Tahiti - We're Here!

Well our first glimpse of the island of Tahiti was through dark cloud and pouring rain and the conditions didn't improve as we began our entrance to the Papeete harbour on our way to the Marina Taina. It was definitely warm enough as wearing a rain coat against the rain was more uncomfortable than being soaked by the rain. I think we are going to throw all of our travel guide books overboard as they all portray boating in these exotic areas as dangerous, unsophisticated, uncivilized and just generally difficult. To which we say, the authors must never have boated in the Canadian Pacific. On the other hand, all of their warnings have left us with the feeling of "Well that wasn't so bad." once we have gone through what they have described as an insurmountable object. This all relates to the entering of Papeete Pass and the joining channel in the lagoon that leads you past the airport and on to Marina Taina. You call the Port Captain on approach, then you call him again when you are 5 min. from the near end of the runway and then again when you are 5 min from the far end of the runway, so he can check with air control to assure that there are no planes taking off or landing, all very good English and very fast response. The channel is very well marked. Our mooreage in the marina is a "Med tie" on the outside wall and even though this is our first official crack at docking this way (other than our fueling experience) Glen and the Mystery Ship handled the challenge like pros. On the other hand, I ran back and forth like a chicken (afraid I'd get electrocuted if I wore the head set radios) from the anchoring at the bow to Glen at the controls in the stern. Lots of help (un-necessary) was on hand. Med mooring involves backing the rear of the boat up to a solid dock using the anchor to hold the front in place then tieing off the rear corners to the dock and securing the front with lines that the marina helpers bring up from underwater mooring blocks. But, since we aren't accustomed to this type of docking, we aren't prepared for the fact that the dock is 10 feet away and 5 feet higher than the swim grid on the boat, now there is a problem of how to get on and off the boat. The marina staff solved this by bringing us a lovely 2 by 12 plank, it looks so elegant stretching between our boat and the dock! Next issue is how to plug our North American boat into European electricity. Again the on site electrician got that all rigged up for us, it isn't perfect, but we can at least run the boat and some air con. It was such a pleasant surprise to have a shinny new flopper plate waiting for us, Justin at P.A.E. was true to his word. Thank you.

Having stuff shipped can be a comedy of errors when dealing with these out of the way places. It's too bad that Russell had to leave early as he would have found this place to his liking, lots of new people, three restaurant/bars at the head of the dock and total civilization mere walking distance from there. The day after our arrival, the "Dream Catcher" an 80+ foot Swan sail boat moored up beside us. We have been meeting up with the crew of this boat in all the places we have been since the Marquises and now we finally got to meet the owners, Barbara and Karsten. As with many of the sail boat people we have been meeting along our way, they were very interested in touring our Nordhavn, which suits us fine as we love trading google sessions so that we can see their boats. Even though their Swan was magnificent, a fine and powerful example of exotic sail boats, we have decided that we will remain power boaters (they don't have a wine chiller on their boat!). For our three days in Papeete, the weather was sunny, then overcast and rainy and back again and since we have been out for so long, there was a bunch of little items that needed to be fixed up/cleaned up, so we took this opportunity to get all of the maintenance stuff done and out of the way for when we return (we have flown home now until June 15). One of these "to do things" was wash the boat - we sure are missing the energetic and inexpensive Mexican boat washers - sucks to have to wash your own boat, but 5 hours later the boat is sparkling and we are rewarding ourselves for a job well done. So really we don't have much of a take on Tahiti just yet, the Polynesian people are very friendly and we are withholding our judgement on the French inhabitants for the time being. When we get back in June, we will explore the Society Islands in greater detail. We have a ton of pictures from Mexico to here, and I won't bore you with a family slide show, but hopefully you will enjoy the few that I have selected. The pics with the numbers and computer screen are our equator crossing evidence. I'll be back in June.