I have to apologize again a bit. I wrote most of this blog the day after we arrived in Papeete, Tahiti, but never posted it. Then, two weeks later, I updated it, but still never posted it. Now I am finally posting it, but if some of the wording seems weird and/or disjointed, it’s because of the roundabout way it was done.
Columbine arrived in Papeete (pronounced pop-ee-ay’-tay) Tahiti on Wednesday, July 27, after a wonderful two-day passage from Fakarava. The winds were perfect and we had that better line that we were hoping for when we sailed back to Fakarava instead of going direct from Tahanea. Here is a view of Tahiti Nui from several miles out.
The final few hours of the passage we were dogged and threatened by several squalls, but fortunately none hit us. Here is what one looked like from the boat.
Anyway, we anchored in front of the Tahiti Yacht Club about 2:30 pm and dropped in the dinghy and went ashore. We walked in to Papeete, a few miles away, just to see what was around. We found a big city with lots of noise, graffiti, etc. But we also found stores, something we hadn’t seen for months. Thus far in our travels, the only stores we found were tiny grocery stores, smaller than the size of a 7-Eleven in the US, and with less stock. Here we have mega grocery stores, ACE Hardware, real marine stores, etc. I have even been able to get replacement parts for my electric guitar!
Thursday we had to move to another anchorage because we found out that it was forbidden to anchor where we were. So we moved to the main cruisers anchorage south of the airport. There are probably two hundred boats in this anchorage, many that we knew from the Marquises and Tuomotus. There was also a 30+ knot wind blowing while we were anchoring, which made it a real chore in this congested anchorage. But we got settled in and it is quite nice here. We are near Marina Taina, and have use of all their facilities – laundry, water, fuel dock, restaurants, and Wi-Fi. Sounds awesome, but there are some catches. The laundry is too expensive for us to use, so we (spelled Cynthia) still do it by hand on the boat. But laundry water is easily obtained right at the dinghy dock, making that chore much easier. The restaurants are also much too expensive for us, and the Wi-Fi is spotty. But it’s really pretty here. Here is a view of the anchorage with the island of Moorea in silhouette.
It’s hard to see in the photo, but there is a fringing reef just outside the faraway boats. The waves crashing on the reef can be quite impressive, huge, curling breakers. One of our neighbors said that when they were going through the pass they looked to the side, and not 50 feet away was a surfer fully enclosed in a curling wave, while their sailboat was in relatively calm water. How cool is that?
We learned one bit of horrible news on our arrival here. Some of our friends, from Seattle, lost their boat on the reefs in the Tuomotus. Navigation issue. This kind of thing really drives home to us to be extra careful, always. We do not want to end up flying back to Seattle with nothing to our name, to have to start all over again. We also learned of a guy who came in as crew on a boat, and decided to go out hiking for a couple days by himself (the mountains here are very inviting). After ten days missing we all assumed the worst, but then he was found, rescued, and has joined another boat.
Marina Taina is too far from town to walk in, but there is good bus service, and a mega grocery store nearby. Several times we have taken the bus in to Papeete to shop. The main market is amazing, like the Pike Place Market in Seattle. Here is a view of some of the vegetable vendors.
They also have large sections of fresh fish and local crafts, mostly seashell- and pearl-based. It’s so nice to have easy access to fresh vegetables again.
Our original plan was to stay here about a week, then move on to Moorea. We only wanted to stay here long enough to buy the things we have been really lacking, like several tools, some replacement lines, etc. We have now been here over two weeks, and are itching to leave. We processed our exit paperwork on 8/8, so we should be good to leave on Wednesday. Tomorrow we will go back to Papeete to do final shopping, then Wednesday morning we will refill our fuel tanks and head out.
Update: I (Glenn) have been really sick for the past week, so we didn’t leave when planned. We now plan to leave tomorrow morning (8/15). We must do our final checkout from French Polynesia on or before 8/23 to avoid trouble, so we are now really limited in where we can go and how long we can stay. We will stay a couple days in Moorea and visit the marine lab there, then head to Bora Bora for a couple days before our final checkout.
From Bora Bora we will go to the Cook Islands briefly, then to the Samoas before heading up to the Marshall Islands for the South Pacific cyclone season. Our current plan is to then return south and spend the entire next season in Fiji and Tonga. Stay tuned.
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