The calm after the storm.
11 March 2019
Bob & Lesley Carlisle
26th February: Saw us back in Tahiti at the Coral Gardens Anchorage, just off the end of Papeete Airport’s runway, having sailed back between the squalls from Moorea last Saturday; we were fortunate to get ourselves securely anchored beside Marina Taina just ahead of what turned into a very breezy and squally afternoon/evening. Things had eased/blown through by the following morning, so we headed ashore to the Carrefour supermarket to replenish the larder; called by ‘Kefi’ on the way, where Mark & Debbie confirmed Spirit of Argo’s report, that it’d been a lot less windy here last week than we’d found over at Moorea; c’est la vie, you win some and you lose some. We got the rest of the shopping (more rum!) on Monday, when we also wandered down to the Mairie to get a decent internet signal, the weather forecasts confirming what we were already feeling: It’s blisteringly-hot, without a breath of wind and likely to stay that way for at least the next week.
Spirit of Argo and the other couple of boats whom we knew in the Tiana anchorage had left for The Gambier islands and Tuamotus – later relieved to hear that they’d all arrived safely as the forecasts showed a lot of heavy thunderstorm activity down that way for this week – so rather than bake amongst all the French yachts, we topped-up the water tank on Tuesday morning, then upped anchor and motored the mile or so north up to the ‘English speaking’ anchorage by the airport; Bella Nave and Imagine are still here (not moved since New Year?) along with two Dutch yachts, Blue Spirit & Charlie-2. The sun’s still beating down on us here, but we at least catch any breath of wind that does pass through; it’s a long dinghy ride to go ashore anywhere, but we’re well provisioned and we can pick-up an occasional weak/flaky wifi signal from the airport. A pity that, as without it I’d still be reveling in Burnley having beaten Spurs and not know that we followed that game up with two disappointing performances, losing to both Newcastle and Crystal Palace.
Tuesday 5th March: The forecast’s held true and it’s been a stinking-hot week with barely a breath of wind, but we’ve managed to re-stitch the sprayhood (damaged in the high winds in Moorea) and complete a few boat jobs besides. The outside of Moon Rebel’s about as clean and shiny as it ever gets, though that’s not saying a lot I suppose as no matter how hard we clean and polish her now, the grey-staining from the cruds and fouling that we picked-up on the Pacific crossing just won’t disappear from the topsides. Boat-work, particularly anything out on deck had to be done early in the morning (even my wake-up pot of coffee got deferred a couple of times) before the sun got too high and hot, so the afternoons were spent reading, sleeping and doing lots of snorkeling, I even found one of the sunken airplanes out on the reef this time.
Debbie of Bella Nave had pointed me in the general direction, then as I was anchoring the dinghy another and ‘local’ boat arrived and feeling sure that they’d know the precise location I went across to enquire. They did indeed, but sadly whilst the guy was explaining, his stunningly attractive Eurasian wife/girlfriend was entirely disrobing before searching around for her snorkelling gear and eventually a bikini too, though she didn’t appear in any hurry to unearth the latter, as a result I didn’t really pay enough attention to the directions I was being given to find the sunken plane. I tracked it down eventually and it appeared to be a little two-seater, perhaps a Piper Cub? I’d heard various stories of how it crashed either taking-off or landing at the airport, but given that the engine’s been removed and the almost complete lack of damage, I suspect that it was simply sunk there to provide something extra for the tourists to snorkel/dive on.
When I came to doing the final bit of cleaning yesterday – oxalic acid/jif to clean corrosion off The Lizard – we discovered that the wind-blade’s connection rod was no longer connected, it’s only secured by a tiny circlip and that was sitting loose on the top plate? We managed by skill or perhaps good fortune to reassemble it without removing and lifting the whole unit on board and without dropping any of the parts into the water; it seems secure enough now, but I can’t conceive how/why it’d come apart in the first place and unfortunately we’ll not be able to test out the repair until we go back out to sea and try using it. At least our next passage will probably only be the hundred miles or so to Huahine, long enough to give it a proper test, but short enough to live without the Lizard’s help if it lets go again.
