Tahiti & Moorea - stingray feeding
Moxie - Beck Family Adventure
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
Wed 9 Jul 2014 20:56
08 July 2014
We spent a week in Tahiti, maintenance and provisioning topped the list so a week of spending and greasy fingers. All good now and we are sporting a brand new outboard, a second hand SSB radio (need an aerial now though) and some diving gear for Denise.
Loads of kid boats that we met in the Marquesas turned up and generally it was quite a social week for all. No good swimming though so we were pleased to leave and went on to Moorea. Unfortunately we missed half of the puddlejump rally festivities in Moorea as we didn't quite get back from Papeete having wasted time scrounging dinghy fuel. All the petrol stations in reach of the dock were closed and we had not enough for the return trip of around 6 miles. A friendly local had some dregs in the bottom of a can and gave us about a litre, mercifully we made it to within 200 metres of the boat when it ran out (a close shave indeed). Anyway by then it was 3pm so we stayed overnight, sailed over and caught the tail end of festivities in Moorea the next day.
We spend 3 days in Moorea, the highlight was hand feeding stingrays. The rays mooch around in waist deep water and are so used to being fed that they swim right up to you nuzzling for food, very pushy. Nose to tail the biggest would have been seven feet. Stingrays feel like eels, very soft and slippery, we fed them with tinned sardines which they hoover out of your hand. Also swimming around the anchorage and in through the swimmers were several black tip reef sharks, we did not hand feed those guys.
We are currently on our way to Huahine, 80 miles north west of Moorea.
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
SV Moxie
http://blog.mailasail.com/moxie