Getting Out of Dodge

Our last days on Bora Bora were spent snorkeling with friends from French Curve and Eye Candy on the reef just off the Hilton Hotel. Afterwards we motor sailed over to the MaiKai anchorage where we had access to fairly good WiFi and could resupply at the grocery stores in Viatape.

It was sad to leave after the great time we had at Bora Bora.

On November 7th we exited the pass at Bora Bora and slowly motor-sailed into light headwinds for the 54-mile trip back to Raiatea. It was a beautiful day and we took advantage of the time to relax a little before the chaos of getting the boat ready for haul out and long term storage. We’d been through the haul-out drill five times before and had it down to a science, but we dreaded the long, arduous, and exhausting task we had ahead of us.

Cyclone season had officially begun on Nov. 1st and every cruiser in the area had to decide on a strategy on how to mitigate risk during storm season that effects the mid-Pacific region. The traditional answer is to sail 2,700 miles south to New Zealand, but that means crossing a big chunk of ocean famous for southwesterly gales and large waves. It’s not a passage for the faint of heart. Another option was to sail north of the equator to the Gilbert Islands, but that was not a highly desirable place to spend four to five months just hanging out. Choice three, an increasingly popular choice for cruisers, is to either stay aboard or store the boat somewhere in the Society Islands. This was predicted to be a La Nina year with a lesser than average cyclone probability, so we felt the risks were fewer leaving the boat on the hard in Raiatea than sailing the 2,700 miles (and back in the spring) to New Zealand. 

The next decision was where to leave the boat in the Societies. Apataki offered spacious, cheap and dry storage, but was rather removed from parts and supplies in Tahiti. Tahiti, where we hauled out last year, was a good choice, especially the well protected harbor at Port Phaeton, but tended to be very wet and humid. The third choice was Raiatea where two good boat yards offered secure storage, dehumidifiers, and staff to look after the boat while we were gone. In addition, it was easy to ship over parts from Papeete so the Raiatea Carenage was our top choice for this season. We took a mooring ball just off the Carenage and began meeting with vendors who would help us with various projects during the storage period.

After staying up late at night and monitoring the US Presidential race results (I so hoped when I awoke the next morning that the predicted results would be wrong and we would have our first woman president), we got an early start the next morning by removing all the sails for repair and storage.  The sails on a 44-foot boat are fairly large and stiff and getting them down and flaked on the limited deck space took all our energy.  We discovered a couple of battens in the main were damaged and the luff of the genoa needed some repair. Luckily there was a new sailmaker at the Raiatea Carenage so we made arrangements for him to pick up the heavy sails on the day we hauled out. 

We also had to defrost the fridge, wipe down all the wood with a vinegar, soap, eucalyptus oil solution to deter mold, and go through every cabinet to determine 1) what was stored in them and 2) identify anything extraneous that we could return to Seattle.

I always hold my breath while they lift Flying Cloud out of the water.

On Nov 14th, after praying there would be light wind, we maneuvered the boat through shallow water, alongside a derelict ferry boat, and into the slipway for the haul out. I had watched several other boats being hauled out earlier so I had a good idea what was involved. The Raiatea Carenage had a large Travelift, but we still had to remove our forestay and roller furling to clear the Travelift’s cross beam. I had been worrying about this all week but it turned out to be a fairly easy job with the help of Dominque’s (the yard manager) yard workers.

How Flying Cloud was going to fit into that crowded yard was a mystery to me. They even managed to put two more boats in after us.

The storage area in the yard seemed packed to the gunnels, but somehow Dominque found room right next to friend’s on Cinnabar (our boats are about one foot apart). The Travelift very slowly lifted Flying Cloud out of the water and maneuvered her around various obstacles, eventually squeezing her between between two boats. A steel cradle was rigged below the boat and a ladder was attached to the stern. Soon Meryl and I found a 5-gal can and rigged a one-inch hose from our sink drain to the can so we could still use the kitchen sink. Once on the hard we lost our refrigeration (it’s water cooled) but we still had electricity and running water so the living conditions weren’t too bad (for a boat yard).

We spent the next few days emptying out each compartment looking for extraneous stuff we could take back to Seattle, discovering long lost items, and cleaning all surfaces with the vinegar solution to deter mold. Cathy, a gregarious French woman who would watching our boat for us, rigged up a dehumidifier that would help keep the mold at bay and the boat smelling fresh. We put a tarp over the aft solar panels since the two panels over the boom would provide more than enough electricity to keep our batteries charged.  We got our repaired sails back from Pierre and stored them down below, and essentially removed anything loose off the deck and stored it below.

While walking through the yard we ran into Eric off of S/V Kandu. He was living on Raiatea with his family while the boys attended school. He immediately volunteered to go in his car and search out some large water bottles (we rig them over the lines tying to the boat down to the ground to deter rats from climbing up the lines) and a 50 ft. extension cord to provide power to the dehumidifier. As I’ve said many times before, I am blown away by how helpful other cruisers are to each other. With no car it would have taken us two days to ferret out these items, but Eric was back in an hour.

The night before we left was the typical rush to get last minute items packed. And this trip would be tough to pack for since we were flying from Tahiti (82 degrees) to Los Angeles to San Francisco (62 degrees) to Hong Kong (65 degrees) to Singapore (92 degrees) to Boise (0 degrees) and then driving to Seattle (20 degrees). 

It was nice to get on this Air Tahiti flight to Papeete after all the frenetic activity of the last several days.

The next day Eric and Leslie helped us carry our bags through the muddy boatyard to their car, drove us to the airport, and had a nice farewell lunch with us before departure.  The one-hour flight to Papeete was anti-climatic and we stayed at our old standby, the Tahiti Airport Hotel, since we had an early morning departure.

Flying out the next morning on the Air France flight we got a great view of the City Marina and downtown Papeete.

The next morning we rose at 5:00 am we caught a taxi for the short ride down to Fa’a Airport and boarded a beautiful Air France jet to Los Angeles. As usual we watched all the free movies we could, ate delicious food, and rested during the 8-hour flight. At Los Angeles we quickly cleared customs thanks to the Global Entry Program and caught a 8:00 pm flight up to San Francisco where we stayed at another standby, the El Rancho Best Western. While it seems like a crazy routing for us to fly to Hong Kong, it’s actually substantially cheaper way for us to travel . We finally collapsed into the comfy beds at the hotel, very thankful to be back in the USA if only for a few days.