Exploring Moorea and meeting Pixel

We are really enjoying our mini-break in Moorea; the anchorage has remained calm and we've had time to explore, both along the coast and up into the mountains, and to meet some new people.

Not all of the exploration has been entirely successful, mind you. We went by dinghy along the coast (but remaining inside the reef) on Sunday morning to see if the Bastille Day Tahitian Events advertised at the Hilton Resort lived up to their advertising. They didn't -  the staff clearly hadn't been briefed that the event was open to non-inmates so we got a rather icy reception at the beach-side cafe and a security guide ostentatiously followed us as we left the dinghies on the beach and told us we'd have to move them (all beaches in Moorea are public so he had no legal right to ask us to do so). We voted with out outboard motors and left but got soaked as we headed back into a choppy inter-reef channel so all in all it wasn't a great success. Anyway if you're thinking of booking a holiday at the Hilton Moorea Resort, don't.

Stormvogel headed back to Paeete on Monday morning for the last chapter in their SSB radio installation so we had a day aboard doing boat jobs and collecting water from a tap near the landing stage. We'd chatted to the crews of two neighbouring boats, Portal and Alliance, so invited them aboard for 'Sundowner' drinks. At our request, Charlie and Lilly   on Portal brought along Pixel, their 14-month old cat (a gorgeous Maine Coon cross) who enjoyed exploring Maunie. 

They have been sailing with Duncan and Jess on Alliance for a few weeks and have had their share of adventures - they are mad keen cyclists who between them have more of less cycled around the globe so they manage to somehow cram two full-size bikes onto their 30ft boat. Duncan and Jess come from Devon and Cornwall but bought their 40ft boat in the States. We had a very enjoyable evening and Pixel took some persuading to return to her own vessel.

Talk of cycling made us decide to hire bikes to explore the island this morning. The heavy Korean-built mountain bikes promised an interesting experience:

Certainly after 30 miles of wishing we'd brought our padded cycling shorts, Graham was certainly experiencing a surrealistic feeling but couldn't detect any tidal current effects.

We toiled up into the hills to get to the Belvedere viewpoint which looks over our bay, only to find that you need to be there before 10.00am to get decent photos of the view before the sun moves round to shine into the lens . Still there were great walking trails in the forest and some ancient monuments and settlements that were the subject of a big archaeological expedition in the 1960's.

We returned via Opinohu Bay, just to the north of Cook's Bay, and saw the megayacht 'A' anchored there - this is the one with, according to Wikipedia, a $20 million annual running cost budget so it was good see they were economising for a few nights of free anchorage.

Before dropping our bikes off, we treated ourselves at the famous* Allo Pizzeria (*made famous on the excellent Soggy Paws website - Soggy Paws is a circumnavigating yacht whose crew have pulled together a brilliant compendium of information for other boats to refer to). And like all the other recommendations on that site, ranging from anchorages through eateries to walks and views, we certainly weren't disappointed.

We'll stay here another day or two and so are beginning to focus on the long-term weather forecasts - a big low pressure is heading our way in about 6 days' time so we need to ensure that we're in a safe anchorage when it comes through.

Cook's Bay, Moorea

As we left the southern pass of Tahiti the surfers, paddleboarders and kayakers were poised at the edge of the reef, waiting for the perfect wave. It's slightly disconcerting to be navigating a yacht within meters of huge surf but we managed fine.

We had a rather rolly motor across towards Moorea until we cleared the substantial wind shadow cast by Tahiti and then we had a brilliant Force 5-6 downwind sail around the north coast of Moorea. This island also has a low coral reef protecting it so we found the well-marked pass and headed in to Cook's Bay, a deep, well-sheltered inlet that is said to have been one of Captain Cook's favourite anchorages. It's certainly beautiful and we had a grandstand view of the canoe racing yesterday.

 

  
The island has a population of 16,000 and no real towns, just small villages. Its proximity to Tahiti and its natural beauty make it a tourist haven and so there are plenty of hotels and resorts along the coast. Today (Bastille Day) we're heading round to one of them to see the celebrations.

Catching up with friends

Last night was a very sociable one as we met up with lots of newly-arrived boats, many of whom we'd only previously met via radio. We went to the 3 Brasseurs micro-brewery where we had the table-top nine pint dispenser of the Blonde lager which was excellent. The Stormmvogel crew were very happy to have completed a long list of jobs (see their blog for details) and the boat is looking very shiny with new antifouling paint and a polish to her topsides.

