Wed, August 6
We spent the morning relaxing and then doing a bit of school work. Clint and Janet from Kairos came over and invited us for dinner. They had caught a 200-pound marlin on the way to Tahiti and wanted help eating it. But we'd already arranged for a movie night with Paul and Ann on Free Spirit. Janet said to bring them with us for an early dinner and then we could proceed with our movie plans. We couldn't reach Free Spirit on the radio, so had to wait until happy hour to discuss it with them.

We hadn't been in the water since we arrived here in Tahiti, and Tara and I couldn't stand it any longer. We grabbed our snorkel gear and jumped in the dinghy. We headed to the spot we'd seen dive boats anchored at on the reef to the side of Adventure. We tied onto a small mooring ball and jumped into the light blue water. The sun was directly overhead and highlighted everything under the water. At first we didn't see many fish but as soon as they saw us, they swarmed around. Maybe the dive boats feed them. Some fish would swim right up to our masks and around our bodies. It was a good thing that they were small or we would have been frightened. The water was clearer than we've ever seen it and it seemed that all the reef fish in our books were represented in full color before our eyes. Many different kinds and colors of coral grew in clumps along the sandy sea bottom. We also saw the largest crown of thorns starfish we've ever seen. It was easily 3 times the size of the ones in the Sea of Cortez. I looked in the distance for sharks, but didn't see any. I did see what looked like a drop off in the water, where the light-colored sandy bottom gave way to the dark-colored deep. Tara and I swam over to it, but got scared and swam back to the reef area. We hurried back to Adventure to get ready to go to happy hour. A boat we'd met in the Marquesas, Camille, called on the radio and wanted to get together. I told them to meet us at happy hour, where Free Spirit and Kairos were also meeting us.

Free Spirit ended up going to Kairos for dinner with us, but didn't have time for a movie. We'll have Paul and Ann over another time to watch Nemo...

Thu, August 7
We cleaned the boat a bit to get ready for Stan, Sean's dad, to arrive. Sean hooked up the new tachometer he bought from another boat and it didn't work. I took Tara, Casey, and Abby snorkeling on the reef where we'd been before. I found a huge spiney sea cucumber and Casey borrowed my gloves so she could pick it up while I took a photo. She let it go and as it fell toward the sea floor, it roller over and ended up landing upside down. Casey and I both screamed under water and I yelled for her to turn it upright. We both almost drowned because we were laughing so hard. When we were done, the girls hung out on Adventure to chat for a while. The clouds were building throughout the day and it looked like rain. It started to sprinkle as the girls and I took Abby back to her boat and went to the laundry to drop off more books. We huddled under my umbrella and ran back to the Dinghy Bar, where we found Sean sipping a Coke. He decided to wait out the rain before going to the airport to pick up Stan. We were hoping to meet Lee and Cphir at happy hour, but no one we knew showed up as the rain poured down in buckets. When it stopped, Sean headed off for the airport on Le Truck and the rest of us walked to the grocery store to buy stuff we thought grandfather would like to eat and drink. We were back at Adventure when Sean called me to come pick them up at the dock. We'd ordered a lot of books, movies, and boat parts over the internet and had them sent to Stan. He brought them, along with a bunch of other unexpected luxury items my mother-in-law, Brenda, snuck into every spare inch of the suitcases. Tara, describing it well, said it was like Christmas.

Fri, August 8
The girls had arranged to go snorkeling with Kairos and two teenaged boys that are visiting them. They put on their swim suits and sun block and were ready to go. But the wind was causing a lot of chop in the snorkel area. Janet called and said she thought the kids would be better off playing a board game or watching a movie on her boat. The girls agreed and carefully changed into their most fashionable clothes. With their hair just right, they jumped into the dinghy and were off. A few seconds later, they returned to Adventure. Casey's clothes were completely wet from the waves splashing into the dinghy. I heard Tara yelling as Casey came below to change into dry clothes. I went up on deck and saw Tara trying to steer the dinghy back to Adventure, but the strong winds were blowing her off. She started to panic and threw the dinghy line to me when she was too far way. Now she had a line in the water and the wind blowing her off. I yelled for her to pull the line in, but she'd spun around and was now backing toward adventure, into the waves and with the line trailing from the bow. Water was hitting against the transom and splashing onto her and into the dinghy. She finally backed close enough to get the line to me and jumped aboard Adventure...she was completely soaked too. We decided that the weather was just too bad and the girls called to say they couldn't go over to Kairos.

Sat, August 9
The girls motored over to Kairos to return some movies they had borrowed. Kairos was leaving for Morrea. The girls were bummed because they hadn't really gotten to spend much time with Abbey or to meet the other teens on board. These were the first kids in their age-range that they'd met since we'd left La Paz.

I sat up on deck and watched as about 100 boats passed Adventure. More than half were dug-out canoes racing each other and the others were motor boats for watching the race. They were all headed in the direction the girls had gone. I called Kairos and asked them to tell the girls to wait there until the race passed them. But it was too late, they'd already left. The girls told me later that, with Tara at the helm, they saw a bunch of boats coming toward them. Casey told her to weave her way through them, but Tara insisted on stopping at the dock and waiting for them to pass. Tara is a great thinker when she's not in a panic. I was proud that she'd made the right choice.

Leigh and Cphir called to invite us over to Naos for a drink and to give the men a tour of the 105 foot sail boat. As we sat in the cockpit with our drinks, we saw Joust from Mystere. He talked with us for a while and then said he'd be back in a few minutes with the chocolate chips he'd promised to me. He came back with a bag that contained five and a half pounds of Belgian chocolate chips and a pump-bottle of vanilla beans. He said, "You'll love the vanilla in the pump...it saves you from having to cut and scrape the beans out of the vanilla beans." I said, "Great!" as if I'd spent a lifetime scraping vanilla beans." Joust said that he'd give us a tour of Mystere in the next few days.

