Wed, July 30
Sean left by himself to try to find a place to repair our alternator that fried against our engine block. He had to go by himself because I was determined to finish writing my blog and get it posted. After running around for four hours, Sean finally found a guy that would at least look at the alternator to see if it is worth repairing. It's our largest alternator (150 amps), so we hope it will be repairable. The girls got some school work done and we cleaned the boat a bit. I made a double batch of brownies to take to Astra for dinner. Sally served us a wonderful lasagna, salad, and garlic bread. We even got to see George's stitches in his elbow. He'd fallen down on a hike to a waterfall the day before.

Thu, July 31
Lost day. No one can recall what we did this day. Sorry...

Fri, August 1
Sean and I took Le Truck to pick up the alternator. He couldn't remember how to get to the place, but knew we had to get off the Le Truck at the new soccer field. The driver let us off while he was stopped at a red light and on the inside lane of a 3-lane road. I nearly got hit by a car, but we managed to make it to the side of the road. We had to ask directions twice, but finally managed to find the alternator repair guy. He'd crudely-fixed the alternator by welding the broken bar and hooked it up to a test machine to show us that it worked. We paid 3000cfp. With the alternator in his backpack, Sean and I walked the rest of the way (about a mile) to Papeete, where we were going to go to Air Tahiti Nui to cancel our tickets we'd purchased as a bond for entering French Polynesia and then buy some black pearls from the same lady I'd bought Casey's and Tara's from. As we walked, I looked in a few shops for good-priced pearls, but didn't find any and the lady we'd bought some from before didn't have any good ones left. We walked to the Air Tahiti Nui office and pulled a ticket from the dispenser by the door. There were at least 20 numbers ahead of us and only one lady working. We left and went to lunch and then to the chandlery to buy some screws. They didn't have metric screws and directed us to another shop down the street that had a large screw on their sign. The screw shop also didn't have metric screw, so they drew a map for us to a place that did. When they found out that we were walking, they insisted on driving us to the other shop, which turned out to be about 5 miles away. The driver waited for us to make our purchase and then drove us back to his shop. The people here are really nice. We got back to Adventure at 4:30pm and the girls were ready to get off the boat. We went to meet our friends at happy hour and then went to McDonalds for dinner.

Sat, August 2
Sean kicked us off the boat so he could install the repaired alternator. We went to the large couches at the outdoor Dinghy Bar, ordered a round of sodas, and settled down to do some school work. At lunch time, we moved into the adjoining restaurant and ordered a cheese pizza. Sally saw us as she was walking by and joined us. We took Tara and the school books back to Adventure and then Casey and I went grocery shopping at Carrefour.

We searched for a birthday gift for Sally and finally settled on a big bunch of flowers, a box of chocolates, and a package of whole vanilla beans (which she'd mentioned she loved to put in warm beverages, but didn't have any). With our cart 3/4 full of groceries, an older man said to me, "I heard you speaking English and am wondering if you know where the cereal is." He was from New York and asked where we were from. We lamented about how the US dollar was loosing value and the high prices in Tahiti. He looked at my cart and said, "You'd better be careful. You probably have $300 worth of groceries in that cart." I could only wish that it would only be $300...I paid $400 for four large bags of groceries.

When we got back to Adventure, Tara was in a panic about what to wear for Sally's birthday party at the posh Pink Coconut restaurant. She was like a chameleon, changing every few minutes into one outfit and then another. She really doesn't have that many clothes, so we were amazed at how many things the managed to pull together. After clothes flying this way and that, she finally settled on the first outfit she'd tried on, a red and white floral dress. Accessories were a whole other deal and various combinations of earrings, necklaces and bracelets were compared and contrasted.

There were about 30 people at the dinner party and the food was excellent. Most everyone ordered the 6000cfp ($80) plate, which came with duck liver pate, beef or fish, dessert, and a glass of champaign. Since we didn't want the pate, champaign, or dessert, we ordered ala cart. Tara and I had a warm goat cheese and walnut salad as a starter (enough to share with several other people) and then crusted fish with veggies and sweet potatoes for our main. Sean and Casey shared a huge prime rib plate. Our main course portions were twice the size as the more expensive complete meals, which was great because we only bought two dinners to share among the four of us. We even had to bring some of the prime rib home in a doggie bag. Our final bill for dinner and drinks was 9000cfp ($120) for the four of us. The girls are writing more about this evening, so I'll leave it to them...

Sun, August 3
As I was preparing lunch, our friends Ann and Paul on Free Spirit came motoring past Adventure. We heard people yelling and ran up on deck. We hadn't seen them since Controller bay in the Marquesas and they were just coming into the anchorage. I yelled for them to hurry up and drop their anchor so they could come for lunch. They called a few minutes later and we went to pick them up because they didn't have their dinghy inflated yet.

