Acclimatising to the pace of life in Papeete

above: The Quai des Yachts and one of our smaller neighbours

 

Pepeete is a busy French city with a noisy dual carriageway boulevard (quieter at night, thankfully) running close to our pontoon moorings. Shops, cafes, bakeries and a very good supermarket are within walking distance so we've been able to do a bit of a restock and take in the sights. Yesterday (Saturday) was some kind of national holiday so the streets were eerily quiet in the afternoon as all the locals headed out to the beaches and everything shut at midday.

 

Our plan is to spend a couple more days here before heading down the west coast of the island for some quieter anchorages. Stormvogel will be here for a couple of weeks getting various boat jobs done (they will be hauled out for paint repairs and new antifouling next week) so we'll meet up with them in one of the other Society islands.

 

Tidal fact fans will be interested to hear that the society islands are situated on what is called an amphidromic point where the tides are not affected by the moon. Instead there is a solar tide so high water is at midday every day of the year. Something for you to drop into lulls in conversation.

 

Anyway, must get on with a few jobs on the boat today. The trusty sewing machine is coming out for repairs on stitching ravaged by UV on the sprayhood and dodgers; never an idle moment (well, hardly ever) on Maunie.

Tahiti - Land Ho!

 

Stormvogel passes the north coast of Tahiti

 

After the tiny, low-lying atolls of the Tuamotu, Tahiti looks very impressive (it's mountains range up to over 2000m). We closed in at Point Venus (where Captain Cook set up an observatory to study the planet) at about 7.00am and we are now sailing down the north west coast towards the very industrial looking port.

 

It's been an excellent, fast passage and we can almost taste the fresh croissants!

On passage from Fakarava to Tahiti

We left Fakarava at 4.00pm yesterday and have had a good sail through the night, with Stormvogel in close proximity. The long range forecast is still predicting large southerly swells in a day or two so we hope that by setting off in good time we'll avoid them; we should arrive in Pape'ete tomorrow morning.

 

Those of you also following the Stormvogel blog (www.wiedekamm.com), with or without the aid of Google Translate, will know that the 'slight delay' we mentioned in our blog when they left the Kauehi anchorage a couple of days ago was, in fact, a pretty scary episode. Only 10 minutes after we took the photo of Stormvogel motoring off into the dawn there was a frantic VHF call from Peter – they had run hard aground on an uncharted coral reef. Stormvogel is an aluminium boat with a lifting keel (retracted at the time); her hull shape meant she rode up onto the reef but did not come to an abrupt stop as she would have with a fixed keel.

 

We lifted our anchor immediately, conscious that every second counted as the tide was falling, and motored across as quickly as we could. We knew that the only chance of re-floating Stormvogel would be to run a rope from the mast-head and pull her over onto her side to reduce her draught in the water so Peter rowed out to us in his dinghy with a line. After several unsuccessful attempts we were beginning to think that this wasn't going to work but we did one final manoeuver where we set off at full speed at 90 degrees to the stricken boat, the slack rope tightening with a bang and Stormvogel heeling over so far that water flooded onto her side decks (a scary moment for Heidi and down below things were flying across the cabin).  With a sickening noise of rock on metal, she slid free. Peter and Graham immediately jumped in with snorkel gear to check the hull and, thankfully, found only paint damage.

 

Both Peter and Heidi were understandably pretty shocked by the episode but pressed on to Fakarava to meet Ole at the airport. Peter has written a fuller account of the incident on his blog and is being very hard on himself. However the important thing is that no one was hurt and Stormvogel suffered only superficial damage as far as we can tell – she was already booked for a lift-out and new antifouling in Tahiti so will soon be as good as new. We were just glad that were were there and able to help.

 

Among the sharks and whales....

Here are a few more photos of our finned friends:

We seem to have a good weather window for a couple of days before big southerly swells come to the Tuamotus at the end of the week so we plan to leave Fakarava this evening for the two day sail to Tahiti.

