November 2020

Date: November 2020

Position: Moorea, French Polynesia, South Pacific

Iaorana (Bon jour) from French Polynesia again!

Captain Bonzo here with an update from Ari B!  For those of you who don’t know me, I am the Captain of Ari B, a multi-talented stuffed dog, that speaks 5 languages, has sailed half way round the world and barks orders. I also write the newsletters for Alex and Carla.

When I last wrote to you, we were about to sail to Tahiti to stock up and get some boat parts for our regular maintenance, so after a lumpy, but uneventful sail from Fakarava we arrived in Tahiti at the end of July. Since French Polynesia extended the period that foreign yachts can stay in the country without paying import tax from 3 months to 3 years (without considering the impact on yachting facilities), it is virtually impossible to get a marina berth in either of the 2 marinas in Tahiti. It’s literally hot berthing – as soon as one leaves, there’s another boat moving in. Carla was even told by the harbourmaster on the radio that the marina was full, but as luck would have it, a boat just left as we arrived and we snagged their place! Alex was keen to use shore power to run some maintenance on the house batteries that showed signs of aging – and we had not been to a marina in 16 months! Whilst in the marina the team went shopping, walked around town, had a drink and enjoyed civilisation for a change. I guarded the boat as even though my French is fluent, Alex was worried about peoples’ reactions should he use a stuffed dog as a translator J.

Of course some epic food shopping took place, Carla got her permit to stay in FP (now required, thank you Brexit!), Alex renewed the tax free fuel certificate and the team had some nice evenings too with friends that also were in the marina. Fuel was taken on, food and drink was taken on and in general, after some discussion, we took the decision to be able to stay off the grid for up to 6 months if we needed to.

Papeete (Tahiti’s capital) is a strange place from a yachting point of view. It’s the crossroads of the south pacific, with virtually every sailing route in the pacific passing through here and it’s the only place to do repairs, get parts etc for thousands of miles, but it is woefully poorly equipped to do so. Prices are astronomical (we suspect because of taxes and shipping costs), for example 4 litres of boat polish that costs $65 in the USA is being sold for $227 – Alex actually took the bottle to the checkout to make sure the price wasn’t a mistake – it wasn’t! Parts availability is poor. Every Caribbean island is better stocked than the 3 chandleries in Papeete put together. So they are really shooting themselves in the foot. The potential for yachting being a major pillar of their economy is huge, but the industry gets suffocated with fees and taxes, and since everything is so expensive, everybody is shipping stuff in from the USA. Including us. So the local businesses are losing out, and so does the government as yachts in transit have tax free status. We all feel that we’d be happier to walk into a well stocked shop, buy everything we need there and then, and contribute to the local economy – the cart is before the horse here......., but who listens to a dog??

Plus, since they invited all these yachts to stay longer without taking ANY measures to accommodate them, marinas are full, anchorages are full and anchoring time restrictions are being put in place, as some people simply arrive and then sit in the same place outside someone’s house for a year. Imagine you have a campervan parked outside your house for a year with people living in it – it’s just not on. So, regretfully there’s a little tension in the Society Islands. Most people are still polite and friendly and we have never had an issue, but one needs to be mindful of not becoming a nuisance. Add Covid to that mess – stopping many yachts from leaving since most ports down the line are closed or restricted, but we have to say that the vast majority of the locals are exceptionally friendly, despite the challenges. And we are thankful!

So after the rush and bustle of Papeete we were happy to do the short sail to Moorea for a change of scenery and some hiking. The team felt a little short on the fitness side and were looking forward to climbing some mountains. After a couple of nights on the reef, we entered Cooks bay with one of the most dramatic sceneries one could imagine – simply beautiful!! And hills to be explored!! So, the next morning they set off for an easy walk they had planned so as not to overdo it the first time in months, while I stayed and guarded the boat. 5 hours later, they returned having completed a gruelling walk in terrain that has not been walked in ages. Fallen trees, landslides, no path etc etc. Serves them right –could have taken another path.....

