Leaving Tahiti for Boise, Now Who Does That?

The next few days were a whirlwind of activity as we were scheduled to fly out of Papeete in only four days. When we are hauled out we lose our bathroom, our refrigeration, and our showers, so the first priority was walking about a mile down the road to a wonderful Carrefour SuperMarche.  We hadn’t seen this selection and quality of food since Panama (and that certainly wasn’t the same as a French supermarket) so that was great. We bought some fresh baguettes (price controlled by the French government at US$ 0.53) and fresh vegetables. Our freezer was still frozen so we hoped we could eke out four more days of cold out of it.

Leaving the boat for two months is no walk in the park. We had a comprehensive list of things to do and we started at the top and worked our way down. We didn’t have someone to watch the boat and we’d had trouble with mold before, so we opted to wipe down everything with a mixture of vinegar and soap and leave all the cabinet and engine room doors open to promote ventilation. As much as we wanted to leave the fans on, it was just too great of an electrical fire risk to make it worthwhile. We did put all the pillows and bedding in vacuum seal bags, took all the sails and running rigging off, filled the heads with fresh water and sealed with saran wrapping, and placed desiccant containers around the boat.

We lucked out that someone I had been conversing with on an email list mentioned that her boat was in our yard and her husband was renting a car when he returned to Tahiti from the States.  We met Tony, an affable Australian living on a bright yellow trimaran and he agreed to drive us up to Papeete on Tuesday (Bastille Day when no taxis or buses were running) to our hotel for our 7:30 am departure the next day. Since the cab ride alone would have been over $125, Tony was a godsend. He even drove us down to the local town of Taravao to the great Ace Hardware store to stock up desiccant containers and other stuff. 

On Tuesday, with the boat put to bed as well as possible, we jumped in Tony’s tiny car and drove the one hour to Papeete. It was Bastille Day so not much was open. We treated Tony to a nice lunch at the local brew pub, then walked down to the City Marina to see if anyone we knew was around. Well, the good news was lots of boats were there, including Full Circle, French Curve, Boxing Kangaroo and others, but everyone was at the once-a-year hevia (Tahitian dance competition) just out of town. We caught a cab back to the Tahiti Airport Hotel, which for $120 turned out to be a great little place overlooking Faa’a Airport. For the first time in eight months we enjoyed a long hot shower, a huge bed, and TV with a lilting French narrative that we couldn’t understand.

At 0’dark thirty we got up and met our taxi for the two-minute ride to the airport (we had a lot of bags). It was so weird knowing we were going to actually get on the flight, versus flying stand-by which is our normal way of travel. While checking in the affable French agent said “You know, we don’t have a lot of people flying from Tahiti to Boise, it’s usually the other way around.”  Certainly food for thought at that early hour.

Instead of waiting for everyone to board the plane and then hope our name got called for stand-by, we actually got on early, stowed all our bags (we’ve got to learn to travel lighter), and sat an enjoyed the phenomenal Air France service. Meryl and I just stared at each other, both thinking that last time we had service and food this good was on a Pan Am flight to Hong Kong.  Looking out the window at the vast Pacific Ocean we had just crossed, we realized what took us three months to accomplish in our boat would be a six-hour flight to Los Angeles.

Once at LAX we used our Global Entry program to scan an image of our fingerprints and pass about two hundred other people waiting in line. If you are going to travel more than two flights a year, Global Entry (which includes TSA Pre program) is worth its weight in gold.

We transferred to an Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle, arriving at 12:30 am, and made the terrible mistake of going to the Sea Tac Travel Lodge. Even a down-and-out hooker would not spend two hours in this dump. Thank God we had a 7:00 am flight to Boise.  It was hard being that close to all our friends without being able to say hi, but we were on a schedule (finally).

We arrived in Boise and picked up a rental car that our daughter had arranged from the local private jet service and need to be returned to McCall. The guy who took us over to Jackson Jet Center was kind of cool and gave us a brief tour of the hanger, showing us two MIG-23’s owned by private individuals. “There’s a lot of wealth around Boise, we just don’t show it off,” he said.

We took a quick drive over to the Sierra Outlet Store, one of our favorite outdoor stores, where Meryl scored some good deals on clothing. We then met some old cruising friends, Dean and Kris Hearst, who cruised their Manta 38 What If in the Caribbean when we were there. We had a good Mexican lunch (we hadn’t had Mexican food in eight months) and heard about their transition to land so their son, Derek, could finish out high school and go to college. They were nice enough to let me have friends in Seattle forward my renewed driver’s license to them so I would be legal driving in the States. 

Thanks again, guys, so great to see you.