The last several days have been busy, very busy, and we’ve done zero Christmas shopping! Riding peacefully at anchor again in our favorite spot, Opunohu Bay (Moorea), now seems like a good time for a cup of java and a little bit of a recap.
Final Marina Taina Days
We went into Marina Taina last Tuesday and tied up at the end of the huge concrete pier, opposite the marina gas station. It was a bit ironic that the last place we’d be in Tahiti was exactly the first place we’d been in Tahiti. But there we were – tied port to in the very same spot we first visited, engineless, at the beginning of September. We like Marina Taina very much and so we felt quite at home. The place does look different now. The outside slips, before stacked beam to beam with 80 and 100 and 150 foot superyachts, is now pretty much empty. And the familiar faces of friends like Espumeru and Friendship were notably missing. In cruising, that’s how it is.
Our work program was supposed to be short: three days and two nights, preparing to leave Tahiti on Thursday. We needed to anyway, as our visas expired Wednesday 1 December. So on Tuesday and Wednesday we were all quite busy – Danny and I putting the final touches on the rig job (yes, going up a few more times) and Larissa running quite a few errands for particular little things we needed, or making yet another trip over to the Carrefour supermarket. I also handed over our passports and paperwork to Francesco of Tahiti Yacht Agents, so he could finalize our checkout of Polynesia. Working with an agent here is the only way to go – otherwise you’d spend quite a bit of time running around town by bus, trying to do your paperwork at the various administrative offices and jump through the hoops to get your bond back from the bank (minus fees for this and that, of course). But through the Yacht Agent, this is pretty much a painless process and you never have to leave the Marina or nearby anchorage.
Once we got the rigging job done, we started to focus on the remaining items – stowing stuff and double-checking the major systems for the trip ahead. Danny spent some time under the galley sink on a plumbing issue (a salt water hose had come loose). I was grateful for this because it’s one thing I’ve had a hard time with in the past and I didn’t even ask him to do it – he just grabbed a screwdriver and dove in the uncomfortable space and got it done. Thanks Danny! I spent even more time working on the macerator pump from the holding tank. We don’t normally use the holding tank but it has been used in the past. There still some ‘residue‘ if you know what I mean. So I had the ‘brilliant’ idea of giving it a thorough wash-out with loads of fresh water and some special black water treatment tablets that I had left over from Martinique. Soon the smelly tank was full of fresh water and fizzing tablets, but when we went to pump it out, the macerator pump didn’t want to cooperate. It ran, but nothing came out. This was a bummer because it meant more time on a job that we’d actually created, rather than finishing the other small jobs we already had! Bonehead. So yours truly disassembled and cleaned the pump, a job somewhere in the upper echelons of the nasty and gross scale. The impeller had lost a flap, which had jammed the pump. A while later, we had it sorted out and all back together. It works pretty well now, even if a bit like a 6 cylinder engine running on 5.
Wednesday night the three of us did the final shopping trip to Carrefour and carted back 2 shopping carts of provisions. Danny and I were the mules really, as Larissa had already spent a couple of hours there filling up the carts. She does a great job keeping Walk On stocked with food. She’s got lists of this and that, organized and with up-to-date inventory of what’s left. Then she treated her workers right – we had a pizza and movie night after we’d stowed the goods. 🙂
False Start
Thursday was to be departure day. We all felt ready to head out the pass and into the Pacific blue again. Our plan was to head out on a daysail, principally for rig tuning. We’d sail across the channel, tacking to windward and tuning the shrouds we’d worked so hard on, and then anchor in Moorea for a night or two before continuing on. But we were waiting on a visitor. I really hate to say this, but we’d found a spot in the woodwork that hinted at termites or something of the sort. Unless you take care of these guys immediately, you might find your interior turning to sawdust. And they’re like rust – they don’t sleep! So while Danny and I worked, playing at rigger with the mast and shrouds, Lara had gone to a specialty store to find the proper critter killer. It turned out that one of their reps would actually have to visit the boat to help do the treatment – and that was scheduled for Thursday morning. We thought that he’d make a short visit and then we’d cast off, stopping off for diesel on the way and then… Big blue.
