In my limited French, this is what I have come to understand about Tahitian pearls. Apparently, there is a pearl-governing body in French Polynesia that buys all of the pearls from the little farms around the Tahitian islands regardless of quality and only permits the perfect ones to be sold for export.As far as I can tell they crush any with imperfections and dump them back into the sea!It makes me cringe!Sounds like this is designed to maintain high quality and a sparkling reputation for exported pearls.The little farms don’t care; they’re still being paid for all their pearls, but it’s the jewelers that are making the profit from the deal. We did, however, ferret out some exceptions.
Few are interested in trying to sell flawed pearls.It took us four months to track down a source!And then it was all hush-hush, doing deals in back rooms, shifty eyes and whispers. I think the imperfect pearls are the most interesting. Some look like inverted Saturn, others like snowglobes, or tear drops. All different colors, lusters, and pretty good size too. We felt like true pirates, smuggling out handfuls of contraband treasure stowed away below decks. Flew them back to the states disguised in an M&M bag. Tricksters.
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.
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.
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.
