A BRILLIANT PIECE OF DESIGN

With Lesley’s back proving slow to improve we spent yet another leisurely, idle week anchored behind the reef/off the beach at the NE corner of Opunohu Bay on Moorea; there was no need to try and rush her recovery as the wind had once again dropped away completely save for whenever a rain squall passed over and there’s little prospect of anything stronger in the coming week either. To add to our frustration the telephone/internet system went down to the whole island for a couple of days and when the system was restored the free/open wifi we’d been getting here never came back on again; it was now an hour’s dinghy ride or hitch-hike/bus ride around to Maharepa to get any internet connection beyond the expensive and dial-up speed connection available via our satellite phone.
Having lost the benefit of easy internet access our location lost much of its appeal, particularly come the weekend when the beach invariably gets noisy, so we upped anchor and motored across Opunohu Bay to re-anchor behind the reef at its NW corner instead. Closer to the grocery store, definitely quieter, less current/tide running through and better snorkelling too though I did little of that beyond going under Moon Rebel to scrape/clean the hull as I picked-up another bout of ‘swimmer’s ear’ whilst doing so.
Jaye and Irwin aboard ‘Winsome’ were over this side too and we were shortly joined by the Canadian yacht ‘Coastal Drifter’ too, so whilst it was another quiet week, it was at least a little more sociable, with a couple of get-togethers for dinner or sundowners on each of the three, there wasn’t time for much else beyond recovering from the latest party. Both Winsome & Coastal Drifter were also equipped with short-wave radios, so in addition to basic weather-grib files via our satellite phone (though that had a spate of playing silly-buggers once again – I’m suspecting that both the antenna and USB connection cables are perhaps in need of renewal though there’s not much chance of getting those off-the-shelf this side of Australia/NZ.) we were getting reports from other SSB-radio equipped yachts that were actually at sea/on passage. We’ve never been particularly impressed by the accuracy of the weather forecasts for French Polynesia, so to hear live reports of what wind/sea conditions another yacht’s experiencing a few miles upwind is far more reliable.
Friday 5th April: The weather forecasts and SSB-radio reports had been giving ‘possible’ weather windows for the last few days, but invariably included lots of thunder/lightning storms and/or a serious ’hole’ in the wind between Moorea and Huahine. Today’s is suggesting a smaller wind-hole and whilst the squalls and storms are going to be out there, we reckon that if the predicted convergence zone (the worst storms/lightning are where the separate weather systems meet) is should be able to shape a course around the worst of them?
11:00am and we’d said our farewells to Winsome & Coastal Drifter – will either of them catch us up further west? – lifted the anchor and motored quietly (other than our rumbling propeller shaft) over to the reef entrance and out to sea. Conditions were again what for us at least has become the ‘norm’ since we’ve been in the Pacific: Winds slightly too light and the seas mixed-up and confused, on the up-side the seas were fairly small @ around 1.5m/5’ and predominantly coming astern of the beam, so, not too uncomfortable and for the most part we managed to maintain ‘acceptable’ speed. There was no moon, so come nightfall it was a black as a coal-miner’s bum, but our route-planning worked, so having initially steered ‘more north than west’ the lightning storms did no more than provide us with a spectacular fireworks display that was always comfortably downwind of our position.
We even managed to steer around almost all of the smaller squalls that were rushing across to join the party too, though the winds coming off those sent us in some very odd directions, after one had been pushing us 40-50* off course for what felt like far too long, I had the bright idea to gybe Moon Rebel around onto the other tack to get us pointed more nearly toward Huahine. It was 02:00 and Lesley was sound asleep, but given the conditions I was sure I could manage the manoeuvre single-handed. Oops: midway through the turn one of the regular over-sized/cross-sea waves that the Pacific Ocean uses to keep you alert rolled through, the pitch from which flipped Lesley out of her berth to land against the saloon table. She staggered out into the cockpit reporting (colourfully) that she’d once again hurt her back; I couldn’t follow all that she said, but I got the impression that she wasn’t best pleased. To add insult to injury, the wind backed 30-40* not ten minutes later and we then had to gybe back onto the original tack once again anyway.