It didn’t work out quite like that. The rep, Ariel, showed up a while later than expected. He was an amiable chap and we spoke Italian (his mother is from Milan) to get things done. Ariel looked at the tiny hole we’d found and the little pile of very fine sawdust and told me I didn’t have termites. What I have is another kind of wood boring critter, smaller and slower than termites, called ‘vrillette’ in French. He said they were less destructive than the nasty termites, and that was the good news. The bad news was that he didn’t have the proper critter killer with him, as he had come armed with termite stuff. So we put on a moka of coffee and had a chat. There was nothing else he could do at the moment anyway. But he did offer to return the next day and give us some of the proper poison. The day was getting on and we knew that if we left on Thursday we’d likely make Moorea in the dark. So we decided to plan our departure for Friday morning – right after Ariel came by again with his gift of poison.
False Start, Part II
I was up early Friday, checking email and trying to ignore the fact that it was Friday (superstition says you don’t begin sailing voyages on a Friday – everybody knows that!). As it was a daysail to Moorea, we’d all agreed that the no-go Friday rule didn’t apply. The first email I saw was from the Yanmar dealer here in Tahiti that had sold us our new engine. They wanted to schedule a visit to the boat to do the first checkup/revision, especially now that we’d crossed the 50 hour mark with our new Yanmar. Yikes, I had forgotten about this! We had requested this service weeks earlier when we were on the hard at Technimarine – but their techs were busy then and they’d asked to reschedule. With the rigging job occupying our thoughts and our daylight hours once we were back in the water, the Captain had quite forgotten about the Yanmar dealer. Now here they were asking if they could come do the job. Cool! They would even send the guys in the morning and so we still had a chance to leave – or at least fuel up and leave the marina for the anchorage.
Stanley the Yanmar mechanic and his young apprentice (a student, probably 15 years old) showed up at about 10. They performed all the basic maintenance a lot faster than I normally do: oil and oil filter change, fuel filter change, alternator belt change, coolant check, and transmission oil change. On my own, these things probably take half a day – they did it in two hours. I was super jealous of the electric sump pump they had to remove the old oil from the engine. Mine is a little manual jobby and that’s normally the slowest part of the whole process. They just turned their pump on and went about doing the other things in parallel. Too cool. Anyway, at least we were getting our regularly scheduled maintenance done, by the Yanmar guys – peace of mind considering the warranty and boosted confidence in the engine before the long haul to Hawaii. With one little hiccup….
After changing the transmission oil, Stanley managed to break the dipstick. It is secured in the transmission body by a plastic wingnut type thing that has an o-ring in it. He over tightened it and the plastic broke. He had, however, already called the shop and asked to have a new one sent over ASAP, before he even told me he’d broken the old one. Points for incentive at least. But this meant that we weren’t leaving any time soon. Short of putting a cork in the fill hole, we couldn’t put the engine in gear. Around lunch time they left and our waiting game started. We read, topped off the water tanks again, double-checked this and that, talked about tuning the mast, listened to music, watched the other boats and boaters around us… Passing time and waiting for a dipstick… And we’d already paid the marina bill and were checked out.
We played phone tag with the dealer all afternoon – but nobody could say exactly when the delivery guy was going to show up. At one point, he was apparently stuck in the notorious Tahiti traffic, but there was no way to be sure. He didn’t have a cell phone. Later, I found out that he actually hadn’t left yet, but that he’d be arriving by boat! At least he wouldn’t be stuck in traffic, but it was getting later and and later and no sign… Add to this that is was Friday afternoon and ‘manana’ and ‘island time’ were in full swing, I started to have a sinking feeling that we wouldn’t get a new dipstick until Monday. We also got in touch with Ariel, the pest control guy, who had forgotten about our poison and would not be able to make it back to our location until Saturday morning. Never get in a hurry in the islands, it only guarantees your frustration.
