Groundhog Day

  Alofi, Niue
Friday, May 25, 2007

The passage to Niue was benign. Motorsailed for a day and a half, into 10kts and smallish seas. The only memorable aspect was that we left of a Friday, and arrived on a Friday (crossed the date line).


Nuie is a beatiful place, though tiny (population wise). It can support 120 tourists at a time. It is exceedingly green, and tropical. The villages were all immaculately kept. I saw not one piece of litter. The people were all very friendly and welcoming. It seemed the whole island knew there was a new 'yacht' in town, and we were off it, almost before we did.
The Island is predominatly lime stone, and so has an abundance of caves, and caverns, which are great fun to explore and clamber about and swim in.
For visitng boats there are moorings outside the town, but no anchorages at all. In fact there is only one place to land a boat, and even then the tender has to be hauled onto the warf by crane. The depth is 600ft only 300yds from shore in Alofi bay, and that was the shallow part. Consequently most visitors come by air.

We only stayed one night, as the breeze veered north just after we arrived and then west, making the Alofi bay extremely uncofortable, and a lee shore to boot. Not such a bad thing in the end as we were headed due east to Rarotonga which is usually upwind. We were on our way, under kite by 10am the next morning.