Good evening! Once again, I am writing from my 9 pm - 12 am shift. Conditions are still light with only 8 knots of wind floating around. We’re managing to convert that into a blistering 6 knots of speed which feels very slow. Many of the boats we travel with would consider that a fairly decent pace but we have higher standards for speed here on Charm! Tonight, the wind gods care nothing for our standards.
Our new crew members, Chris and Griselle, are learning quickly. They showed up on the 15th, laden with all kinds of goodies for us - a new spinnaker, books, crosswords, water filters, Mac and cheese, blueberry pop tarts and Butterfingers! All of us were happy to see them.
I was especially happy to see them since they brought new credit and debit cards. When we were at the dock on the island of Raiatea, near the town of Uturoa, someone came on the boat in the middle of the night while we were sleeping and took Hoe’s laptop and my wallet. They had two phones in the cockpit but left them behind for some reason. They also left two other laptops sitting right next to Joe’s. They got very little in the way of cash but my wallet had all kinds of useful stuff to me, including the wallet itself which was the perfect size, with the perfect number of zippered compartments.
After the theft, I was trying to talk to the police and the bank at he same time. Sparing you the horrible details, all of our credit cards and debit cards got cancelled or cut up, including the ones in Joe’s wallet that were probably still usable. To add to that, Joe told me he had just spent the last of our cash reserves to pay for a repair to our SSB. Then I learned that my fallback credit card had also been cancelled a month ago due to fraud concerns. The helpful lady on the phone reassured me that a new one had been sent to the address on file.
So we borrowed some money from our friends and, after they left, just didn’t spend money until Chris and Griselle showed up.
So most of my time in Bora Bora was spent on a curb outside the post office (it closed 10 minutes after I arrived but the hotspot still worked (and was literally quite hot - the post office was air conditioned but its curb was not)) which had the most reliable internet in town, setting up all my recurring payments again while tracking down receipts for the insurance company for the last time we got robbed.
Now we are at sea, with a gorgeous pumpkin moon that rose during Joe’s watch. We appear to be leading the fleet. Sky is still in sight behind us but no one else is around. Our faithful companion, Nica, has dropped off our screen but we are sure we will see her again soon.
The photos are of yesterday’s start. Seaside is pictured with Bora Bora behind and then Sky, looking lovely with her spinnaker and all different shades of blue.
It may be hard to make out but the other photo is of Tully at one of the roulottes (food trucks) that are very popular here. She was patiently waiting for her ice cream. The staff just worked around her until it was finally ready.
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