Tiputa, French Polynesia - Monday, May 21, 2018
22 May 2018 | Pacific Ocean on route to French Polynesia
Helen/Mark
After dinner, we watched the movie, The Hunt for Red October, which was Mark's choice. I was so tired and falling asleep. But I got my second wind and enjoyed the whole movie. Mark got tired and wanted to stop before the movie was over. We both watched it thru the end. Then headed to bed and it was only around 9 pm. The sun sets at 6 pm and within a half hour, it's pitch dark. We looked around at the 20 boats in our anchorage and they were all in darkness. Not sure if people were tired but not many made it to 10 pm. Woke up thru the night with cramps in my legs and feet. I thought I drank a lot of water thru the day. I usually mix some coconut water in my glass. I put on some arnica and had some coconut water and they went away. We were up around 6 am. Had breakfast and got things ready for our check in process. Mark printed off several copies of our Crew List. We took the dinghy over to the island on the other side of the entrance channel. They had a pier with some tie ups. I tried to throw our line around it but kept missing. Some kind gentleman came over and got it. Then offered a hand for me to climb onto the pier. How nice was that! He did not speak English but told Mark he needed to tie up on the other side of a small tour boat. Mark also put out the dinghy anchor as the waves were bashing into the shore. He finally got the anchor to hold in some rocks close to shore. As we walked up we could hear a crowd of people cheering loudly. Apparently, we didn't know that today was a French holiday. They were playing volleyball in the arena. It looked like several places were setting up for some celebrations, maybe to do with the holiday. Not many people spoke English, but we were directed to the police station. This was not the correct place as we need the Gardome office, but we gathered it was a holiday and no one was working. No one told us it was a holiday. We knew it was a holiday in Canada. The lady gave us instructions to get to the customs' building by walking around this island, but it turned out we had to go to another island. We did the walk which was a couple of miles in length, walking past the entrance channel and then around on the ocean side. The waves were very large and crashing into the shoreline. I was sweating from the heat. There was a breeze which was our saving grace. After 20 days on the boat with little walking, this was huge. We noticed a couple of stores and some houses but not a lot more. We walked long enough to come back to the same town center. We picked up a couple of things at one of the small grocery stores and headed back to the dinghy. Mark deposited a bag of trash that we brought over with us. Then we headed back to the boat. We stopped and spoke with a couple of the cruising boats. Mostly everyone checked in at another island. We did find out that they had some internet at a local cafe. So, we headed there for lunch. I put together a nice email with several pictures, only to find that it would not send my email. The internet is barely 2g here, so I should not have included more than a picture. I got my emails and checked some news. We were able to make a few phone calls using Whatsapp. Lunch took forever which gave us time on the internet. I agree there were lots of people at the cafe, mostly from the cruising boats. It was expensive too!! We went back to the boat and got into our swimsuits and took our snorkels as we were told there were mooring balls set up by the tiny island in the channel. Sure enough we tied up and got into the water. It was the most amazing place to snorkel. A huge number of fish of all sizes and colors adorned the very clear water. Mark took pictures with our underwater camera. I noticed one nurse shark swimming away and could not find him again to show Mark. We swam back to the dinghy and managed to get out of the water. Mark made up a rope ladder to help me get into the dinghy, but it needed to be rigid...still it helped elevate me enough for Mark to pull me into the dinghy. On the way back to the boat we picked up Mark's rigging tool and headed over to the other Fountaine Pajot Athena (same model as ours) sailboat in the anchorage. Mark tested his and ours. We had a lovely visit with Robert and guests, Eva and her husband, Don. This boat was 4 years newer than ours, but looked identical. They even had the same layout as ours. Headed back to the boat and showered. Then sat out on the front deck to dry. I'm not sure why I'm so tired. Maybe it's the heat. Ready to have a bite to eat and then we will be retiring early.