Taha’a, Society Islands

13. Jul. 2015
/
French Polynesia
/
3 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Taha’a, Society Islands

Date: July 9 – 12, 2015

Sailed out of the Fare pass in Huahine and headed west downwind with following seas, running wing-wing to Taha’a….a….ah.. a… ah.. aaaa. Ugly clouds obscured the island as we crossed the twenty easy miles, but thankfully never hammered us. I love weather that’s “All-Bark, No-Bite”, or as my buddy Hal puts it, “All Hat and No Cattle”.

Once through the easy Toahotu pass we cut slightly south and into the deep Haamene Bay. We’re not sure what’s up with the island’s obsession with unnecessary vowels; I bet they’d get along well with Brits when they visit. I’m think they’d love the flavour, colour, and granduure of the island. We picked up a mooring in 100 feet of water courtesy of Hotel Hibiscus who we heard did great tours of the local vanilla and pearl farms on the island. We radiod them to see if they’d show us around the next day, then settled in to enjoy the huge empty bay and clearing skies.

The next day we met up with Marke, whose French father and Polynesian mother ran the pension. In my mind, Marke is spelled like that in following with the unnecessary vowels. You think I’m kidding, but when he showed us around the island, all of the signs seem to be missing all the consonants. Like when we drove through the town of Faaaha. Sounds like something I’ve shouted in front of my students when I forget to move the decimal and end up with completely the wrong answer twenty minutes later. “FAAAHA!”

Our first stop was at a local vanilla farm. Apparently, 80% of the French Polynesian vanilla comes from Taha’a. Teva, our host, showed us his covered grow house that keeps birds and other pests out. He said each vine takes 3 years to mature and give flower. The beans take nine months to develop after the flower is pollinated. Then the beans need to be sun-dried which takes another five months. So it takes over a year to go from flower to sellable bean. One kilogram (2.2 pounds, you lackey) of dried beans though goes for about $400-500 USD.

It’s a hybrid of the Bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, and needs to be pollinated by hand since the insects that normally do the job weren’t brought to the island with the first plants. So our host, Teva, showed us how to pollinate the flowers. It made me blush, but it’s all in the name of science and fine cuisine!

The whole thing was run out of his house with his wife. Sounds like it takes a good deal of time and capital to set up, but then runs pretty smoothly. Teva said he sells mostly to local and foreign restaurants looking for organic, independently grown vanilla. Great niche.

Then it was off to the pearl farm along the winding coastal road. Gorgeous weather and a great view of Bora Bora.

Out on the docks our hostess, Magda, showed Miranda and I the process of making a pearl. The oysters are mostly a breed from the Tuamotus and are now grown here, hung in baskets under floats in the lagoon. Oysters will coat foreign objects in their iridescent mother of pearl. When that happens in nature you get a gorgeous object the size and shape of a Nerdz candy, but certainly not your gramma’s pearl earrings style.

To get that shape the oysters are grown for a couple years until they’re big enough to handle a nucleus, or sphere cut from a swarthy clam from the Mississippi river. So a white marble is put into the oyster, and twelve to eighteen months later the thing is coated to an appropriate thickness with mother of pearl. Seems like cheating, right?

If an oyster spits out the nucleus or coats it only partially, which happens about half the time, the oyster will never be a pearl bearer and is thus is eaten with lemon and garlic. If the oyster coats the nucleus well, which can be discerned through careful, non-destructive surgery, a larger nucleus is inserted and the oyster is returned to the farm. Most productive oysters can make four pearls before they’re tuckered out. Magda showed me all about where to squeeze to get the pearl to pop out. She said I’m pretty good at it, but I’m sure she says that to all the guys. Geeze, here I thought vanilla pollination would be the only thing that made me blush on this excursion.

The next day the good weather held and we were off to the other side of Taha’a. On the northwest side of the island are a couple motus; we anchored just off Ilot Tautau, encrusted with expensive palapa-style bungalows stretching out across the water. They had a really lovely view until we showed up and plunked our anchor just offshore in the eight feet of crystalline water and clear sand. Suckers!

Between Tautau and the next motu north, Mararare, there’s a pass out to the reef that’s 300 feet wide and a quarter mile long. The channel is only three feet at the deepest and it’s a snorkeling gold mine. It’s called the Coral Gardens, but Coral Maze might be more appropriate. The corals are healthy, colorful, and dense. And the fish must be used to getting fed by the tourists because upon entry they swarm you. If you open your hands to them they nip at your empty palms. I lost sight of Miranda a few times behind clouds of Pacific Double Saddle Butterflyfish and Convict Surgeonfish.