After all the visiting with interesting people, we hopped on Le Truck to show Stan downtown Papeete. We split up, with the boys going to boring hardware and marine stores and us girls going to look for clothes and pearls. We quickly found that the shops were closing. It was only 3pm, but it was Saturday. We went and got ice cream and then, as we walked down the street, we saw Sean and Stan looking a bit lost. We hid behind some pillars to see if we could follow them unnoticed, but they just stood around, looking confused. When they saw us, they said they wanted to go back to the boat because everything was closed. We ended up going to the Carrefour market and buying some food before going back to Adventure.

Sun, August 10
Sean and Stan wanted to check out the marina and surrounding area, so they went to La Casa Blanca, the restaurant connected to the Dinghy Bar, for lunch. They walked around the marina, critiquing the sailboats and then dinghied to the pass through the reef that is close to where we anchored. We have the option of leaving Tahiti through this pass and Sean wanted to check it out. He said it was smaller, but wasn't rough. I voted for going back out the pass we came through because it gives us about 8 miles of smooth reef-protected waters instead of open ocean swell.

The girls and I stayed on Adventure and watched two episodes of our new season of Monk. When the boys got back, we all went snorkeling at the reef. I found a huge sea spiked sea cucumber, about 24 inches long, and Casey borrowed my gloves so she could pick it up. When she let go of it, it flipped upside down. We both screamed under the water and she swam back down to turn it over. It was really cool!

We went back to Adventure, showered, and then went to drop off cookies at Naos and Mystere. Dan, the captain on Naos was there with several of the crew, but Leigh and Cphir had gone to town. Dan has done the trip from Tahiti to New Zealand eight times and had told me at the BBQ which islands were the best to visit. I wanted him to tell Sean because I didn't recognize many of the names he mentioned. Dan said that the further West we go, the better our passage to New Zealand will be. He even encouraged us to go all the way to Vanuatu, which is about 400 miles past Fiji. Sean was thinking we wouldn't even make it to Fiji, so we'll see if plans change. Dan gave us a cruising guide to Vanuatu and said we'd really be missing something if we don't go...

Joust wasn't on Mystere, so we went to happy hour at the Dinghy Bar to meet our friends, Paul and Ann. Leigh and Cphir came by and said they saw Joust back on his boat, so Ann, Tara, Casey, and I went to deliver his cookies. Paul and Ann walked to McDonalds for dinner with us and then came back to Adventure to watch a movie. Paul has been anxious to see Finding Nemo, so that's what we watched.

Mon, August 11
Sean, Stan, and Paul went to shore to call Tahiti Gaz to see if their strike was over and API Sails to see if our sail repair was complete. Sean used a phone card he had purchased for 1,000cfp ($13) that can be used to make calls from phone booths in French Polynesia. Paul had tried to get his propane tank filled a few days prior. They wouldn't fill it because it was rusty, so Paul had sanded and painted it and was ready to give it another try. He and Ann had delayed their departure for Morrea so they could get their tank filled. Some of the gas company employees had just gone on strike, so that delayed them even further.

They then took the bus to a car rental company and Sean rented a small car (the only one they had available) for 600cfp ($80), went back to Adventure and Free Spirit to pick up empty propane tanks, and then went into Papeete to get the tanks filled. The strike was still going on, so they couldn't fill the tanks immediately. They guys would have to come back the next day to pick them up. They stopped by the marine store to buy a few things and, by the time they got back to Adventure to pick the girls and me up, it was already 1:30pm. We then went on a whirl-wind tour of Tahiti Nui (the big island) and Tahiti Iti (the small, connected island). We went to some cool caves, but they were roped off so we couldn't walk into them. We walked through the Paul Gauguin museum, where we got eaten alive by a bunch of mosquitoes. We drove to Tahiti's world-famous surfing wave, which didn't look very big in the distance. There were water taxis to take people to see the wave up close, but we didn't have time to do it. We went to point Venus, which overlooks the bay Captain Cook anchored in. To complete the tour, we risked it all and drove through downtown Papeete. Fortunately the traffic was all headed out of the city, so we didn't have as much trouble as we thought we would.


Tue, August 12
We got up early so the boys could go pick up the bottles of propane and then return the car. Our friends from Argonauta, Giorgio and Wendy, came by in their dinghy as we sipped coffee. They'd come in the night before, but weren't able to reach us on the VHF because we didn't turn it on when we got back from our island tour. Giorgio ended up going with Sean, Stan, and Paul to get propane. The strike was still on at Tahiti Gaz, so Giorgio had to leave his bottle to be filled the next day. Sean and Paul were able to pick up their filled bottles. They called me on the VHF to pick the propane up at the dock so they could return the car. Casey and I were in the middle of taking our bath in the ocean and had to drive to the dock wet and in our swim suits. Sean saw the sail maker at the marina and found out that our sail was still not ready. He promised it would be repaired tomorrow. We really want to get out of here and go to Morrea, so I hope he delivers as promised this time.

We put the propane on Adventure and then finished our baths. Tara, Casey, and I then went to do two loads of laundry and went to the store while they were washing. We bought $500 worth of groceries (we have to get out of here...everything is too expensive!). We pushed the filled shopping cart to the marina and picked our wet clothes up from the laundry room. Sean and Stan were at the dock in the dinghy, which was already full of three jerry cans of gasoline, three jerry cans of water, and our double filter and hose for water. The helped us load all the groceries and the two bags of wet laundry into the dinghy and then got out. The girls and I took everything back to Adventure while the boys went to Papeete to buy some boat parts.

We all met up with Giorgio and Wendy at happy hour at the Dinghy Bar.