First Week in Tahiti!

 

A view from Pahto looking at the marina office/restaurant and the hillside of Punaauia.

 

Hello and Merry Christmas from Tahiti!  We’ve been stationed in Punaauia (the actual town that Marina Taina is in) for a little over a week now and yep, still loving it!  Our days basically consist of waking up with the sun, usually around 6:30am (don’t ask me how this happens.  It must be like some island time or my body just knows it doesn’t have to go to work so waking up early is okay, because normally I’m sleeping until the last minute and that is never 6:30.)  We do some reading or guitar playing, then eventually make our way to shore to get some stores for the day and ice cream and possibly, okay probably beer, then head back to the boat where we go swimming or snorkeling or do some boat work.  It is a pretty strenuous situation really.  Very stressful!  We have gone into Papeete a few times.  It is about a 15 minute bus ride that picks us up right outside of the marine and drops us off right in downtown on the waterfront.  I don’t know if it is like this year round because it is Christmas right now, but there are lots of street venders selling goods plus the big market that sells the daily produce and fish.  We like to check that out every time that we head to town.  Kevin especially likes to take a look at the fish.  It is a little difficult to get to good places to go hiking or sight seeing without either hiring a guide or renting a car so we haven’t been able to do much of that.  Which is a bummer because we both love to hike and I know the island is beautiful.  Kevin’s dad, Dave, is coming on the 27th for 2 weeks so we plan on renting a car when he is here and doing a little more of the sight seeing then.

To update our boat situation.  We are batting about 500 with regards to the repairs that needed to be fixed.  Good news is we finally have some power.  We were able to fix the solar panels.  Kevin took the electrical boxed apart and two of the three had water in them and corrosion.  After we got them dried out and new connections/fuses in place we can finally do things like turn on the lights at night without having to run the motor or worry about draining the batteries.  We, and by we I of course mean Kevin because I have no idea about these sorts of things, are pretty sure we got the tiller/rudder problem figured out.  We can now successfully go in reverse without having to throw up sails or break out the oars!  And our final and arguably, depending on who you ask, most exciting news is that Kevin fixed his bear clippers!!  We thought that we had the single sideband working and tuning property but a few days later it was giving us fits again, so not sure about that, and our wind generator still isn’t working.  We know what part of the problem is, but the other part is hiding within the casing and we haven’t been able to get that open yet. 

A few Pictures from our passage from Napier to Tahiti.

Pahto crew right before setting sail.
Looking back at Napier as we sail into the sunset, or as the case may be the afternoon sun!
Pete, a friend we met at the Napier sailing club, sailed out of the harbor with us for the first few hours!
Another shot of Pete and his boat.
Cape Kidnappers, the last piece of land we would see until we reached the South Pacific.
The first fish, an albacore tuna, we caught on our passage.  Perfect size for a small crew and a boat with no refrigeration. 
Shower Day!
Kevin enjoying his shower!! 
Kevin enjoying one of the few nice days we had at sea.
Our friend, Wild Captain Ron, who spent a few days with us resting his feathers.
One of the few days we were able to actually do some cooking.  Pretty sure this was pancake day!
a beautiful sunset at sea just a few hundred miles south of Tahiti.
A storm system off the starboard provided us with a really gorgeous rainbow. 

Bonjour from Tahiti!

Bonjour from Tahiti!  So we got a little off course from our original plans of heading to Chile, but here we are!  And personally I’m enjoying every minute of the sunshine and crystal clear warm water!  We arrived on Sunday just after dark, spent that whole night pulling watches until daylight so we could motor into the lagoon.  We dropped anchor in front of Marina Taina around 6:30am, met with the agent who is helping us check in and out of the country and were eating ice cream by 11am!  The first time in many years I was thankful and excited for a McDonalds, yummm  McFlurry! Marine Taina is about 7 miles down the coast from the city of Papeete.  The marina conveniently boasts TWO bars (well restaurants really, but all we noticed was the tap behind the bar) which we made good use of,  and laundry services (equally as important!) It is also within walking distance of the Mcdonalds and grocery stores.  Since all of French Polynesia speaks well, French I have gotten to put my extremely rusty French speaking skills to the test.  Really not working out as well as I would like, but much better than expected. We plan on taking the next few days to get the boat sorted out and cleaned from our passage before we really start exploring the island.  The only real damper on spending so much time in the tropics is no amount of sunscreen can save me from the sunburn I’m currently sporting.  Kevin tans, I turn red, okay REALLY red.