Two guys finally showed up after 5PM. One had a genuine Yanmar dipstick in his hand and wanted to pass it off to me and high tail it to happy hour with his girlfriend somewhere. I asked him to wait just a minute while I replaced it – just to be sure. Good thing. The new one was the wrong size! The plastic cap/wingnut would certainly fit, but the new dipstick was too short and would never measure the oil level correctly. A bit of a scene began to take place: Danny and I and cruiser friend Hugo on the dock with these two Tahitians, anxious to get the heck out of there, and all five of us trying to figure out what could be done. While I explained to one of them how it was totally unacceptable and that they needed to source the correct one ASAP, Hugo and the other one starting taking the two dipsticks apart, with the intention of fitting the proper length dipstick into the new cap. There was a good bit of discussion, a few phone calls, and a three guys playing with dipsticks – if I wasn’t so frustrated about how much time had already passed and pissed that we still didn’t have the right part (one more night in the Marina!), I might have laughed about it. They managed to change caps and dipsticks, but they kinda sorta broke the plastic on the way and so now I had two damaged dipsticks and zero confidence that they would work properly anyway. I insisted they stick around until a solution was found. The two Tahitians were really getting exasperated… The weekend had started at 5PM as far as they were concerned and couldn’t care less about our plight. It was now close to 6PM and they were getting calls from their girlfriends (turns out they DID have cell phones!) to hurry up and get to the Tiki Bar, or wherever. Finally we managed to get someone on the phone from the dealer (a small miracle, as it was after-hours) and they informed me that their head technician would bring me yet another dipstick on his way home. We watched a gorgeous sunset off the south coast of Moorea, had a cold beer with Hugo right on the dock, and waited again.
The sunset was very nice, dipstick or no dipstick – this, and a lot of the photos that follow, are by Danny!
Jean Claude, the head technician, showed up at about 7PM. He had a dipstick alright, but again, it was the wrong one… Too short! So he re-did the same job we’d already done, this time without damaging the plastic and in 5 minutes I had a functional hybrid dipstick, installed by the head technician. Getting the right part, or at least a workable solution by a responsible company rep, was the whole point in the first place. I was satisfied. I thanked Jean Claude and offered him a glass of wine, as a rain shower was passing outside anyway. He looked tempted but said if he didn’t get a move on there would be serious consequences with his wife. These Tahitain women must be really tough on their hubbies – perhaps they deserve it?
Hugo and his son Mateo were still around so we had a couple of beers in the cockpit while Larissa played with Mateo, speaking in Spanish, and putting on a series of children’s DVD’s. I’d never seen “Finding Nemo” in Spanish – but was surprised how much I could understand. Hugo is Norwegian and Mateo was born in Cartagena, Colombia. In Tahiti, he attends a French school so the kid is pretty talented for a 3 year-old. He understands Norwegian pretty well, and more French than Larissa, Hugo, Danny and I combined, but prefers Spanish. 🙂 It was a nice evening – and now we knew we could finally leave on Saturday.
Hugo’s son, Mateo. One cool happy cruiser kid, that speaks three languages!
Cruiser birthday party on the dock for one of the cruiser kids.
Mateo. 🙂
Father & Son hanging on the dock.
Playing the dipstick waiting game – and playing with Mateo!
Mateo goes after the dock crabs with the hose! He was really having fun.
Third time’s a charm: leaving Tahiti!
Departure day came, Saturday morning. Finally. I was up at six, running through the list in my head of the stuff we shouldn’t forget to take care of before leaving. Relaxed and pretty sure we’d done just about all we could, I took a stroll around the docks, coffee in hand. I stopped at “See Adler” to admire. What a beauty. This is 70 foot ketch, a Hinckley (spelling???), built in Maine in the late 90’s. Dark blue topsides, teak decks, mirrored stainless steel, beautiful lines – you know, the kind of boat to really take your breath away. Currently, she’s owned by a guy named Peter, but she was built originally for the owner of the Campbell soup company, so I’m told. Peter was doing some varnish work and invited me aboard, saying that his workday (5AM to 6:30AM) was just about finished anyway. Over the next hour and a half, Peter showed me his boat inside and out. My jaw dropped so far and so often that I had a sore face after a while… I mean, what a boat! Gorgeous cherry wood interior and the nicest joinery I’ve ever seen, on a boat or in a home. I could go on and on, but you really have to see a boat like that to appreciate it fully. Peter shared a lot of stories about his life – including his previous circumnavigation in the 70’s with a 55 foot Cheoy Lee ketch called “Renegade”.
