NOW YOU SEE IT...

26th May and I'm wondering where's this month gone to?
Having got Moon Rebel relaunched we visited the hospital and quickly discovered that a wart is a 'verrue', an inspection by the local wart-doctor confirmed that it was your typical/bog-standard wart which'd gone wild from being buggered about with; should've listened to my mother and left it alone. Disappointingly the earliest date they could chop it off was 15th May - we'd been told the wait would 'probably be just two or three days' so with two weeks to wait our plans changed and we decided that we were going to sail across to Bora Bora for a few days, then beat to windward to get back here for the surgery.
Ah, Cruising-plans, that one lasted less than a day: the weather wasn't particularly encouraging for the trip across, then Lesley reported that her back had begun to hurt again, the reason given was 'working too hard in the yard', though my suspicion was that the thought of a potentially rough day's sail to windward when we returned to Raiatea from Bora Bora might've been a contributing factor? We hoisted anchor as soon as the weather improved and instead spent the next ten days sailing to the east and south of Tahaa and Raiatea, where visiting the Marae site at Taputapuatea and taking a dinghy ride up the Faaroa River were particular highlights. Along the way we also replenished our propane supply (got a huge local bottle and decanted it into our two empty USA gas cylinders) topped off the diesel tanks and jerry-cans - we've only used about 40 litres since we last did that over six months ago in Nuka Hiva - and got both the long outstanding deck-painting done and some re-varnishing too - both ended up looking like they'd been applied with a stick, but then my painting always looks like that.
The low-lights of the trip all came on May 15th - the day of my surgery - we were anchored off the islet of Taoru, just a mile or two south of the island's main town of Utaroa, but woke up to unforecast showery and blustery weather, meaning that anchoring off Utaroa (200m from the hospital) was therefore off the agenda. Plan-B was to return to the anchorage/mooring field off the boatyards, but as that was a further hour's sail and also needed a hitch-hike or taxi ride back to Utaroa, so we needed to be setting off now - I'd not even had my coffee. Ten minutes later we'd discovered that our anchor was snagged on the rocky sea-floor and a further twenty minutes confirmed that it was badly caught and not going to be just 'motored-free'; not what's wanted on one of those very rare days when we have anything beyond a self-imposed time constraint to adhere to.
I zoomed in the dinghy across to a nearby catamaran, in search of assistance and was fortunate to find that its professional skipper was an experienced free-diver - anchor was in >50' of water - and fluent English speaker too; Jake was from Mauritius and reckoned that more people here understood his English better than they did his Mauritian-French. Twenty minutes later with Jake's help we'd freed the hook and were sailing back north and west to the boatyards, the weather by now was much improved, but still too windy for anchoring off the lee-shore of Utaroa; it did at least give us fast sail back to the boatyards.
We arrived at the yard and were securely moored by 11:30, so managed to arrive comfortably early for my 13:30 appointment with the surgeon, so things were looking much better, until the moment that she arrived and explained that she'd fallen at lunchtime and hurt her hand, she didn't think it was a serious injury, but it hurt sufficient that she wasn't going to be carving anyone up that afternoon; I was given a fresh appointment for the following Wednesday and sent on my way - bugger! What happened to 'Physician heal thyself'?
Very little wind, but potentially a great deal of rain forecast for the coming week, though even if it'd been conducive for the passage, it was hardly worth the effort to go to Bora Bora and back just for the week. We also discovered that you can get access to a good 'no limit' wifi signal from the boatyard next door to the one we used, though only if you took the service for a month; we didn't expect to be staying anything like that long, but at $50 for as long as we want, compared to the usual $5/hour still looked a good deal anyway and would allow us to get lots of online jobs done (like a new blog) that've been deferred pending us 'finding some decent internet'. As a result, save for moving 200m to anchor when a genuine boatyard customer needed the mooring buoy that we were on, we didn't go anywhere all week: Lots of internetting, I finished the varnishing (achieved the scraggy-stick effect finish once again) and made several shopping forays into Utaroa to replenish the long-life stores ahead of our setting sail for the Cook Islands and Tonga - word from friends ahead of us is that Bora Bora's not the place for buying anything much beyond designer label clothes and pearl jewelry.
