Return to Papeete

21. Jun. 2015
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French Polynesia
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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.

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.