Papeete, Tahiti

14. Jun. 2015
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French Polynesia
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2 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Papeete, Tahiti

Date: June 5 – 13

Alright! Back to work! I guess that’s how it’s felt in the last week in Papeete. We got set up in the new marina in town which is half price until the end of June. They’re still working on things so the marina isn’t a well oiled machine yet, but hey, neither am I. It’s a treat to be at a dock, to be able to run out and pick up something you forgot, to walk to dinner without being sprayed with sea water in the dinghy, hose salty kite and dive gear down without being a water Nazi, and also to take a real shower. I haven’t taken a real shower since Panama. That’s not to say that I haven’t taken a shower, or even a hot shower. The boat provides hot showers when the engines have been running. I’m talking about real, hot, soapy, soaker showers. 3000 miles long past.

Our first night in we went out to eat at the plaza that features all the Chinese food trucks in town. The place was teeming with people and steaming with food blazing over mobile propane grills. The food was great, and most importantly, not cooked by us! We also stumbled upon a great Polynesian dance performance. I was ready to get my coconuts and grass skirt going.

The town of of Papeete gets a bad rap from the cruising community. If one expects a pristine settlement on a tropical island, one shouldn’t expect to find random Harken jib car parts there. We were pleasantly surprised by Papeete. There’s a beautiful park and promenade along the waterfront, nice restaurants, and more chandleries than you can shake a spinnaker pole at.

The styles of the tattoos have been changing little by little as we head west through French Polynesia. In the Marquesas the tattoos were generally animals, sharks, dolphins, and rays. The Tuamotus had more geometric designs, angular and repeating. Here in the Society Islands we’ve seen more flowing ‘tribal’ designs with more Asian looking influence. Pretty neat.

Liza and Felix spent a day planning and packing before they headed to the other side of Tahiti to catch the big waves coming in there. It was an emotional send off; we were happy for all the help they’ve been aboard in good weather and bad, happy for all the incredible experiences we’ve been able to share together, but sad to see them go. C’est la vie.

No time to get glassy-eyed, Susan, time to get busy! We have a TO DO list about a mile long, nothing critical, but it’s like bailing water, if you don’t keep up, your boat is going down. For all the running around town we busted out the baby blue, sparkly fold-up bike that was stashed in the starboard crash box back in Fort Lauderdale. She was still in impeccable shape with not a spot of rust! We bolted her together and found some pegs in the local hardware store. I pedal, feet a blur in tiny circles, and Miranda stands on the back, holding on, skirt flapping in the wind. It’s comical. If I didn’t have a cute girl holding onto me, I’d feel like a big knob and get beat up by way more muscley Polynesian men.

On the list, propane! Dragged seven, ten-pound propane tanks to the gas filling station some miles north of town on the blue bike. Then it was onto replacing failing exhaust hose and dinghy fuel line connections, running to the Port Captain and Customs Offices for clearance paperwork, and general cleaning and work on the boat. Miranda also got her hair cut by ‘professionals’ in a ‘salon’ because she doesn’t trust me with the ‘trimmers’ to give her a ‘fashionable haircut’ on the ‘transom’. Geeze, some people have no adventurous spirit at all.

We also destroyed the blog by updating the WordPress software and it took a good couple hours of freaking out in an internet cafe, but Miranda figured it out. For you gurus, we couldn’t login to our admin site because we got the White Screen of Death (technical term, promise!) from our outdated theme’s incompatibility with the new version of WordPress. So she updated the WordPres theme by overwriting the current version via an FTP client called Filezilla. Merg? It’s sort of like getting your Michigan driver’s licence renewed when you’re not allowed back in the country because you have too many DUIs. Tough going. It’s amazing what you learn out here, even when you don’t want to.

We loaded up with new provisions, fresh produce at the market, a good deal of booze, watered up, and filled the boat with diesel, before heading out of Papeete! On to new horizons!

Passage to Tahiti

04. Jun. 2015
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French Polynesia, Passages
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Author: Pete

Location: 16°54.429S’ 146°57.237W’

Date: June 2nd – June 4th

June 2nd saw the high wind which had previously swept the Tuamotus and filled our kites in the past days calming. It’s time to head to Tahiti. Liza and Felix have flights to catch and Miranda and I have a good deal of work to do on the boat that we’ve been neglecting. It’s been terrific ignoring minor problems in favor of diving and kiting and snorkeling all in the same day. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? But the TO-DO list grows longer little by little as the salt air and general wear and tear take their toll on everything. We need a week of civilization, or more specifically, a hardware store. A grocery store wouldn’t hurt either.

