Cruising!
01 June 2016 | Raiatea Carenage mooring field
Cruiser Bill
Launching Wings is always an anxious affair, and this was no different. In the end, she was lowered into the tiny launch slip with no problems and we had a seaworthy boat again. Hurray!
When we arrived on Monday morning, nothing had been done toward launching, but we spoke to the yard manager, Simon, and he told us that we settled our bill he’d make sure we were out by early afternoon. Simon directed his crew to remove the varnishing scaffolding that surrounded the boat and then he drove the TraveLift around the boat so that the could lift us off the cradle that had held Wings since last year. His crew then was able to paint the patches under the cradle pads and the late launch allowed the paint some time to dry.
We still had the car, so that later launch time allowed us a chance to gather more groceries and a jug of spare diesel before we had the rental manager drive us to the Carenage and leave us.
We did settle our invoice and we did get launched at about 1300 hours. All lf that went very well. Conni and I took about 45 minutes to bleed the entire diesel system and get the engine running. It’s SUCH a big event when that old engine begins to rattle!
After all of our work, the automatic feature on the bilge pump, the third in a row, now, failed. I’m at something of a loss to ascertain why, but it has. Perhaps we’ll find the time to haul the pump again and try to determine the reason.
I had the opportunity to talk to the Carenage owner, Dominique, about the Moitessier boat in the next yard and he gave me this story. His parents build a boat in France in the early 1950s and said it to Tahiti. They met Moitessier and became good friends with him. His father was planning to move on to New Caledonia and build a larger version of his own wood boat, but Bernard Moitesier talked him into building a steel version. Dominique’s dad then flew back to France, bought tons of steel plate and a welder, and returned to Tahiti. (Tahiti in the 1950s must have been something to see!) At any rate, the boat was finished. Years later, Dominique’s family sold the boat that at some point had been purchased and not maintained. On his deathbed, Dominique’s dad asked him to sink the boat rather than allow it to disintegrate in place, which he unhappily did. The old but well maintained steel boat that I’ve photographed so many times is Moitessier’s last boat, still owned by his wife. She appears every few years and sails the boat a few months, then returns to France where she lives and Bernard is buried. Moitessier died of prostate cancer many years ago, now. Moitessier’s most famous boat is Joshua, named after the first person to single-hand around the world, Joshua Slocum. If you haven’t read that momentous book, it’s worth the time: Around Alone by Joshua Slocum.
I drove the boat out of the launch slip and out to a mooring buoy for the night. Ruth, the Australian woman on Blue Heeler, had spoken to us while we were in the midst of being launched and invited us to dinner, which we enthusiastically accepted. They arrived about dark and we rode in their dinghy to Blue Heeler. We had a great time! American sailor and friend, Orlando, a single-hander we met in the yard, had been given a bottle of good tequila and he proceeded to squeeze limes and concoct a nice Margarita wanna-be. The festivities had begun. Everyone aboard the Blue Heeler is vegetarian, so we had a huge and filling meal of interesting vegetable-based rice dishes and some red wine that we contributed and an excellent chocolate cake prepared and brought by a Swiss-French woman, another cruiser. We stayed and talked until midnight before returning to Wings for the night.
We slept late.
We finally got underway about noon or so and had a very leisurely cruise to Taha’a. Conni has been looking forward to exploring this island for three years and one thing or the other has forced us to miss it. Not this time! We dropped the hook in a large bay on the east side of the island and found a newly placed government mooring ball close to town. We accomplished a few chores and had a good, long sleep.
This morning, it’s blue sky and a good bit of wind: we’re glad that we’re on a mooring.