Even though we didn’t bring any bread to feed the fish I still think they were happy to see us.

Two days of almost constant immersion and then we were off to Bora Bora, purportedly the most beautiful island in the world!

Moorea, Society Islands

30. Jun. 2015
/
French Polynesia
/
2 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Moorea, Society Islands

Date: June 25, 2015

We decided to make the most of our down-time waiting for the autohelm part to come in by sailing to Moorea, three hours from Papeete. We had spent a few days ordering our autohelm part, salvaging data off a dying hard drive, and working on a dinghy cover. The sun does wicked things to the material over the years, so often canvas covers are put on to extend the lifespan of the noble work horse of Joe Schmoe Cruiser. Gringos call the covers ‘chaps’, but I like the Spanish equivalent, ‘pijamas.’ I love the idea that the dinghies tied up at the dock in their pajamas are really attending some sort of nautical sleepover with terrycloth robes, slippers, and night caps.

It was a lot of work; we made a pattern out of clear plastic in Galapagos and worked on the real thing on the mooring at Marina Taina. It’s tough to work on a project like that on a rolling boat with limited space to maneuver meters of fabric. At least that’s going to be my excuse if anyone calls me out on a few spots of rough tailoring. Most of the time we worked with the dinghy suspended from the davits and occasionally I had to get in it to work. I only once fell out of the tippy dinghy into the harbor. Miranda thought that was great.

Several of the days were pretty windy and rough when we were on a mooring ball in Taina. We had gusts to thirty knots and once breaking waves in the mooring field. One afternoon as we were working on the dinghy cover, a big catamaran broke free from its mooring and went zipping sideways downwind through a dozen moored boats. No one saw it until it was right next to us. I put the dinghy in the water and went tearing after it, without thinking about what I was going to do in my poorly idling, nine horsepower dinghy once I caught the 30 ton catamaran in 20 knots of wind. Miranda was smarter than me, as usual, and called the marina. They dispatched a launch and with the assistance of another dinghy we wrestled the boat to another mooring ball and tied it up. Miraculously, the vagabond boat didn’t ding a single other vessel out of the dozen it zipped by in the mooring field.

Then it was happily time to piss off to Moorea for a few days while we awaited the autohelm part. We motorsailed the fifteen miles across because the wind was on our bow. Of course it was the first day it had blown from that direction in a week. It was light and the going was easy. We passed Cook’s Bay, named after the popular Captain Cook who explored the area, and turned in at Opunohu Bay a few miles west. The two bays cut deep into the island of Moorea, making it look like a heart with two divots in it.

Had to hand steer the three hours over, which seems pretty easy, but is a chore when you’re used to someone else driving for thousands of miles. Motored easily through the pass with the backwards French buoy marking. The pointed teeth of Moorea’s peaks made for fantastic scenery.

Oop. That’s fanny-tastic scenery! We anchored just inside the protection of the coral reef in ten feet of water.

We put the dinghy down with gusto and took off to go snorkel. It had been three weeks since we’d been in the water. Well, except for the time I fell off the boat working on the dinghy cover. Three weeks?! We LIVE on a boat for crying out loud. How does that happen?! It was good to be back down undah. A couple chill sea turtles paddled by near the drop off and we saw some of our old friends from other boats out there too.

Came back to the boat in a nice flat anchorage and slept like babies.

The next morning we met up with friends who knew the low down of the island. Paul and Andy from Talulah Ruby showed us the secret snorkeling spots. The first spot hid seven sunken carved tikis. Legend has it that the first missionaries made the craftsman throw them in the lagoon when they came. Snorkelers keep them free of marine growth so they are in great shape. A little spooky to see under water!

Our next delight of the day was Stingray City, a sandbar in the lagoon where the stingrays (and reef sharks) congregate in the shallows. We anchored our dinghy in chest-deep water and the rays came out to play. They swam in and around us, looking for handouts. Apparently some dive operators feed them, so they were very cordial with us. They nose around you and are happy to be petted. Their skin is velvety, an unparalleled combination of smooth, slippery, and soft without feeling slimy. It’s a cool enough sensation and interaction to dissolve your speech into unintelligible, involuntary chortling. From all across the sandbar the sound of our group of friends giggling like school girls though their snorkels rang out. It’s a precious thing to hear a posh, collected fifty-year-old British man tee-heeing giddily at the thrill of a natural petting zoo.