Weds 22nd May: Back to the hospital for my surgical appointment this morning and we arrived early as it 'looked like raining'; the surgical nurse happened to see us arrive and said: "Oh, you're early, I'll go tell the doctor" who almost immediately waved me through into the surgery and I was wartless, stitched-up and on my way out again ten minutes before my 10:00 am appointment time had even arrived. All in all it proved a very painless procedure, not least when they handed me the bill for my 'private' treatment - £45 and that included another visit to 'check' on the wound a couple of days later. Lesley had done the day's grocery shopping whilst I was being carved and we were back aboard Moon Rebel by 11:30, a well-timed return as it was pouring down by 11:45 and didn't let-up for almost 36-hours - we got the water tanks replenished at least. All was deemed 'perfect' when I returned on the Friday morning, the stiches are apparently 'dissolving' so I don't need to get those removed and was discharged with a pleasant 'Bon Voyage' and an assurance that if I had any problems or concerns, then the clinic in Bora Bora could/would quickly sort them out; I'd expected to be laid-low for a week, but no pain at all, we even went for a walk up the local 'mountain'.
So back on Moon Rebel, but we're still sitting at anchor off the boatyards at the top end of Raiatea: The weather's still not great for reaching Bora Bora - overcast and damp/squally - though with our new cutlass bearing we e could of course motor the whole way in 6 or 7 hours. Nor is there any prospect of suitable weather to continue onward to Tonga and feedback that we're getting for Bora Bora from other yachties seems to be: Call in to see - it's spectacular, but don't hang around too long as it's expensive, unfriendly compared to the other Polynesian Islands and geared heavily toward Land based and Charter-yacht tourism and especially now that 'high-season' has arrived, they really don't want many cheap-skate cruise boats cluttering up the place and making it look untidy; that sounds a lot like the BVIs or Ionian Sea? We know several yachts that haven't even stopped there on their way west, but hey, it's Bora Bora, even if unfriendly and expensive, you can't sail through Polynesia and not visit.
Monday 27th May: Our wait for suitable weather's not been a case of sitting around surfing the internet as expected, Moon Rebel came too our rescue as ever: Saturday morning and I was disturbed from my book by Lesley's call that: 'The toilet's pump has jammed solid' - she was the one using it, so why is that my problem? - so I happily laid my book aside for the joyous alternative of playing around with some pressurised turds.
Having discovered that the three-way valves and 38mm outlet hose had scaled-up to perhaps 12mm diameter, Lesley pointed out that it was 'better to discover that now rather than half way to Tonga' and I immediately recalled Lesley having said almost precisely the same thing with regard to these hoses and our passage to the Marquesas; that had been back in Panama over a year ago, no wonder they were chocked-solid! After a couple of hours 'fun' wallowing around in the aromatic mix of seawater and sewage I had stripped out all the hoses, vigorously beaten them over the side to clear out the calcite deposits and got all re-assembled, working perfectly and with no leaking valves, pumps or joints (first try too - a miracle!) That point as anyone who's ever done the job themselves will appreciate, is the wonderful moment when you can leap over the side and freshen-up, before re-boarding to take a very soapy shower. Today that was exactly the point when I recalled what the hospital had told me just yesterday about my leg wound: 'You can shower as normal, but don't risk infection by going into the sea until your stitches have dissolved in 3-4 weeks' time". It was perhaps lucky that the nurse hadn't put any prohibition on fixing the heads, or suggested that there might be any infection risk from playing around in raw sewage.
We had a similar problem with the heads again on Sunday and I spent another hour of rolling about in sewage, whilst it was only slightly less unpleasant for Lesley in cleaning/disinfecting the area once again afterwards; everything worked fine once again, but having not found a problem - even in the irrelevant parts - we just knew that we weren't yet done. Sure enough, come Monday morning I heard the dulcet cry of 'the heads' pump is jammed solid again' and I was once again down on my knees with my head stuck in a cupboard examining valves and hoses. When I gave the pump-arm a tug just to 'see what it felt like' I managed to add a fresh and novel twist to the task: The outlet pipe blew clean off the top of the pump releasing a volcanic eruption of seawater/sewage into the storage cupboard, from which, fortunately, everything had already been removed, save of course from my head! Now I'm really not enjoying myself.
Two hours removing and taking apart every single piece of the system for cleaning/checking/re-checking, I even risked going over the side on the basis that clean seawater couldn't possibly do my leg any more harm than the pool of shit that I've been laid in on and off for the last three days, to check for any blockages in the seacock and skin-fitting. We finally found a blockage and in the only logical spot it could possibly have been, a calcite-plug in the outlet hose which we'd 'cleaned thoroughly and completely' back on Saturday morning. Today we discovered that the boat hook we threaded through the hose to check it was clear on Saturday morning is about 4'6" long whilst the pipe is actually about 9'4" long, so in the unbelievably unlikely scenario that the pipe is clear save for a blockage extending less than 2" from either side of the pipe's precise centre then you won't find it by reaming the pipe through with that boat hook - bugger! All finally back together again and it'll hopefully stay that way for a while; I guess it makes a change from just laying around eating lotuses, or should that be loti?