In Papeete Marina

We are in Papeete marina and preparing for moving the boat to Hawaii. It is hot and humid here, as summer in Tahiti should be. Rain showers come and go soaking us to the last thread while walking on the street. The laundry never dries outside. Seattle is clueless about what ‘rain’ really means. Welcome to the tropics!

I am about to learn how much time goes into opening and closing hatches on the boat. I occupy myself with endless cleaning and familiarizing with hatches, cabinets, newly discovered nooks and crannies, cleaning some nasty slimy biofilm from the water tanks, and scrubbing the teak floors. Multiple times. While dripping in sweat.

Thanks to my OCD, developed over the decades in dentistry, I come up with some useless projects that only my colleagues would appreciate. The Village People “In the Navy” song is hopelessly stuck in my head for hours. Even Pandora’s 80’s stations (with oddly sounding Seattle ads in Tahiti) are powerless against this earworm.

Our departure date gets delayed again and again. No wind. I am grateful that years of performing oral surgery and root canals has taught me patience.

Pierre-Yves, the delivery captain from Tahiti Convoyage Croisierestops by the boat daily and checks items off his checklist in preparation for crossing. One day, he puts on a snorkel, fins, and invites me to join him for a swim while he inspects and cleans the rapidly growing seaweed from the hulls. Here in the marina? Right next to the cruise ships? I am mildly horrified by the thought of swimming in a commercial marina while Pierre tells us that this is clean comparing to some harbors in Asia he had to do this in. I politely decline and miss my only chance (so far) to swim in a marina that’s reportedly cleaner than in Vietnam.

Our departure date gets delayed three more days when relentless and very thorough Pierre discovers that the oil pan on the starboard engine is leaking — after we just had both engines completely serviced two months ago.  The joys of boating life – something ALWAYS needs to get repaired, something ALWAYS rusts through. At least there is some action going on – we move the boat to a different spot in the marina, get a lift truck to lift the engine, wait for a couple more days and get a spanking new oil pan bolted back onto our engine.

Then there is a silver lining to the delay – we are one dock closer to our favorite restaurant across the street — La Retro — which we visit daily and always order the same – a pint of Hinano beer and carpaccio de thon rouge avec frites. Hard to get tired of this daily reward; so much for suffering in the tropics and that kind of stuff.

The universe sends us a sign that we are getting close to our departure date – we are going shopping for provisions! Carrefour is the go-to store for everything from hardware, to cleaning supplies, to fresh baguettes, Pastis aperitif, and meat for dinner. It is a version of Walmart only fancier and very French. On my previous trips to Tahiti I would go there and spend hours admiring the design and color of dishes, glasses, bowls, plastic pails, and colorful toilet brushes while Jim would be happily lost in the hardware isle. I couldn’t help but wonder about where did we fail as a country that we don’t have a demand for beautiful daily stuff and when will we start shaping our tastes by offering more modern stuff instead of more of the same?

We dutifully follow Pierre in the store and buy everything in sight like we are preparing for a village wedding. We finally put Costco to shame by leaving the store with three packed grocery carts and over $1000 in provisions. Six kilograms of flour, trays and trays of eggs. 160 to be precise. My Lithuanian friends can put two and two together and figure out what 160 eggs have to do with weddings. A bankuchenas, a stunning tree cake! Sadly, they don’t sell those in Tahiti but at least Pierre promised to bake fresh bread during the passage.

A note to myself – I need to research the equipment to make those tree cakes since I will have lots of time on the boat and sometimes even lots of eggs. If you are truly intrigued with those tree cakes, you can order them from here in the US.

I know what ya’ll are thinking – how on earth (ocean?) are you going to fit all those eggs in the fridge? First, marine fridges are relatively roomy, probably to compensate for being not very cold. Second, most countries don’t refrigerate their eggs because they are not washed and stay perfectly fresh.

Back to Carrefour – I am delighted to find some US produce like onions and apples, from Washington to be precise. While taking the pictures a very serious store employee comes and asks me if there is a problem. I am trying to do my best with my limited French/ English mix to explain my enthusiasm over the apples.

Back on the boat I am spending hours stuffing the groceries in the cubbies, cabinets, hatches, under Pierre’s bed, etc. all frustrated with my lack of Rubick’s cube and Lego skills.

Pierre takes off to the immigration office and comes back a little bummed because the office was closed with no sign explaining why. We end up motoring to the Taina marina (that’s where we met our boat the first time and fell in love) to get tax-free fuel — since we’re not French / French Polynesian citizens, we don’t have to pay the VAT tax on the fuel.

The sign on the fuel pump is a little confusing but that’s not the reason we don’t get diesel, turns out we don’t have some departure paper even if Pierre has requested it. We don’t mind motoring back and coming tomorrow because finally we got out of hot marina and we get to pass by stunning Moorea in the horizon. Woohoo! We are almost sailing!

Pierre checks in with us about the last-minute things, apologizes for his pronunciation first and asks us if we brought extra shits for them. We pull our best stoic Norsemen faces and tell him that no, we did not bring extra bed sheets but there are some on the boat. People have picked on my accent more times than I want to remember and we are so grateful that he speaks fluent English.

With the sunset about to engulf the harbor, I feverishly scrub the decks while the cruise ship passengers watch me from above. I continue to tackle the mountains of laundry which somehow seem never ending while using our pediatric-size washing machine. The cruise ship passengers still dutifully watch me hanging laundry on the lifelines but too bad they can’t see me scrub the interior floors for the tenth time. We finally crash for a few hours of sleep before the big day.