Well we enjoyed a few days in the “airport anchorage” and moved up to Marina Papeete last Friday early in the morning while all was calm. We don’t get to practice docking very often, maybe 3 times a year, so it’s best not to perform envelope expansion if we can help it. Gel coat repairs aren’t cheap. Anyway, access to lots of fresh water and a hardworking Tahitian fellow named Jean Claude have allowed us to clean our girl up! Jean Claude has been polishing gel coat and stainless steel and waxing like a mad man the past few days, all the while listening to his tunes and smiling. It’s nice to be around happy people. Meanwhile we’ve been doing all sorts of other “boat jobs” so when we finally get out of here, we can relax a bit.
Oddly enough the master toilet started leaking just after we got here. Lucky for me plumbing and electrical stuff is now second nature, and even more lucky it was on the freshwater side – the solenoid valve that flushes the silly thing. Didn’t even need any new parts, just a teeny little piece of debris.
We’ve had a FedEx box of bits and pieces stuck in customs for quite a while now – after much haranguing I think I’ve broken the code and hopefully one more hike down to their office will satisfy the folks and bust that box out of jail. We want our stuff!
Isabel picked up her Carte de Sejour right after we docked last Friday – thank you BREXIT – now she has to get a long stay visa just like me. I got my second measles vaccine Monday afternoon so if Samoa opens up next year (doubtful) we’ll be able to visit. Heaps of children died of measles there a couple years ago so unless you can prove they’ve had the vaccine recently or antibodies from a childhood vaccine, don’t bother showing up as you’re not welcome.
I took my 50 cubic foot SCUBA tank to Sub Technology for a VIP test – required once a year. Unfortunately it’s a year out of date as I didn’t remember the inspection last year, and by French regulation it cannot be returned to service without also getting a hydro pressure test. Light an extra $50 on fire. Silly rule.
While we were down at the airport anchorage we dinghied in every day and visited the big Carrefour, spending well over $1000 provisioning for the next few months. We got our VINI hotspot sorted out so we can pay online rather than cash at the post office, and we picked up our UPS box at the Tahiti Crew office. We discovered our Polish pals Andrew and Lucas on SV Sancta Anna tucked in there at Marina Taina, so one afternoon we packed up a bunch of yummy stuff and had a late afternoon picnic on their boat. Good fun. I also spent a bit of time and money in Marcel’s chandlery at Marina Taina buying “boat stuff” and of course now need to go back to get what I either forgot or didn’t know I needed yet. That stupid FedEx box will end up at Tahiti Crew’s office someday, so 1 more trip will hopefully cover all the bases.
The autopilot misbehaved badly on the overnight passage from Huahine to Tahiti, disengaging multiple times, a couple of times without any audible alarm. Troubleshooting started with removing, cleaning and reinstalling multiple connection points then letting the autopilot run while on the mooring in the marina. I thought I had cracked the nut but nope, still malfunctioning. An email to B and G tech support yielded the typical “it’s not the software, likely the wind sensor excuse. Wind sensor my ass. I’ll still go up the mast and inspect that connection point when we’re in a flat calm anchorage, but meantime I rolled the software back to the previous version and for the past couple of days the autopilot has run 24/7 with no disengagements. In my previous life combat helicopter software testing was a big part of life, and if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and poops like a duck it might just be a duck.
B and G tech support will be hearing from me again rather soon. Time for them to do some pushups for a change.
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