Wks 87-88: Faa’a, Tahiti (0nm)

Still stuck in Tahiti, waiting for travel restrictions to be lifted, but enjoyed a low key week in Papeete’s airport anchorage (aka Hotel California, as the long timers dubbed it!) better getting to know all the lovely people anchored around us.

First Mate’s Log

Saturday, 9th May: A quiet day on board sorting out odd jobs. Had my first group Zoom call experience to wish my dad a very happy 46th (by some counts) birthday. It was not nearly as complicated as I expected – technology is moving so fast just living on a boat for a couple of years puts one hopelessly behind! Tried a new recipe for another trial of cooking pizza in our oven. This version had a much better texture, but still a touch tricky to get right. So, our search for the perfect boat pizza dough recipe continues!

Sunday, 10th May: Discovered the cooling water in the outboard engine wasn’t flowing (sea water is pumped through the engine to keep it from overheating), so it was time for an emergency service session. That meant pulling apart the whole leg to check the impeller (it was fine) and flush the system (nothing blocking it). Actually, we could find nothing wrong at all… so we hoped just having taken it apart and put it back together would be enough. Luckily, on reassembly, it worked just fine. No idea, but at least we fixed it! Later that evening, Martin and Cheryl from Zan popped by for a curry and a beer. Even after two days we were all still feeling stiff from Friday’s hike!

Monday, 11th May: Aiming to reduce trips to shore (which require a 30 minute dinghy ride), Alec and I set off towards the marina with laundry, a big gas bottle from Ocean Blue, all our trash and the week’s grocery list. The local gas refill stations are very picky about refilling non-local bottles, so the other cruisers in the anchorage had been going in on a 13kg Tahiti gas bottle, which they could then decant into each boat’s smaller bottles. We’d offered to take the latest empty back to exchange for a full one so that we could join the queue for refills. Its a slightly finicky process requiring hanging the big Tahiti gas bottle upside down and running a hose to the smaller bottle you want to fill on the floor. The idea is to gravity fill the small bottle while not getting liquid gas everywhere. Not as easy as it sounds I don’t think!! Anyway, I left Alec at the marina to do the laundry, trash and gas while I went down to the enormous Carrefour for groceries. We succeeded at everything but the gas (for some reason the man never showed up who exchanges the bottles?), but that’s still a pretty good showing, so piled everything in the dinghy to head home. By now of course the wind had picked up to 20 knots and we had to drive directly into it to get back to Serenity… suffice to say we were VERY wet by the time we got back (though amazingly managed to keep most of the laundry and groceries dry)! That evening, we were invited to Painkiller for an impromptu birthday party for Ken (along with Tourterelle and another boat called Rapture), that was the perfect boost to our spirits after such a big day ashore.

Tuesday, 12th May: Martin from Zan offered Alec a lift in his super-fast dinghy to try again on the gas bottle exchange – this time, success! We all went over to Ocean Blue after, where Derek had everything set up to do the refills. With a little tinkering, Alec managed to get our two small empties filled and get the rest going into Martin’s (its a slow process – apparently the liquid gas likes to take its time, even with gravity’s assistance). By now, most of the rest of the anchorage had showed up to Ocean Blue for one thing or another, so we all stayed for a cup of tea and a nice catch up. Later, had a first stab at fixing the water heater (using some leftover sealant to replace the gasket) and left that to dry – fingers crossed, though I’m feeling a bit pessimistic. In the evening, it was finally time for the VA boats to get together! We joined Shelly and Mike from Avatar (White Post, VA) aboard Barbara and JB’s boat Ziezo (Tappahannock, VA) with nibbles and a few beers – what a great evening! Topics included: Lee-Jackson-King Day (what we had in VA for a long time instead of Martin Luther King Day), favourite restaurants we miss (Bodos!!), the many uses of “y’all” and memories from school days.

