We arrived back on Tahiti with our bags and tent packed ready to join the crew of the Catamaran Sonadora. The owner/captain of the vessel is 73 year old Carole May who is a fellow Brit. Carole has been sailing around the world for the past 5 years picking up crew and skippers on the way. We were joining Carole, Sam and the latest crew member Fred for our passage to the Cook Islands. Sam is a 25 year old New Zealand surf dude who if he was anymore laid back he would be horizontal. Sam joined the boat in Galapagos where he had been for the past year filming a documentary with his friend about coastal pollution from a surfers point of view. Whilst there in Galapagos he was bitten by a shark and within minutes he had already proudly shown us his impressive scars from the bite through his thigh! Fred is a quiet American guy who keeps himself to himself and seems the polar opposite of Sam. Not really much more we can say about him.

The first night on board the boat once we had packed away our stuff and Carole had showed us around we sat down to our first dinner of Roast New Zealand lamb with all the trimming including roast potatoes and mint sauce. We were fed up to the gills and when we couldn't eat anymore Fred and Carole polished of the remaining leg between them. We got the feeling that we wouldn't be going hungry on this boat. The next couple of days we settled into the swing of things helping out around the boat as much as we could. Fred and Sam were working on the outboard motors which both need fixing and Carole showed us the ropes, so to speak. Fred and Sam seem to have difference of opinion on a few things and while Sam takes it all in his stride Fred storms off the boat to sit and sulk when things aren't getting done in Freds way. I began to think that there may be a bit more to Fred than meets the eye but we shall see…

Wednesday night and we got invited to a Barbeque being run by The Shenandoh. This is a 1902 British built 3 masted Gaff Scooner that has been restored and owned by an unknown person. This unknown person is LOADED! The crew from the boat invited approximately 50 people for a grand cook up on the marina with free beers and food. We sunk a few ales and chatted to a few Yachty types before disappearing back to Sonadora around midnight. Sam was going on to another party with his surf dude mates and there was no sign of Fred. Back on board the boat Carole insisted as per usual on a nightcap (not only can this woman eat she also drinks like a fish too!) I turned it in around 1 am and left Katie chatting with Carole about nursing and the state of the NHS…

I was awoken around 3am by Katie telling me to be very quiet as she had locked us in our room. Fred is outside asleep, entirely naked. Apparently he came back not too soon after I had gone to bed , absolutely plastered. He then starte getting rather hot under the collar saying that no one understands him and how depressed he is etc… Then he pulled out his knife and started stabbing up the boat cushions saying to Carole "have you ever killed anyone? Because I have" This went on for a while until he passed out and Katie and Carole escaped. Fred must have woken up and gone to his cabin, taking off his clothes then seeing Carole he stormed out of his room to continue the debate until he fell fast asleep but naked in the cockpit for all surrounding boats to see.

Needless to say Fred was asked very nicely, so not as to bring out the serial killer side in him, to leave the boat the next day!

The following night we were asked to keep an eye on the boat so Carole could go out for a few drinks with friends. She was worried about the return of psycho Fred so we gave her one of the walkie talkies and sat in to watch a DVD. I did my usual and flaked out so upon waking I went to bed leaving Katie to watch the end of the film. Carole turned up, started to walk across the passerelle (gang plank) back to the boat and promptly fell in, submerging herself, her handbag, money, phone, radio and loosing a shoe in the process. Our boat neighbour Roger, and Katie managed to pull her out and because I was asleep again I missed out on more excitement!

After several days we were getting a bit cheesed off with putting in all the work on the boat while Sam disappeared surfing everyday, just returning to be fed, so we took ourselves off to see some sights. We bussed/hitched/walked out some waterfalls with Sam's current girlfriend of that particular week, Emma who we got on well with. We spent the day doing really nothing, we swam in the waterfall pools right next to the sign saying its not safe to swim in the waterfalls, we went to a local black sand beach and just relaxed. It was nice to get away from the boat and take time to think about whether we were doing the right thing with Carole's boat, as after one week it didn't seem that we were any closer to getting out on the seas.

