Well as things start to come together Pacific Schooners now has a home in Rarotonga and our first shore-side employee.

We’ve recently moved into the eponymously named “Schooner House” near to town, in Taputapuatea, across the road from the Beachcomber complex. This fantastic limestone house was built around 1882 and fits perfectly with the image that we at Pacific Schooners wish to project. We plan to use this as out administrative base and our shop-front, where prospective passengers can come to find out more about our voyages as well as purchase products brought back from our island destinations and merchandise related to “Tiare Taporo” and Pacific Schooners. It will take us a few months to get the place decorated, furnished and stocked exactly how we want it, but for now it really is a pleasant place to be which just feels “right” for us.

We’re also actively looking for some historical information about the house and so if any reader has any stories or memories of note please get in touch with us.

Pacific Schooners has also recently employed Hanalei Taiarui as our Reservations Coordinator. Hana comes to us from the local Pearl industry, but importantly has also worked on the cruise ship “Paul Gauguin”: a 6-star ship that operates in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands. Hana has been working with the various travel agents and wholesalers that will sell our voyages as well as keeping in touch with the numerous individuals that have expressed interest in sailing with us.

Her efforts to date have been invaluable especially in providing the drive and impetus to put together all of the detailed information and plans which sent behind the products we want to sell.

As time marches on and our refit progresses smoothly, our minds start to turn more and more to planning exactly what we will do on this delivery voyage of ours. The general plan is to provide a diverse opportunity for “Tiare Taporo” to trial both herself and her various services. So we hope to deliver cargoes along the way, carry some trainees, take passengers about a bit and do a little trading of rum and knick-knacks.

We have some neat opportunities to explore as well. The most significant of which are: The possibility of a “Cook Islands Event” with “Tiare Taporo” in The Big Apple – New York City – combining Cook Islands Tourism as well as products and services; black pearls, art, financial services etc, and; There has also been an expression of interest in making a documentary about our delivery voyage which we are looking into with interest.

So the following is a likely itinerary for our voyage, although this depends in part on the interest that the voyage attracts. We will firm up dates and ports of call as soon as possible.

In the meantime please send expressions of interest in any parts of the voyage, whether as a passenger (from Bermuda onwards), trainee or sender/recipient of cargo to Garth Broadhead - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Depart Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada

New York City, USA

St George’s, Bermuda

St Thomas, US Virgin Islands

St Barths, Guadeloupe

Bequia, St Vincent & the Grenadines

St Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

The Panama Canal

Panama City, Panama

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Pitcairn Island

Mangareva, French Polynesia

Tahiti, French Polynesia

Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Aitutaki, Cook Islands

Rarotonga, Cook Islands (arrival early 2012)

“Tiare Taporo” has been conceived to be the ideal supply / passenger ship for the Cook Islands; to establish the best and most practical elements to serve the particular requirements demanded to provide for our nation of islands. In addition the ship will provide a training ground for trainee seafarers, both Cook Islanders and those from abroad.
 
“Tiare Taporo” is, first of all, supremely seaworthy. Not an obsolete coasting vessel designed for simple freight service in protected waters and canals. She starts with the strongest, most seaworthy hull - in lines and construction - developed in the last few generations anywhere in the world: that of a deep-sea ocean going trawler. Designed for the storm swept North Atlantic. Designed to take whatever nature hands out; winter and summer. Built and inspected to the exacting Standards of Canada Steamship Inspection. Now, with extensive regard to the business at hand, carefully and thoughtfully being configured to carry supplies safely and passengers comfortably, in reliable service, throughout the Cook Islands. Here following is a walk through of our “Tiare Taporo”:

There’s no such thing as spring in Nova Scotia, Canada. Oh, once every 10 years or so you get a warm, sunny one but generally it is cold, grey and wet. This year is no exception. We had two sunny days in all of May, but June is looking a little better. Still our little gang works away in spite of the weather at the myriad tasks required to transform this former fishing vessel into the Cook Islands-bound “Tiare Taporo”.

TT under tow from slip

Although it has to be said that anything is better than winter in these parts! Our refit on “Tiare Taporo” started just as winter was setting in and we worked right the way through it. Much got done though and it has to be hats off to our dedicated and hardy crew that they achieved so much in the worst of conditions.

The idea of getting a North Sea side trawler to fit out as a sailing South Seas supply vessel has been kicking around for some time. Certainly the idea of improved transport among the islands has been around for ages. There was once a time and within living memory when all the goods and people got around the South Pacific in auxiliary sailing vessels. Why, you might ask, did such vessels survive well into the mid 20th century?

Welcome to Pacific Schooners and our ship, the “Tiare Taporo”

We are currently converting and refiting the former deep-sea fishing motor vessel “Zebroid”, as the handsome, reliable and seaworthy full powered, auxiliary sail-assist ship, “Tiare Taporo” to carry passengers and cargo and sail her on regular routes and passages among the Northern and Southern groups of the Cook Islands.

