11-18 August – Hello! – We’re on our way to NZ

We are finally back at sea. We had a gruelling 50+ hour journey, leaving Mettingham last Friday with our 9 bags of hold luggage that required an extra large taxi to get us to Heathrow. We had to overnight in Paris, we were mightily relieved that we could check all 9 bags through to Tahiti and we did not have to drag them all to the hotel for the night. We had a great overnight stay at the Citizen M hotel at the airport. I mention this for Phoebs as she knows the guy who started this chain of hotels that is expanding at speed. It is so clever you do everything electronically so there is no reception, which means the cost of a night is very reasonable. The guy is a big art collector which is very evident in the decor of the hotel which really appealed to me. Early start the next morning in pouring rain for our flight to Los Angeles, I must say we are so impressed with Air France, the food was great and a smart new plane. We had a 12 hour layover in LA, which was very tedious. Typically the Americans demand you have to collect your luggage and move it to a different carousel, so we were hugely relieved to see all 9 bags in LA. We finally got into Tahiti Sunday morning, we managed to nonchalantly walk through customs with all our bags, hoping that the smell from my truffled Baron Bigod cheese didn’t catch anyone’s attention. Rowan had managed to book a taxi that we just squeezed into with all our bags. These bags included a Wing Foil, double canoe, stand up paddle board (all inflatable!), a couple of bags of boat spare parts, over 1000 tea bags, new sheets and cushions for the boat etc etc

What a relief to see PolePole waiting for us in the same spot looking good, I counted our bags onto the boat and realised we had left a bag in the luggage hall – our replacement standup paddle board! I had to do a mad dash back to the airport and luckily found it in no time. We couldn’t believe our luck getting so much stuff safely onto PolePole.

The gorgeous view of the island Moorea from the marina

Some of our 9 bags of luggage

Truffled Baron made it all the way safely …… and what a treat, perfectly ripe!

The next few days were getting the boat sorted, and the various repairs done. Monday Rowan hired a big car to pick up our sails that were being repaired, first trip had the two smaller sails and with a bit of help from passers by we got them to the boat. He went back to get the last big main sail and had arranged for a few people to help us with it on Tuesday so he left it in the car inside the car park. We woke up Tuesday to find that it was a holiday and the underground car park was locked! Poor Rowan, that sabotaged a day of getting going, so we extended our stay at the marina until Thursday. We needed an extra day anyway as Rudy the repair guy had struggled with the fix from the boat manufacturer for stopping our diesel tanks leaking. The clamps had to be re drilled, which all took time.

It was fun being back in familiar territory, and meeting new boats in the marina. The interesting one was being invited back on board our old PolePole. The French guy Mark who bought it off us, we saw in June just before leaving the boat, he had an eye problem and had flown into Papeete from the Marquesas island where they had just arrived after crossing the Pacific. We were very impressed that Stephanie his new American wife (second wife) who is not a sailor had stayed on board the boat on her own. Now they were docked in the marina but Mark has returned to France for 6 weeks to move his elderly parents into a care home. Stephanie invited us to drinks, we hardly recognised old PolePole she was so gleamingly clean, it looked like a show house, beautifully curated, very minimalist (not my strength) with not a hint of clutter or mess. What a shock for her the next night when she visited us, with the boat in repair/unpacking chaos. She had a very cute little dog and the two of them seemed very happy to be here for 6 weeks. We went out for supper and found a street food van in a car park that was full of locals and decided to try it. What a discovery – it was a sort of thin crepe wrap with all sorts of interesting contents you could choose from. Only disconcerting thing was seeing rats scurrying around the car park!

Our busy pontoon, with the boats all squeezed in close to each other

The island Moorea always has dramatic clouds hanging over it

Gorgeous evening scene with the dock opposite us all lit up

Wednesday Rowan managed to get the main sail on board with the help of some very fit looking Danish men and our old friend Kane (ex English policeman we met in the Tuamotus) with his lovely old dog Quinn. We did a big grocery shop at the supermarket in the afternoon as it will be our last big supermarket shop before we get to NZ, end of November beginning of December.