Made a couple lunches and a couple dinners to have in the refrigerator so no one had to cook in the two day passage. Said goodbye to our friends on Namaste who we’d been kiting and diving with for the week. We pulled anchor without incident. Our three meter anchorage had low, scattered coral heads and we floated the chain to avoid them. We rounded the long shoal finger just inside of the Fakarava pass and exited easily even with 2 knots of incoming current. Outside the pass we put up the spinnaker and ghosted along slowly for an hour, then doused it and motored, then flew the spinnaker again just at dusk. So much work, this sailing life. Now we’re on the downhill run to Papeete. A little rain accompanied us along the way.

June 3rd, our second day on passage to Tahiti trailed behind us like our wake astern. At the end of my watch the wind died and the spinnaker sagged over the deck. I pulled it down and fired up the girls. We motored most of the day in zero wind. Really ZERO wind. The Pacific was glassy, and besides a few gentile rollers lifting the boat there was nothing but our forward motion courtesy of the diesels. The wind filled in come evening, and just before dinner we were again sailing, now on a beam reach. A cargo ship, the Chiquita according to the AIS, steamed by us off our starboard at 18 knots, coming within a half mile. We haven’t seen a real ship in months!

Liza and Felix caught a tuna and cleaned it for dinner! We put it with rice and veggies and sat on deck watching the sky afterwards. Miranda spent some time digging coral out of her knees from kiteboarding into and through the coral ‘bommies’ in Fakarava. Much easier if you just go over them.

Now it’s another gorgeous, cloudless night sailing under a full moon bright enough to put charge through the solar panels!

Sighted Tahiti the morning of June 4th. The tall green of the island and its massive dimension contrast starkly with the low, tiny motus of the atolls we’ve been frequenting. It’s pretty amazing to think that there were islands like Tahiti on all of those atolls, once tall and green, now ground into sand and swept out to sea as the coral reefs build into low motu and remain. Pretty neat geographical evolution. You can really see the scale of geologic time. Don’t blink.

The wind built steadily throughout the night. This morning I woke to the pleasantly rocky ride associated with good wind. We’re up to 15 knots of wind abeam and are nicely making way, topping out at 8 knots. The boat hums happily with a low vibration when we approach hull speed. Feels good to be moving fast; I’m humming too. Funny how one’s mood is so synced with that of the boat. She’s like another entity among us. Like I need one more female personality aboard! (kidding, kidding!)

Cumulous clouds cap the verdant peaks as we round the north side of the island. Eventually buildings spring into view and other boats bounce along the choppy sea. We prepare for making port. Just before we pass between the (backwards) navigational buoys we called the harbor control and were given clearance to enter the port. Were they going to fire cannons at us if we didn’t call? We sidled up to a finger pier in the new municipal marina that’s still under construction without incident, despite my rusty docking skills. I think we just sailed to Tahiti.

Fakarava, Tuamotus

02. Jun. 2015
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French Polynesia
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4 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Fakarava, Tuamotus

Date: May 23 – June 2

Leaving in the early afternoon on the 22rd we ran a quick overnight passage to Fakarava from Makemo, about 70 miles to the south pass. We had low wind at first, but the wind picked up over the night and we were running 6 knots under the spinnaker by the morning of the 23rd. The pass in Fakarava was wide, deep, well marked, and low current. We plowed our way through exactly when the tide was supposed to be low, but still encountered 1 knot of outgoing current from the heavy swells breaking over the outer reef and filling the atoll with water. We followed the beacons in and skirted the long reef that runs far into the lagoon, something best done in the daylight as that part isn’t marked.

A good deal of boats were anchored in the protected bay, no doubt drawn by the idyllic beauty of the palm-laced atoll, the clear, good-holding sandy anchorage, and the great protection from the strong southeast winds predicted to hit the area in the following days. We nosed into the three meter shallows, exploiting one of the merits of sailing a catamaran, dropped anchor and floated our chain. We took an hour to make sure our anchor was dug in then took the dinghy for a drift snorkel in the pass.

In the evening as we were opening a coconut for drinks a dinghy came zipping up after seeing that we were from Charlevoix the Beautiful. Chris and Jess aboard the sailboat Namaste are Michiganders who grew up and now have a summer place in my home town. We chatted about home and they invited us to join them on a dive in the pass which we heartily agreed to.