Weds-Thurs, 13-14th May: A new Arrete came out with more easing of restrictions across French Poly. We are finally allowed to go to Moorea (the neighbouring island to Tahiti)! We figured that Moorea would get rammed with local boats over the upcoming holiday weekend, so decided to wait until Monday to make our escape from Tahiti. Had a couple of days pottering about on board. Alec pushed forward with our solar panel warranty claim (the Tahiti rep is a tricky fellow…) and replaced the LEDs on our switchboard (now bright enough to rival the main cabin lights!). With the sealant fully cured, we tested our waterheater fix… but no luck – its still leaky! Back to the drawing board. Caught up with a few friends thanks to free 4G in the mornings on my local SIM card, and enjoyed lazy afternoons kayaking and snorkelling around the anchorage.

Friday, 15th May: I’d planned a fun day out in Papeete, though the morning dawned rainy and grey. We hoped it might break at some point and bravely ventured out anyway, but even with rain coats we were completely drenched by the time we got to the dock! Luckily, a fun cafe nearby made excellent cappuccinos that perked us right up. We passed a slow morning there catching up on wifi tasks and enjoying table service for the first time in months. The rain refused to abate, but we went back out anyway and had a fun couple of hours nosing around the local shops, which were just starting to open back up. On our way back to the dinghy, we ran into Ian and Ann from Tourterelle, who’d just been to buy new foam mattresses. And we thought our plans were crazy in the weather! They’d lugged two huge slabs of foam three miles back to the dock in the pouring rain, and were looking decidedly unimpressed as they loaded up their dinghy. At least the foam was wrapped in plastic, so hopefully they didn’t have a soggy night’s sleep!

Saturday, 16th May: The weather was finally perfect for the long awaited anchorage movie night! Moggy, a big catamaran, had the brilliant idea that they could set up a big screen between the hulls at the back of their boat with a sheet and a projector and host a “drive in” movie. Anyone who wanted to join could come along by dinghy and we’d all raft up behind. The evening’s showing was “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” which being a spoof by Seth MacFarlane seemed a slightly unusual choice given the average age of the community (we think the VHF voting scheme had perhaps been rigged by one over-enthusiastic boat). No matter – we were happy to watch just about anything just for the experience! The evening was perfectly flat calm without a cloud in sight, so Alec and I piled into the kayak (with lots of snacks!) and along with the rest of the anchorage descended on Moggy as the sun set. There were about 12 dinghies, and we tied neatly together to form a big raft. Alec and I managed to snag a spot right in the middle with an excellent view (and it meant we were also the throughway for snacks that got passed around – perfect!). Though it wasn’t a great film, we had an amazing evening; it is a special experience I won’t soon forget :). [Picture to come in a future update!]

Sunday, 17th May: Headed back to shore for a few last provisions and admin bits in preparation for going off to Moorea tomorrow. Had intended to get a pizza lunch from one of the restaurants in the marina, but when we sat down for a coffee the service was so bad (and the wifi so useless) we abandoned it. So, we ended up at the slightly fancier restaurant on the marina waterfront. The menu looked amazing so we splurged on an epic last meal in Tahiti – exceptional poisson cru for me and tuna tartare for Alec that even featured Tahitian vanilla! A perfect way to round out our time here!

Story of the Week: Cruisers’ Hotel California

Cruisers are not normally very good at staying on one place for long periods; itchy feet might in fact be considered a prerequisite to this lifestyle. So, being stuck in one spot for an extended period during the lockdown was breaking new ground for this group. We had it better than most, having only arrived to Tahiti in late April. Some had been in that spot since lockdown began on March 21st!

Given the above, I was surprised to find that spirits were high and all the cruisers we met were as cheery as ever. Everyone had managed to channel their sailing energy into other things, making for an even more vibrant community than usual. One of my favourite features of this was the daily “Hotel California Net” hosted over the VHF each morning by a rotation of boats. Referencing the Eagle’s famous song, our anchorage had the same rules – “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!” That humorous spirit pervaded the morning net, where myriad (often rude) jokes were told in between the serious updates on COVID and restrictions in the islands, keeping the mood up and ensuring we never got too bogged down in the sombre.

