It was an active 10 days in Papeete.

With no confirmed marina space available, I decided to have the boat hauled out and put on the hard so I could remove the mainsail for its repairs. This might have been possible with the boat anchored but very difficult. It’s a big sail so I normally have one other person to help me take it off and put it back. Doing it alone with the boat at anchor would have taken 5 times as long to flake the sail once it was off the boom. It also would have been risky – a sudden gust of wind could have pulled the sail off the boat and into the water where recovery would have been nearly impossible. Even if I got it flaked and tied in a bundle I’d have to carry it ashore in the dinghy. Of course, to put it back after repair would have been the same risky process in reverse. Though expensive, with no marina space available hauling the boat was the only viable option. I did take advantage of it by having the bottom power washed. It’s amazing how fast sea life latches onto a hull.

It really is not comfortable to stay on the boat when it’s out of the water – you can’t use any sink drains because normally they discharge straight into the water. Boatyards are also hot, noisy, dusty places with sanding, scraping, and painting going on all day. Hanging out there is no fun.

Given all that, I booked a room at the Hilton Tahiti on the waterfront, a pretty nice place and convenient to where I needed to go in Papeete. It was connected to a shopping mall with a huge Carrefour supermarché where I bought everything I wanted to provision the boat for passage all the way through to Australia. It was also just 10 minutes drive from downtown Papeete with a wide variety of good restaurants. The pool and sunset views from the hotel over nearby Moorea were pleasant distractions from everything happening with the boat, my schedule and my route. The Hilton was the relaxing, restorative interlude I wanted at Nuku-Hiva but didn’t get. A hot shower every day? It’d been months since I had anything close to that luxury.

I rented a car for my time in Papeete. There is no Uber type service in Papeete that I found. The car made it easy to run around to the marine chandlerys and pick up a few things I needed. There is even a big Ace Hardware store near the boatyard where I found, of all things, Coleman gas canisters that fit the Magma grill mounted on my port pushpit. I left the US with 3 cannisters and only had 1/2 of one remaining, never seeing them anywhere else I’ve been, until now. I bought several so I can start grilling again. I also did some touring, driving the coast road around the perimeter of Tahiti Nui and stopping at a quaint beach place for lunch. During the drive I had some spectacular views of the steep, forested interior on the island.

With the sail repaired, repairs I hope will last until at least Australia, I had the boat dropped back in the water and drove it inside and outside the reef south passed the airport to Taina Marina where there is a real fuel dock. I filled the main diesel tank and any empty jerry cans so the boat has more than enough fuel for the run to Australia. In fact, I don’t expect to use much fuel with easterly winds continuing to prevail along my planned route.

So what about my route now? I had to bypass Rangiroa and head straight to Papeete for sail repairs. The next stop would have been Huahine. But with the time burned going to Papeete and days I spent there, any visit to Huahine would have to be a really short one. Making the effort to drop the dinghy in the water, mount the engine, and then reverse the process, for just a day or two ashore doesn’t seem worth it so I dropped the stop in Huahine.

After Huahine I planned on stopping at Suvasuva in Fiji (Vanua Levu Island) where they’ve just completed a great new marina with restaurant , fuel dock, etc. (Nawi Island marina). After the extended stay in Papeete, and taking on full fuel at Taina, taking s break in a marina became less important. It also is a bit out of the way on my direct course to the Torres Strait and ultimately Darwin where I want to leave the boat during the tropical storm season from November to April. Darwin is also most efficiently positioned to sail to an Asia port somewhere for my 6th continent landing, then continue across the Indian Ocean and around the tip of Africa.

So the current plan is to sail to Vava’u in Tonga for a short stop because I’ve never been there (unlike Fiji). It will also give me a chance to reassess crossing the Coral Sea to the Torres Strait at the northern tip of Australia. Vava’u is also a pretty well-protected place where people wait out tropical storm season.

The usual route for transiting the Torres Strait begins at a point just south of Bramble Cay. As might be expected, it is heavily travelled route with lots of big ship traffic and strong currents. It’s far from ideal for a small boat, especially sailing solo where keeping an active watch for ships full time for 40+ hours is not very feasible.