Saturday 9th March: Some decent easterly breezes forecast for the last few days, but also forecast - and clearly visible crashing onto the reef! – are some very big SW/WSW seas that are the fallout from a Tropical Storm that’s passed between Fiji & Tonga and is now swinging south and east to pass about 300M to the south of us; hopefully it’ll blow itself out before reaching the Gambier islands, there a several yachts we know sat down there to avoid just that sort of weather. Sailing ‘uphill’ is never much fun, so we held off departing to Huahine until those head seas died away (tomorrow?) but sadly the winds are also forecast to die off and the heavy rain return too, will we ever get ourselves any further west? To be fair this weather is no different to that which we had during Caribbean Hurricane Seasons, but there as it was only around 30 miles between islands you didn’t need much of a ‘window’ to move around in (as we have between Tahiti and Moorea) and if you ran out of wind – the most likely problem – enroute, you could simply motor the rest of the way. Particularly now our propeller shaft’s rumbling once again, we don’t want to be having to motor solidly for 24-hours to reach Huahine and then on to Raiatea where hopefully we’ll be able to haul Moon Rebel for a few days and replace the cutlass-bearing.
All in all it’s been another lazy week, we moved back down to Tiana in the expectation of more wind (I think there’s been some offshore, but not much here in the lee of Tahiti) and done three repair jobs – none were ‘on the list’, just new ones we’ve found – but for the most part boat-jobs have been planned and then cancelled due to it either being “too bloody hot” or “too bloody wet” to progress them. Similarly on the only couple of days the weather looked promising enough to hire a car or scooter to tour the island, there were none to be had – Cruise Liners in those days perhaps? – though pretty much all those we know who have been around report their days as ‘disappointing’. We didn’t even revisit the museum (when we went in January we read the signs saying ‘closed until early February’) but when we mentioned going again, friends advised that we’d not read the signage closely enough. Apparently the museum was was closing for six weeks and due to reopen in February 2018, not 2019 but hasn’t re-opened since, nor are there any indications as to if/when it ever will, though the staff apparently all go every day, though no one’s quite sure what they do there.
Monday 11th March: The seas had stopped crashing onto the reef by this morning and the forecasts promised just about enough (if we were lucky) easterly wind to take us across to Huahine and suggest that whilst there might well be a few rain showers, the worst (if we were lucky) wouldn’t be arriving until tomorrow evening; go now and we’ll have arrived before then. A quick sort out, all safely stowed, pre-departure checks complete and we were lifting anchor and heading out through the reef by 11:00, not the promised wind strengths, but managed to make ground slowly north, assuring ourselves that ‘once out of Tahiti’s wind-shadow’ all would be well. We’d still a way to go in achieving this when some very ominous clouds began rolling off the mountains allowing us just enough time to turn Moon Rebel offshore and away from the reef which we were skirting too close to for (Lesley’s at least) comfort; that proved one of our better decisions of the day. Another five minutes and it was blowing 25+ knots of wind and absolutely pouring with rain, Les gave her favoured over-the-shoulder call of ‘there’s no point us both getting wet’ as she disappeared below decks, whilst we barrelled across the Moorea Channel in zero visibility wondering whereabouts any inter-island ferries were? I was fairly certain that we were south of their route and made sure that we stayed there!
Other than during a couple more half-hour heavy rain/strong wind squalls – my drowned-rat impression was all but perfected – the winds stayed no better than F3 and each passing squall stirred things up leaving lumpy/confused seas. The final straw was our seeing regular lightning flashes away to the W/NW by mid-afternoon, so we turned south and by 16:00 were once again tucked-up behind the reef at Opunopu Bay on Moorea. Perhaps next week to Huahine? At least we can get a decent internet signal here.