Hi
from Clare, 2-2017 Settling In Sunday 21st May 2017
We
are enjoying a gorgeous day at anchor behind a small island on the
east side of Raiatea. A little piece of paradise in flat calm water
with beautiful views of the mountains and the surrounding reef.
Both water and air temperature at 28 degrees makes life very
pleasant.
HAPPY TO BE AT ANCHOR
We
have friends on ‘’Plastic Plankton’’ and ‘’Flying Cloud’’
transiting from French Polynesia to Tonga expecting up to 40 knots,
four metre waves and torrential rain. Also ‘’Tactical
Directions’’ transiting from New Zealand to Fiji is slowing down
to avoid the same Low Pressure System which is passing through Fiji
to Tonga. It doesn’t sound much fun and the weather map looks
quite scary, we are very happy to be here safe and sound.
SOME PROBLEMS
Our
only aggravation is that Andrew’s Master Card is declining payments
but in fact the payments are going through. When Andrew paid the
boatyard for six months storage the MC declined the payment so Andrew
paid by Visa. However on our bank statement both payments are
showing. So as you can imagine we have spent quite an amount of time
trying to rectify the problem. Numerous phones calls to MC find us
dealing with electronic prompts or being placed in a queue. Not at
all satisfactory when calling from overseas. It is not over yet but
we are hoping it will resolve itself this week. The MC declined a
second time for a smaller amount (but the payment went through) so it
seems that Andrew’s MC will be unusable for the rest of the season,
which is a bit of a blow.
FUN WITH FRIENDS
We
were scheduled to have a pot luck dinner with twenty cruising friends
last Sunday, but it was postponed due to rain. So we invited Mark and
Cheryl on French Curve to have pot luck on Eye Candy. It was a good
night as we haven’t seen Mark and Cheryl since last season. They
are now on the hard preparing their boat to go west across the
Pacific. The following night with improved weather the pot luck
dinner went ahead at Apooiti Marina. Another good night, we meet
some lovely people, all enjoying life to the full.
HARD YAKKA
We
have now been around to the main town of Uturoa and provisioned the
boat. Many walking trips later visiting every supermarket both in and
out of town, we now have the basics. We discovered weevils in the
rice, pasta and flour products, so these we either did not buy, threw
out or manually sifted the product and killed the little devils.
After that we got rid of all cardboard and vacuum packed just about
everything that didn’t come in a tin. We have learnt that vacuum
packing is the only way to stay on top of the problem. So just
remember when you drive to your local supermarket and pick up good
quality food in one visit; you live in a great country, so enjoy.
 |
| Uturoa township from the dock |
SO
WHAT’S NEXT
This
morning I am washing the bed linen and baking bread, hopefully
without weevils. Andrew is varnishing parts of the navigation table.
Twice now he has touched the freshly painted area by accident, cursed
and then laughed. I think we need a big WET PAINT sign. We haven’t
made any definite plans yet for the season. We will wait for the sea
to settle down before we venture outside our lovely lagoon.
 |
| Better than local bread |
 |
| Varnishing the nav table |
Love
Candy xx
