CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS ABOARD THE AUSSIE CATAMARAN ‘LaMitsu’ – Thanks Laurie & Sue!

Sunday 2nd December: After a glass flat night just inside the reef entrance at Havae – a good job given the limited swinging room and scope on our anchor chain – we took the dinghy ashore and had our first wander around Tahiti. We quickly discovered that the major tourist attraction we’d stumbled upon and were anchored in sight of, was the Teahupo’o wave; apparently ‘world famous’ amongst surfers and if not necessarily ‘the most dangerous wave in the world’ as claimed, it’s apparently up there with the best (or should that be worst?) of them, though not today. We subsequently found lots of scary U-Tube videos of it doing its thing, but as it rolled onto the reef at 18” to 2’ high today, they were hard to imagine, we were more impressed by our discovery of a ‘real’ supermarket that was not only open on a Sunday, but could/would sell baguettes and beer on the Sabbath too.
With barely a breath of wind, nor any promised/threatened we spent a couple of short-days motoring north inside the reef – the section that we’d baulked at on Saturday afternoon proved deep and straightforward with the sunlight from directly overhead, though it was narrow and twisty enough to confirm our decision not to attempt it ‘blind’ on Saturday evening – before dropping anchor in the bay at Port Phaeton: Tahiti comprises two volcanoes/islands the small/southern one (Tahiti Iti) which we’d just rounded and the larger/more populous/northern one, Tahiti Nui. The west side of the narrow overlap between them is Taravao Bay/Port Phaeton, reputedly the best Hurricane Hole on the island; we’d come here specifically to get a good look around in case we have need of using it in anger at any time in the next month or so. If a Cyclone should pass close north or south of Tahiti it looks promising, though in the unlikely event of a ‘direct hit’ I suspect that the cyclone would track straight through the narrow gap between Nui and Iti making this perhaps the very worst spot to be?
It was good this week though and after months in the boondocks of the Marquesa and Tuamotu Islands, provided all that we were in immediate need of: A real and huge European size/standard Carrefour Supermarket, free/fast internet connections a big hardware store and a dentists; after ten days here we’d most everything other than our busted fridge sorted out and even managed a bit of bush walking and sightseeing too. The only disappointment was that after being told for months that ‘everything’s much less expensive once you reach Tahiti’, we were finding just the opposite. To be fair that statement is perhaps true, but whilst ‘everything’ in the Marquesas and more especially the Tuamotus was very expensive, there was very little of ‘everything’ or indeed anything for sale, so we spent very little. Prices in Tahiti are perhaps fractionally lower, but with a veritable cornucopia of treats that we’ve not seen in months, we’ve spent a fortune indulging ourselves in all those things we’ve had to do without. No fridge repair man at the Port Phaeton Marina/Boatyard though, so with assurances that we’ll find one in Papeete we eventually upped anchor and sailed (actually we motored most of it!) the thirty-odd miles west and north to tuck-in behind the reef once again near Marina Tiana, the epicentre of yachting in Tahiti.
Thursday 13th December: Immediate impressions were that the anchorage/mooring-field/marina here are not very well sheltered, but are massively busy, I suspect that during the half-hour we spent entering, finding a suitable spot and anchoring, we more than doubled the number of boats that we’d seen since leaving Panama. If there is a cyclone threat and (as seems likely) 50% or more of these yachts headed to Port Phaeton, then it would be just too busy to offer safety in high winds, we need to re-think our Hurricane-plan. Disappointment two was discovering that whilst there were a couple of refrigeration engineers, they worked first and foremost on the hotels/apartments ashore, then the super-yachts and if they had any spare-time/enthusiasm after that, they might just deign to look at a small sail-boat’s system and don’t even waste your time bothering to even enquire until after the Christmas/New Year holidays; the catamaran ‘LaMitsu’ have already been waiting five weeks just for an initial review/inspection visit : (.
We’d further disappointments as we quickly discovered that the grocery/hardware shopping and internet opportunities here weren’t anywhere near as good/handy as they had been back in Taravao Bay; whilst Taravoa was a much smaller town, it was the retail/commercial/everything hub for the SE part of Tahiti Nui and the whole of Tahiti Iti so everything was within walking distance, whereas here things are scattered all over the metropolis that is Papeete. Never mind, there’s a McDonald’s at least, so Lesley can get her long overdue junk-food fix; it’s proving more sociable too with a few more English-speaking yachts, not least Spirit of Argo, Kefi and Bella Nave who we know from further back, we even came across Vassil & Inga on ‘xxxxx’ whom we last saw six years ago as now at Mindelo in the Cape Verde Islands.
