We were hesitant to go to Bora Bora, considered the pearl of the South Pacific, with all the water bungalows at the lagoon, and therefore more touristy. But the thought to see manta rays was irresistible. Seeing these gentle huge rays, with wingspans over 12 ft (they can go up to 21 feet) and large forward-facing filter-feeding mouths was well worth it! Also snorkeling with eagle rays the next day was not to be missed. Combine that with the joyful company of our new Dutch friends Bertus and Jacqueline aboard s/v Queen Bee, who joined us snorkeling with reef sharks and manta rays, and happy hours! Glad we visited the endless lagoon of Bora Bora, and even got to fly the spinnaker to get there.
Our last week for me and Tessa, and we are back on the quiet island of Huahine. The water is gorgeous here too, and we for sure will enjoy our last days here.
After about a month of hassles, I feel like we are finally almost back to normal cruising mode here on Bliss! We are back on the boat in French Polynesia, after almost two years.
Today was a pretty good, normal day. In the morning, we took the dinghy about a half-mile to go snorkeling (and it started easily and ran almost without problem); before lunch, I installed our wind generator (and as a result, our batteries are less low than they were last night at this time); in the afternoon, we had kids from two other boats playing here in Tessa's room, in the cockpit, and in the water jumping on and off paddleboards. All in all, a pleasant day.
Of course, we still haven't left Tahiti. In fact, we've come only about two miles from the marina where we were for two weeks while working on prepping the boat, provisioning, etc. But we needed to get out of the marina to get back into cruising mode, to test out some of the critical systems (anchoring stuff, water maker, solar/wind power, batteries). And out in the anchorage, the breeze is nicer, and you can swim right off the boat, and (happily) we found three kids boats all anchored close together! (The other kid boats we are with are Slingshot from Canada, Bella Donna from England, and Due South from New Zealand; Tessa has now adopted an unusual British-Kiwi accent!)
All this has been a long time coming. I (Tod) arrived at the boat on 9 June. After getting her back in the water and some very basic prep, I brought her 100 miles upwind (a rather annoying motoring trip, pounding into waves with winds gusting to 30 overnight, waves breaking over the cockpit, etc.) to a marina in Tahiti, were Jolanda and Tessa joined on 19 June. It has been almost non-stop work mode since then. Two years of storage in the tropics is hard on a boat, and there have been dozens of things that have needed (or still need) to be fixed.
Just as an example, the outboard motor for our dinghy has been quite a headache. On the first day I tried to use it, when I was anchored far from town, the outboard died as soon as I let go of Bliss and simply would not restart. With the 15 knots of wind blowing that day, I started drifting quickly away from Bliss, through the anchorage. I got out the emergency oars and made it over to another anchored but unoccupied boat, about 500 feet downwind of Bliss. A friend, George from Silver Heels, came over in his kayak to see how he could help; I told him I would try to get the engine going, but that in any event I would be able to row back to Bliss if necessary. After many fruitless minutes of pulling on that stupid cord, I resigned myself to rowing back upwind to Bliss. About a minute into the rowing trip, one of the oar locks broke off! One oar does not do much good in a dinghy, and again I started drifting quickly! I used that oar like a canoe paddle, paddling like crazy just to be able to get back to the stern of that same boat that I had just cast off from. Again my friend George came over, and with both he and I both paddling hard, he was able to tow me back to Bliss.
After that, the saga of the outboard has been long and eventful. I won't bore you with all the details. But just to give a feeling: I've cleaned the carburetor probably six times; replaced a fuel filter; replaced a bad fuel hose connector (which took visits to five shops to find - necessary only because I brought the wrong replacement connector with me from US); replaced spark plugs (Jolanda visited at least six shops to find) -- and each trip takes hours of bus and walking around to the various shops. To top it off, when I thought I had solved the problems, Tessa and I took the dinghy out for a spin. When I was satisfied that the engine was working well even at high speed, I turned to come back to the marina. At that moment, the engine slipped off of its mounting position on the back of the dinghy and was twisting sideways, starting to fall into the water! My only hand on the thing at that point was on the twist-throttle, which caused it to throttle up to max speed and twist even further off its mount! Tessa was screaming, and I was frantically trying to find some handhold on the thing, with it still revving wildly, with the propeller coming out of the water and the upper case slipping away from me! Finally, just as the thing jumped completely off the mounting bracket and started to submerge, it stopped -- probably because water had gotten sucked into the air intake. As it was starting to sink, I found a handhold and was able to pull it back aboard! We rowed back to the marina -- Tessa was still freaked out, and I was a bit crestfallen.
Anyway, it's all better now. Yesterday morning, Tessa and I took the dinghy from our anchorage location about 2 or 3 miles to Papeete (the main city of Tahiti) to get another replacement part. (This time it was the bow roller wheel...I never imagined having to replace that. It's always something.)
Yesterday afternoon, however, I could foresee the return to normal cruising mode. Tessa was happily playing in the water with kids at another boat, and they were all cheering on one of the kids' brothers as he came past kitesurfing in the strong afternoon winds, doing a 20-foot jump into the air just past the stern of the boat. Tessa is happy, the boat is almost back to normal operating mode, and we can envision all the nice days to come. Hopefully soon I will be out there kitesurfing also (but probably not doing 20-foot jumps!). I felt like I couldn't complain too much!
Board games!
Tessa at Surf Camp
Hanging Out
the old bow roller wheel.. no bueno! That white thing is not supposed to be two parts...rubbing on that exposed steel pin ate up our snubber line twice!
This years's adventure for the Bliss crew is reaching it's final stage. Thinking about the whole trip, we can divide it up in 4 parts: 2 months of prep for the ocean crossing in Mexico; almost one month underway to reach French Polynesia; 3 months of living, boat schooling and maintaining/fixing the boat in these amazing islands; and finally prepping the boat again for long term storage. Bliss will go out of the water in less than two weeks in Raiatea, and will be stored on land. After all these years, Tod has become an expert in putting Bliss to bed. The female crew will stay in a house close by until we all fly to Tahiti at the end of the month, and catch two flights back home the next day. Amazing to think that it will "only" take 18 hours of travel time to get back versus the 24 days it took us to get to the Marquesas!
No doubt Tod will be happy to end the "cruising is working on your boat in exotic locations" part of this adventure, and go back to the ease of land/home living. But I'm sure we will also miss the beauty of these islands, the friendly people, and the joy that jumping off our floating home brings to see amazing sea life. As I'm writing this, we are anchored all by ourselves in just a spat of shallow water in the midst of deeper water, with spectacular views of the volcano mountains of Raiatea on one side, and an enormous infiniti pool on the other side. We are in kayak distance of the largest marae, ancient Polynesian temples.
We got to this anchor spot by eyeball navigation, searching this part of the lagoon for patches of lighter blue, but not too light of a blue, indicating too shallow water. You need clear overhead sun to do that, and fortunately we had that today. We had been holed up for a week with a bad weather storm, the only bonus was that Tod discovered some sources of our leaks, and fixed them. With the winter in full swing here, we have noticed the cooler temperature at night, no more just a sheet for sleeping, and the water temp has dropped a few degrees from 85 to 81.
Most of the boats we have met this season are leaving French Polynesia now and heading west to sail another 4000 miles to spend cyclone season, starting in November, in New Zealand or Australia. It will be fun to follow along our cruising friends, and getting some ideas of what we plan to do during the summer months of 2020, when we plan to make more westing as well.
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At 2019-July-15 06:40 UTC the position of Bliss was 16°38.27'S 151°25.78'W, on the east side of the island Tahaa, in the Society island group of French Polynesia
