16º 22.536s 147º 16.290w
Thu Jul 25 2019
Turned
out last night wasn’t good for Valentine and Gascon to prepare a dinner for
four. That’s all that was left of us in the anchorage after several boats bailed
out, so Isabel whipped up a killer chicken curry (Indian style) and the crew of
SY greyhound, Dietmar and Marie, joined us for dinner. They’re nice folks, both
professors of orthodontics from Hamburg University in West Germany. Braces have
come a long way since I was in high school, thank goodness. If not for those
evil shiny oral appliances, instead of being called names like “metal mouth”
and “lead head” I might have been a great jazz trombonist. Well, probably not,
but YOU try playing a trombone with a bunch of sharp metal chewing up the
insides of your lips. Didn’t work out for me.
We
had a nice snorkel adventure inside the false pass yesterday afternoon,
paddling around in about 3’ of water. Beautiful corals and a great variety of
tropical fish, and darned if we didn’t even find a couple of camouflage
grouper. Big ones, and there I was without my blasted spear gun. Really too
bad, as these were some nice size boys – would have looked great on the grill,
and that particular type of grouper doesn’t carry ciguatera like the spotted
varieties.
I
took a break in departure preparations this morning to go ashore and pay
Valentine and Gascon for our mooring. After 15 years of charging 500 CFP (about
$5 US) they’ve raised the rent to 1000 CFP per night. Well, everybody’s got to
make a living, and they are lovely people. Valentine was in the mood to visit,
so we sat around and jacked our jaws for a bit. Turns out her father spirited
her away to this particular atoll as a very small child to hide her from her grandfather,
who had kidnapped her at least twice. Her mom stole her back each time. She’s
lived on the atoll pretty much her entire life. Polynesian family dynamics are
even weirder than US or UK families.
Gascon
helped me husk some coconuts that we had collected at the South anchorage of
the atoll some days back, so now we’ve got enough to last for a while. A couple
were cracked and he pronounced they were only fit for feeding the pigs, so I
was happy to donate them to the cause. There’s a good chance we’ll help eat one
of those pigs or their offspring in a few months, so why not? What’s really
nuts to know is that after Valentine and Gascon put on one of their big feeds
for the visiting cruisers, all the leftover fish and lobster get fed to the
pigs. How about that? Their pigs eat lobster, fish, coconut, and various fruit.
I’m thinking we need to buy some bacon from these guys!
Valentine
told me that when her dad brought her to the atoll, he had a little 14’ wooden
skiff with a 1 horsepower outboard. The trip from her family home where grandpa
kept kidnapping her to Anse Amyot was around 35 miles, and the atolls are low
enough so that it might be difficult to see the next one on the horizon when
out of sight of the one you’ve just departed. Her dad brought a pig along as
navigator, and according to Valentine they still practice the same habit, as
pigs can smell land and help the humans navigate. Wow.
The
weather forecast was fairly light for the next 24 hours, 10 – 15 knots on the
port aft quarter and fairly flat seas, so we elected to bolt for Tahiti and
enjoy a mellow sail. The seas have been pretty flat, and the wind has been
pretty steady between 10 and 15 knots back around 130 to 140 degrees on the
port quarter. We put up the main and unfurled the screecher and have been
blasting along at up to 10 knots at times, with the apparent wind around 100
degrees. Currently we seem to be averaging around 7.8 knots speed over ground,
and if that keeps up we’ll drop the anchor shortly after dark tomorrow. It’s a
beautiful clear starry night, and a couple minor shooting stars have already
made an appearance.
We’re
about 140 nautical miles from the destination and the weather couldn’t be more
spectacular. The big city of Papeete with all the people and noise and jet skis
will be a bit of a shock after the remote atolls, but hopefully we’ll get our
projects and repairs knocked out and then retire to a quiet anchorage over at
the neighboring island of Moorea. There’s kite boarding gear to be bought and
played with!
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