Sailing out of the north pass of Apataki was interesting: the swirling currents and our unreliable motor had our hearts in our mouths. In a large atoll the waves push water over the reef and then it streams out the reef passes. It was a cloudy day and the winds were light. It had taken a bit to get the motor going and we asked Tyrene to hang around in case we needed a tow. Once we were safely through we could turn south and head for Tahiti.
A couple of hours later a squall came through and we reefed down. Tyrene made better time and was soon well ahead of us, and later that day was out of sight. We sailed past the last islands and then we were alone again in the empty ocean. There was a comfort to it as we settled into our usual routine. I set the boat up and got the self steering working while Alison finished cleaning up below and made lunch. Then Alison slept in the afternoon while I plotted our course through the islands and pulled down the weather. We were sailing in the lee of the Tuamotu chain so the waves were low for the first couple of days, with a good breeze and decent weather. We trailed a lure and on the second day caught a nice young mahi-mahi. It put up a hell of a fight and it took me almost an hour to pull it in. It was just the right size for dinner that night with some left over for breakfast the next morning. I killed and gutted it over the side while Alison washed the boat down with buckets of seawater with a dash of bleach, which eliminates the fishy smell. Then I stood there as she washed me down too.
We ate an early dinner in the cockpit as the sun started to set. Food always tastes better on a yacht than it does on land and things you wouldn’t look at in a supermarket at home, such as Spam or Tang, become staples on a boat. They taste pretty good when you are anchored behind the reef in a tropical atoll. So if Spam tastes good imagine how good a freshly caught tuna or mahi-mahi tastes, with a bit of lemon and some black pepper.
The passage was a dream trip on the whole, and on the morning of the fourth day we could see the mountainous island of Tahiti-Nui on the horizon. The wind was down to almost nothing so we started the engine with the now familiar method of spraying WD-40 into the engine’s air intake. I was too scared to turn it off again and we motored all the way in through the reef pass outside Papeete, then around inside the fringing reef. As we motored past the entrance to the harbour we could smell the copra on the docks and hear the traffic noise and horns of a major city. It was an amazing contrast from the quiet of the Tuamotus and Marquesas, and I felt a mix of regret and excitement at being in a city again.
We passed the airport and entered the anchorage near Taapuna pass. Tyrene had made it and we could see Dennis and Corene in their cockpit. Paul jumped in his dinghy and came over for that first beer after a passage. We anchored on a sand flat in about twenty feet of water among hundreds of yachts. It was nearing Bastille Day and boats from all over the Pacific were there. Golden Sovereign, Déjà vu, Hueglig, and Alice were all there too, having travelled via the more usual route of Rangiroa atoll.
The days that followed fell into a pattern. Paul would come around in the morning and we would go surfing, then after lunch we would go into town to shop or find boat parts, and most nights we met on one of the boats for drinks. The surf was fearsome. The Taapuna break is challenging and as the nearest winter break to town it was also crowded. Swells came in from the Southern Ocean and were suddenly thrown up by the reef that rose quickly from hundreds of feet deep to about two feet of water. The result was a hollow tube breaking over sharp coral. Every morning we would go out and Alison would get the betadine and bandages out. I still have scars on my back from that reef. Paul is a very experienced surfer who surfs every day and when the swell was up he would catch eight or ten tubes each session. I would be happy to make a wave without being thrown onto the reef. It was quickly becoming obvious that my old, dinged board and body were too slow for the wave, and I stopped going out when the tide was too low.
The reef was about a half mile offshore and we would give the locals lifts in and out. This was a good idea as in return they would give us waves and give us local knowledge. The leader of the crew was a fearsome guy with tatts all over him, and after we got to know him and showed respect to the locals we never got into trouble. Towards the end he was practically pushing me into the right waves.
We were anchored off the local yacht club, and there was a big ‘supermarche’ nearby. After trying to provision in local stores in the islands for months we were dumfounded to wander the air-conditioned aisles and fill cart after cart with groceries and fresh vegetables. The French eat well. We soon figured out how the beer bottle return system worked and became fond Hinano, the local brew.
