Tahiti, Moorea to Bora Bora

We tied up at the town quay, safe and sound!  Now we have to go about fixing Interlude.  It ended up that there was only 1 facility that could do our work, at least in our timeline.  The yard, Technimarine has a great reputation, so we were happy.  So now we have a plan and we are in Tahiti after all. 

They have an annual festival called Heiva:  we went to a night of the dance and chanting competition,  to a sports day, with activities such as javeline throwing, coconut husking and rock lifting! 

40 kg No Problem right?

 


Just aim for the coconut on a pole 100 feet away?

 

Even cruisers tried the traditional dancing

We took two days to tour the island, which was nice.  Most of the time you are at water level, pretty, but not spectacular, the highlights would be the waterfalls, view from Belvedere and for Cheryl the size of the fiddleheads!   We spent a day doing a walking tour to Papeete, which was a good deal of fun. 

Other than that we have been walking the town, going from hardware store to hardware store, chandlery to chandlery.  And eating some amazing food.  Somerset found an awesome restaurant that we have greatly enjoyed.  They have Roulettes, which is a chip truck on steroids, and they have a great range of food.  Cheryl came up with the best meal so far, a crepe with potato, sour cream and bacon!

We have been on the town quai three times now.  The location is great, right in the heart of Papeete.  As always life is interesting, we took out our below deck showers many years ago as it brings in too much humidity to the boat.  This really is normal for most warm weather boats and then you shower on the stern or in our case on the side of the boat.  Most people shower, in privacy, behind closed doors.  We shower on our deck, which is fine in an anchorage, but now we are in downtown Papeete, beside the boardwalk, showering in our cockpit!

We also spent time on a mooring ball at Taina marina.  You have an amazing view of Morea every morning and evening!  And great provisioning right around the corner, as there is a large Carrefour in walking distance.

We were hauled on Tuesday, with a scheduled splash time of Friday.  As is usually the case thing don’t always go quite according to plan.  They are putting the new anchor sprit on on Friday when they realize that they had not finished the bottom side.  So we were there for the weekend, as they don’t work on weekends!  On the Monday they have the anchor sprit ready and put on!  Now you have to reattach the forestay and it is blowing 30 knots!  There is such a curve in the forestay, due to the wind, so that there is no way of attaching it.  So they move us so we are facing down wind and it was much easier.  At 4pm they put in the 5200, which then needs to dry before we can test the windlass for alignment.  So we stay in the sling overnight and are launched by 7:15 the next morning!  This was the first time we were on the hard in winter, a much nicer experience than the heat you get in the summer.  And the view left little to be desired!

We head off to the town quai, again, to clean the boat as a yard is never a clean place and the water is a fixed charge.  Then onto a mooring at Taina Marina. 

As Karen was trying to wire the deck level running lights she noticed that a weld was missing on our new anchor sprit!  She takes pictures and sends off an email.  On Monday she calls the yard owner, no problem, will take an hour to fix.  So we let go of the mooring and head the 10 miles to the haul out.  They put us in the big boat haul out, put a barge in front of us as a work platform and do the weld, in just over 4 hours!!

We go back to the mooring at Taina Marina, to enjoy our view again.  Then back to the town quai as we have someone who is going to look at our SSB.  We can transmit 100 miles, or 1000 miles, but not inbetween!   So they fix a few connections and now we can only tune on the 2, 4 and 6 meg frequencies!!  We decide to move the tuner, that part of our installation is the problem, so half a day of part shopping and half a day to reinstall the tuner and now we cannot tune at all!!  The joys of boating!

On Monday the SSB guy returns, concluded that our fixing was OK, but our tuner is dying.  Yeah, we have a plan!

Tuesday we finish with water and move to Morea.  We go to Opunohu Bay, which has an extraordinary view.  We go snorkelling with the stingrays and black tip sharks, have dinner and head out for Bora Bora, an overnight passage.

We pick up a mooring ball in Bora Bora at the Mai Kai marina, which is really a restaurant with mooring balls.  Food at the restaurant is great, we have dinner there twice and lunch once!  We bike around the island, some 30 add kilometers.  Can you say bike butt?!  Some amazing views, but not the traditional Bora Bora views as the wind is too high and the coral of the water is very different.

We did do two dives in Bora Bora.  One just outside the path, while the coral was dead (thanks to a hurricane several years ago) the fish life were plentiful and varied, not to mention the large lemon shark!  Lionfish!!  Where is my spear?   But they are not a plague here (and not large enough to eat!)  The second dive was with the giant mantas, a worthwhile experience.

We walk the town, look at pearls and ready ourselves for the next passage.

Just a bit of math.  We did 1000 nautical miles from Panama to Galapagos.  Then 3000 nm to the Marquesas.  So we should be done, right?  Marquesas to Tuomotos is another 500, Tuomotos to Society Islands is another 300.  Now we have to go 700 from Bora Bora to Suwarrow, then 500 to Somoa and another 700 from Somoa to Fiji.  Added quickly, we have another 1900nm to go this season.