E39 – KAIWAITU TO HELA
Bailed from another anchorage!
In the wee hours of the morning at Kaiwaitu, as we continued to roll badly from side to side, a large thunderstorm system threatened to put us on a lee shore so we bailed from yet another anchorage to find safety at sea.
As dawn broke, we found ourselves with a wing and wing rig running nicely downwind towards Hela.
The days sailing just filled in from there and we had a magnificent trade wind sail all the way to the anchorage of Hela where we dropped the pick just short of the reef edge in about 20m of water.
Wasn’t long before we were boarded, yet again by local officials to check our paperwork but as everything was in order, it turned into smiles and selfies!
Ashore, we found a rustic village that was clearly pretty poor, but had the basics to live and be happy. There was no supermarket on the island we were told, as the locals were subsistence survivors mostly and little cash floated around. There must be some income coming into the island though to pay for the goods and passengers who arrived on the large ferry later in the day.