 

After a busy few days we have also ticked off lots of maintenance jobs so we feel that we've completed a 10,000 mile service and given Maunie a good clean and polish too (the proximity to those superyachts rubbed off so Graham was to be seen polishing stainless steel and fibreglass like the pros). Christian the Fridge Man has performed some magic so we have two working fridges once again, hurrah. However, it hasn't all gone to plan – our watermaker has been stripped down by Gilles the Watermaker Man who has been advised by the manufacturer in Italy that they will send out some parts made of a different material. This suggests that that we are not alone in experiencing problems in warmer waters and this suspicion has been reinforced when we met Matt and Charlotte on Gallinago yesterday (we first met them in St Lucia) and they have exactly the same problem on the same model.

 

So we'll leave Tahiti today without the watermaker, which Gilles will rebuild, once the parts arrive in a week or so; he'll then send it by internal flight up to Bora Bora. This means that in the meantime we'll have to be more careful with our water usage and collect fresh water in jerry cans wherever we can. Luckily the last time we had the sewing machine out we made a rain-water catcher so if the wall to wall sunshine breaks we'll be ready to direct rain straight into the tank.

 

Next stop is the neighbouring island of Moorea – only 20 miles or so – where we'll anchor in Cook's Bay (one of Captain Cook's favourite anchorages, apparently). A few other boats are heading there so the social life should be good and there is said to be good walking ashore so we're looking forward to the exercise.

 

 

 

 

Counting the Satellites

After a few days at anchor we've gone all posh and moved into the Marina Taina with some very large neighbours opposite; more on them later. Actually we've been pleasantly surprised at the cost of a berth here (about two-thirds that of a typical British marina) and we have the benefit of our own tropical fish aquarium just off our stern.  The side of the concrete dock is being colonised by coral and is teaming with little brightly-coloured fish.

Maunie to the left, superyachts to the right

The reason for moving from our free anchorage is that we have made contact with Christian the Fridge Man who tells us he'll be here at 8.30 in the morning to look at our poorly aft fridge. This isn't the one that Patrice the Fridge Man (no relation) upgraded to water cooling back in Martinique; that's still doing fine. So we hope we'll get the aft fridge fixed and the watermaker will also be handed over to Gilles the Watermaker Man tomorrow for a service.
Whilst we are here we are within easy walking distance of Carrefour and, of course, have the usual marina luxuries of electricity, water and a good set of loos and showers ashore. 

Our dock is also the temporary home to about ten superyachts, both sail and power, and there are more up in the town quay (see Stormvogel's blog for his photos). 

We can confidently predict that the charges the boats opposite us are facing wouldn't be described as 'pleasantly surprising' but, then, normal values don't apply to these awful things. Don't get me wrong, some of them (the sailing ones at least) are stunningly beautiful boats, but they are such in-your-face demonstrations of "I've got so much money I don't care" (particularly as less than a mile from here there's a shanty town where families are sleeping in shacks) that it makes you want to shout rude words at them.

This would be pointless of course, as the targets of our ire - the billionaire owners - aren't here.  Instead the large and well-paid crews go through the daily routines of polishing the bits that they polished the day before, checking the systems and recoiling the beautifully coiled ropes before they knock off at five and head to the bar. They look bored out of their minds (and stop for very frequent fag breaks) and much just ache to take a boat like Erica XII (yep, the owner want us to know he's already had eleven of theses toys) out for a blast under full sail.

Erica XII

There's clearly a sort of arms race going on with owners wanting something bigger than the opposition but we've also noticed that there's some kind of one-upmanship going on with the number of satellite domes that each boat carries. Now on Maunie we are very delighted with our little satellite dome which unfailingly locks on to the nearest Inmarsat satellite and allows us to send emails and voice calls from the middle of nowhere (and, most importantly, receive vital weather forecasts and safety bulletins), even when the boat is pitching and rolling like a demented thing. 

Maunie's satdome (and onions)

It also will provide (slow) broadband internet but at a price - we're on the 'economy' tariff (about £65 per month) which allows us no more than 5 Mb of data transfer each month and we work very hard to stay within this limit; this is why our email automatically strips out any incoming attachments such as photos and we access these when we have shore-based wifi. So one dome does all this and why, you might wonder, would you need any more? 