This will be in the form of a blog so don't forget to check back soon! Over time this will become the full website for the ship and the company, detailing services and voyage information.
 

 
The origins of this concept for a commercially successful Cook Islands Sail Assist Passenger/Supply Vessel are both old and new and based on experience, precedent, observation, local knowledge, sharing of notes with colleagues and extensive research.

Just as naturally, current conditions of island supply/shipping and trends in Adventure Travel are major factors in consideration. The promise of success in this proposed Aux-Sail Trading Schooner venture comes from drawing upon the strengths of these earlier operations and reducing or eliminating their respective inherent weaknesses as well as responding to and taking advantage of current conditions, trends and needs in island traffic and the adventure travel industry. 

Our Ship, the "Tiare Taporo"

“Tiare Taporo” is a full powered commercial auxiliary sailing vessel designed to carry passengers, cargo and trade goods as well as vocationally train young mariners throughout the Cook Islands of the South Pacific in regularly scheduled and reliable service out of Rarotonga & Aitutaki.

• The ship is 130 feet (40m) long, just under 300 gross tons and has a 900 horsepower engine.

• She will have an ample sailing rig to provide fuel economy/extend range to the far flung islands.

• Her hold will carry 200 to 300 tons of break-bulk cargo including; frozen fish, fuel transport, freight, orders, govt supplies and trade goods.

• We intend to carry doctors and dentists as often as possible to provide specialist care for outer islanders.

• “Tiare Taporo” will carry up to 30 passengers, 8 professional crew and 6 apprentices in comfortable cabins and bunks.

• We will provide dependable regularly scheduled service to the islands stimulating trade and transport of good and passengers. Passengers can plan their times on and off the islands.

• Our scheduled routes will include 22 days to all of the Northern Cook Island Group, 14 days to the entire Southern group; one week trips to Aitutaki & Palmerston; Each route will have a minimum of six round trips per year on schedule.

• Available outside regular schedule for Charter: expeditions, supply/medical/educational/ govt. missions outside scheduled service.
  The company also has plans to establish additional vessels in these and alternative routes as the model proves successful.

A director of Pacific Schooners and the principle author of the plan behind the company, Captain Daniel D. Moreland is one of the most respected sailing ship masters at sea today. An internationally recognized authority on square-rig and traditional sailing ships and their operations, he started his career sailing in the West Indies in island schooners, brigantines, and passenger windjammers.

While the original "Tiare Taporo" was based in the Cook Islands (permanently from 1919 through 1949 and then intermittently until 1968) her two most famous masters were Viggo Rasmussen and Andy Thompson, both of whom became legends in the Pacific. I haven’t been able to find much biographical detail on Capt. Rasmussen yet so can a reader please help me out?! 

Information on Capt. Andy though is abundant:
Captain Andy Thomson was and is known far and wide as one of the most colourful seafarers of the Pacific and the Cook Islands.

The name we have chosen for our new ship is “Tiare Taporo”.

The name itself is Tahitian and means “lime blossom” (in Cook Islands’ Maori it would be Tiare Tiporo) and was also the name of a previous and much beloved ship that was very famous in these parts.  She was also one of the very last to trade under sail in the Cook Islands and the South Pacific.

It is true of life that one never knows where the winds will blow one, or what the adventures and encounters experienced along the way will be. It is early days yet with our “Tiare Taporo” – she’s still getting her facelift, necessary for her to embark on her Pacific adventures – but already the surprises that become good stories and fond memories are starting to roll in.

One of the more memorable surprises began just 10 days ago when out of the blue I received an email from a Gentleman who had stumbled upon this website and wrote to recall in particular his adventures in the Pacific in the early 1970s and especially his meeting with Cap’n Andy Thompson of the original “Tiare Taporo”. It also transpired that this Gentleman is a descendent of Captain Bligh, a man most famous in these parts as a result of his command, HMAV “Bounty”, having been taken from him in 1789 by Fletcher Christian and being cast adrift with 18 of his crew in a 23-foot open boat - the so called “Mutiny on the Bounty”.

Being a keen student of the Pacific and always having taken a special interest in Bligh, I was very keen to meet this man who had so kindly written to me and, fate having dropped me in London, we had a very pleasant lunch together at “The Town of Ramsgate” the pub which has, since 1545, stood at the top of Wapping Old Stairs, from which “Bounty” was embarked on her Pacific voyage.

We dined under the gaze of William Bligh, whose portrait hangs on the wall of the pub, and talked of many things and then stood on the stairs down which Bligh & Christian had doubtless walked to be rowed out to “Bounty” and wondered at the marvel of how history can often seem so alive. Below is a compilation of some of my correspondence with Maurice Bligh, which touch on the many things we discussed.