Mike wakes me at midnight for my watch. Apparently the wind reached 20 knots for about three seconds while I was asleep but has been back to its 8 or 9 knots ever since.
I eventually come to, wondering how the bloody hell I did this waking up just after going to sleep business for 19 straight days (and how the hell I am going to do it again for a similar stretch in a few months’ time). I watch TV, getting up every 15 minutes as required to check the instruments and look outside. I see even less than when we did the Pacific passage as we are the only boat out in these few square miles of sea.
Mike wakes up just before my watch finishes but I am so engrossed in the TV that I don’t notice him sitting at the navigation table for 10 minutes until he walks past and strokes my feet, nearly giving me a heart attack. I thankfully get up, go below and fall asleep almost immediately my head hits the pillow.
When I wake up, land is in sight although we are still a few hours away. Mike goes for a short nap while I keep watch. Dolphins arrive again although these don’t hang around for as long today.
We get the main sail down and motor into the anchorage at Taiohae where some WARC boats are already anchored – Blue Eyed Girl, Dreamcatcher, Eowyn and Noeluna. We put the anchor down but within an hour we have swung 180 degrees and are too near a boat which has its stern anchor down (which means it doesn’t swing at the same time and direction as us) so we have to move and re-anchor.
We need to refuel here but have heard that getting alongside the fuel dock can make your boat filthy at best, and dent it at worst, as the swells at the side of the bay are unpredictable. Dreamcatcher has lost its steering and they are refuelling so we head over to them and as their lines are taken ashore, Mike nudges the boat sideways with our dinghy to put it in a more suitable position for refuelling. I shout to the guy on the quayside to find out how long he will be there (as we need someone to help take the lines when we get there) and he says he will be there all afternoon, so we shoot back in the dinghy, get the anchor up and move the boat over to the fuel dock. After a lot of jiggery pokery (technical term for buggering about and manoeuvring) we have the anchor down and two stern lines attaching us to the dock. The fuel nozzle is passed to us across the water attached to a line. Mike discovers that the nozzle won’t properly fit into the tank – the whole thing is so big that it won’t fit under the helmsman’s seat so he has to hold it at an angle and let the diesel flow in very slowly so that it doesn’t spurt out everywhere. All the time I am sitting on the back step with a fender as the boat keeps moving backwards and forwards towards the nasty concrete wall with the swell – the dinghy acts as a giant fender on the other side.
By the time Mike has poured 320 litres into the tank, Dreamcatcher and crew have departed. This means that Mike has to get into the dinghy to get to the dock in order to pay, leaving me on the boat in charge. As he leaves, he shouts out to put the engines into gear and go forward if it looks like we are going to hit the wall. Eeeek!
Anyway, he returns a few minutes later because they want lots of paperwork in order to process the payment. In addition to our fuel duty exemption certificate (the only perk of being a foreigner is that fuel is duty free) which Mike gave them, they also want sight of the boat registration papers, something we have never been asked for, even in the last island. He grabs them and is off leaving me sitting like a frightened rabbit in charge again.
I manage to keep us off the wall until he walks back to the dock but there is no one to let our lines go, so Mike unties them and Jeannius floats forward while he jumps in the dinghy and chases after us before I manage to hit anything (although the chances are remote as we still have the anchor down). Then it’s off to anchor again in the bay, which we have to do twice as we swing too near to another boat the first time.
Graham from Eowyn comes over to get some navigation information on the Tuamotos and we arrange to go out to eat with them and the crews from Dreamcatcher and Brown Eyed Girl tonight to a really good restaurant that Graham has already tried, then Mike goes ashore to do some shopping and visit an ATM to get some more pretty money out. He comes back with some shopping too.
I take a load of washing over to Brown Eyed Girl and use their washing machine as I can’t afford to ‘waste’ the water on our boat. There is apparently water available here at the quay but it is said to be contaminated at the source by goat pooh and I really don’t want to put that in my tank.
After lunch, a nap, a cup of tea and a shower, it’s time to go out. Having just got my hair dry and myself into the dinghy, I am really pissed off that it starts to rain, and for a short while, quite heavily - I will now have poodle hair for the evening and a wet bum to boot. Such are the challenges of a sailing life for a lady (lady?)! We pick up Joe and Jared then Marie and Charles, by which time,thankfully, the rain has stopped.
The quay is five feet up from the side of the dinghy, but at least there are plenty of ladders which seem to be in good condition and well attached to the wall (unlike some rusty, wobbly specimens that I have had the misfortune to clamber up elsewhere). I navigate one successfully and we walk along the main road to the restaurant. The menu is pretty extensive, expensive but excellent. I eat shrimp in curry sauce, and Mike, the peasant, has a pizza. Our waitress, lovely and friendly as she may be, looks rather ‘manly’ and I find out that in some families here, the tradition still exists whereby if a third son is born into a family, he is bought up as a girl. How strange.
We walk back to the boat. Somewhere along the way I manage to talk through a pile of poop but don’t notice until we get back to Jeannius. By this time I have trailed it all over the dinghy, across the cockpit and just inside the boat. How lovely! I’ll look forward to cleaning that lot up tomorrow when it’s light
Our position is: 08 deg 54 min S, 140 deg 05 min W
Distance so far: 5775 nautical miles
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