17:30:84S 149.51.05W 11 July 2010
The Adventures of Sunboy the Sailboat
Al Sparkes and Deb Swain
Sun 11 Jul 2010 19:23
We have been over on the island of Moorea since last Tuesday. We ended up having a bit over a week on Tahiti, getting things for the boat sorted, getting a new auto pilot control unit fitted so hopefully we wont have to hand steer all the way home. We rented a car for a day and drove around the island which was a bit disappointing as the Tahitian signage is just non existant to some things we wanted to see, we simply couldnt find them.
We just loved the Carrefors supermarket and the ability to buy some foods that we havent seen for months and whilst a tad expensive, were just fantastic, especially the racks of lamb we splurged out on for one nights dinner. We also found another supermarket which has a really excellent quality brie on special for around $7.00 a kilo so we have added a few packets to our larder for further enjoyment. The girl's birthdays are here pretty soon so we did the usual and gave them their choice of dinner so Layni opted for her old favourite of duck pancakes and Nikki has gone for some nice fillet steak. So we are all looking forward to the girl's birthday dinners of course and all being well, we hope to be in Bora Bora to celebrate those events.
We caught up with some new boats in Tahiti and some old friends as well. We had a couple of nights with Phil and Chrissie from Songline and Ross from French Kiss and the guys from Meander and Fancy Free. Ross has some friends over from Australia, Graeme and Bec, who are having a couple of weeks on the boat while Ross goes back home for a while. It turns out that Graeme and Bec have just moved to Nana Glen (just near Coffs) from Sydney and it also turns out that Graeme is originally from Molong, a town where I was born and just 15 miles from my home town in the central west. Small, small world. These guys are great people and great sailors and we really look forward to catching up with them when we get home. Brad, Kat and Jay from Ghost pulled in from their tripping about the Society Islands and we had a couple of days catching up with them and looking at their rigging problems which are quite significant and discussing their plans to have the whole rig replaced in Papeete.
Papeete is a big and very busy place and there is traffic going at all times of the day and night. The harbour is also busy with ferries to the outer islands coming and going. Because we had not been so close to automotive pollution
we all suffered a bit from sore throats and coughs and colds and I am sure it was brought about by that factor. Now we have been on Moorea for a while, people are getting back to their old healthy way again.
We also found a wine wholesaler in Papeete that sold great French wines without tax to yachties so we stocked up on a couple of very nice cases of Cote de Rhone which was about a third of the price of what it is in the shops here and we hope to enjoy those on the way home. While we were in the shop we saw Matz and El from Go Beyond who we hadn't seen since Panama and like always, it's so good to catch up with people you havent seen for ages and get a chance to talk about how their crossing had been, where they had gone to and what they had been doing.
As I said, we left Papeete last Tuesday, after witnessing a huge outrigger regatta where the harbour was filled with single and multiple outriggers, a bit of eye candy for the girls with all the buff boys pumping away in their boats!!! We came in through the pass in the reef without a bother and into the anchorage and it was just so good to be able to see the bottom and know that you are dropping straight into nice soft sand, a perfect holding arena for our rocnor anchor. We have a bit of exposure to the wind which is just what we need for our wind generator and the water is gin clear with fringing reef on both sides for us to snorkle in as well as a really lovely beach on the shoreline, frequented by lots of locals and a few tourists as well. Each day, dive and tour boats go past us from a nearby flash resort with those little burre's over the water, the boats taking their guests up to a local dive site where stingrays and sharks are attracted in with tempting pieces of tuna and small fish.
We had a night on board with Graeme and Bec from French Kiss who had drinks and dinner with us and I think their is a pretty good chance we will have some good sailing buddies when we get home. Graeme has done the Clipper around the world race, which they one, with Graeme as the navigator/tactician, something that has placed him in very good stead for a lot of other ocean races. He is also bloody handy as far as mechanics are concerned which was very handy the other day when we discovered diesel leaking into the bilge. One of the worst things you can imagine is the whole of your diesel tanks, all 250 litres leaking into the bottom of your boat. Fortunately we discovered it early and identified the problem as the primary fuel filter and thanks to Graeme, we got that fixed, with replacements on order for when we get to Bora Bora.
The anchorage is also near a little shop that sells those beautiful fresh baguettes that we have to get up oh so early for, around 6.00am, but boy are they worth it. They also sell the best chocolate cake I have ever eaten and we treated ourselves to a little slice or two yesterday, absolutely delicious. We were a bit hungry after our morning out to the shark and stingray show which was just incredible. We took the dinghy over through the reef which was a hoot in itself and then parked up with the tourist boats and other cruisers dinghies and jumped into the water. There were heaps of stingrays swimming up to you, looking for tidbits, at one stage, Nikki was leaning over in the water looking at something and one came up and parked itself right over her back!!. Their undersides are just so soft and they are, for all intents and purposes, so friendly. They bring their heads up out of the water, nuzzling your arms and hands, almost pleading to be given those delicious little bits of fresh tuna that they seem to love.
The call came out that the sharks were coming in and we swam out a bit further and had a magical time swimming with these black tip reef sharks. They look so incredible under the water and just so in control of everything around them.
They have no fear whatsoever and swim very close to you as they wait for their turn in the morning events. We were able to get quite a lot of video footage of both the stingrays and sharks and I will try and cut some stills out of them and post them on the blog page.
So this morning we were up early to get our baguettes and get ready to watch the Solar eclipse. We bought our special eclipse viewing sunglasses and from about 7.30am we were able to watch the moon slowly but surely cover up the sun. Simply fantastic is a simple way of describing the spectacle. It wasnt a total eclipse but near enough to it for us. The total eclipse was evidently able to be viewed up near the Tuomotus but we certainly didnt feel like sailing back all that way just to see it but a lot of other boats did just that. One headed out last night into 30 odd knots of wind and quite big seas but ended up turning around and coming back. I think they had two people on board who had never been on a yacht before might have been the persuading factor who were not up to the 60 mile windward flogging.
We have just had a delicious breakfast of french toast made with leftover baguettes (nothing gets wasted on this boat anymore) and we are making ready to head for Bora Bora, some 120 odd miles away. So we will post our positions from there and let you know a bit about that place as well. Roll on Bastille Day!!!