Arrived in Tahiti
10 August 2010 | Off Venus Point, Tahiti
We left Rangiroa 2 days ago and arrived in Tahiti last evening. The trip, while only about 24 hrs, seemed to take more out of us than we had expected. Much of that is probably because in the last several days at Rangiroa our anchorage changed from calm to a mess of wind and surges. Dana vomited at least once and Mark felt a little queasy. This was all from the winds picking up and changing the direction to come a bit more from the south, causing wave action to bypass a point that was giving us some protection.
The last day or so in Rangiroa we didn't do too much other than clean up the Northfork. Mark cleaned the hull in expectation of waxing the boat, which didn't happen because the change in weather. Dana organized our bedroom, which meant that lots of stuff got pulled out and not necessarily all of it was replaced. Mark asked that Dana not improve the organization any further.
We pulled up anchor without any problems and made it out of the pass at Rangiroa. We were low on water, so we fired up the water maker as soon as we got to sea, but there is some kind of problem. When the high pressure pump starts, you can hear the generator struggling to provide the needed power. This is even when nothing else is turned on the generator. The water pump requires alot of power, so normally we only run the small battery charger when the water maker is on. In one of the attempts, the circuit breaker on the generator blew, which suggests the problem is with the water maker. We decided we had enough water, 150l out of 950l total, and we would look into this further in Tahiti.
We realized we might not have time to make the Papeete harbor with daylight. Given that the harbor can be quite busy and we were unfamiliar with it, we decide to anchor off Venus point, which had an easy entrance and was a little closer so we would have more light available. We anchored in 20ft of water and enjoyed watching a bunch of outrigger canoes practicing in the bay while we BBQ'd several more chicken breasts for dinner. Mark was able to find an open wifi connection to the internet and we took an early night to get some rest for the next day.