After 19 days, we finally got out of Papeete. While it was great being docked in the center of an actual city, be able to stroll to cafes for our morning croissant and espressos, get work done on the boat, etc, we are very happy to have taken a 2 hour motor to the nearby island of Moorea. We're anchored along with a handful of other boats in a quiet inlet with dramatic cliffs on either side. Nice change from Papeete.

Papeete began painfully for us. After entering the harbor, locating the piers for cruisers, and circling for a bit, we executed a proper Mediterranean mooring: dropping our anchor, backing up to the dock, and tying our stern onto it. At that point, we were told we were not supposed to anchor, but rather use mooring lines for our bow that were attached to the dock. The people "helping" us then untied our stern at the same time as the wind picked up to 25kts and started to blow our bow around. With our stern untied, Mark (at the helm) now had trouble controlling the bow with the thruster and before we knew it we were blown alongside the dock and the side of the boat was covered with black marks from the old tires serving as fenders. What a mess. We asked our helpers to leave, then put one of the bow lines in the windlass and brought the bow back into the wind and our stern to face the dock. Later, we got to spend a couple of days cleaning the black marks off the boat and waxing the hull, which it probably needed anyway. Takeaway: be much more firm in dealing with people helping your dock... others should probably be limited to tying lines a couple of cleats.

It took a day to connect to shore power as one of the sockets on our cord had shorted and Mark had to locate a replacement and install it. What a pleasant change to have shore power, especially as our batteries were in a bad state, keeping only 1/6 of the charge they should have been. Our next order of business was getting and electrician to look at these batteries and inspecting our electrical system to see if there were any problem that was causing our premature battery failure issues. Ultimately, we concluded the last set of batteries from Puerto Rico had been lemons and that was why they had failed after only a few months. We got a fresh set of AGM batteries at some expense, which hopefully will last their advertised 3-5 years. The electrician, Patrick, also helped us repair our water maker, which had a blown capacitor on its high-pressure pump and had a high pressure hose with a bad connector. In addition to cleaning and waxing the boat, we also were able to replace the snubbing lines damaged in Manihi, replace the copper keel connector in the bilge (very important to prevent galvanic corrosion on the boat), and the broken topping lift.

Midway in our stay in Papeete, we decided on a last minute trip home for Dana to go to her mom's 50th birthday party and for Mark to attend his annual camping trip with his high school buddies. We had realized at the last moment that these events were the same weekend, there were relatively cheap tickets available, and Papeete was one of the few places we could have left our boat for a few days because it was connected to shore power (so the freezers would not drain the batteries).

During the time in Papeete, we were able to hang out with our friend Chris from Mooneshine and Tim and Rebekah from Kittiwake, as well as meet some new friends such as Korey and Clara on Comfort Zone. With all the work we were getting done, our stay kept extending out one day after another. Finally, we decided we were ready to leave after Mark finished the repairs to the keel connector, we should make an effort to get moving. The last full day in Papeete we spent with Mooneshine and Comfort Zone taking a bus to the other end of Tahiti to see the Billabong surf contest on one of the reefs, apparently quite a major event in the surfing world. It was a 2.5hr bus ride each way and, because of the bus schedules, we only ended up being able to spend 3 hours at the contest. However, it was a great chance to see more of Tahiti, as this was really the first time we had left Papeete during the stay. Our conclusion was our time was better spent on the smaller and more remote islands, and so confirmed our decision to move on the next day.

The crossing to Moorea was uneventful. We motored the entire way as we were a little short on time and, at any rate, the winds were light and shifting all the time, probably an effect from being between the two islands. It feels good to be on our way again.