Wednesday 23 August – our engines let us down again

As the plan was to leave this afternoon we had a busy morning packing up the boat and putting things away …… like the inflatable kayak. We had organised to take Kane out for a farewell lunch as a thank you for all his help with the bottom cleaning. We picked him and Quinn up at 11 and dinghied to the far end of the bay to a very modern new museum. The French must have poured money into the country, it was a very high tech museum, and architecturally impressive even if the contents were a bit lacking – a few big fish tanks and local coral. Poor Quinn had to wait outside, so luckily it was a quick visit. The highlight was the receptionist selling some delicious looking big avocados for a bargain – not the usual eye watering prices of French Polynesia.

We then went back to the marina and restaurant where we had lunch on Monday, the easiest place to go in the dinghy. We had a great table on the water’s edge and Quinn enjoyed lying in the sand in the shade. We had a very good mixed platter of fish, with a delicious curry prawn dish.

The museum

Leaving Moorea on a cloudless day and flat sea

Back to the boat and a final big farewell to Kane and Quinn, we set off at about 3:30 into a cloudless sky and a flat sea, absolutely idyllic. When Rowan started the engines they misbehaved but he did what our Aussie dealer guru told us to do and it worked. We got the main sail up and we were off, with me looking for whale activity. About 20 minutes later the wind completely died and we turned the engines on, this time they went ballistic with error messages, with one engine completely gone. Rowan took the very smart decision to return to the anchorage there and then. Our next island is a tricky entrance and passage behind the reef, we definitely need working engines. We managed to tack our way back and call Kane to come and help us to get through the reef passage. We did an impressive sail through the passage at nearly nine knots with poor Kane unable to keep up with us in his dinghy! We then had to turn into the wind get sails down and get Kane to tow us to the anchorage. His little boat could barely move us and we landed up in a tangle of ropes and chaos for a while. Rowan finally got one engine working and we limped into the anchorage, we dropped anchor as soon as we could but landed quite close to a French man who was very unhappy about us. We managed to move again and finally settled far from anyone. All this in the most glorious setting sun. Thank goodness we turned back when we did, anchoring in the dark with dodgy engines would have been a nightmare.

Kane roared back to his boat to fetch Quinn and join us for a stiff drink which we all needed. Quinn was overjoyed to be back on PolePole, the only bit of happiness this afternoon! We will have to get the Yanmar (engine) dealers over from Papeete, Rowan has dealt with them before and was totally unimpressed by them which does not bode well. Luckily the Australian dealer who helped us when we had problems leaving Papeete, was answering all Rowan’s calls and is being extremely helpful. He was so chuffed with the case of wine that Rowan sent him from NakedWines Australia that he is very keen to help, it was a very smart move of Rowan’s!

Looks like we might be back here in Moorea for a while.