Friendly Cook Island

The downtown waterfront in Avarua, Rarotonga. Our boat, the Kathi II, is the one farthest to the left.

by Christine Kling

From Bora Bora to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands is a little over five hundred miles. This is one aspect of the Pacific that makes it so different from the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, having to do an overnight trip to get across the Anegada Passage from the Virgins to Saint Maartin is considered a long trip. In the Pacific, this trip across to the Cook Islands was considered something of a short hop.

None the less, we were tired when we arrived in the little commercial harbor in Avarua, Rarotonga. There was not a whole lot there when we arrived in 1975. We motored past the long empty concrete commercial docks and tied up stern-to on the seawall right in front of the range markers, as you can see in the photo above.

The entrance to the harbor in Rarotonga is through a pass in the reef that surrounds the island. There is a strong cross current and negotiating the pass can be tricky, even for a small sailboat. We didn’t really think too much about our docking location. We were just happy after a four day passage to be able to sleep the night through.

The next morning we were awakened at daybreak by the loud engine and propellor noise of a ship close by. This sound that comes through the hull of a fiberglass boat is an unwelcome one, especially to sailors who have just finished an offshore passage.

Jim flew out the forepeak hatch and I poked my head out behind him.

I told you we were stern tied just under the range markers, right?

We were staring dead bow-on at an inter-island freighter of about 300 feet in length steaming into the harbor. She had just cleared the reef into the basin. The guy on the bow threw the monkey’s fist toward the long commercial dock, but she was coming in too hot. The man on the dock looked on helplessly as the line curved aft and fell into the water due to the ship’s speed. It’s amazing how fast 3-4 knots of speed can look when it’s a big rusty metal ship that is bearing down on you.

At that point I was wondering if the prudent thing to do was to jump overboard and start swimming out of the way, but I was frozen watching the bow of this thing grow bigger and bigger.

Then with a splash, both bow anchors dropped and the chain rattled and clanked as they lay chain across the harbor bottom. The hull groaned as they put the brakes on the windlass, and it almost looked like the bow lowered into the water as the wrenching sound of metal screeching on metal echoed across the harbor and she ground to a stop. About one hundred feet off our bow.

After calming our heart rates with coffee and some breakfast, we walked over to the docks and asked permission to board the ship. It was 9:00 a.m. and the Kiwi crew was gathered in the galley drinking coffee served by the cook/steward, a fellow who wore a low-cut flowered dress (showing his hairy cleavage) and full make-up at that hour of the morning. They all got a good laugh when they learned we were the people from the boat tied up in front of the range lights.

In bits and pieces from the colorful crew we learned the story of their arrival in darkness, and as they waited for daylight to enter the harbor because their radar was not operational, their repeated attempts to awaken the captain from his drunken stupor. As the sky started to grow light, the captain got the ship more or less lined up on the pass and they started through. The first mate said he cautioned the captain about their speed, but the old man could barley keep his eyes open. It had been the sober crew, not the captain who had made the decision to drop the anchors.

We never saw the captain who had returned to his cabin and his bottle while the crew went about the business of unloading and loading their cargo and my new best friend, the ship’s cook wanted to know if I had any spare Simplicity patterns for dresses since he had lots of fabric and his sewing machine, but no patterns.

That night we went out to a disco with several members of the crew, including the steward. I recognized that those guys enjoyed living dangerously when I saw the friendly cook in his wig and high heels groping the bottoms of a couple of 6- foot tall, 200+ pound Polynesian guys who didn’t look like they welcomed the attention. Jim and I left early before what looked the inevitable fights started.

Raro_today While thinking back on this experience, I looked up Rarotonga on Google maps, and I was amazed to see how the place had grown in 38 years. The layout of the harbor looks almost the same though it looks like the cruising boats now tie up in a new basin to the left of the old harbor. Times have indeed changed, and I’ve sailed many more thousands of miles in the intervening years, but one thing hasn’t changed since that day. I’ve never again looked at passing ships at sea with any confidence that they are going to look out for me.