Well we worked the deal with our new friend Ryan who sold us a gently used 12-meter Airush Union kite and bar/string set with a new leading-edge bladder that still needed installation. Our other new friend Yannick who installed the new bladder and tested the kite for integrity. Yannick is the Airush dealer for French Polynesia, a fun part time gig he has along with his full-time job as a marine biologist. Yannick came from France about 30 years ago to study the reef life and coral health, met a beautiful local woman, made a couple of babies and the rest is history. They’re both passionate kiters on the weekends and I was lucky enough to coerce Yannick into installing the bladder, a slightly technical and complicated task, especially for a newbie like me. He met up with me Monday morning to deliver the kite and we had a chance to talk about the health of the coral in French Polynesia. Yannick has seen a remarkable degradation in the coral life over his 30-year career here, obviously the product of global warming. We can argue about whether it’s a natural global cycle or man-made, but it’s definitely happening. We’ve seen a lot of bleached and dead coral since arriving and are always delighted when we find coral that’s live and healthy. Unfortunately, we’re almost surprised when we find lots of healthy coral. Glad we don’t have grandchildren, because they’ll have to look at pictures of live coral or see it at a coral zoo.
The weather forecast promised a nice overnight passage to Huahine, our leeward Society island objective about 90 miles away. We departed the anchorage about 1300 even though that was a bit early – apparently we’d both had enough jet ski and tour boat traffic to last a lifetime. Soon we were tooling along nicely with full main and jib, looking at the miles melt away and thinking “we don’t really want to arrive at the pass before dawn”. Before supper we put a reef in the main to try and slow down a bit, as JollyDogs was galloping like a racehorse for the finish line, and we were looking for something more like a cow heading to the milking barn. We were on a beam reach with 12- 14 knots of wind, and the trouble with a Seawind 1160 is it’s a serious sailboat, not a condomaran, and she wanted to go!
Isabel crashed after supper and by 2300 I noted that we’d likely arrive well before sunup, so put another reef in the main sail, Jamie Gifford style. No reason to come head to wind with all that flapping and drama – just drop the main halyard about 20 centimeters, haul in on the reef line, and repeat until the sail is down where I want it. Once all looks good, clip on to the jack lines and get on the cabin top to clean up the sail that’s spilled out of the lazy jacks and bag, then we’re off to the races.
I woke Isabel up around midnight and she stood watch until it was just cracking dawn and then fetched me to the helm. We had arrived at the pass around 0430 and she’d hove to for a bit, working to avoid another boat “SV Lef” that was doing exactly the same thing. I stumbled up into the cockpit and she handed me a steaming cup of joe and we motored in towards the pass, finding an opportunity to drop the main as we motored in.
The pass was a cinch, and soon we were touring the anchorages near the village of Fare, not finding any available internet hotspots so we continued on down to the South end of the channel, about 1 ½ hour’s journey. There we found our close friends Chris and David on SV Taipan, who pointed out a fine mooring that we could take. Well heck, we’ll just keep the anchor dry and warm and tie up to that sucker. David launched the dinghy and helped Isabel nab the mooring line, and soon I had set up a bridle system using our long dock lines and chafe protection.
After shifting into housekeeping mode, we launched our own dinghy and joined David and Chris for a pancake breakfast, yakking about this and that until mid-day, then returning to JollyDogs for a nap.
Let the games begin!
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