In browsing some cruiser forums about the Torres Strait I read others describing an alternate route, a shortcut that crosses the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) beginning at Raine Island and continues northwest for about 120 nm to Thursday Island where the Torres Strait passage is made. Yes, you’re right if you guessed Thursday Island is between Wednesday Island and Friday Island. The Raine Island passage is described in an obscure book by Ken Hellewell written some 20 years ago. I thought I had no chance of locating a copy so was surprised when I found a kindle version on Amazon. It has specific GPS coordinates and mini-chart extracts for the entire route which necessarily maneuvers through the myriad of coral reefs in the GBR. It even identifies a few anchorages he successfully used when he made the passage, although one is now off limits as a Protected Area in the GBR Marine Reserve. With no ship traffic nor strong currents, and shorter, it seems like the better route to get through to Torres Strait.

So, following Vava’u my destination will be Raine Island about 2500 nm away. That’s now the plan. If the weather reasonably cooperate, and nothing significant on the boat breaks, it should work out. However, if things go slowly I may skip Vava’u and continue straight on to Raine Island.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I had no desire to visit Papeete where I had been before, more than once, but sailing circumstances forced me to change my mind.  The day after I left Nuku-Hiva I had a serious problem show up with my mainsail such that I could only raise it halfway.

My mainsail uses what’s called a ”bolt rope”, a rope sewed into the luff (leading edge) of the sail. The rope fits in narrow track that is attached to the mast with hinges so the track can rotate. It’s critical the bolt rope easily slide up and down the track as the sail is raised and lowered (reefed). Over time the sail cloth that wraps around the bolt rope has gotten worn, in some places split open.  The first repair on this was done in the Canary Islands where the sailmaker used Kevlar film to patch over worn places along the bolt rope.  That worked pretty well since the Kevlar doesn’t add much additional diameter to the bolt rope.  Increasing the diameter of whatever is wrapped around the bolt rope, of course, would make it more difficult for it to slide in the narrow track.

The sailmaker in Puerto Montt also attempted to patch the bolt rope but didn’t have Kevlar film so he used conventional Dacron sail cloth, much thicker than the Kevlar film. This seemed to slide OK when we first nearput the sail back on in Puerto Montt, but the hoisting and reefing action on the sail during the passage to the Marquesas eventually caused the Dacron cloth to bunch up around the bolt rope making it difficult to move the sail up and down the track. I saw what was happening and tried to trim back the bunched-up Dacron but that really didn’t work.   Finally the jam got so severe the bolt rope jumped out of the track and causing further damage to the bolt rope cloth covering, like shredding it. This happened at a third batten down from the top so I could only raise the main sail that far.  It would have been crazy to try to continue my voyage as originally planned with such a major problem with the mainsail.

I decided I needed to pull the sail off, get rid of all the bolt rope patches, and have the bolt rope entirely re-sewn to the sail.  The sail itself is in very good shape.  The only sailmaker who I considered competent and equipped to do this work is in Papeete – Tahiti Sails. With that reality, I changed my routing and headed straight for Papeete where I am now. I don’t know how long this repair will take and to what extent it will affect my plans to get to Australia by November.  I do know that people leave boats needing serious repairs to their hulls, etc. in Papeete for extended periods.  Worst case is if Tahiti Sails can’t make the bolt rope replacement and I have to box up the sail and ship it back to the manufacturer in the US for repair. I’ll hand the sail over to Tahiti Sails on Tuesday and hopefully have their assessment soon thereafter.

Right now I’m anchored in a place call Pointe Venus, a calm anchorage,i just a few miles north of Papeete but with only one other boat here.  This is unlike inside the reef around Papeete itself where there are hundreds of boats anchored or on mooring buoys, some derelict, and two large marinas which are perpetually full.  The glut of boats in Papeete is another reason I didn’t want to come here. Since there’s no space in a marina for me, it’s likely I’ll have the boat hauled and put on the hard so we take down the sail so the repair can be done. I don’t want to anchor out with the other boats and try to remove the sail and manage the repair process by commuting in my dinghy.

