It is pouring
with rain, sheeting down out of a dark grey sky with visibility no further than
the breakwater end. The rain comes
in waves, or pulses as I think the weather men on the telly have taken to
calling them. It could be
Falmouth or Fowey in
August. We are supposed to be going
in to see the gendarme to check into French
Polynesia but it means a row to the steps
which are awash with the swell and a walk of an undulating mile. He closes at 1100. I think I will write a blog and try the
gendarme tomorrow.
We arrived here
at 1700 on Bastille Day after twenty-one days at sea. No record but a satisfactory passage
free from serious incidents or malfunctions. We are now nine and a half hours behind
UTC.
When we finally
left Santa
Cruz at 1600 on the Saturday we
were hot and tired. There had been
so much to see ashore and to do on the boat that it had taken us a day longer to
tidy up and get ready for sea than we had anticipated. Our two Australian mates had left two
days earlier. As soon as it got
dark one of the g.p.s units failed and shortly afterwards, for the first time
ever, the electronic chart plotting software locked up completely and failed to
deliver even after repeated re-bootings.
I managed to fix the g.p.s (a poor connection) but we were loath to play
with the computer while tired and in the dark so we got out the back-up paper
chart and felt our way cautiously out of the islands with their strong
currents. In the morning Mags,
feeling braver, re-installed the programme and after that we had few
problems.
We did suffer
from chafe which we had been looking for on every long passage but had, so far,
largely avoided. The temporary
lashing holding the mains’l clew down to the boom wore through. One genoa sheet gave way having parted
at the knot attaching it to the sail.
The preventer, holding the boom out and preventing an involuntary gybe,
began to wear. On carrying out a
controlled gybe the stainless steel shackle connecting the mainsheet to the
traveller burst apart. These were
relatively minor incidents although, what with one d--- thing leading to
another, it took us over an hour to sort out the mainsheet at 0100 on a
pitch-black night. Our very worst
moment however came when we ran out of pre-paid minutes for the sat-phone on a
Friday evening. How were we to pay
for more minutes if we could not contact our supplier? We found we could made a free-phone call
to the air-time wholesaler who obligingly e-mailed the retailer who called us on
Sunday afternoon and by Monday morning we were back in business and ready to
receive your very welcome e-mails again.
The best feature
of the trip was the twice daily “sked” on the HF radio. By the time we joined in there were
three boats, our two Aussie friends on Y-Not and Orpailleur and Cameron, another
Aussie on Timella the 1970s bilge-keeler referred to in a previous blog. We rapidly overhauled Timella, gradually
caught Y-Not and kept station about three hundred miles astern of
Orpailleur. The result was we had
good contact all the way across and with the help of a little programme we were
able to plot the positions of our friends twice a day with all the distances
covered and directions sailed. It
was a comforting safety feature and a bit of fun which helped pass the
time. Timella left a day before us
and after a fortnight was over a thousand miles astern, struggling with very
light winds. They are planning to
sail direct to Fiji and we
have the greatest admiration for their patience and fortitude.
We were invited
to a get together last night on a luxurious 47ft catamaran, French built and
sailed by three American men. We
are 10 boats in the anchorage and all were invited. Among the twenty-five guests were some
interesting people. ….A young
Israeli single hander on a Halburg-Rassy 42 (very similar to JJ Moon) told me he
was on his second time round. I
raised my eyebrows. “The previous
time was non-stop via the capes (Good
Hope, the Horn etc) from Plymouth to Plymouth in 207 days”. I asked whether he was the first Israeli
to do this and whether he was famous at home. He said he thought he was the first but
had not publicised the voyage; he had done it for his own satisfaction. South–west of the Scillies he was
“buzzed” by an RAF Nimrod who called him up on VHF. Who was he? Where was he going? He replied that he was the S/Y Girafa
205 days out of Plymouth, sailing round the World non-stop, bound for
Plymouth. The airmen were very nice
to him! ….A small boat anchored
just astern of us is sailed solo by a young Norwegian anthropologist. He has given up the academic world to
live the simple and spiritual life at sea.
He left Norway in
2003 and goes home every now and again to earn a little money but now he does
this by teaching sailing or carrying out yacht deliveries. He thinks of himself as a tradesman and
prefers to earn money by practising those skills. His boat is twenty years old of a
sophisticated design but organised very simply with the minimum of things to go
wrong. ….A young French couple
(very attractive people!) sold a small Contest and built a large catamaran with
the proceeds. Naturally, it is very
basic and they live on a shoestring.
With no fridge they catch as much fresh food as they can by spear fishing
with a snorkel. They are anchored
outside the breakwater because they have only one engine and are not very
manœuvrable in confined waters. Headed for
New
Zealand where they hope
to find work they need to learn English first and are spending some time each
day on academic study. We get the impression that it is all quite hard
going. The variety of people and
their boats is most stimulating.
As for Hiva-Oa,
THIS IS IT. This is the real McCoy;
a genuine south-sea island with thick green vegetation of widely varied tone and
texture from the tops of the craggy volcanic hills, often cloud covered, down to
the high water line. It does not
matter a bit that the mobile phones work here, that the people drive plenty of
cars and the food in the restaurants is just like it is in “real” France. This is what we came for and there is a
great feeling of satisfaction and pleasure at being
here.
