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Rendezvous Moorea

Saturday morning all 70 boats signed up for the Rendezvous were leaving the harbor, to sail the 12 miles across to Moorea. We saw the big ships that bring everything to this island nation and the huge containers it all comes in offloading onto the warf. Talion was right behind us leaving the marina. The weather did not want to cooperate and we had exactly no wind for the start of the trip, so no real racing was to be had, and we all motored. Of course it is supposed to be a rendezvous not a race anyway, but you know what happens when more that one boat is on the water headed to the same place!

We had volunteered to take on guests for the trip. We had no idea who or from where our guest would be. It turned out to be Matt from Cains Australia, who was one of the speakers and represented one of the sponsors.

Once the breeze finally picked up, we rolled out the sails and let cousin Mike drive the boat. As we got closer and closer the wind picked up more and more. It was a delightful sail and I think Mike had fun trying to steer a course in the swell rolling under us. Our jaws dropped open as we were now close enough to see the green beauty and the steep cliffs that is the magic of Mo'orea. We arrived in Cooks Bay, a place that had been on my bucket list to go for a long long time. So the celebration began. There were a lot of boat in the bay and the water was deep for anchoring (60 feet). But it was so inviting, Miguel (we called him that the whole time they were here, so not to confuse the two Mikes) decided to jump in and cool off immediately.

A dingy was approaching us and I asked Matt if he knew who they were, when suddenly I realized it was Rick and Jasna from Calypso, who we had sold the boat to several years ago. It was a joyous reunion and more drinking was involved! Mike and Katie swam over to Morning Light to hang out in one of Scott's floating islands behind the boat. Then the crew of Jade showed up and it was a big reunion all over again with Rick and Jasna and Sea Otter Jimmy. And as promised, Pedro delivered the Mexican Indio dark beer they had requested. Hard to believe he did not drink it before he got there!! Miguel took Erick, Pedro's son, ashore so he could Skype with the new love of his life, Elise. She had crewed for them on the passage, but went to work up in Alaska. Now Erick is planning to jump ship from his dad to be with her again. (awww!)

With a good buzz on, we took showers and got ready for the night's festivities. The crews of Jade, Talion, Avatar and Calypso enjoyed a great reunion dinner. The food chosen by the Rendezvous was either steak or Swordfish, uuhh, I'll have the fish please!!

Then the night's dance show started. More drumming and ukulele playing meant we should get good seats. Tonight was Tahitian style dancing. Katie was picked by one of the dancers to join him along with several other audience participants. She had one big grin on her face!! And she danced quite well! The grand finally of an amazing day, was the fire dancers. Wow were they spectacular!!

The way most everything gets here, by ship

Talion following us out of Marina Papeete

Ready to sail to Moorea, but no wind!

everyone motoring, still no wind

One of our old listings brought back to life

Mike and Miguel sailing Avatar

Matt our Australian guest and Katie on the fordeck

Wind in her sails and a bone in her teeth now

Katie enjoying the sail

Behold, Moorea!

The entrance to Cook's Bay

Race committee boat with Steph and Andy

A pretty full anchorage in Cooks Bay

Avatar Crew celebrates arrival

Big cliffs and Big boats!

Miguel jumps in to cool off

Cool shirts we all got for participating

Miguel, Jasna, Shelly and Rick reunion

Katie and Mike play in Scott's toys

Jimmy hugs Jasna

Pedro with his offering of Indio Beer from Mexico

Pedro's handsome son, Erick

Jimmy, Pedro, Jasna and Rick reunion

Jimmy, Miguel, Jasna, Patsy, Paul, Denise, Andrea, Shelly and Rick at dinner

The musicians in their costumes and drums

Beautiful lady dancers

Handsome men dancers

Katie and her dance partner

Katie doing the Tahitian dance

Go Katie Go!

Fire dancer

More fire dancers

Amazing Fire dancers!!

Sail Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous in Papeete

Cousins Mike and Katie visit!!

Mike and Katie arrived on the 22 of June on the 5am flight. Not sure why, but all flights from LA seem to arrive at either 5am or midnight. Must be because of the 5.5 hours it takes to get here! We still working on the mast project, which we had hoped would be done before they got here. Since Pedro was there to help Mike, I took the cousins up to the downtown market and we did the tourist thing. What fun showing them around. By Thursday afternoon, the project was done and they helped to put the boom and sail back on. We bought lots of food for their stay at the market, and Friday we carted the gas jugs down to the station to have filled. We were all ready to sail across to Moorea by Friday night when the Rendezvous festivities began.

Having signed up for the Pacific Puddle Jump while still in Mexico, we were invited to participate in the Sail Tahiti-Moorea Rendezvous put on by Tahiti Tourism, Latitude 38 magazine and several other sponsors. It sounded like a lot of fun, so we planned Mike and Katie's visit around the event.

