Rock and Roll in Shanty Town.

After farewelling Marco and having a few days in Papeete, we were pleased to welcome Zac, an enterprising fellow, the son of our old mates Adam and Nom. 

Zac joined us with an expectation of a few days of repairs and then some adventure. Unfortunately this turned into a 10 day stationary blah marathon involving repairs to the boom, the watermaker, some new canvas, and endless (and mostly fruitless) trips into town for parts. All while on the anchor in the floating Papeete shantytown, often hideously rocking and rolling with the residue of the supersized swells pounding over the reef...

What I refer to as the Papeete shanty town is in fact a crowded series of anchorages inside the reef around the airport. All manner of floating (and almost floating) craft, some of them overdue for the wrecking yard, and almost all of them home to either a solo wizened and crotchety old salt, a cruising couple of any age, or a young family. The vista is too beautiful to invoke a true sense of a slum, but at times it's touch and go. At night the anchor lights atop the forest of masts looks like an array of fire flies, or perhaps a constellation low in the sky.

Essso and I craned the damaged boom off in our last allowable visit to the Marina, so it could be picked up by Stellio, the aluminium welder. He was quick, but getting it back was going to be an issue, it weighs about 100kg and it's very unwieldy. The Marina always seemed to be full when we asked, which was confusing as there always seemed to be empty spots when we took the dinghy in. Hmm. 

So the decision was made to ferry it by dinghy. We had some slightly hairy moments but in the end it went off pretty much without a hitch. There was muted respect from the many floating onlookers nearby, and a marked increase in our own concept of what we could achieve autonomously with a bit of know-how and adaptive flexibility.   

It was good to have Zac's young muscles on hand but we mostly relied on practical physics and winches. 

After a few too many lost days, we took the plongee (bad French language pun) and did our dive course. 

Apparently in Sydney you start this in the pool. In Tahiti you start in the coral lagoon with the shipwreck and the crashed Cessna. It was pretty cool. Of course we don't have any underwater photos...

The plan was to get out of there on Saturday midday and head to Tikihau on the slimmest of weather windows. However, we didn't allow for French bureaucracy. Apparently we needed 48 hour notice to leave Tahiti for any other island group... OK, thanks, now we know.

So it was back to Moorea to wait for the next weather window on Wednesday. Hardly a terrible outcome but we are well overdue to do some proper sailing.