After a few days recovery, they set off again. This time the hike took them through pineapple plantations and through the Opunohu valley, and up to the three coconut pass. Moorea have done a fantastic job of maintaining a set of marked trails passing historic maraes. Today most maraes are just piles of stones but before the arrival of Europeans in the 18th century, they were used for social, political and religious activity including human sacrifice. Thankfully not dogs, at least I think not. They were the sites of the most sacred religious ceremonies, namely circumcision and puberty rites, marriage and death ceremonies. Important political events also took place including war councils and feasts with neighbouring communities to organise alliances and marriages. Over 100 have been listed in the Opunohu Valley alone and many have been excavated and are surprisingly well preserved. They are still held sacred by modern Polynesians today. Whilst on the subject of Polynesian culture, Carla has been discovering her artistic side. She has taken to painting driftwood with Polynesian designs that have symbolic meanings. We were all a bit sceptic at first but now we are quite amazed with some of her work.

Sadly a few days later we received some tragic news. An accident had occurred in the reef anchorage just around the corner from us and a passing speedboat struck and killed 13 year old Eddie on the British sailing yacht “September A.M.”. We knew the family although not terribly well, but the team celebrated the father’s birthday with a beach bbq and Alex had helped them out with a few tips on windsurfing. Still a member of our extended yachting family had unfairly died long before his time and in honour of Eddie, a Hawaiian ‘paddle-out’ was held across the world, with us doing our bit in the very location Eddie was killed. Carla and Alex constructed a raft with flowers and Polynesian symbols encouraging and supporting his journey into the next life and met up with other boats to show our respect on a sunny Saturday afternoon at 3pm. Ironically, the police that was absent on the day of the accident (the location is just off a popular public beach with lots of people in the water, and a small boating channel that should have a speed restriction, but doesn’t) was present that day and informed us that putting rafts and flowers into the water was forbidden. A French boat educated the police as to what we were doing so they let us get on with the ceremony. R.I.P.  Eddie 9th August 2020.

Leaving this sad story behind, we set sail to Huahine the next day some 80 miles away, arriving after 12 hours at sea – a great day sailing, averaging 6.5 knots. ‘Hua’ supposedly means sex in Tahitian and ‘Vahine’ means women which translates to pregnant women and that’s because when you stand in the main village of Fare and look to the left, the hills look like a pregnant woman lying down. We spent a few days on a buoy in a well sheltered spot while a bit of stronger wind was blowing and the team explored the southern section of the island on foot. It’s very pretty here with lush vegetation and bananas and papayas growing everywhere! After a few days we moved the boat closer to the village, A & C went for a great lunch at Izzy’s burger bar and sampled the locally produced fruit brandies, adding a couple of bottles to the ship stores. They also hired a car to tour the rest of the island. At the water’s edge they discovered a lovely small museum and a series of maraes that also extend up into the hillside and a huge banyan tree that resembles the Tree of Life in the movie Avatar. There were also ancient fish traps made of stone and shaped like the letter V, which are still used today to catch unwary mullet and jackfish. Then on round to the other side of the island and the feeding of the sacred eels. Carla came prepared with a tin of mackerel and as soon as she opened the tin the slippery fellows appeared, 2m long and with sapphire blue eyes wriggling and fighting one another to get to the mackerel.  They never really found out why they are sacred but to the islanders the sacred eel is superseded only by the coconut in terms of respect and importance. Apparently they keep the waters clean and free of pollution, eating rubbish and bacteria that grows on the riverbed. Quite why they eat that when they have a daily supply of several tins of fish is anyone’s guess.

