Note: These events happened in July & August 2023 but I am writing this in Dec 2023l
On July 20 Peggy’s cousin Pat & her husband Steve joined us in Tahiti. They are VERY experienced boaters. Steve is a sailing instructor (and a professional trumpet player) and they owned Ahelani, an Outbound 46 monohull for many years. Peggy did the Baja HaHa with them on Ahelani, and enjoyed a number of great trips with them on their boat in Mexico, with me joining one in 2019. They now own a trawler and recently completed ‘The Big Loop’ up the east coast of the US, across the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, back to Florida where they started.
We started with a tour of Papeete, including the market.
Pat & Steve at the market.
By July 21, a cruiser’s rally / party called the ‘Tahiti-Moorea Rendevous’ was starting. This is a 4 day event, beginning with a welcome party, with drummers and dancers, as well as info booths where you can find out about many destinations cruisers might be heading to. They had reps from Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand and Australia. The purpose of the event is to promote a connection between the cruising community and the people who live on Tahiti and Moorea. (and have some fun!) Many of the boats took locals out sailing and there was a morning for locals to tour the cruisers boats. This was especially aimed at cruisers with kids connecting with kids living on the islands.
A traditional Maori dance with drummers.
Dancers and drummers with a few of the cruisers.
Steve & Pat with one of the dancers
The next day the 29 boats participating in the rally took off from Tahiti heading toward Moorea. Being a ‘rally’ and not a ‘race’ is a matter of perspective. There was an official start line and signal as well as an official finish line so some sailors took it seriously as a race. Most people were more focused on talking to other cruisers on the radio and enjoying the sail. Which was fortunate because when the lead boats were still over a mile from the finish the wind died. A few people stuck with it and eventually finished but most (including us) turned on the engines and motored to the finish.
A few of the rally boats with Tahiti in the background.
There were a couple well-known blogging boats in the rally. The catamaran above is ‘Parlay Revival‘, with a crew of 8. Colin bought a hurricane damaged 2012 Lagoon 450F in the Caribbean and spent years fixing and refitting to make his epic journey possible. You can find his blog on YouTube if you want to follow their travels. Warren and Erica from WeSail were also on the rally. It was fun to meet people whose blogs I had been following for some time!
Entering the pass at Opuhonu Bay was easy and it was great to be back in this beautiful paradise!
Dinner that night was quite a feast. It was fortunate that we brought our bug spray to discourage the swarms of mosquitos from feasting us as well.
This was a great time to meet other cruisers, swap stories and compare plans. We made several new friends that we hope to keep in touch with.
The next day began with the canoe races. We had heats of 4 canoes, each with 4 cruisers providing the ‘paddle power’ and one experienced local for control and direction in the stern.
Team NZ was a number of enthusiastic guys from the New Zealand info booth at the welcome party. They managed to capsize at the very beginning of their warmups! They did redeem themselves with a respectable 2nd place showing in their heat.
The next event was a market for local arts and crafts, followed by a huge traditional Polynesian feast. Then games, more dancing and time to hang-out with new friends.
The dancers pulled a number of the cruisers up ‘on stage’ for even more fun.
There were many games. Tug-Of-War was a favorite, along with a relay race where you carried a 4 ft pole with a large bunch of bananas hanging from each end.
There was also ‘stone lifting’ with a huge stone (maybe 50 or 60kg) and coconut husking and grating. The locals make it look really easy but it is NOT!
The people standing in back are using a spike that sticks out of the ground to remove the husk. Then, using a rock to strike in just the right place, the coconut will split through the middle. The people sitting in front are using a serrated metal scraper to get the coconut meat out of the shell. It is a lot of work!
The next day was mostly boat tours, especially for local families with kids to see how families live on their ‘floating homes’ and get the kids playing together.
Even though it was a rainy day, we did some snorkeling and hung out in the 82 degree water. Each evening Steve took out his trumpet and serenaded the anchorage at sunset.
Then back to Tahiti for a bit more exploring the city with Pat & Steve. And all too soon, they were on the plane and heading back to California.
Peggy and I stayed a few more days, “putting Calista to bed”, taking down the jib, replacing rigging lines with old ‘sacrificial lines’ that would sit in the sun for the next 7 months, pickling the watermaker, putting out all the fenders and extra docking lines, etc. I also changed the oil and filters on both engines and the generator, removed a frozen exhaust fan in the stbd engine compartment. I raised the Code0, rinsed with fresh water, dried and repacked. Same for the asym. I took the kayaks apart, thoroughly rinsed, dried and repacked. I also took inventory of all spare parts, tools, supplies and nautical charts.
Engine exhaust fan needs replacing. Looks like another casualty of salt-water splashing around.
The ice maker had stopped working a few days earlier. After some effort, I was able to trace this to a corroded connection at an outlet about 10 ft away. The power line for the watermaker was connected there. Easy fix, once I found the problem.
The port fwd head macerator pump froze up. This required removing the toilet and pulling apart some of the hoses. It’s a kinda messy job. At the end, I found that someone had put a baby-wipe in the toilet. These are guaranteed to strangle the macerator as they are reinforced with nylon threads that just wind around the macerator blades until it freezes. Not sure where this came from. Maybe a cleaning crew we had a month earlier?
Peggy flew back to SD a few days before me. I got the rest of the work done and left Aug 5. Gilles will be watching Calista for us until my return, planned for about Feb 15, 2024.
Here is a photo album with many of the pics above as well as some others and a few videos.