Social activities also blossomed in the Hotel California anchorage. In addition to the more typical invites for sundowners, which were coming thick and fast, people hosted fun, elaborate events that no one would normally have the energy to organise. This gave rise to Moggy’s epic drive in theatre, nighttime snorkel excursions, full moon parties, etc. On the other end of the spectrum, bottom-of-the-list jobs were finally being tackled across the anchorage, which typically turned into multiple boat affairs (everyone was time rich with lots of extra tools lying around they’d always hoped would be useful for something!). It even led to us trying out the dreaded “gravity fill your gas bottle from another bottle” (see above on May 11th). This was something we’d read about since before we even had the boat, but it seemed tricky enough that we’d never been brave enough to try. But, put enough cruisers together… Alec and Derek actually had a lot of fun I think getting their set up to work! Without time pressure to move off somewhere else, it was finally worth tackling some of these more challenging things, with rewarding results. Scarcely a day went by that didn’t end up being sociable in one way or another! But in a really nice way – there are a lot of great people in the cruising community.

The darker side of the Hotel California was that tensions with the locals continued to grow throughout our time there. The airport anchorage, near the suburb of Faa’a, would in normal times have only hosted a handful of boats, if that (likely because its 2 miles away from shore access – for us a 30 minute dinghy ride). While space has never been plentiful in the Papeete area, we’re told, there was always a mooring or a marina spot to be had somewhere. But with all the normal places full of long-time resident boats, the airport anchorage was all that was left for the transient yachts like us. The locals normally use this expansive area as a watersports playground – outrigger canoes, kite surfing, kayaking, paddle boarding, windsurfing… you name it. And on the weekends locals would also bring their little motor boats out for the day to anchor by the reef. All the sailing boats meant there was a lot less space for the local’s pursuits, and they really, really didn’t like that. But we’d been told specifically by the government to go to this anchorage – in fact it was the ONLY one we were allowed to use (all the other anchorages near Papeete had been closed). And of course we weren’t allowed to leave. All of us wanted to move on – no one wanted to be stuck in one place long term! So, that made it very frustrating being the target of the local’s anger and rudeness.

The upside for us of having boats forced to come together in this one place is that we got to meet so many more people than we might have otherwise, and especially a lot from our Pacific Puddle Jump fleet. Normally boats would disperse quickly through Polynesia after the crossing, and we might have only run in to one or two Puddle Jumpers in our time here. But, we’d now all been sent to the same place, so we got to know a number of them. It gave us a chance to develop a network of people all going in the same direction, meaning hopefully lots of friendly faces in later anchorages as we do start moving around and hopefully a buddy boat or two for future crossings!

Parting Thoughts

While COVID totally changed our plans in Polynesia and meant we had to miss out on the Marquesas and Tuamotus, we have actually been incredibly lucky to be here through this crisis. Sure, the anchorage was jokingly nicknamed “Hotel California,” but we could swim as much as we liked in crystal clear water, were free to visit other boats / socialise without any distancing needed, and had the benefit of well stocked French supermarkets (I never saw them run out of anything except for eggs once). We also had a great community around us, so never really felt isolated. And because Polynesia did such a good job containing the virus, we have never had to fear it. While some bits and bobs have been difficult, its clear we’ve had one of the best places anywhere to be locked down.

Looking forward, we might get something no one in our lifetime has had – the chance to see these islands without cruise ships and flocks of honeymooners. The only tourists here for at least another month or two are sailing yachts. Bora Bora with empty beaches, Raiatea and Tahaa with no charter boats, Huahine literally all to ourselves… while its not the experience we envisioned, it could be an incredibly special and unique one. So, taking off that age old adage “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” we’re going to make the most of seeing these islands as perhaps they once were. It might be even more special than if life had been normal this year.