Getting the batons into the huge main sail, and patching chafe areas, in the convenient big arena space at the marina

The main sail required 4 hunks to move it!

Early Thursday Rowan managed to rig the main sail back onto the mast. Rudy got the clamps on the fuel tanks and we were ready to go. Rudy lives on a boat, his dinghy is his shed so he visits people by boat. His dinghy was tied to us so he offered to help us off the dock as we were tightly jammed between two boats. I was up front with headphones on, giving Rowan distances to the boat in front, which all got a bit panicky when my measurements started at 2 meters, down to one, half a meter and then down to 10cm, with the bow sprit over the boat in front’s dinghy. The engines were not working properly and they kept losing power, stuck half in and out we were glad to have Rudy still on board, he had cleaned out our fuel tanks and polished the fuel we had in them, he had extracted about a litre of algae. So we wondered if there was debris in the fuel lines. We managed to get off the dock and slowly made our way into some open space. We had to let the port authority know what we were up to as no boats are allowed to loiter as the main airport runway crosses the exit. Rowan managed to get the engines behaving, having revved them both hard hoping to clear the fuel lines. We were heading to the other marina about 8 miles away to fill our fuel tanks. Rudy left us in his dinghy, just before we got to the fuel dock, we had to do a tight turn around to get onto the dock, again I was giving Rowan distances to the wall in front, getting down to less than 10cm and in a real panic, the bloody engines had failed again! Oh my how tense, Rowan just got the engine going as the bow sprit was about 2cm from a metal bridge. After all that mad panic the fuel attendant told us it was lunch time and we are not allowed to stay on the fuel dock. No begging worked, so we had to limp off and try and anchor nearby. This is all inside the reef so not a lot of room for manoeuvre and tricky anchoring. We finally got the anchor down half sticking out into the demarcated passage. After many frustrating calls to local Yanmar engine dealers, he finally got the name of a guy in Australia who is the main dealer there who was incredibly helpful. He spent over an hour reconfiguring the electronics with Rowan, he got rid of the error messages and promised to investigate the problem further. We returned to the fuel dock, a lot less stressful this time with the engines working. It took a while to get nearly 500 litres of fuel on board. It was pushing 4pm and we wanted to get to the next-door island Moorea before sunset, so the race was on. We excited the reef and entered a turbulent sea that was like a washing machine. Thank goodness PolePole handles it so well. I don’t think we have seen such confused seas before, waves were hitting us from about 3 different directions, and the wind was picking up to 30 knots. We were both very calm about it, it was a lot less scary than negotiating docks with no engine power! It also helped that we could see spouts of water from whales, which is always exciting. We have heard there are loads of whales around Moorea, Kane is already at the anchorage, and said loads of people have been swimming with whales here. We were very relieved to get into the calm waters of the anchorage on the inside of the reef before dark at 6pm. What a day – we were both knackered by it!

Happy to be out at sea again

The anchorage at Moorea

Evening sunlight, highlighting the ridge down the mountain

Dramatic skyline and calm waters inside the reef

We had a good night’s sleep with big gusts of wind between lulls, whizzing us around in circles, thankfully well clear of all the other boats. The setting here is spectacular and wonderful to wake up to such a dramatic skyline. The wind picked up in the morning and a few of the boats around us left. The next chore was getting the water maker going, sadly bugs/algae must have got into the filters as the water smelt rotten. Rowan luckily has all the gear and chemicals to sort it out, he had to go through a whole long process cleaning it out but eventually got there. A huge relief as we were right out of water.

Morning sunshine on the skyline and not a cloud to be seen

With big winds hitting 30 knots we stayed put after our exhausting few days. The issue with the engines has reoccured but at least Rowan knows what to do now. Mike the Aussie guy has been incredibly helpful, he knew of NakedWines in Australia, so Rowan is sending him a case of wine to keep him sweet and on tap for more help.