That night we went to the Dinghy Bar to meet Astra, Free Spirit, and Jeffrey and his two buddies. We added chairs and couches to the seating area as people joined our group. Soon we had 15 people and the furniture began to resemble a large box. Jeffery rearranged the furniture so that we ended up with 4 large couches and several chairs with four coffee tables in the middle. The furniture enclosed the group so that they had to move a chair to let people in. The waitress struggled a bit as she brought beverages to everyone inside the fortress. I worry a bit about the girls being exposed to people drinking alcohol. Since Sean and I don't drink much but still have a great time socializing with our friends, I'm hoping it will teach the girls how to behave responsibly in a social situation. Tara has noticed the difference and has classified Sean and me as "tea totlers."

Clair from Foftein came by and asked if I had heard about the BBQ the next night. The big boats were hosting a BBQ on the dock next to their moorings. She asked me to bring sausages.

Mon, August 4
The girls did a little bit of school work and we went to the grocery store to buy sausages for the big-boat BBQ. Sean decided to stay home by himself for some cave time.

All of the five super yachts (Mystere-150 foot sailing yacht, Foftein-100-foot sailing yacht, Naos-105 foot sailing yacht, Bullish-125 foot motor yacht, Archadia-a 117 foot motor yacht) are stern-tied to the outer finger of the marina. I pulled our dinghy beside Naos and tied to the big dock ring their line was on, hoping the captain wouldn't yell at me. On the large concrete pier were the makings for a really-organized BBQ: Clothed tables with bottles of wine and hard alcohol, huge tubs of beer, soda, and ice, gourmet salads, and raw tuna, beef steaks, lobster, and yes, the sausages we'd bought. 4 BBQs lined the pier, smoking and ready for action. About 35 people (25 or more were crew from the big ships) were standing around talking and drinking. Joust, one of the chefs, gave me the double-kiss greeting and some really good wine. The girls grabbed cups and poured themselves some of the sparkling apple juice we'd brought. The girls will write in more detail about the evening, but in a nutshell:
-The food was the best ever! First-class all the way. The tuna and steak melted in my mouth.
-We got a tour of Naos and Tara also got one of Foftein when Annabelle, the stewardess, had her try on one of the ship's uniform skorts.
-The girls both got a ship shirt and uniform skort from Foftein.
-I had to represent Adventure in the private yacht owners' bouncy-ball race.
-The girls now know the full meaning of the phrase "he swears like a sailor".

Tue, August 5
We went to Astra to say goodbye. They were leaving for Morea at 1pm. Jeremy gave us back some of the books and movies we loaned to them and a disk with photos they had taken while we were traveling together. We're hoping to meet up with them again along the way. We dropped a book off for Ogopogo's new crew member, Jeffrey, and then walked to the marina laundry room to drop off 5 bags of books for other cruisers to take. In the laundry, we met another cruising family from Kairos. They have two 20-something sons and a 16-year-old daughter on board with them.

We were going to go to Papeete to shop, but had left so late that all the stores would be closed by the time we got there (they close from about noon to 2pm). We went to McDonalds and then to the Carrefour shopping area to kill some time. At 1:30 we jumped on Le Truck and went to Papeete. Sean split off to go find a tachometer to replace the one on Adventure that broke while the girls and I shopped for pearls. I finally found some pearls that I could afford, two loose pearls and one set in a pendant. Casey bought a greenish loose pearl and puka shell necklace and Tara bought a pearl necklace. We met up with Sean and found out that he'd seen Fred from Ogopogo in Papeete and Fred told him he had a brand new spare tachometer that he'd sell for a good price. Back at the marina, Sean headed for the Dinghy Bar to meet Fred and look at the tachometer. I took the girls back to Adventure so we could clean up a bit before two crew from Naos came over. Leigh and her boyfriend Caf want to own a cruising boat some day and wanted to see Adventure. I went back to the Dinghy Bar to join Peg, Fred, and their two crew from Ogopogo and Sean. We bought the new odometer for $60 and they threw in a diesel jerry can that looked brand new. They wanted to give us three jerry cans, but we only have room on our deck for one more. Sean had been looking since Panama for another jerry can like the ones we already have, but couldn't find one. Other jerry jugs cost at least $60, so we'd just done without. Amazingly, the jerry can they gave us matched our others that we'd bought in the USA. Caf called on our VHF radio and I told him we'd pick them up in a few minutes. When we arrived at Adventure, the girls were watching a movie. They'd done a nice job of cleaning Adventure and were excited to show Leigh and Caf what has been our home for almost two years. While Sean showed Caf the engine and navigation systems, we took Leigh for the tour of the rest of the boat.