Another day’s sailing saw us enter the lagoon of world famous Bora Bora with its spectacular mountain at the centre of it all. We picked up a buoy in front of the Bora Bora Yacht Club and were shortly after visited by the money collection man who advised us that anchoring in the lagoon was forbidden and the nightly fee for a buoy was $30. So the team examined the plan he gave us carefully and could see areas where anchoring was forbidden, the mooring fields and a couple of 72 hour limit anchorages. So what about all the rest of the area? We anchored out for several days, being creative on where we spent our time and didn’t have any issues. We subsequently had it confirmed that you can actually anchor in any of the mooring field areas as long as you don’t impinge any of the buoys and they now offer a monthly rate of 300 US dollars.

Bora Bora is best appreciated from the air, so the next day Alex and Carla assaulted the mountain together with Charlie from Longtemps, who at 30 years old could easily be their son and Alex was determined to keep up with him.

Mount Pahia is the 2nd highest summit on Bora Bora at 658m and the hike up is a mixture of rocks, roots, ropes and dirt, and it’s steep all the way. Near the end you get to a steep gully called the Stairway to Heaven. It’s all roped from here and takes about 30 minutes straight up to a ridge and the first summit. So after the exhausting climb, they sat on top of the world, with a view of the most famous island in the world that was simply breathtaking. Really quite spectacular. Many people take a guide for this hike but they did it alone and found it for the most part to be well marked.

One can’t visit Bora Bora and not go to the famous Bloody Marys. The restaurant is a big varnished Fare Tiurai (carnival type hut) with thatched roof, open sides, white sand floor, wooden slab tables and stools made of coconut tree stumps. Celebrities from around the globe have eaten here and there are two ‘Walls of Fame’ at the entrance with the names of over 230 famous personalities. Many gave impromptu performances including Ron Wood and Julio Iglesias. Nobody famous when they were there unfortunately but Carla did get some curious looks when she arrived with mask and dark sunglasses.

Overall, although the island and lagoons are spectacular, Bora Bora left the team somewhat unmoved. The stark contrast between the numerous top of the range hotels all situated on the motus around the fringe of the lagoon and the local community left us all a little uneasy. We didn’t see any evidence that the vast amounts of money that have been invested into the hotels and the no doubt vast profits that are being made had a positive impact on the local people or their infrastructure. Seems to us the cash that is being made goes elsewhere. A friend of ours fancied a couple of nights on land (well a water bungalow actually), so he enquired about the price of one of the end rooms (suites) at reception and was told it was $ 75,000. He said I don’t want to buy one, just stay a few nights. That’s the price per week sir, breakfast NOT included. Unreal.

After a week the wind was good to move on to Maupiti, some 30 miles west, an island that was top of our list to visit. The pass into the lagoon is a little more challenging than in the rest of the Society Islands. It becomes hazardous if the ocean swell is larger than 2 meters from a southerly direction, but on the day of our arrival the conditions were perfect and the entry was straight forward. Carla even caught a large wahoo just before we entered the pass. Maupiti is beautiful, has a large lagoon, resident manta rays, a mountain you can climb to stay fit and best of all – very friendly people. The locals have got it right – there are a number of pensions both on the island and on the motus, some restaurants and so on, but no big, posh hotels. All the businesses are locally owned and the profits stay right where they belong. At the time of our visit due to the virus situation not a lot of tourists were there, so the team had the place almost to themselves. A&C liked it so much, we stayed a month.

Carla went diving with the mantas almost every day for a week and even Alex went for his first dive in over 25 years. The “manta cleaning station” – essentially a large coral block gets visits from the local rays every morning. They glide in and hover just above the station, with mouths and gills open, and little fish dart out from the coral and feast on any parasites they can find on the graceful rays, which at 3 to 4 meter wingspan are impressive to look at according to A&C! And they are inquisitive and playful at times, so if you keep still, they pass so close over you that you could touch them – what a spectacle!!

Every Saturday there is a traditional Polynesian fire pit oven party on the beach of one of the motus. A & C attended while I was safely on board – no telling what the numerous dogs would do to a stuffed version.

