Photo: Leaving Bora Bora...

We departed magical French Polynesia at first light for Hawaii without filling fresh water into our tanks. We couldn't get alongside the Bora Bora yacht club jetty, the only source of clean water on the island. Some guy moored his expensive motor launch for hours on the water point whilst he lunched and drank wine. I saw him, he was suntanned, wore designer sunglasses on his hair, jumper over his shoulders... you know the type. Anyway, whilst he lunched, showing off his expensive boat, no other vessel could moor alongside to take on fresh water. So we left, knowing we could fill our tanks using our onboard watermaker once out at sea... we had around three weeks sailing ahead of us and could rely upon our ability to produce our own fresh water from sea water. We did it all the time.

Fully provisioned and ready, Sänna sailed easily into the Pacific sunset with a sweet wind, leaving the breathtaking lagoon far behind. Once we'd watched the sun set over the western horizon I started the generator to fill our fore and aft tanks with fresh clean water. I turned on the watermaker. Nothing! The pump wouldn't start. Now we had a problem! It was inconceivable to even attempt a three week voyage through the tropics and over the equator to Hawaii without adequate fresh water supplies. We both knew this long voyage was now over before it had even begun. We considered our options; we didn't fancy beating back against the trade winds...

Marie suggested we divert to Uturoa on the island of Raiatea. There was a yacht charter base there and the main town where we could both fill up and buy enough stocks of bottled water to somehow get us through. It was a good plan and we tacked Sänna through the wind heading SSE. We had around fifty miles to make and we'd be through the reef entrance at daybreak. Everything went well...

We moored against the town quay. Uturoa was typically French Colonial and very appealing. Maybe we should stay awhile... but we needed to get this thing sorted. We enquired at the dockside fuelling station. No water there. We went into the local Chinese run store, purchased two 25 litre plastic water containers and fifty litres of bottled water. But we still needed to fill our 350 litre water tanks. Even then we'd have to ration ourselves to a daily amount to get us through...

We walked around to the Tahiti Yacht Charter base to ask if we could moor up to fill our tanks. "Sure, no problem" they said, so we motored around the breakwater and they took our lines. I explained our problem to the French base owner and he offered to get their engineer to look at our pump. Their big guy immediately came onboard in his greasy vest, inspected the watermaker pump and motioned for a screwdriver. He was Polynesian and didn't speak English. I gave him the screwdriver; he made a few turns of the pump shaft and told me to turn everything on. The pump fired up straight away. I calculated the whole thing took less than three minutes. Marie was highly impressed when I told her the Polynesian version of the Incredible Hulk, with my assistance, had fixed our problem...

...we shook hands and I slapped his back with delight. He boomed a great laugh and explained the problem in French. I didn't understand a word, so I followed him to the office. There, he took a pump off the shelf and showed what he'd done. There was a slot on the shaft to turn it. The base manager translated. Our pump was clogged with fine coral that easily passed through the filters and his big engineer had simply freed it. The same thing happened to their watermakers onboard their charter boats all the time. I had learned something new and I was very grateful. I asked how much we owed for the assistance of his well experienced engineer. "Nothing" he said, "Buy us a pack of beers and you can stay overnight if you like."

I realised I was dealing with a bunch of genuine guys who understood we were hardcore sailors too, just like themselves. These French are like that... not like the idiot who'd moored for hours on the yacht club water quay in Bora Bora, showing off his shiny plastic pig.

We accepted the manager's invitation to stay on his mooring overnight. In the evening we watched another sunset whilst drinking good, refreshing Tahiti brewed beer and had a very nice meal in the town. The next morning, we again departed for Hawaii in a brisk, perfect SE breeze, setting a NE course under full sails towards the equator over a thousand miles north of us...

Dave

Note: www.tahitiyachtcharter.com
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