Bastille Day Celebration

Christi started the morning by finishing the bottom. Much to her dismay, everything she had scrubbed yesterday had a fine little layer of growth return. She decided to just pretend like nothing had grown back and to just work on the previously uncleaned areas. It took her an hour.

From there we went snorkeling in the coral reef next to our boat. As we were swimming out there, the people we had met from San Diego, Eric and Gisela, came up to us in their dinghy. They were also going snorkeling, so we all went together. The reef had small spots of color, but was mostly all light brown. There were a lot of coral shaped like Bryce Canyon, which was neat. There were a few fish, but not a ton. We did see a couple new fish we have not seen before. One had a beak and came in a few colors. We saw one black tipped reef shark about 5 feet long. There were a lot of plants growing on the coral that had long spindly branches with thorny looking things at the ends. The most noteworthy plant looked like a single dark pink rose stuck on the side of a coral head. It almost looked like someone had glued a plastic flower to the coral. We only saw one. Continue reading

Moorea Maintenance

Tomorrow is Bastille Day, one of the biggest French holidays of the year. According to Lonely Planet, when a holiday falls on a Saturday, everything is closed the Friday before. Since (we assumed, at least) everything was closed, the plan for today was to do some boat chores, then go snorkeling.

Conditions were ideal for several chores. It is much easier to change fuel filters when the tanks are full and when you are in a calm anchorage, so Eric changed all the fuel filters aboard. Christi assisted. Continue reading

Touring Moorea

Today we planned to rent scooters and take a tour of the island. We took the dinghy over to the town of Paopao in Cook’s Bay, where the scooter/car rental place was located. The ride over was interesting. There is coral all around, so you have to be careful. There is a small boat channel that is clearly marked, and as long as you stay in the channel, you are fine. It just looks kind of crazy as you are in the channel because Continue reading

Welcome to Moorea

We left Tahiti through the southern pass, which is closer for us than going back around to the north. We had been leery of using the southern pass, reading in our cruising guides that it can be treacherous. The rally to Moorea had used the southern pass and it was no problem, so we were confident in using it this time. It is a bit hard to see, but check out the surfers catching waves on the reef. It felt like we were heading out to see through surf, but the pass itself only had minor swells. Going through was easy.

sandiegomooreatahaa1-013-large.jpg Continue reading

Getting Ready to Leave Tahiti

We decided it was finally time to get moving. Since we were leaving the only real city we will be in for a long time, there was some stuff we needed to take care of before leaving.

Eric changed the oil on the main engine and generator since there was an oil disposal site nearby. We loaded up to the brim with fuel. We were by no means low, and yes, we can get fuel at other places, but we wanted to get it here since it is a modern fuel dock with reported very clean fuel. The duty free diesel was $3.00 per gallon, up from $2.90 we paid in Nuka Hiva. If you have to pay duty, it costs closer to $5.00 a gallon. We had to wait a half hour for fuel. A big mega-yacht had just pulled in the day before and sucked the storage tanks dry, and the fuel dock had ordered an immediate fuel delivery that we were waiting on. The station holds 8,000 gallons, and the mega-yacht holds 16,000 gallons. The mega-yacht was going to be back soon to suck the pumps dry yet again, so we snuck in at a good time. Continue reading