There are lots of things one can’t buy out here, and after being away from the USA for nearly 1 ½ years there are things one begins to need, or want. We both grew up in the land of plenty and have lived where things were ridiculously plentiful for most all our lives. We could pop down to the local supermarket and pickup fresh lettuce, a cabbage, select from a variety of potatoes, even some toilet tissue. Not so out here. Where there are communities of any size, say 100 or more, there are small shops – the kind you stand at a counter and look at the stuff on the shelves then ask the attendant for this or that. It’s kind of an adventure finding out whether they’ve got anything you need. At bigger places like Hao or Fakarava there are multiple shops where you can actually browse the aisles and merchandise.
There are no chandleries out here, and in terms of boat parts, if you didn’t bring it, good luck sourcing it in Tahiti then paying for air freight or waiting for 3 weeks for the next ship to come. Most of the atolls get a ship visit occasionally and a few have airports. Such things as a spare engine starter, spare watermaker parts, plenty of engine and transmission oil, a spare halyard or sheet – all that stuff needs to be aboard along with enough tools to get the job done. Many parts will have to come from outside the country, so there will be big costs and delays.
Groceries are a challenge unless you like eating out of cans. We like fresh food and feel it’s important for our physical health. It certainly is important for our emotional and psychological wellbeing. When we were trapped at Raroia last year for 2 ½ months during the coronavirus lockdown, we couldn’t even find a fresh cabbage to buy. Here at Gambier we did manage to get fresh cabbage, potatoes, onions, garlic and carrots after the ship came in, but nobody has lettuce of any sort, and we’ve not found anyone locally that gardens and sells their excess. It’s amazing how our craving for a green salad can get the best of us. Back in my Air Force days I underwent SERE training – that’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. The 3-week course included a few days of being chased around the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, simulating downed flight crew being hunted by hostile forces. My group of 3 guys shared what meager rations we had as we navigated the terrain between our simulated parachute landing point and the border to safe territory. I lost a lot of weight during those days, and I dreamed of pizza. Not girls, pizza. For an 18-year old that’s just nuts. Now I’m older and long for salad.
Using a freight consolidator is the best way to get stuff from the USA or Europe. Open an account, have everything shipped to their address, and they put a pallet of stuff on a ship and eventually it arrives in Tahiti where a local agent (Gondrand in our case) shepherds the goods through the customs process and then forwards it out to wherever you are by ship. Included in the shipment is a bill of lading declaring exactly what each item is for, whether it’s boat part related or not, and the purchase price. French Polynesia doesn’t assess import duties on boat parts for a yacht in transit, but all else gets whacked at various rates. It’s important that everything in the shipment match the bill of lading. We ordered a spare engine starter, and somehow the vendor shipped an alternator instead. Worth more than a starter but useless to us. When an item in the shipment doesn’t match what’s on the bill of lading, the entire shipment can get held up and if not properly resolved everything can end up in suspense forever. This almost happened to us in Mexico when some tiny watermaker parts didn’t match the list, and naturally this occurred as we were staring at our waning weather window to depart Puerto Vallarta for French Polynesia. Fortunately this time the customs officials let it slide and the shipment came through. That was a close call.
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