Though Christmas was still ten days away it was clear that Papeete was already winding down to the holiday – ‘Island Time’ with the addition of French socialism/trade-unions is hard to fight – so we settled in and just went with the flow; I scraped a little bit more of the crappy ‘Treadmaster’ from the deck – I’ve got more than half of it off now – though if it wasn’t raining the sun beating down viciously generally drove me off the foredeck and back under the sun awning. I managed quite a lot of snorkelling too as despite being within a mile or two of 200,000+ people, the water’s still crystal clear and the reef system very extensive; highlights were a flock/school/mob(?) of three grey reef sharks sleeping on the sea floor and a hammerhead shark that even allowing for the magnification factors of both water and fear must’ve been around 4m/12’ long; hammerheads have been known to bite, so I kept a close watch on that one and when it did eventually disappear from sight, I headed in the opposite direction.
24th – 27th December: With no fridge we’d stayed anchored near the marina’s dinghy dock as life was easier if we could get ashore to the grocery store each day, but after completing the last of our Christmas shopping today and loading the fridge-box with ice, we moved a mile or so north to join Spirit of Argo, Bella Nave and LaMitsu anchored off the Coral Gardens Reef, near the end of Tahiti Airport’s runway. It’s not so well sheltered, but there’s barely been a breath of wind in the last month and it’s handy for the best snorkelling/diving in the area, plus it offers great sunset views over the island of Moorea. Christmas Eve we all gathered aboard Spirit of Argo for sundowners and to witness the big switch-on of their Christmas-Lights – I don’t think Oxford Street’ll be worried by the competition. We were only going across for ‘an hour or two’, but sods-law was applied and after weeks of little or no wind a monster squall/thunderstorm blew-in and we spent two hours worriedly watching Moon Rebel from a distance as she (and we) bounced around in 30 - 40 knot winds.
Christmas day began with a morning of swimming and snorkeling – not something we ever managed in Wensleydale – before all meeting up on LaMitsu (the biggest of the four yachsts – you should always include a catamaran owner amongst your friends) mid-afternoon for a Christmas Barbecue. I’m honestly not sure what time we arrived back on Moon Rebel, but I do recall Lesley refusing to cook anything for dinner and neither of feeling up for anything more to drink, so we crashed into our bed. Santa had discovered and brought Lesley some toblerone chocolate bars, whilst I was permitted to smoke a couple of extra cigarettes on Christmas Day: After a two month lay-off from cigarettes I got bored with not smoking, so we’ve compromised and Lesley allows me a couple each day, one with morning coffee and a second with evening sundowner.
Boxing Day saw us back on LaMitsu once again as we’d not had any cheese and biscuits, nor even finished the last of the desserts - how did that happen, with both Lesley & Debbie having at them? - when we left yesterday. I also scored another Christmas present: Laurie’s fridge has finally been fixed, so he donated us his now redundant but working compressor control unit along with a compressor that ‘might be OK’. In addition, we discovered an unofficial refrigeration engineer just before Christmas and he’s English-speaking too. The yacht ‘Alila’ was anchored nearby and besides having got Lesley rat-arsed on some hefty rum cocktails one evening, Mike had offered to visit Moon Rebel once we returned to Tiana after Christmas on the reef, to ascertain what, if anything he could manage to do to repair our fridge.
28th December: Back down to the Tiana anchorage this afternoon and Mike off ‘Alila’ was across within a half hour to inspect/test the fridge. The bad news was – As I’d already begun to suspect from my own trials yesterday – that both the compressor and its electronic controller on our unit are stuffed and we’ve already been warned-off trying to import one to here: A fridge that’s £500 in the USA will cost us around £1200 by the time it arrives here and in the ‘not unlikely’ event that it arrives with ‘shipping damage’, the insurance will only cover us for the £500 US price, the shipping/import-agent/import-duty costs would be down to us. More positively, Mike ‘thinks’ that the Chandlery in Marina Tiana ‘probably has’ a suitable compressor/control unit which he could install into our fridge-unit and if not, believes we should be able to cobble something together based around Laurie’s old units with the addition of the still working bits salvaged from our own unit; we await the Chandlery re-opening in the New Year to see what’s in stock.
Spirit of Argo came around for beers on Saturday evening before they followed Bella Nave and LaMitsu across to Moorea for New Year; we couldn’t be arsed to follow especially as we want to be back here when the Chandlery re-opens, though we’re not anticipating a particularly sociable evening as it’s overwhelmingly French-flagged yachts, the lingua-franca of the marina bars is French rather than the more usual English and our French is only just adequate; then again, I do seem to understand more of it with every beer that I drink!