Friday 3rd August

Papeete,
Tahiti

17 32.422 S
149 34.279 W

Happy birthday to Katie and Leora, hope it’s a good one!

Well we were up, showered, car loaded, checked out and on the road by 07.20hrs,
of course not all of us were properly awake but the driver was and that’s all that matters. The drive to town took an hour and a half – longer than normal as the traffic was heavy and slow. We stopped at the bank and raided my card again – we just about had enough to cover the bill now. Our next stop was the propane depot to collect our bottle that had been filled 3 days prior and then we headed to the boat yard where we quickly unloaded the gear from the car and put it on the boat. Overnight some idiot had gone through the area with a paintball gun and we now sported 3 pink paint ball splatters on the boat – Gerry was not a happy chap! The car had to be returned by 11.30hrs so Gerry took off with Abigail, stopping on the way at the port captain’s office to add Abigail to our manifest and to check out (we sort of plan to leave on Sunday and the office is closed all weekend). Meanwhile I went on board and made the mistake of opening the fridge, with no power for the past 4 days everything needed to go in the bin, there were fruit flies inside the fridge and there was blood running in to the fridge from the defrosted meat in the freezer – oh joy! I threw out everything and proceeded to clean out the freezer and fridge, ending up with buckets of foul water which needed to be disposed of. I couldn’t get them off the boat until Abigail and Gerry returned as someone moved the ladder away from the back of the boat and I was stranded aboard. At last I managed to get the fridge and freezer smelling normal again and then put away the laundry and shopping in their right homes. By this time Gerry and Abigail reappeared having dealt with the paperwork and car hire place, they were a bit cross as the car hire place wouldn’t give them a ride back to the yard and they had been forced to get a taxi back – using cash we didn’t have to spare. Gerry went off to pay the yard and luckily they hadn’t deducted the tax from his bill so when they did that we had a little left over (enough for a drink and dinner at the vans that night). We spent the next couple of hours washing down the decks and trying to get the paint ball splatters off of the boat with some success. At around 15.00hrs our boat was back in the travel lift and going back into the water, it was nice to be back aboard with all our stuff at hand. Once we were free of the travel lift we motored around to the town lagoon and tied up alongside for the night (Abigail had befriended the port captain and he had not charged us for the one night, as long as she emails him the photo of himself with Bear). Once tied up we hosed out the cockpit again and Gerry ran the generator – it was a delight to hear, so quiet again and running smoothly thank goodness. At last it was time to go ashore for happy hour, we had just 2 drinks in the closest bar and then went to the food vans and had a delicious Chinese dinner and soft serve ice cream. We walked back along the waterfront to our boat and spent the remainder of the evening listening to music before going to bed.