After I left Peter & S/Y See Adler, it was time to wake the troops and prepare for departure. More coffee and Danny and I made enough noise to wake Lara, at about 08:30. I spoke to Ariel about the poison and he would be coming by at 09:30-ish to drop some off. Then I searched out Philippe, the Marina Manager, so that we could settle our bill for the extra, unexpected night. He told me not to worry about it – it was a gift – and so our last night was just as free as being on the anchor, except with unlimited water and 240 Volt power supply! Thanks Philippe!!! Ariel came by at around 10 with our poison, and by 11 we were on the fuel dock across the way from our slip. We topped the diesel tank with 400 litres of diesel and got 30 litres of gasoline for the outboard. Then we left…
By noon we were out of the pass and back in the deep blue channel between Tahiti and Moorea. Danny and I had the main up without hassle and we eased our way into a sail. Spirits were very high – the jobs were done, the winds were filling in and the boat started to respond… We were sailing again! It’s a cleansing, refreshing and exhilarating feeling. For a while we sailed with only the full main, taking turns looking up the mast (sighting) to see how straight it was, and checking the tension of the stays and spreaders on both port and starboard tack. These were part of the instructions we’d received by e-mail from Manotaço in Brasil.
The admiral is happy to be back at sea!
The wind was light and the sail easy – we studied the eventual adjustments we’d need to make and made mental notes. Then we unfurled the genoa and started sailing a bit more in earnest. So good to feel her surge again like that, heeling confidently e gaining speed. Soon after, were were leaving the wind shadow of the island and came into the unfettered trade winds. It didn’t take long and we were in 25 knots of fresh breeze. We sailed for a while with the genoa partially furled and then switched to the staysail to ease tensions – after all, it was only a daysail! We pointed her bow for the entrance to our favorite place, Opunohu Bay, Moorea. It wasn’t all that far and we were rocking and rolling, making 8 knots most of the time. A controlled gybe went very well and before long we were rounding up to port (south) to head into the pass, which we made at nearly 7 knots with only the full main.
Danny claimed he thoroughly enjoyed his first sail on Walk On.
Heading into Opunoho Bay, we encountered “Hanse Explorer ” at anchor. Nice boat.
Everyone was in a damn good mood and I was personally delighted that soon we’d be anchored again there on the sandbank, in this mystical magical place. Danny was so thrilled by the sail, and by being ‘free’ after so long in Tahiti, that he decided he wanted a haircut. Mark the occasion by chopping off the mop! Larissa grabbed scissors and electric trimmer and went to work. It took a while but it came out great – Danny loved it and Larissa had fun. I watched them both and laughed.
Polynesian Birthday
We wouldn’t be idle for long. Danny’s previous captain, Dan, from S/Y Leeway, was in Moorea, having left Tahiti about 10 days prior. One of the big reasons for him to visit Moorea was that good friends would be on the island for a while. Pesa and Madeline, a couple Dan and Danny grew to know very well in Ua Po (Marquesas), would be spending some time there at the house of their daughter, Vaiata. As luck would have it for us, the day we arrived in Moorea was Vaiata’s 30th birthday, and Dan had kindly arranged for us to be invited to the festivities. So after only and hour or so at anchor, Vaiata’s husband and Dan came to pick us up.
The birthday party was fantastic. It was a barbeque really, outside in Vaiata’s lovely garden. The main man on the grill was Pesa, Vaiata’s father and good friend of Dan and Danny. He and Danny were especially pleased to see each other again. As the evening wore on, more and more friends and neighbors showed up and before you knew it, the place was packed. I didn’t count, but I guess there were about 40 or 50 people there. Pesa worked the grill and we chatted and got to know each other – lucky for us, Pesa and his family speak English pretty well! And Pesa is one of the coolest guys you’d ever want to meet. His picture must be in some book under the definition of ‘down to earth’, and he’s curious, always ready to learn something new about a person – with a warm and ready smile. But all of the guests were very nice and accommodating to us – making us feel very much at home. The food was more than abundant, the cake was great, and the serenading afterwards with ukuleles, guitars and an electric base was only improved by the magical words to the songs, in Polynesian. Wow! We felt very grateful to them for sharing her birthday with us and a little slice of modern Polynesian society and customs.
Pesa peels a hot Uru (breadfruit) that has just come off the coals…
Uru on the fire.
Pesa and I getting to know each other, and me learning a lot about culture in the Marquesas.
Pesa and Danny – look, danny has no hair!
Lara making friends, as always – she starts with the little ones. 🙂
A sad sight on the reef at Opunohu Bay – someone lost their yacht to the reef. This happened about two weeks ago we were told. Typically the owners would have to pay to have her salvaged from the reef, and then either hauled or towed to deep water only to be sunk. 😦 The cost is usually around 5 grand. Ouch.
Moorea will always be a very special, magical place for us. Too bad we have to leave… But we’ll be back!
More soon!
MM
S/Y Walk On 