Okay, of you're a Russian billionaire you might need to be able to stay in touch with your dubious empire for the one or two weeks a year you actually spend on the superyacht so perhaps a second dome as a back-up might seem a worthwhile investment. And if you must access satellite TV in places more beautiful than any TV shot can convey, maybe you need one of the bigger TV domes as well. But honestly, some of these shiny toys have more domes and antennas than NASA:

 3 domes and 2 radars and to hell with the weight and windage aloft

4 domes, 2 radars and all sorts of little pointy bits

We think that some are just empty dummies rather than working units. We have certainly heard of some superyachts having beautifully painted and polished but engineless old helicopters strapped to their decks for show so it's entirely possible that the displays of arrogance and wealth opposite us have a few extra bits of IT bling fixed to their masts just to make things look a bit more symmetrical. Then again, with the budgets these boats have, why not just spend the extra £100k and have a real one, just in case? Bah! We need to get back into the islands and villages as soon as possible; in the meantime must get one of these signs for Maunie:

Boat maintenance in extoic places

The proximity to expensive marine engineers and chandlers seems to have had an effect on Maunie as bits that have been very reliable so far have just started to go wrong. However the good news is that we managed a full fix on the generator's oil (and water, it turned out) leak without calling in the expensive local engineers.

It transpired that the vibrations of the engine (sewing-machine smoothness isn't an attribute of the Faryman one-cylinder diesel motor) had caused a couple of bolts in the oil sump to work loose. Getting at them involved levering the engine out of the bottom section of its soundproof box - Dianne inserting a hammer handle at the required moment -  which also allowed us to clean all the dirty oil up. A messy job, but we also discovered a minor water leak and we're glad to report it's all running fine now - a satisfying fix.

Next jobs before we leave are a full service of the watermaker which still trips out occasionally - there is a Schenker service agent here so we have taken the unit out and he'll do it, hopefully under warranty, on Tuesday - and, we hope, a fix for our aft fridge which has suddenly decided it's bored with cooling things down. We're trying to find an engineer for this as it's  beyond our capabilities.

So we'll be in Tahiti longer than planned but it's not a bad spot

From Force 1 to Force 9 and back again

We are regularly reminded that 'normal' weather conditions (from a European perspective) don't apply out here in the Pacific. Our experience of torrential rain and flash floods in Hiva Oa was one example but today we've experienced a frankly rather scary, prolonged wind event which transformed last evening's tranquil anchorage into a white-frothed maelstrom. (Random fact No 27, incidentally, is that Graham once sailed through Maelstrom in the Lofoten Islands of Norway - it has an impressive tidal whirlpool and gives its name to sea conditions you'd rather not experience).

So this morning, after a leisurely breakfast and a Skype call to Di's sister, we inflated the dinghy and were about to go ashore to the supermarket. However an intense black cloud to windward made us wait, thankfully, and ten minutes later the wind had increased to over 30 knots (Force 8) and all the boats were straining at their anchors or mooring buoys. It's a pretty unpleasant situation in a crowded anchorage as you worry about (a) whether your anchor will hold and (b)  whether the anchors of the boats to windward of you will hold. 

Unfortunately such was the speed of the transition from calm to (unforecasted) gale that several boats had their crews already ashore and two empty yachts either side of us dragged their anchors and slid past us. The VHF radio was suddenly alive with warnings and three people climbed aboard Annaconda and managed to let out more anchor chain to stop her moving further whilst Sierra Echo stopped of her own volition when her anchor snagged something on the seabed. Another yacht about a mile away was less fortunate when she broke free of her mooring and ended up on the rocks and a couple of other boats saw their furled headsails break free to be whipped into shreds by the wind.

As the gale increased (we saw a gust of 42 knots on Maunie) the swell outside the reef began to break heavily on it and inside the reef the wind-driven waves grew to nearly one metre in height, making life aboard very uncomfortable.

Finally, after about 7 hours of this misery, the wind began to drop and the local canoe teams came out for heavy weather practice (we did say they take their sport seriously!). Now, as dusk falls, the wind has dropped to less than 3 knots and once again the anchorage is calm. 
So it's been a bit of a day for us but at least Maunie has remained firmly anchored and we are undamaged. We've felt very trapped aboard but have been reasonably productive; Dianne has been adding information on treating bites and stings from 'sea critters' to our medical files and Graham managed a few maintenance jobs and, unfortunately, discovered an oil leak on the generator which will probably need professional help if we can track down a local engineer and spares... Never a dull moment on Maunie!
   

Tahitian sunset

This afternoon we left the city-centre moorings in Papeete and motored about 3 miles down the coast (remaining inside the protective coral reef) to a much more peaceful anchorage. After a brief but heavy rain shower we were treated to a wonderful sunset, with a couple of racing outrigger-canoes charging past us (they take the sport very seriously here).

From here we have a clear view of the mountainous profile of Moorea, Tahiti's much smaller sister island. We're planning to visit there on Friday for a few days. Meanwhile we'll launch the dinghy in the morning and land at the marina as there is a large Carrefour just around the corner; it'll probably be the biggest shop this side of Fiji so we'll do a stock up for the coming months.