Leaving Tahiti

With Andando`s fuel belly filled up, after waiting so long for the big grey ship before us,

 it was already dark, and without our depth sounder we decided to leave early morning to avoid the reefs. We danced the night away with the boys entertaining us on all our favorite love songs ,thinking back a whole twenty four years, a young women in white in the arms of her hero…

But soon the romance was interrupted by reality. We forgot to buy margarine! Not so easy! You don`t just walk across the street to the supermarket, or jump into your car and rush down the street! You lower the dinghy, already stowed away. You row as fast as you can while the drizzle let your hair hang in your face, in hope to find a shop still open after seven! You`ve spend the last Polynesian Franks today, emptying your wallet of foreign currency…so now you hope to find an ATM somewhere on your way down the street, in search for margarine! We reached land, secure the dinghy, and rushed to the Yacht Club, trying to find someone to shove us in the right direction. Hallelujah! If we hurry, we can still reach the shop down the street! So that was exactly what we did. Joe and I started jogging, not feeling the rain drops anymore. Without knowing the time, only that it is dark, we were driven by the knowledge of being without margarine for the whole trip to the Cook Islands or wherever. Suddenly it seemed so important! How can we eat our flap jacks, still hot from the pan without the glistening of the butter… How am I going to make the lasagna, without the margarine thickening the sauce? Panting we reached the shop, and as soon as we stepped inside the sliding doors, we started breathing again after about two kilometers. We found the margarine, a whole tub, 500g for US$8, and slipped a bucket of ice cream in for Dom Pedro`s…I will not tell how much we paid for that! At a slower pace we started walking back, just for me to remember I saw a bread fruit hanging on a tree somewhere close to the road. It is dark, so I can get on Joes` shoulders and reach this delicious fruit. If the branch is hanging over a fence into the street, does that fruit still belong to the people on the other side of the fence? I don`t think so! With a balancing act in progress, a damn dog from somewhere behind the fence knew about this green fruit as well, and needless to say, we left the fruit hanging….and me floating through thin air up the hill to safety! But we had the margarine!

We sailed away the next morning with light wind in the sails. We pass the island Morea on our starboard side.

The lures were out, and we were hoping for some fresh fish. A big fin was chasing our lures, and we were not sure whether we wanted it to take the lure or not! A short while later something big did take our lure, and a piece of our line, and we were still without a fresh fish for the freezer. Soon our Skipper spotted some birds circling, and fish jumping out of the water! We changed course immediately and the chase started! Our lines were out, and it wasn`t long before two skip jack tunas grabbed our lures. We lost the biggest one of the two, but we were good.

With the wind on the nose and the swells on the beam, we were in for a slightly uncomfortable sail. There were squalls all around us all the time, and we had to be on the lookout to take the sails in before one of them hit us!



From THIS....Starboard



To THIS...Port adjusting the sails



and then within a few minutes to THIS.....