Although not everything that could have gone wrong on our passage did, but it sure felt like it.  Note: Mom if you are reading this you might want to scroll through this paragraph. 

Passage notes: I will start with the reason we aborted our mission to Chile. After leaving New Zealand, we had great sailing for 2 days I think, then we got gales, one direction then a 12 hour break, and then from another direction. After about 10 days of this a significant amount of free-play began to develop between the rudder and tiller. About all we could really do was monitor the situation, which after every gale was a little bit worse.  Knowing the long passage to Chile would be gales as often as not, and because the situation was deteriorating during every gale we decided it would be best to search out lighter air, and a port where we can make any repairs that may be necessary.  That is the big issue, we are currently working on that problem and hoping it doesn’t cost too much! Now the rest of the casualty list: solar panels, wind generator, freshwater pump, single sideband radio,  even my hair clippers quit! The fridge quit, oh wait, we didn’t have one of those when we left new Zealand, damn. While drifting around waiting for daylight and contemplating the list of things that broke in a few short weeks I was thankful to be somewhere that would have all the items necessary to make repairs, and was happy to know that nothing more should break in the mile between the pass and where we anchored. That is until we dropped the anchor, shift into reverse, pay out rode…oh wait, reverse? What happened, we’re not going backwards, Shit. Launch dinghy, tow boat backwards to set anchor, done. Our electrical problems were all caused by corrosion, which has to happen eventually on a small boat, it just happened all at once to us, but everything can be fixed. We will be working on those items, and enjoying Tahiti since we are here. We will not be sailing for Chile this season, by the time we make all our repairs, we will be too late in the season to actually get to Chile and have any time to cruise. The good news is that I don’t think it is going anywhere, so we will be able to sail there another time.

It might sound like the passage from hell, and in some regards it was, but overall we had a good time. We had a few days of nice weather that we could enjoy being outside, and were going in the right direction. We even caught a few fish, on all 4 days I was able to even attempt fishing! The first one was a nice Albacore. We had been becalmed overnight, and in the morning there was a school of baitfish under the boat, which soon became a school of albacore. Next fish was a nice mahimahi that hit late in the evening, and while it was fun to catch, and it was a beautiful fish we couldn’t be bothered to clean a fish in the dark, and try and preserve it somehow. We prefer to keep only meal sized fish! The third and last fish was also a mahimahi, but this one was really big, and we quick-released him to save having a monster fish thrashing around the cockpit. So given the conditions we had we were happy to catch a few fish, which was more than we expected. The new wind vane performed as well as we had hoped for, but as the free-play problem increased the wind vane performance decreased, but there wasn’t anything we could do about that. We saw and heard no other traffic during our passage, but we passed the island of Rurutu in the Austral group, and while we didn’t get too close we did enjoy the view of a beautiful tropical island for the day.  Another couple of thousand miles have now passed under our keel, and we are happy to have arrived safely somewhere!(Tahiti isn’t the worst place in the world to be stuck in)

The most amazing thing happened during Tom and Liz's trip to California!

On a clear day, you can see.....

amazing things!

Big Day for the Staffords!

This is Liz- reporting in for Kevin and Katie...
Today, December 4, was a huge day on board the Pahto.  First of all, the winds finally died down.  Second, they dined on chicken (OK, it was out of a can) and  corn and peas (OK they had to be rehydrated) for dinner.  And, finally, and best of all- they both TOOK SHOWERS!!!!  Life doesn't get much better than that- at least from their current perspective out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean!
The past 3-4 days have slowed their forward progress quite a bit.  The winds were generally coming out of the east- not at all what they needed or wanted.  All they could do was to lower the sails and put out the sea anchor- and ride it out.  But at least they were able to catch up on some sleep!
Getting those calls when the weather is rough is not easy.  We are just so thankful for the SAT phone- so that we can talk to them even in those "not great" sailing times.  They still are happy to be out there- even when the weather and sailing gets challenging.  And knowing that Kevin is so solid in his sailing knowledge and skills and confidence helps a lot!
Catch you at the next latitude and longitude.