It was also time to catch up with emails, and to try to find some new batteries to replace the ones I borrowed from Russ. It was easy to find them, they just cost US$400 each. This was to replace a battery worth $85. Finally after much exploration I found one 6V locally built battery for $240. I quickly bought it and installed it, and gave Russ his. I wished I had bought more in Panama. It was great to stock up on essentials like zip ties, silver tape and electrical fittings. We spent hours trying to find a base fitting for our sink.
Over the last month electrolysis had set in, and eaten away the base of our sink, which is too deep and sits below the water line when the boat is full. I had repaired it with the essential material every boat should have – a bicycle inner-tube. It took my hours and most of the skin off my fingers, but I managed to stretch a 1 1/2 inch tube over a 3 1/2 inch fitting and clamp it at both ends with hose clamps. Effective, but not permanent. We finally found a sink manufacturer who sold what we needed. It was not easy in our broken French.
We were anchored just inside the reef, and between us and the shore there was a deep channel that ran close to the shore. Each day teams of locals would paddle their racing canoes in training for the upcoming races. Both men and women wore flowers behind their ears. The Tahitian girls were gorgeous. One night we went to the local 5 star hotel to watch the dancing show, and after watching the furious rate they could gyrate their hips at I was more enamoured than ever. We kept going back.
Paul and I decided to take a land trip to visit some of the guys off Pau Hana down at Teahupo, a fearsome surf break towards the south of the island. We hitched down, catching rides first with a girl in a little car then jumping in the back of a surfer’s ute, who took us the rest of the way. The other guy who jumped in was a mad French guy who had broken all his boards out there and said he was using a windsurfer board because it was tougher. We spent the night in ‘Mama’s’ house for $15 and the next day Paul surfed the break at 4-6ft. He said it was very shallow but he got barrel after barrel. I stayed ashore, not being confident enough to go take on ‘The Heaviest Wave in the World’.
After a while we moved over to Moorea, a few miles to the west of Tahiti. Another gorgeous island. We anchored in a bay that was counted among the most beautiful in the world.
Here the fast dinghy really came into its own as we blasted along inside the sheltering reef to go to dinner or into town. It was also fun to hitch, trying to talk to the locals in our broken French. One afternoon we came back to find True Blue had dragged. We re-anchored and tested it well in reverse but it was disconcerting because despite our heavy anchor she had gone a long way. That evening Denis dropped two dozen precious beers over the side of his boat and I scuba dived to retrieve them for him. Looking at the bottom I could see why we had dragged; the bottom was deep silt from the river at the head of the bay. Each beer had made its own little tunnel and it took most of the length of my arm to reach the harder mud. Our anchor had just sat on the top without gripping. We moved to a spot where the current scoured the bottom and the holding was good.
For the next month or so we moved between the Society Islands from Moorea to Bora Bora, surfing and relaxing. We sailed first to Huahine, a little island surrounded by a fringing reef with a small village next to the reef channel. This was my favourite island in the Societies, with good surf and a pretty, unspoilt landscape. Pau Hana and Tyrene were there and we surfed each morning on the excellent breaks near the town. There was a lefthander near where we anchored that was mellower and a barrel machine right a half mile to the south. The locals were very aggressive there and we only surfed that one when they all went in. We met the guys on shore and they confirmed that was what they expected. The year before one Hawaiian guy had his finger bitten off for pointing at a local. While we were there another guy came back to his tent to find his passport and air ticket sitting on his pillow after he took too many waves. It was an amazing wave though. I got a great barrel there before being hit by the lip and losing about twelve square inches of skin off my back.
From there we went to Raiatea and Tahaa for a few days before moving on to Bora Bora.
Bora Bora was beautiful, but much more impacted by tourism. Everywhere you looked there were resorts. We spent a week or so touring inside the lagoon and snorkelling the reefs before anchoring off the Boar Bora yacht club. Our three month visas were going to expire soon and it was time to move on. I spent a morning cleaning the bottom, and we said goodbye to Tyrene and then went into town to check out. Our motor was getting harder and harder to start each time and we decided to sail through the Cook Islands to Tonga to get it repaired, so we were parting company for a while from everyone. It was Al and I on our own again.