More photos - and moving on to Fakarava

We are now anchored off the small village in the NE corner of the huge Fakarava lagoon after a 39 mile motor in no wind. Still, we used the time well - Graham serviced two winches, Dianne made another of her brilliant Nutella cakes and we saw a whale and calf only about 20m from the boat!

Here are a few more photos from the last couple of days:

 One of the many 'come on if you think you're hard enough' land crabs

 The low-hanging fruit (fishing buoys, actually)

 Stormvogel leaves the Kauehi anchorage at first light

 Breakfast with a view aboard Maunie

A 5 knot tide sluices out of the entrance pass at Kauehi

Difficult to find the words to describe this but ........

Yesterday afternoon we left the anchorage next to the village and motored the 7 miles across the glassy Kauehi lagoon to find an anchorage close to the entrance pass at the southern end. Peter & Heidi wanted to do an early start this morning to get across to Fakarava to meet the plane from Tahiti and so this move would make the voyage shorter.

 

Having peered into the gin-clear waters as we anchored in the fading light, the Maunie crew decided we'd have a second night here to do a bit of snorkelling so Stormvogel left us at 07.00, after a slight delay, and we've had an amazing day.

 

Our anchorage is sand with dark blobs of coral heads all around and it's quite disconcerting to walk along the side decks; the clear water makes it feel as though we are suspended in mid-air, 30ft above the ground.

 

Once into the warm, clear water we were mesmerised by the wildlife all around us. The rather menacing-looking Black Tip Sharks that also seem to favour this spot didn't put us off too much, though Graham had a bit of a moment when a 4ft one, complete with Ramora Fish hiding under its belly, came straight towards him (inquisitive rather than aggressive, Graham thinks!) and only turned away about a yard from him!

 

The coral is like a garden here – full of rich colours and home to at least 50 different species of fish. We swam into the shallow water and glided over the coral heads just a few inches below us. The clams have incredible colours in their 'lips' and some of the fish are simply beautiful, though an hour later we were hungry again.

 

We've posted a few small photos here but will add more when we get to Fakarava tomorrow evening. The forecast is for a couple more calm days then a reasonable breeze so we'll aim to set off for Tahiti (a 2-3 day sail) on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Enjoying Kauehi

After a couple of blowy nights, things have settled down here and the wind has dropped too! Graham is back to full fitness and we have both regained our lost sleep. Last night it went so calm in the anchorage that Graham woke up at 03.30 and took the photo of the neighbouring yacht by moonlight.

 

The standard of living in the village here is much poorer than in Takaroa; the solitary shop is sparsely stocked and there isn't a bakery. However a recent addition to the island is an airstrip so a weekly flight from Tahiti is due in this morning and apparently it brings air-freighted baguettes! Yesterday we walked over to the windward reef of the atoll (only about 1000 metres from the lagoon side) to find the surf crashing onto the coral and, unfortunately, lots of plastic waste blown in from who knows where. At the tide line the plastic was ground down to tiny pieces – digestible by fish – so you can see how this stuff is getting into the food chain.

 

The plan of today is to sail (or motor, probably) the seven miles back down the lagoon towards the entrance pass. We'll look for a suitable spot to anchor near it as there is said to be some spectacular snorkelling there. Tomorrow we'll set off early to the neighbouring atoll of Fakarava which is much bigger and boasts hotels, restaurants and dive shops so it will be a useful acclimatisation before we hit the bright lights of Tahiti a few days later. Peter & Heidi's youngest son Ole is flying into Fakarava tomorrow afternoon (via Hamburg, Paris, Los Angeles and Tahiti!) so they are looking forward to having him aboard for the next month or so..

 

Fakarava will also have internet access so we'll post a few more photos and catch up with emails – thanks to Geoff, Amz and Simon for their news over the past couple of days. All news from home is very welcome – not having internet access for a few days means that we have no idea what's happening in the rest of the world. This can have its benefits, of course; the other day we chatted to the oldest resident of Takaroa, who spoke good English having spent some time in Australia, and he said "The good thing is that we don't worry about what's happening in Syria out here!"