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Starblazer - 12/05/2014 – Adieu to French Polynesia



I’d love to say ‘au revoir’ but sadly I fear we will never get the chance to return to this collection of very different islands covering more of the earth’s surface than western Europe. I am afraid the amount of repairs and maintenance has seriously impacted on our enjoyment of the islands though we did visit Taha’a and Raiatea, two islands which share a logoon circled by a reef, on our way to Bora Bora. We successfully got all our gas bottles

refilled on Raiatea, did a bit of a drift snorkel off Taha’a (we couldn’t swim against the current to do the whole drift), fitted another pair of alternator belts whilst tied alongside another World ARC boat as an emergency measure (thanks Em and Dan on Skyelark), spent a night with John on anchor watch because the holding was poor and we kept dragging which led us to re-anchoring about 6 times in 18 hours! Eventually John set up the Fortress on its Mud setting then attached its chain to the shackle on the main anchor’s chain, just behind the anchor. Jonathan from Chez Nous dropped the anchor over the side while John controlled the chain then he dropped the main

anchor and let out another 50 metres. That worked, we stayed firmly attached to the bottom until it was time to leave. Bora Bora has had trouble with thieves helping themselves to anything left on deck overnight, especially fishing rods. We had been warned and took sensible precautions. We were made most welcome there and enjoyed our stay, I wish it had been longer.



We are now on passage, as you might have guessed, on the first leg of a three leg passage to Tonga via Suwarrow in the Cook Islands and Niue with a maximum 72 hour stopover on each island. We will not be able to spend any money on Suwarrow as it is uninhabited except for some wardens who arrive in June. In Niue we will use our New Zealand $ for the first time. French Polynesia was expensive, we had been warned. Their currency is the Central Pacific Franc (CFP in French), very reminiscent of the old francs which were still in circulation when I first went there in the early 1960s. I don’t know what metal they use but the 1, 2 and 5 franc coins are featherweight! The exchange rate is £1 = 145 CFP so you quickly get to count in thousands, it is perhaps indicative of the prices locally that the most commonly dispensed note from a cash machine is 10,000 CPF, about £70. Many cash machines will only dispense 10,000 franc notes though one or two would provide a 500 franc note.



At least we are sailing and have been since 10:00 yesterday when we started this leg in the first group. We are going well, the wind is co-operating sohopefully we won’t find ourselves too far adrift of the group though, of course, they are all faster than us on paper.



Joyce


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