Jer:
It’s a quiet morning in the Mangareva harbor. A favorable forecast led many sailboats to depart Thursday for Hao and our friends left yesterday. True to my word, I focused on R&R, and we all had a great time. Sometimes I felt as though we were Jo-Ann and Greg’s guests because they brought us lots of goodies (items for the boat, food, and misc fun things), cooked and cleaned, and made us feel well looked after. The four of us make a good team.
The Gambiers are a quiet little archipelago. We spent our time in four anchorages. The busiest anchorage is off of the main town (Rikitea) in Mangareva and we found three spots on the island of Terevai. One near Herve’s home and an old abandoned church and another on the other side of the island with the incredible reef I mentioned in my previous post. The third in uncharted waters. We bounced around the 4 where we snorkeled, hiked, and paddle boarded weather permitting. On Friday, Greg and I hiked up Mt Duff while Tim and Jo-Ann walked around the island. The walk around the island was 14 miles whereas the hike was steep and muddy leading to a few wipe outs and four filthy legs. I think the hike was easier, but not good for Tim and Jo-Ann’s injured knees. An added benefit of the hike was that Greg and I sat around and drank beer for a couple of hours while waiting for T & J to finish. We were all ridiculously psyched to eat at Atomic Pizza (open on weekends) after our endeavors. We had talked about pizza night the entire visit. The dining out opportunities are slightly grim. It was a sad moment when Greg found out the proprietor was too tired to open after a long day pearl farming.
Yesterday we took the dinghy into the island a couple of hours before the ferry departed to the airport and milled around, went to the festival hosted by the school, and said goodbye. Tim and I returned to the school for lunch and purchased some mother of pearl pendants made by the older kids. We returned to Agility and got some work done prior to a return to Atomic Pizza. The pizza was excellent and I’m freezing one as a treat for our passage to Hao.
We have several things we need to do. The bilges all need to be cleaned of salt residue, rust removal on the stainless, all storage areas cleaned and organized, something leaked underneath the refrigerator so we need to do a major dismantling and clean out, one of the toilets is being finicky, we’re still trying to figure out how to use less energy or generate more, re-provision, etc, etc. None of this is out of the ordinary, but typical boat upkeep. Plus it gives us something to do so we’re not on permanent vacation.
We will check the weather daily and look for a good time to leave. It may be awhile, but we are prepared to take off as early as Tuesday. We need to be to Tahiti by June 12 for repairs.
On that note, I think I’ll make another cup of coffee and mull over the day ahead. Au revoir.