We spoke to Carole about our concerns on more than one occasion and she kept moving the leaving date and saying that she would not go until the boat was ready but never really clarified what that meant. Myself and Katie really wanted to move this ever advancing date closer so we set about getting stuff done that needed doing. I managed to get a couple of mornings with Sam before he b*****ed off surfing and we fixed one of the outboards and managed to get the parts for the other. Katie was scrubbing the decks and putting things away, sorting out Carole's worrying array of dangerously out of date medicines and getting things all shipshape but Carole still wasn't prepared to put a date on exit.

Another few days of disappearance by Sam left me to get the two outboards running and back in the boats which after a crash course in outboard engineering from our friendly neighbour Roger I surprised myself by actually getting them working.

The next day the weather changed and a large swell came in. The newly fixed engine was knocked off the back of the tender and ended up at the bottom of the marina. The smaller engine then decided it wouldn't run without the choke so it had to be stripped back down by muggins! This set us back to where we were at the beginning of the week and things were really starting to get too us. Carole was not one for buying new things whan she thought that someone should be able to fix it. It was time to head off for some more time away from the boat and do some thinking.

The next morning we set off on a cross-island walk with our tent and supplies. This was going to take us two days and after hitching across to the other side of the island we started our trek around 8:30am. The morning's walk was very picturesque with waterfalls, river and lush vegetation on the sides of the valley. We stopped for lunch well ahead of schedule near the mid point of the entire walk. We had done well in the morning and could only think that as we got steeper the walking speed would get a lot slower and the path harder to climb. Our lunch stop was at the side of a small river, so we dipped our feet in to cool them. After our smoked salmon and goats cheese rolls (a bit posh but why not!) we washed out the packaging in the stream so as not to have a stinking backpack to carry. I dipped my feet in again for a final cool and out shot a two-foot long eel and took a nibble at my toe. Katie said I screamed like a little girl! She was incapacitated with laughter. I didn't laugh so much...

We pressed on with the walk and sure enough, as predicted, the going got tougher. Then the curse of the White family hit us…. It started to rain. and rain. and rain. We carried on and the skies just got darker. As we got closer to the lake where we were going to pitch our tent we were passed by a couple of 4x4's taking people on tours over the island. We watched them bounce past us as we carried on walking. After a while one stopped, seeing what drowned rats we looked like and said that he was going back to Papeete and would we like a lift. I think we thought about it for a nano-second before jumping in and sharing a ride in a battered old Land Rover for the 30km back to the Marina.

Things moved on pretty much at the same pace with no change on our return. Sam would, if he were about in the mornings, disappear surfing and Carole's leaving date was still being dangled like the proverbial carrot, never getting any closer. It was time to look elsewhere for passage to Rarotonga. This was a shame really but having spoken with some of the friends that we had made during the three weeks in the marina, some of them being boat owners, some of them crew, they all advised that if we were not 110% happy with the boat or had any doubts about safety then we should get off the boat while we could.

We spent a bit of time thinking what we could do, when we remebered that one of the people we had met was single-handedly sailing on to New Zealand. Leigh is the owner, builder and captain of the 45ft single hull ketch "Mi Querida". He had already offered the position of crew to another couple, but if they changed their mind we would be next on the list. We actually knew the other couple, Charlie and Helen, who Leigh had offered this position to and they had other options in the pipeline. After having a couple of beers with them they had made their mind up that they were not going to take Leigh up on the offer and instead go with another boat. This meant that we had passage on Mi Querida leaving on the 2nd of July when Leigh's visa ran out.

With this good bit of news we decided that we would make ourselves scarce from Sonadora, as Carole was still expecting us to do stuff around the place even though we weren't sailing with her, so we headed back for a weekend in the tent over on Moorea and joined Leigh on Monday, on board. Tuesday night was to be our final night so we had a couple of drinks with the friends we had made in and around the Marina and after a late night BBQ on board, a lot of rowing to and from the boat which was out on anchor to the dock and back again (I was elected to do most of the rowing as I can't hold a straight line for two strokes. Its good practice says Leigh) we went to bed looking forward to finally setting sail the next day and getting out of the Marina in Tahiti we had been stuck in for four weeks.