour late, but we were welcomed, and ushered in and up the stairs to the loft that rapped around the sides and back of the upper wall. Children and tourists were seated up there. Local men and women were seated on the main level.

The people were the most interesting. Downstairs, the ladies seemed to group separately from the men. All of the island ladies looked lovely in their straw hats of all designs. The preacher spoke in English, and then in local language Maori. The local men and women downstairs seemed to be doing their own thing while he spoke. Some slept, some talked (even in groups), read on their own, and some looked around.

While the men and women downstairs were doing one thing, the people upstairs were doing something totally different. The children were playing and making no attempt to be quiet. One young teenaged girl in a corner did a graceful moon-walking hula during the singing to entertain herself a couple of her friends. The tourists were the best "behaved" people in the whole church, even though many were operating still cameras, video cameras, and small sound recorders. I did happen to notice that the preacher looked down at the podium or up at the ceiling whenever he was preaching and I decided that if he looked at the people downstairs, or upstairs, he would get too distracted to continue his sermon.

When it was time to sing, things really changed. Everyone focused. A man other than the preacher walked out and stood below the main podium. He did absolutely nothing that indicated leadership, other than walk out there. Each time he did, one of the women or men downstairs would stand up and begin a hymn in a very loud voice that turned into a three or even four part hymn/chant. If a woman began the singing, the women would pick up the lead, while the men sang the follow-ups, sometimes repetitions of what the women sang. All of the singing was in Maori. The lead singer, and perhaps another woman or a man would also have individual parts throughout the entire hymn/chant. One of the sounds the men made during the singing was a grunt, almost like a team of rowers might make when they stroked down on their oars. The arrangement and the voices were beautiful. They caused me to seek out a record store, where I bought CDs that sound lovely. Aaron, Anton and I were glad we went.

On Saturday, Aaron and Anton rented bicycles, and peddled around the island on the ocean road while I searched and made arrangements for delivery of diesel fuel and George and Don went looking for a barber shop. On Monday, Aaron, Anton and I rented motor scooters and rode around the island on the inside road. I got some good movie footage riding my motor scooter. I have decided to name my movie company Handshake Productions and my sound studio Windblown Sound. If you ever see and hear my movies, you will know why.

We saw a lot of farming on Rangoroa, and the lush green farms are well maintained and beautiful by themselves, but they are made even more beautiful because they are nestled between steep shadowy green mountains and the beautiful turquoise lagoon that yields only to the deep blue ocean. The colors are all too wonderful.

Aaron and Anton were excellent sailors and tour companions, as expected. They worked on the boat, cooked meals, and stood more than their share of watches (thanks to some clever scheme of the Captain’s). They seemed to have a great time, so the Cosmos regulars were glad for that. We were sad to see them leave for the airport after a fine dinner on Monday evening.

We spent four days in Roratonga, and then pressed on to Tongatapu in Tonga. This 863 mile leg presented great sailing. We raised and unfurled our sails just outside of the harbor at Roratonga, and sailed the entire distance. About 24 hours before we got to Tongatapu, our main halyard broke at the top of the mast from chafing, and the main came tumbling and sliding down, until the sail rapped and hung on the leeward shrouds. We turned into the wind to get the main fully down and then continued sailing, using just the genoa. We calculated our arrival in Tongatapu to be 0300 at that point, so we decided to reduce sail to just our staysail. We don't go into unknown harbors in the dark of night. Using reduced sail worked fine. We arrived at the entry passage around 1000.

Going into Nuka'alofa is tricky. Piha Passage, and the Narrows have several twists and turns on the way in, so we studied our charts carefully, waited for a cargo ship whose pilot asked us not to enter the Narrows until he got his ship out, and then proceeded without problem into the lagoon harbor. Studying the charts was helpful to know how the turns were going to be made (go along the side of a small island, make a sharp right, go close along to a submerged reef on the right, until the submerged reef on the left disappears, and then make a sharp left, etc.), but none of the aids to navigation where as marked on the charts.

Today is Thursday, and we expect to stay on Tongatapu until Sunday, and then head on to New Zealand. I will write more about Tonga, when we leave.

Rocking on anchor in Nuka Alofa, Tongatapu, Tonga, (not to be confused with Rarotonga in the Cook Tonga, I mean Cook Islands).