The fire pit contains coconut husks mainly, they get lit and the food gets placed in the fire pit and then covered with banana and palm leaves to slowly cook overnight. We had pork, breadfruit, bananas, chicken all cooked overnight in the pit – delicious!! And they added poisson cru (raw fish dish) and clam curry to the menu. The team had a great time with a bunch of other sailors and some locals and tourists, even though they ran out of cutlery and some people had to eat with their fingers – apparently fine for the pork, but a challenge with the curry sauce! Our host then proceeded with a variety of games, coconut opening competitions and traditional dancing – all a bit touristy, but great fun for the team I was told.

Equally spectacular is the view from the top of the Mount Teurafaatiu. At 380m the hike is not quite as harsh as Bora Bora, but still, it gets the heart pumping and the view in our opinion is even better. The crew did the hill 6 times in an effort to get fitter, including a final descent with friends from Alia Vita via a route that wasn’t a route and took 2.5 hours of hard cross country scrambling to make it back down.

We spent a blissful month in Maupiti – the team’s favourite island in the Societies. At the same time the watermaker started playing up – fatigued materials from many years of relentless service saw corroded components that could no longer handle the 60 bar of pressure the system requires to filter salt out of water. That’s 30 times the pressure you have in your average car tire Alex tells me, so once components are weakened, trouble is ahead. Alex got it working again by using the parts from 3 membranes to make 2 working ones with a bit of steel, some dyneema, a pulley system and some chewing gum J. I of course had technical oversight of the bodge repair job.

But we had to get new ones, so Alex and Carla put an order into the US, and since they were going to get the parts delivered via ship, then proceeded to buy the many bits that were on their shopping list for NZ. The shipping costs are per cubic meter, and are only about $200 to come to Tahiti, so they went and spent 4000 dollars in a couple of days on the internet.

Talking about shipping – they had put in an order for rigging parts in the UK, as the backstay insulators had developed a crack and Alex made a new backstay from parts he had on board. It was a workable solution but a one-piece backstay is our preferred option so they ordered new wire and fitting from Jimmy Green (excellent quality dyform wire). In addition the UK shopping team (Louise, Lucja and Kieran) sprang into action and put a box of essentials together (teabags, medications, shorts, starter motor brushes etc..), which Louise shipped to Jimmy Green so everything could be sent together. Thank you very much UK Shopping Team. We don’t know what we would do without you.

It all left the UK of 17th August, via airfreight, not cheap, £532 Carla tells me. Only the imbecile courier company UPS routed the packages via NZ. There have been no flights from NZ to Tahiti since June (thank you Covid), so it had to go on a ship, no one knew exactly where the packages were, they were marked as lost, the paperwork was lost, but they finally arrived in Tahiti after over 2 months! The courier company will have to deal with Carla’s feedback – the poor sods.....

Parcel time! We have been back and forth to Tahiti twice to collect parcels. They arrived within a week of each other. Shipment 1 contained two parcels - rigging parts to complete our step by step rigging replacement project and ‘essentials’. The aim for the team was to have the entire rig in Dyform (compact strand wire 30% stronger than standard wire) and staloc terminals that can be assembled by hand without a swaging machine, thus adding repair capability in remote corners of the earth. To Carla’s amazement Alex seemed to have ordered all the correct parts, in the correct lengths and sizes. According to her that’s a first, I won’t repeat Alex’s comments here.

So Alex started work and over the following 3 days cut, assembled and fitted 7 wires. That included 4 trips up the mast and with Carla’s help he replaced one after the other, lowering the old ones and lifting the new ones with ropes. The main job took 5 hours up the mast. So he was well knackered by the end of it. I don’t know what the fuss was about – I have done jobs like these many times in my days and never complained and I have 4 legs – you try climbing a mast with 4 legs.