The 23rd was our day to wind our kite skills back up. The wind was up, so we pulled out the kite gear, locked in the fins on the board, and motored over to a tiny islet surrounded by shallow sandbar to go kite boarding. We have aboard three kites, a 12, 9, and 7 meter, but only two lines and harnesses. We brought one board and Felix’s surfboard. We took turns dusting off our kite-handling skills in pairs, one riding, the spotters supporting in the dinghy. The sun was out in force and the wind was making a good show at 15 knots.

Zipping over gorgeous, iridescent waters was tenuous at times because the sandbars surround the islet were dotted with mailbox-sized coral bommies that would surely shred flesh from bone should a kite rider take a digger just upwind of one. Most were just under the surface and clearly visible, but shallow enough to ding your board on and spaced in clumps such that when one was avoided, it could be surmised with some certainty that several others would be waiting nearby. Fortunately the death cookies were clustered in certain predictable and avoidable areas. Sometimes the wind was just too good over there though, and you found yourself over in the coral patch despite common sense, goaded on by the boardshorts-wearing devil on one shoulder while the sunscreen-smeared angel dozed in a hammock on the other one.

The morning of the 24th Liza and I got up early to dive with Chris and Jess from Namaste. We only have two sets of gear and the dive sounded technical, so we planned to check it out first before dragging Miranda and Felix into the mess. The heavy swell, uncommon for the season, was wreaking havoc with the current apparently. Chris, acting as driver for the day, motored us out in the dinghy to a marker buoy out of the channel and we dove to 100 feet with Jess. We finned along for about fifteen minutes until we realized the current was not only weak, but about to switch and flow OUT into the open ocean. That’s bad. So we aborted the dive and Chris picked us up in the dinghy. It wasn’t a total waste of a day. We took the kites to the skies again, albeit with a few bladders being mended. We were down to the 7.5m Best Kahuna at some point.

The morning of the 25th we took another crack at the diving. Chris picked Liza and I up in the wee hours of the morning and zigzagged through he coral heads and sand shoals out to the pass. We anchored the dinghy, and checked our gear before rolling into the water. The visibility was good, and you could see the anchor at 30 feet as if it were at the nose of the boat. We made sure it was set then drifted with the light current back towards the lagoon. We slid down the gentle slopes until we ran into what is called the Wall of Sharks. In the distance hanging in almost motionless in the current were hundred, I shit you no, hundreds of sharks. Mainly Gray Sharks and Black Tipped Reef Sharks cruised up and down the pass, flying like sleek, dangerous fighter jets in the swift water. Greg, pictures coming soon should make up for not diving with the Hammerheads in Galapagos.

So naturally after unintentionally peeing in our wetsuits we settled down and made it though the first wave of the ghastly gliders. We thought we were out of the fun until we ran into another wall of them. They cruised by close at times if you held your breath enough. The bubbles scare them apparently. They scare me, so we’re even. Most were between 5 and 8 feet long, so not too big. At one point in the dive we did see a BIG white shadow slithering over the bottom. Turned out to be a Sickle Fin Lemon Shark huge. HUGE. Everything looks bigger underwater, granted, but this thing must have been 14 feet. It was walking through a forest filled with foxes, and coming across of Grizzly bear. All predators, but some more predatory than others. We gaped like we’d seen Brad Pitt, or maybe a really terrible car accident with seat belt shunning occupants. It was awesome.

We collected our jaws and Chris dropped us off at Tayrona. We made plans to take Miranda and Felix the following day, and made a little lunch. We spent some time after lunch going over theory and doing an easy checkout dive off the back of the boat to bring Miranda and Felix back into diving shape for the following day.

On the 26th we woke bright eyed and bushy tailed for another round of sharks. There were more sharks than before. Swarms of them. Walls of them. At some point there were flights of sharks behind me, between me and the rest of the group, and behind the group. We were truly and utterly surrounded, and the slinky beasts didn’t seem to even notice. They cruised by us, eyeing the bubbling monsters with their vertically slit, cold eyes. Foxes, I kept telling myself they were just foxes. It only helped somewhat.

Miranda and Felix, being somewhat new to diving, did a fantastic job in a fairly technical dive. We bottomed out at 85 feet and were under for about 45 minutes as the current whisked us through the pass and deposited us at a sandy beach in the lagoon.

Since then it’s been a couple of days at the same anchorage. Did another dive, more kiting, and a lot of hanging out. Life is good aboard Tayrona. Heading to Tahiti sometime in the next couple of days.