Underway for Tahiti

At about exactly noon on Sunday, August 5th, the Schooner Maggie B was headed out doing eight knots with all sails flying, through Mahanatoa Pass, Raivavae, Austral Islands. We have a lovely 15 knot Southerly to blow us the 400 NM NNW to Tahiti. The wind is due to back to Easterly during the next few days, which should make for an easy passage.

The front came through Raivavae yesterday with torrential rain (think: an inch, 2.5 mm, of water in 15 minutes!) big breezes — from NE at 35 knots to South at 30 in 1/2 hour. We knew it was going to happen, but it was quite a shift. We worked our way back around the island from the lovely little motu called “Le Piscine” or the Swimming Pool. We anchored at about sunset in the shelter of Rairua harbor. That night we had thunderstorms with HAIL! Hail in Polynesia! Quite a shock. We gathered up some for ice for our rum drinks.

Almost everybody on the island was friendly and charming. Even the French Gendarmes took me in to see their book of visiting yachts, which goes back to the 1950’s, and urged a Maggie B entry. While we were out at Le Piscine, a small outboard fishing boat pulled up with a huge stalk of bananas and a dozen grapefruit. Only reluctantly they accepted six cold beers as thanks.

The island is supposed to be “dry,” with no alcohol in the few stores and none allowed to be landed. But the Gendarmes didn’t blink when I declared our ship supplies. Other yachties, who went to a “disco” in someone’s house a week ago report that beer is brought to parties in buckets and ladled out. They also reported it to be fiercely strong, resulting in one guy doing a face plant in the road on the way back to his boat.

Our Onan generator, which has performed marvelously, took exception to a routine fuel filter draining and developed an air block. All the usual techniques were tried. Finally we were able to get it going by jury-rigging a header tank (really just a fat hose) that used the force of gravity to finally fill up the fuel pump. She is purring away just fine now.

I neglected to report earlier on our mountaineering expedition. Under sway of an enthusiastic Norwegian on another boat, we went off to climb Mt. Hiro, the highest peak on Raivavae at 1434 feet. We were under prepared. Hannah and Theresa were barefoot, Theresa in a cotton dress and Hannah in shorts. Lots of water and a lovely picnic, though. And cameras. We hitchhiked the five miles to the start in a passing truck. I had thought that we were just going to pop up for the view and a picnic. It turned out that the Norwegian was formerly with a special Army unit that patrols their border with Russia and one of the other guys was ex-British SAS.

We climbed a face and it soon became apparent that we wouldn’t be able to descend it, and got to a lovely view and picnic spot. After lunch off we went along the ridge towards the top. Not exactly like a tightrope, but sometimes 500 feet down on one side and a few hundred on the other. Onwards, ever upwards, supposedly “the easy way back.” The Norwegian took one side trip to chase and almost catch some feral goats, then on another side trip found an immature White Tailed Tropicbird, on its nest.

We finally split up with Ben, the Norwegian and another guy going for the peak, while Frank, Theresa, Hannah and ex-SAS started down towards the back or North side of the island. While steep, it was chest high ferns so one couldn’t really fall. After a while the ferns gave way to a pine plantation planted on a rather steep scree of loose volcanic rocks, that made footing difficult. The layer of pine needles served only to disguise the configuration of the rocks under your next step. It had been raining for about an hour by then. As we came out of the pine plantation, just before we hit the road, we found ourselves in a large, relatively intact marae. It was about sunset and a large pig almost caused multiple heart attacks. We made our way out to the road and a kindly dump truck driver took us back to our boats, about six hours from when we started. Ben and his group arrived a few hours later.

My writing of this report was interrupted by a dual hook-up of Mahi-Mahi. I lost the big one (natch) and Ben landed his, a perfect 20-pounder. We faultlessly went to our “FISH!” stations. I can just smell the garlic, ginger and butter heating on a hot pan for our first taste of fish for a while.

All is well.