We rolled into Fare on the NW corner of Huahine just after midday on Saturday – 25 hours to cover 90 miles, hardly ‘fast’ but little real effort required and the only damage beyond Lesley’s back was my having broken a cup-holder in the cockpit (not bad, it must be 2-3 years since I last broke one) and we’ve a couple of spares aboard so that was replaced even before we’d arrived. Finding a spare one took ten minutes, removal and replacement perhaps five more, but I then lost another twenty in studying the broken unit to confirm for myself just what a brilliant piece of design-engineering it was: Only a very slight change in design would probably make the unit easier and slightlycheaper to manufacture and undoubtedly make it far less likely to break if someone should fall against it, but then of course the unit’s life-expectancy would go from a couple of years to perhaps ten, so you couldn’t/wouldn’t be able to sell as many replacements; as I said, a brilliant design!
‘Kefi’ were in Fare when we arrived, so Mark helped us to pick-up one of the town’s free mooring-buoys and also scuba-dove on it to check that it was secure/maintained too (you don’t need to spend much time in the Caribbean to get a somewhat jaundiced view of mooring buoys) after which it was time for a cold ‘arrival beer’ – always the best ones! - an afternoon nap and then early to bed this evening too.
Given the almost complete absence of wind (as forecast) since arring on Huahine, travelling inside the reef to visit the other (cuter?) anchorages would all need to be ‘under-engine’ and having got Moon Rebel almost to within sight – we can see Raiatea 20M to the west - of the boatyard where we hope to haul out and replace the cutlass bearing, we don’t want to ‘break the camel’s back’ now, so settled for staying on our mooring and touring the island from hereTravelling. A couple of days ashore walking in and around Fare, during which we booked a scooter for Thursday; we usually manage to avoid such commitment and just go get one on a nice looking morning, but with only one supplier we found you need to reserve at least one and preferably two days ahead to get one.
Thursday 12th April: We chose today for our scooter-trip based on the weather forecasts, it’s been showery all week but all the forecasts (other than Passageweather which is the complete opposite) have agreed that today will be dry and sunny. Passageweather’s our default/primary/preferred source, but that’s for going sailing, particularly offshore on long passages, so it’s not really where to look for shore-side weather; wrong! We woke up to bright sunshine but it’d become overcast by the time we reached shore at 07:45 and by 08:15 when we were picking-up our scooter the rain was absolutely hammering down! We did get around almost all of the island, with only short spells of heavy rain whilst actually on the scooter – more than enough to get piss-wet through though! – but it was damp pretty much the whole day and had us cowering under trees, bus shelters and the like during several extended spells of very heavy rain; it’s been a lot of years since we’ve enjoyed the fun of riding on rain-slick dirt roads whilst negotiating flooded pot-holes of unknown depth. We did manage to reach all the major archaeological sites around the island – it still amazes me how little is actually ‘known’ about their use and the religious rites of the Polynesians prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the 18th Century. At first glance the information boards and pamphlets all look comprehensive and confident, but a more detailed inspection invariably unearths regular inclusion of words like ‘assumed, presumed, suggested and believed; the native Polynesians didn’t go in for written history and presumably vast amounts of their oral history was lost during the depopulation which accompanied the Christian Europeans and their Missionaries?
We even saw the ‘sacred eels’ at Faie, though with the stream running fast, deep and mud-red rather than the shallow crystal-clear water one sees in every guide-book photo, we couldn’t confirm whether the eels really did have blue-eyes and once again, whilst everyone seems to ‘know’ that these eels are ‘sacred’ nobody apparently knows in what context or why they’re considered so?
I was particularly intrigued by the ancient Marae (Religious?) archaeological sites at Manunue and Anini close to the northern and southern tips of the island, their construction was somewhat different to most of the others we’ve seen in French Poly, closely resembling some sites that we’ve visited in Brittany and most especially in the Outer Hebrides. I’m hard pressed to come up with even a tenuous explanation for any connection between the two indigenous peoples – contrary to Thor Heyerdaal, it seems that the Polynesians arrived here from the west, predominantly southern China rather than Peru/Chile, though either’s a fair stride from Harris & Lewis. So I suspect that it’s more likely that both regions just happened to have a shared geology, insofar as they had lots of detached rock-slabs laying around that could be fairly easily erected into enclosing walls for subsequent filling with the general rubble that was also laid around.
Perhaps that’s all that any of them are and that like the early farmers of the Yorkshire Dales to cultivate the land you first needed to clear the rocks that were scattered across it, in the Dales they used said rocks to build enclosing walls, but if here they weren’t needed (the Polynesians aren’t and never have been big on livestock farming) they instead just piled them up in neat and tidy heaps to which a thousand years later we’re trying to attach unwarranted social and religious significance? Lesley would perhaps like that theory, given that one blisteringly hot day in Greece many years ago, she discounted the ancient city of Delphi as “just another pile of old rocks.”