SV True North

 Avalau Island portrays the quintessential South Pacific island feeling.  It has an extensive coral reef providing shelter from the ocean waves, a beautiful white sand beach with palm trees leaning out over the sand and striking turquoise crystal clear blue water. Avalau Island - a little bit of paradise! We anchored off the beach a little further out than planned because unfortunately a very large catamaran was anchored in the location I had set as the destination on our course map.  Not to worry, it was a short dinghy ride to shore.  The catamaran named Big Picture departed within an hour of our arrival but we did not bother to move and re-anchor.   We took the dinghy ashore and had a nice walk all the way around the island on the beach.  After the walk we did some snorkeling before returning to True North for sundowners and dinner.  After a calm overnight we departed just after sunrise to catch high tide through a shallow pass between us and our nex...

 I returned to Neiafu to pickup my next crew member Guy who was arriving from Pittwater NSW, Australia.  The harbour had filled up with yachts since I left with the arrival of the World ARC and the first few of the Island Cruising Rally boats.  All the moorings were occupied, luckily I had reserved a mooring by leaving my standup paddle board attached to it when I left previously.  The forest of anchor lights on all the boats lit up the anchorage at night. The lights are the masthead anchor lights on the moored yachts. Some of the Mini Globe single handed round the world race boats had arrived in the harbour as well.  See   https://youtu.be/-NROHpp4KV4  for an overview of the race. Mini Globe yacht close-up The tiny 5.8 metre Mini Global one design yacht We had a nice chat with three of the racers one evening when we met them at the Hideaway floating bar in the harbour.  One of the racers, Dan is a Canadian and the other two were Spanish and Irish...