Day 129 Rarotonga departure

Finally, the right wind
Position @ 1900 - S20º50 W159º36
As we were preparing for our departure, three boats that we had last seen in Tahiti docked at the harbor. Greg and Debbie on Volaré, Dave and Melanie on Talerra and Daryl and Loretta on Cancata had all joined our Bitter End parties at Marina Taina in Tahiti. Later, we had seen them in Huahine and given them the list of suggestions that Guy from Kagou had given us on seeing the sights of Ra'iatea and Taha'a. I had also spent an interesting morning on Talerra looking at the pictures Dave had of the 14 years he spent building his boat.
Unfortunately, we had very little time to chat before we left. One surprise was a small gift from Debbie. She and Greg had used Mark's sewing machine to repair a rip in their sail when they were at Marina Taina. In return, she baked us a carrot cake but something went wrong and it did not turn out to her satisfaction. Somehow in the short time we overlapped in the Rarotonga harbor, she was able to whip up another carrot cake and present it to us before we left. This one was delicious. (The other one was also)
In Tahiti, they had a fourth "buddy boat" Trius but they tore their mainsail along the way and had to miss some of the intermediate islands and go on to Tonga where they could order a new sail and have it air shipped in. The best laid plans of mice and men...
Kurt had gone off earlier with Brian from Salicorn to check out a surf break. We sailed out of the harbor and turned left following the shoreline to the West side of the island. Kurt saw us coming and paddled about a quarter of a mile so we could pick him up along the way. He handed up his board, climbed aboard and we turned North toward Suwarrow.
The sea was relatively calm, the wind was blowing from the East and the sky was almost cloudless as we started our trip. We have only seen perfect sailing weather a few times in the whole trip but this was one of those days. During my watch from 1900 to 2200 there was no moon and with no clouds, the stars were stunning