7/15/15 Blog





Interesting news from French Polynesia. Conni was talking to Vairea, the lovely and competent Carenage office manager, who told her that she should check, but that her understanding was that the legal time to stay in French Polynesia has been doubled from 18 months to 36 months. Well, OK! We're staying here another full season at least, or perhaps two. Why leave? We've had such a great time. We can stay for weeks anywhere we we want.

Since we had to leave the rental car inside the closed gate of the Carenage, we had to beg a ride from the manager of the Pension back to the yard, but we dodged the huge raindrops (it has been raining all night) and made it back to the boat. The bilge needed pumping, so I flipped the switch and......nothing. Oh, NO! A working bilge pump is absolutely necessary even when the boat's in a cradle ashore.

At 1400, I finally got a spare bilge pump installed and running, but what an ordeal! I was the perpetrator, as it turned out. I had dropped the oil filter while changing it yesterday since my hands were so oily. I was concerned because I didn't want to put oil into the bilge, so I grabbed at it and inadvertently pulled loose a bilge pump power wire splice. The splice should not have pulled loose, so I found another problem. I'm sure that the old pump probably worked, but it's now a spare and we've got a new one in place. My mistake consumed half our work day.

With the needless repair complete, we cleared the boat of personal gear, got a lot of small but vital tasks completed, and got our wonderful Honda generator prepared for storage.

We've got nothing but outdoors task to complete tomorrow. Conni has to go up the mast to pull the wind instruments and the last cockpit covers must come down. I've got to remove the two solar panels and rig them for use below just to provide a trickle charge to the batteries. We've got to replace all halyards with messenger lines. It's a lot of work and we don't have a full day.

We depart Raiatea for Tahiti in early evening tomorrow.

We're still simply incredulous about the change in French Polynesia's cruisers' law and the changes that it makes to our plans. Wow! Three years of cruising here!