 A week went by and parcel 2 arrived – well actually 15 individual parcels on a pallet. Since Alex was not a 100% certain that the watermaker parts and associated hydraulic hoses and fittings for the 14 connections would all fit (he had to order from 2 different companies), he wanted to be in Tahiti to be able to get bits if needed. As it turned out he could have made it work with the parts he ordered, (that’s a second said an amazed Carla), but decided to replace a couple more fittings and hoses. So after loading all 15 parcels on board off he went to find the parts, essentially 2 hoses and a few fittings. It was made more difficult, as he had stubbed and probably broken a toe a couple of days earlier, so walking was slow and painful. Upon his return he tells us this story:

“ So I took the dingy for the 25 minute ride into town, it was bloody rough and my foot was killing me – anyway I find the shop not too far from the dock and put my hose on the counter (which was still functional and if he didn’t have a replacement, I was going to reuse it). Me no French, he little English, but after a few minutes he puts 2 new fittings on the table (correct ones) and things are looking up. Then he writes down the price - $125 each. I pull a face, so he takes a couple of wrenches and starts to unscrew the old fittings – they are re-useable, I didn’t know that. Brilliant that’ll save 500 dollars I think and watch him unscrew the fitting and destroy the hose in the process. I am not too worried, it’s just hose. So he takes off both fittings, disappears down the back and returns empty handed. He says “No hose”. Shit. No hose? “No Hose”. No problem he says and gives me the name of another shop, 5 minutes walk away. I am now a little nervous as now I must find hose otherwise no watermaker. Off I go, limping down the road in search of the shop, which I cannot find. 45 minutes later after asking numerous people I find out the shop. It is closed. No I am really nervous.

 Back to the first shop, I find someone who speaks a little English and he helps me call the third and last shop, get directions and shows me on Google maps. They said they have hose, so I am on my way – 35 minute walk one way, no taxi in sight. On arrival the shop is closed. I call him. He is out with his car looking for me to give me a ride – nice. He doesn’t have the hose in the shop, it has to come from somewhere else, by scooter. He doesn’t like my fittings, says they are no good, will go pop at 400 bar. Well my watermaker is only 60 bar and they served me for the last 8 years, so what does he know. A short trip to a bank, since he doesn’t take cards and after 1.5 hours I finally have my hoses, part with an obscene amount of money and hobble back to the dingy. 5 hours after leaving I get back to you guys – victorious! See what I mean about Tahiti – its run of the mill hydraulic hose and it takes half a day to get it sorted. ...”

So after Alex’s rant, we spend the night in Tahiti, return to Moorea in the morning and Alex has a rest. His foot is now very painful after walking on it for ages, so the watermaker project is delayed for a day. The next day, the old membranes are removed, new ones installed and mounted (the assembly weighs about 40kg and moving it in and out of the tight space is very hard for the team). Test run. Leaks. Remove (all 40kg out onto the deck. (can we do in situ? Carla asks hopefully – NO) and fix. Install again (backs now hurting). Test run. One leak. Remove (can we do in situ? Carla asks hopefully – NO) and fix. Install. Test run. All fingers, toes and paws crossed. NO leak. Total time 1.5 days. Carla felt like she had been in a step class, dashing in and out of the boat to collect tools etc. Who says it’s boring on a boat. Watermaker back in service producing 180 litres an hour. Fingers, toes and paws still crossed that it remains that way.

So that’s the two big jobs done but for the coming weeks, Alex and Carla will be busy with  more boat jobs. To name a few - Install a new SSB antenna, replace engine room extractor fan, replace navigation lights forward, replace led lighting in galley, install new handheld radio charger, replace davit wires with dyneema, replace bbq, replace faulty light switch in galley, repair sprayhood, replace bimini side windows and so on and so on. And then there is the regular maintenance like a main engine service. Carla’s turn this time.

While I am writing to you, the boat is in Moorea, it’s raining and we are looking for a weather window to head for the Tuamotos. We might go to the Marquesas and even the Gambier islands, but have not made fixed plans.

We’ll keep you updated when we can but wifi access will be a bit more sketchy during the next few months even though we now have a phone contract.

So, from the far side of the world our best wishes for all of you, stay safe and healthy, until next time.

Au revoir

Ari B out