Georgia | Errantries

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.

Author: Pete

Location: 1632.116S’ 14412.192W’

Date: May 17 – 22, 2015

May 17: Ran under the spinnaker to within a mile of Makemo before dousing the sail and motoring through the pass. There was a little rage going on, and we were a few hours early for slack tide, but current seemed minimal and we only encountered one knot against us as we muscled through. In the anchorage we floated our chain to avoid coral snags which plague boats in this region, attaching fenders at 10, 20, and 30 meters on 40 meters of chain in 13 meters of water. Being Sunday, nothing was open in town, so we snorkeled the lagoon and found significantly fewer sharks than in Raroia.

May 18: Spent the day snorkeling in the lagoon and went for a long run on the island. My legs haven’t been asked to walk more than 10 meters at any given point so they voiced their objections about an hour and a half run loudly. The town is cute, with people biking all over on trikes, mothers riding around with one naked baby standing on the crossbar and an infant swaddled in blankets in the basket in the back. Found some internet at the post office in front of the harbor. Later than night had our friends Martin and Lexi over for drinks. We met them in Galapagos, and they were on our Tangaroa radio net on the big crossing, but we missed them in our Marquesian island hopping.

May 19: Snorkeled outer reef and the pass. The undulating coral bed off the island was fantastic. In the pass a wall made for excellent snorkel drifting too. Went over to Martin and Lexi’s boat, Pao Hana for dinner and drinks again.

May 20: Haircuts in morning. Liza busted out the trimmers and scissors and gave Felix, Martin, and I all haircuts. It took a good deal of the morning and when we finally weighed anchor to sail north in the afternoon, the glare off the lagoon was terrible. You couldn’t see the coral heads coming, so we made it about ten miles north, then pulled into a nice beach and set anchor again. Along the trip we caught a 50 cm Green Jobfish, which turned out to be really tasty. We made a bonfire on the beach that night and cooked the fillets in the coals with potatoes, carrots, onions, and old bay. Heaven.

May 21: Flew the spinnaker on our morning sail to north anchorage. We pulled in and were immediately welcomed by our friends on Georgia, Continuum, and Free Spirit, but also the gray-green serpentine forms of black tip reef sharks. Dozens and dozens of them. I’d go so far as to say ‘shark infested.’ Apparently the two local guys up from the town in south Makemo had harpooned and cleaned a mahimahi in the anchorage.

To their credit they invited everyone in the anchorage to a seafood bonanza at the copra shack they were using for a week as their fishing camp. Vaienui and Jonah were in their late 20’s, local boys excited about showing off their culture and fishing prowess. When we showed up in the afternoon they had great green slabs of mahi grilling on chicken wire over oil barrels with palm wood blazing. On the grill they threw a dozen blue lobster and a local chicken they macheted on the spot. To top it off they caught a dozen coconut crabs the size and disposition of snapping turtles, a delicacy in the area and in Tahiti. They were bright blue and orange, really beautiful crustaceans. Several of them went into boiling pots of water. The cruisers brought side dishes, desserts, and lots of booze to add to the feast. The boys didn’t have plates or forks, so we brought some. They encouraged us to go for the local style and crack the crab legs with the back of a machete, split and de-vein lobster by hand, and dug into the steaming mahi with our fingers. It was awesome. They showed us how to tear open the coconut crab abdomen and scoop out the gray goop they they likened to foi gras. It was a massacre. Shells, legs, bodies strewn across the rough table and weaved palm table mat the boys had made. Everyone had a ball. We left the treats and booze for the boys and gave them some money for the amazing spread. They insisted that they couldn’t accept the money, that the food and firewood was free, but we wore them down and they seemed pleased with the gesture. We all sat on the dock under the starry moonless sky and talked in broken French and English. It’s a lot tougher to communicate at night when gestures are removed from one’s arsenal of translation.

May 22: Left Makemo Atoll today at what was supposed to be slack tide. The northern pass has a constant ripping current that we watched for three days before attacking. I lined up the boat with the two green navigation cans, unfurled some main, and ran into the melee with the engines roaring to keep some traction on the ripping water with the rudders. Deep swirling vortices pulled the bow this way and that. At some point we were making 13 knots. Weaved and staggered through the eddies until the pass spit us out like being shot from a cannon into a moderate rage. It was all very exciting.

Now we’re heading toward Fakarava under spinnaker, another atoll with some surfing potential. Should be there tomorrow morning after a quick overnight sail.