Oh well, the good and bad come with the mission I set for myself.  I’ve booked an ocean-view room at a nice hotel and a rental car so at least I intend to make the best of the time while i’m stuck in Papeete.

After a 45 day, 5,500 nm passage from Puerto Montt, Chile, to the Marquesas I was looking forward to a well-earned break from sailing.  My week in Baie de Taiohae was certainly a break from sailing but unfortunately not the relaxing, restorative interlude I hoped it would be.

The bay is reasonably well-protected on 3 sides but is subject to a fairly continuous swell from the south that will roll the boat back and forth depending on how large the swell is.  Even the catamarans I saw at anchor, which are generally much less susceptible, were rolling around a little as well.  It wasn’t seriously uncomfortable, mostly just annoying.

To get to shore I needed to use the dinghy, of course. To pick the dinghy up off the foredeck, pull it back to the stern, mount the 6 hp Yamaha outboard (60+ pounds) in the dinghy, add the gas tank and oars, all takes more than an hour. Getting the outboard out of the storage locker on the stern of Phywave and getting it on the dinghy transom is a pure muscle job.  When I finally leave the anchorage I have to reverse that whole process.

The swells, and wind waves that sometimes pop up, can make for a bumpy ride in the dinghy from Phywave to the place on shore where we can tie up the dinghies. I won’t call it a dinghy dock because it’s just a concrete wall with a couple of ladders and chain along the top where dinghies can be tied. There isn’t a lot of space especially since local fishermen tie their boats to the same wall with some using stern ties to buoys. It’s easy to get tangle with the stern ties coming in as I did once.

With not much space the normal process with 2 people would be to nose the dinghy to the wall and have the forward person grab the ladder or chain and tie the dingy to it.  However, with one person, I’m necessarily sitting in the back running the motor so I have to swing the dinghy sideways to grab the ladder or chain, a challenge with a crowded space. 

I’m explaining these details to point out that taking the dinghy to shore was a hassle.  Of the 7 days I anchored in the bay, I only took the dinghy in 4 days.  While I was there the bay only had about 2 dozen boats at anchored, and only about a third of those had people on board. The others were anchored long-term (it’s free) while the crew went off somewhere else, even a back home for a break.  I’ve seen photos of the bay with more than 50 boats, most will crews on board. That would have made for a vastly more crowded dinghy landing than I experienced.

There is a gray sand beach near the dinghy landing which people occasionally use to land their dinghies.  I tried that one day instead of the wall. It was more work and sand got everywhere. Even with small swells breaking on the beach it was still some work to push the dinghy out past them to get going back to Phywave.  Later someone told me there are sometimes small hammerhead sharks in those waters. Great!  But apparently they only come around early in the morning for a wild chum feeding frenzy when the local fishermen are cleaning and cutting up their catch and throwing the scraps in the water.

Taiohae is the administrative capital of the Marquesas but even so, there isn’t a lot there.  Beyond the government buildings there is one really good hotel with 20 bungalows (and no vacancies) a handful on guesthouse/pensione type places, 4 or 5 restaurants, 3 or 4 small grocery stores, and variety of tourist shops and tour companies.  The grocery stores were adequate to re-provision the boat.  In Puerto Montt I had bought food for several months so I really just needed to replace what I had consumed en-route to the Marquesas.

The best day I had on Nuku-Hiva was Friday when I rented a car, had lunch at the upscale hotel with its amazing view, and drove around a good portion of the island to see 500 year old archeological ruins and small villages nestled at the heads of the many bays around the perimeter of the island. Driving on narrow paved roads up and over steep forested ridges provided some spectacular views.

On my first day ashore I did meet a couple from Austin at lunch that were sailing a nice 44 foot catamaran.  They had arrived in the Marquesas from Panama, as I recall, and spent 2 months anchored in the Taiohae Bay.  Of course, they knew every place in the town and shared than information with me, but I didn’t see nearly enough in the town, or on the island, to justify staying there that long, especially in an anchorage that was sometimes kinda rolly. Some folks just love to hang out on their boats, and have made a lifestyle of it. I guess I’m not among them, instead pursuing my sailing mission.

When the end of my week came I didn’t hesitate to up anchor and move on.