June 28 - Taina Marina is not fancy, but it has four or five really good restaurants, a facility where you can drop off your laundry to get done, two dive shops, a chandlery, etc. Best of all is that there is a very high end market a very short walk from the marina where you can buy fresh produce, bakery, fresh, frozen and canned foods of any sort you may wish. Before Tristan and Burt leave we take a taxi into Papeete (everything, especially food, is very, very expensive) and the next day Tristan and Burt make a ferry day trip to Moorea. Now it’s all about the waiting for a slip as I am told that most of the repairs I need cannot be done at anchor. Then I learn that these slips do not have US 50 amp service and that the marina only has two converters, so things are dicey to say the least. It’s all making me very anxious between getting a slip, getting the repairs done, Kryss flying in, etc., but I guess “that’s cruising”.
At this point in the log, if this were a movie or an opera, the following entry might be labeled an “intermezzo”. I can’t help but constantly muse about the fact that I have now sailed almost 6,000 n.m. from PGI to here and somehow it feels surreal, like “did it really happen, am I really in Tahiti instead of somewhere in the Hamptons, or the Bahamas or the Caribbean”? I remember having had a very different feeling when we arrived in St. Thomas from PGI a number of years before even though it was “coastal sailing” and only a “hop skip and a jump” compared to this, probably because I had bareboat chartered there so frequently and had never really thought that I might ever sail my own boat there. In any event, I still haven’t shaken the “surreal” feeling as of the writing of this on July 4, but I’ll let you know if and when I do.
June 28 - July 13 - The guys have flown home and now I’m “marooned” on the boat at anchor waiting for a slip at Marina Taina. Despite promises from Tahiticrew that my repairs were being scheduled (fix broker furler, fix autopilot, fix change leaking “dripless” shaft seal, polish fuel and work on removing deteriorated baffling) nothing is actually happening and now I’m being told that these repairs cannot be effectuated until I get into a slip. I take the bull by the horns and arrange to meet the Tahiticrew rep. at the marina office and after a short “palaver” it turns out that there is a slip that no one wants because it’s very tight to get in and out of. I jump on it; dinghy back to the boat, raise the dinghy in the davits, weight anchor and recruit that Tahiticrew rep to come on board to help me with the lines when we dock. I had hoped to back in, but had to go in nose first and spent the next two weeks trying to figure out how I was going to get out, but that turned out not to be a problem. They had a chase boat that just towed me out to where I could proceed on my own safely. Repairs are being undertaken now that we’re in a slip and I’m just biding my time until Kryss arrives.
July 14 - July 24 - Kryss and I go in Papeete a number of times; we take the ferry to Moorea for a day and rent a car to drive around it even though I intend to sail there; and we rent a car and drive all around Tahiti. We even get to the location where the Olympic surfing competition will be held the following week, but nothing’s going on when we are there.