The Tourism office is right next door to the downtown Marina Papeete. We walked over and picked up our sign in package, which included T-shirts for the whole crew and lots of brochures and sailing travel info. Stephanie Betz and her company were in charge of the whole event. She gave us a nice lecture with large paper charts and slide show, telling us about some of the highlights of sailing in the Society Islands. It was all the stuff you wanted to know as a cruiser, like where you can and cannot anchor, when ever possible pick up the government moorings so not to wreck the coral with our anchors, some of the highlights of each island and fun things to do.

The director of Tourism gave us a nice talk, and every single person there got a real flower lei!! They were very lovely and smelled like heaven. Next was the dance show, which we had all been waiting for. These dancers performed the Marquesan dances with big drums, beautiful costumes, and many of them had amazing tattoos. It was very tribal and thumped in the chest. Then they get the women to all come up and learn the “Bird dance”. It was quite fun and somewhat humorous as we all waved our arms in the air following our dance leaders. Then they get the men to come up and learn the “Canoe dance”, where they slapped their legs and swung their arms like paddling. I am sure everyone very much enjoyed themselves. At the end we were all allowed to take their photos with us. Nothing like standing next to a muscular sexy sweaty dancer!! Oh yea and the gals were lovely too!!

After the show they fed us wine, juice and hors d'oeuvres. After a few drinks and shopping at the trinket tables, we went next door to the park, where the “Trucks” serve food. This as a cool thing to do in Papeete and one of the least expensive ways to eat out. The park has many spaces and food trucks move in around 6pm and stay until about midnight. We had steak, Chinese food and pizza with Patsy and her crew, which was her daughter, son in-law and granddaughter. All for about US$20 each. And that is a cheap meal out here! This is why we provisioned the boat and ate on board for most of the trip!!

Drums waiting to be played

Leis waiting to be placed around necks

Director of Tahiti Tourism

Stephanie and Andy our hosts

The drummers have arrived!

Beautiful men in great costumes

Beating the drums

The warrior dancers arrive

Dancers doing their thing

Dancer with prop

Lady dancers

Beautiful lady dancers in great costumes

The whole show

Tattooed dancer

Chief tattooed dancer

Another dancer

Lady dancer

Ladies cruisers waiting for dance instructions

Doin the Bird Dance!

yep that is me in the purple

Great shot of Mike with Chief dancer

Demonstrating how to do the men's dance

After show posing

Katie, Shelly and buff dance guy!

Chores

Sailing to Paradise, seems like such an idyllic thing to do, but it is not always fun in the sun. Lots of chores were been done before and after the fun was had. One of our last minute things was to replace the drive unit of the autopilot that broke on our shake down cruise to mainland Mexico. I guess the good news was it happened there and not out here, where things have to be shipped in at great expense! Pedro had to re drill some of the wood he built to hold the previous one as of course the holes for the new one did not line up with the old ones. To get to the autopilot, the entire aft bunk (where we sleep) had to be taken apart again and disassembled, drilled and re assembled.

In the mean time, Mike made rubber mounts for the dive compressor hidden underneath the aft seat. He then had to secure the frame to the seat mounts to make sure it did not move around in case of a big seaway.

Once we arrived in the Marquesas, we had LOTS of laundry to do. Thank God I had the new clothes washing machine installed to replace the old leaky one. When our friends paid to have their laundry done ashore it was $25 per load! It may have been expensive for that washer, it will pay for itself in no time! Because it was raining a lot when we first arrived we hung up the drying line underneath the sun/rain awning. This way even if it rained a bit the clothes still dried.

The one photo shows really well how the sail track had tried to remove itself from the mast. Thank goodness it was only partial pulled out. It started on the crossing, but got so bad on the passage to Fakarava, we knew we could no longer use the mainsail. So when we finally got to Pape'ete, we took the track off and searched the town until we found the proper sized rivets and bought a rivet gun. The anchorage by Marina Taina was sometimes rolly, especially when the surf was up, so we moved down to Marina Pape'ete to try and be in a more still location for the job up the mast. Mike went up and down the mast at least 6 times to complete the job. He went slow so not to strain his new back too much. Once at the top, he found another problem. The pin holding up the sheaves (rollers that the halyards go over from outside to inside the mast) had come loose and one of the sheaves was missing (most likely fell inside of the mast). Pedro came over and fixed up that problem for now, but we will have to have a new sheave made and re-installed. Probably will not find the other one, until we pull the mast out again!

The mast track itself is starting to show some age, so we know at some point it too will have to be replaced. We actually saw two boats replacing that same type of track here in Pape'ete and got good info on where and how to get one when we need it. How will we know when the time has come to replace it? The cars on the sail will start popping out of the track.

Just like a house, a boat always has something to fix. We try to keep from letting the list get too long and sometimes a thing that is at the bottom of the list, suddenly gets moved to the top, when a priority has to be changed. Such is life cruising around the tropics!