We ended up going back the next day armed with tuna. The rays were really excited to see us then! Reminds me of a great Mitch Hedberg quote: “I find that a duck’s opinion of me is heavily influence by whether or not I have any bread.” That guy was a genius. We brought our gringo friends Rick and Lara from SeaKey, and Dutch friends Pete and Liz from Suluk.

The 28th we sailed back to Papeete with the hopes of picking up our much awaited part!

Return to Papeete

21. Jun. 2015
/
French Polynesia
/
1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: Papeete, Tahiti

Date: June 20, 2015

A few days ago we pulled into the beautiful protected harbor of… wait, what? Papeete? I thought we were out of here! Bah!

Clearing out of the country took several days of running around to immigration and customs office, one at this end of Papeete, one at the other, all by bus and in French (which I’m getting REALLY good at faking!) I jumped flaming bureaucratic hoops like a dressed-up, sweaty corgi in a circus act. It’s all part of the fun, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Papeete-8

To leave one must give notice three days in advance then get physical clearance papers from immigration on the day you’re to leave port. They’re so anal that they indicate the HOUR of your departure. We fueled and watered the boat at the Marina Taina and then headed out into the gray of the sea.

The sharp teeth of Moorea’s peaks loomed ten miles away in the distance. Scattered rain bands swept the horizon and the wind kicked to twenty knots. No problem, we’ll just rig Tayrona to sail herself around the point, then hide out inside and keep watch in the comfort of the salon, right? Wrong! We turned on the autopilot and it promptly shrieked the beeping death warning and flashed an ominous “AUTORELEASE” message. We tried it again. “AUTORELEASE” and more death beeping. I dove into the depths of the port engine compartment where the autopilot’s hydraulic ram is housed and fiddled with the rudder position sensor. It gives rudder position feedback to the autopilot brain so the system can be proprioceptive and correct rudder angle accordingly. Long story short, it was shot, but we didn’t know it yet. We turned off the “AUTORELEASE” function deep in the configuration settings and the autopilot turned to “AUTO” and stopped the incessant beeping! Hooray! We did a happy dance on deck, at least for a moment until the autopilot swung the boat hard to port, then hard to starboard searching for the right rudder angle but without any feedback. We put the kibosh on the autopilot and our happy dance and steered by hand while we tried to figure out what was going on.

We weighed the option of sailing for the next two months to Fiji by hand and decided we should probably fix the problem while we have civilization to help. I begrudgingly put the wheel hard over to bring us back to port. We picked up a mooring ball at the Marina Taina and sat there miffed for a while.

Now we were illegally in the country! Our passports were stamped out and everything! We found Tehani from the Tahiti Crew, who helped with formalities to get into French Polynesia, and she pulled some stings and got us back in the good graces of the law. We once again fly the French Polynesian flag.

In the next days we hunted down a friend of ours on a different boat in town. Paul on S/V Georgia is a sailing guru and we figured he’d be able to help. I described the symptoms to him and he concurred with my diagnosis of a rudder position sensor failure. He happened to have the same system and over the next couple days we pulled off his sensor, and installed in on my boat. The autopilot worked like a charm when we tested it out on sea trial. I was temped to take off right then and there but he’s a better sailor than me and would surely catch us.

Papeete-1

They’re surprisingly inexpensive Raymarine parts! $250 is a steal for most autopilot failures. I’ll take it! Oops, no Raymarine dealers in French Polynesia though. Matter of fact, the closest place that has this part is New Caledonia, some 2500 miles away near Australia! We can order it from the US but it takes ten days and $400 in shipping and customs. Owwie.

We recalled a twelve-minute discussion on the docks a week earlier with an American cruiser who was heading to California to take care of some business and would be back in Tahiti in short order. In passing she casually offered to bring anything back if we needed parts. It’s one of those nonchalant proposals sailors put out there when they know that no one is going to be boorish enough to take them up on it. But hell, I’ll be boorish for $400 and no customs crap to deal with! We shot her an email and got the okay to order parts! Huzzah!

So that’s where we are now. Sitting in Tahiti awaiting a part to come in on the 29th with a good Samaritan sailor. It’s a pretty awful place to be stranded. The green peaks, blue lagoon, fresh papaya, and Miss Tahiti festivities are dreadful. Hard time aboard Tayrona.