Thursday, September 10, 2009

First Tahitian week

One week already and I feel guilty to have almost disappear from the blog. That is the time it took for me to find the opportunity and the time and the energy to come back and update our blog.
We arrived last Wednesday at the Pointe Venus in 30 knots wind and under the guidance of Marc Lucas a.k.a. MarcGyver who has his boat in a marina nearby. I had been complaining about our 40 knots of wind that we experienced coming out of the Tuamotou, but in fact, we were rather lucky. A cat that had left the day before us from Hiva Oa and had gone south had 60 knots of wind for 12 hours. And in Tahiti itself, the wind was a 50 knots sustained and caused damages to a few boats, including one cat going on the reef.
So, Wednesday afternoon, we took a very quiet anchorage on the SW of Pointe Venus, and after a welcome drink with MarcGyver and Jane, who came with french baguette and pineapple, we enjoyed a wonderfully quiet night at the anchorage with no noise and very still  and quiet water.
Thursday morning, we took our time and around 10 o'clock, sailed to the entrance of the Papeete harbour and then around the airport to the marina Taina.
We got there a fantastic, friendly, competent and effective welcome from the personnel of the marina. In no time, we were tied up alongside, and were it not for the electric connection and the internet connection, we were as happy as can be. It turns out that their electric system has differential meters and cannot accept the green and the white wire inside the boat to be connected together anywhere. This took a whole week  to sort out and we are not out of the woods yet.
As for internet, there are two suppliers on the marina who compete against each other in a very disorderly fashion, including installing powerful antennas next to each other. The result is a lot of interferences, and even when you have a strong signal, the connection is very unstable.
Apart from that, the windvane is repaired, the spinnaker pole is fixed and shortened as I wanted, the sails are at the sailmaker, the bilge pump has been replaced and the connection redone. Very little left to do to bring Papy Jovial back to tip top shape for the departure to Noumea.
As for Tahiti, I have mixed feelings and perceptions, not all of them enthusiastic and it will take a full entry in the blog to explain my impressions
I'll be back . . . .   (who said that ?)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Arnold...

--about time we heard from you--


Tom Zalewski
tom.zalewski@ngc.com

Anonymous said...

Hey Brother,
I have enjoyed your blog. I check in on you almost everyday. Maria was asking about you just yesterday.
Orza,
Piper

Anonymous said...

Hope you cllected all the news re the NZ brothers Zaff in March to pass on to our Tahitian Brothers! The Undertaker