395: We Found WHAT in the Bilge?! Our Final 24 Hours in French Polynesia

In this episode, we leave Morea on an overnight sail to Bora Bora in friskier conditions than expected. After arriving, we try to check out of French Polynesia in under 24 hours, but not before making a horrible discovery in the bilge and squeezing in one final provisioning run. Our last stretch before leaving the country starts now. That's the marathon starting. This might be it. The captain says we're going. All right, guys, we are leaving Morea. It's official. A lot of boat traffic today. Here we are leaving Morea for the last time. It's super sad. I remember watching other people on YouTube leaving French Polynesia and leaving Morea for the last time and how sad they were and thinking, oh, it's going to be a long time if ever for us. And sure enough, that day is here. We are heading west and it's time to get to Bora Bora where we check out. We had a great day today in Morea. We went ashore and saw a great little foot race with locals and they had some really cool watering stations. The locals were dressed up in their Hava costumes and really putting on a show, playing their instruments. It was killer. Just such a beautiful atmosphere, beautiful people inside and out. And we had lunch one last time at Tropical Garden, our favorite place, where we got the fried fish, which is fried in a batter with coconut in it. And then it has a vanilla dipping sauce. Phenomenal. And we had a huge surprise. Of course, the mouth, he's talking to everybody around us. It turns out the guy looks at me in the table right next to us and says, we watch your YouTube channel and the reason why we're at this restaurant right now is because you recommended it. And he says, by the way, happy birthday. Little did he know these videos are about three months old. The Admiral likes to stay well ahead. It was just great to get to know Toby, Mary and Logan. They're from Washington. Just delightful to talk to them. They're thinking about sailing. We hope we could be of knowledge to them and inspiration to them. So here we are, guys. We're making great time. We're doing over seven knots, so eight, which is killer for us as we are off to Bora Bora. The wind conditions are pretty much perfect and we're due to get in at 7 a.m. Of course, many things can happen until then. And then look at beautiful Moraya. What a dream come true to live in French Polynesia for two years. It's gone by super fast. What an adventure. And now we're off to Bora Bora where we're going to check out. And man, we're burning it up. Guys, we're so thankful that you're watching this. If this channel brings you joy and you're learning something, please hit that subscribe button if you haven't done it already. Hit the like button for the algorithm. We appreciate that. And share this with others. Leave us a comment. Tell us what part of this video you like the best. If you have any questions, we'll get right back at you. Free state is pretty rough. I guess we expected it a little bit. Could be worse. We got some big waves coming in. Thankfully, they're behind our hind quarters, so it's not too bad. And the wind is good, so we're not getting majorly tossed about. Well, we are racing away from Moraya faster than I could have ever imagined. We're averaging about 7 knots. And the wind kind of comes in and out up to 18, down to 12. And I think our highest speed, 9.8, speed over ground. So that was surfing, obviously. The sea state is getting better, but as you can see, we are having the waves on our hind quarter, which moves the boat in a weird motion. It's kind of like surfing, but surfing sideways, which causes the boat to weather hell a bit. So we're trying to counteract that. And this sail today is going to be about 130 miles. We are headed to Bora Bora. We've done 15, so 115 left. And we are planning to go all the way through. It looks like we're going to arrive there. Oh, that is not good. At 11 in the morning, but that changes constantly. It all depends on the sea state, the wind. Right now, the wind is dying a bit. And that doesn't help us with the banging of the boom or the sails flapping. In a couple of hours, when Brown comes on at 6 o'clock, we'll have to put in a second reef just to be sure. And then we're good to go for the night. Which slows down quite a bit. And that's a good thing, because right now we're getting in pretty early. So this is a little bit more chill. Earlier on, it was all hands on deck and you've got to be at the helm and you've got to be paying really close attention. And now I feel like I can take a deep breath and relax a bit. So this is good. Well, we don't have a huge amount of wind. So we were basically banging the boom every time there was a wave that came over us. So I've put a bungee on a line that hopefully is a preventer. Not sure how good it is to have torque in two directions on that fixture. But at least we don't have banging on the boom anymore. That was really frustrating. Looking a little better. A little bit more wind, which is also helpful. Alright guys, it's almost midnight. I am on night shift. Ron is down there reading. We just had a squall come through here. And we tried to bring the jib in a little bit. And the whole line went out and wrapped around the other sheet that was out there making a complete and utter mess. So we had to take it all in. And Ron went out and had to undo the big web of lines that were in a tangles. Anyway, things are calmer now. Back to 12 knots of wind. And we are coming up to Guajini here in 10 miles. And just not really sure what to expect between Guajini and Rayatea. We're hoping that the winds stay the way they are now. We're just not really sure because of the effect of the mountains. So time will tell. But it's been a pretty calm night. It is really clear. We've got an 80% moon. Sea state is not too bad. And we've got enough wind to counteract the sea state. So that's good. So overall, couldn't be much better. We're coming up alongside Guajini. And wow, the sea state is super calm right now. Because the island is blocking a lot of the waves. Well, it's blocking the waves completely. With 8 knots of wind, apparently we're doing 5.5 knots speed over ground. Which is incredible. We've got a couple of squalls around that I'm watching. But as of now, it looks like we're squeezing right between the two squalls. And hopefully it will stay that way. Just dropped the sail. We just lost all of our wind. So the sail was just banging, banging, banging. I gave it a little bit of time. But at some point, you've just got to let it go. And we're now getting into a not great sea state. Which means that the sail would bang even more. So I'm glad we took it down. And hopefully we'll get some wind and be able to put it back up. But right now, there's nothing. Oh, the best part of the 12 to 6 shift. Right now. Oh wow, you can finally see Rayatea and Taha. It's like getting up from a nap and having that be your view when you get up. Woo, Bora Bora, here we come. It's slow going, we've got no wind. But we've got engines. We have an estimated time of arrival of about 1 o'clock. Which is 4 hours from now. Not bad for the total trip then. We are almost in Bora Bora. Finally. Oh, this is the place that was so unattainable for weeks. And we are almost here. Found a good weather window. The wind's kind of, it's one of those things when you're sailing. It gets to the point where maybe it's possible, but it's just super irritating. But we are almost here, so we're almost near our check out of Bora Bora from Mt. Piti. I know, and then it's heading west, time is locking low. But we've had so many great memories of Bora Bora. And the first time we came here, it was so exciting. Yeah, it was totally epic. Man, look at that place, isn't it beautiful? So nice. One more hour. Wow. Bora Bora! Good to be back. Woo! Yeah! Yeah, they just came back! Passage is done. It took about, almost exactly 24 hours. We're on the mooring ball. Very thankful to be here. And maybe we're going to get a rain storm to clean the boat. That would be ideal. Perfect timing. It's good to be here. Good to have our mooring lines attached. And the captain is already relaxing. Yes! Good morning everyone. Wow. It's a new day. And last night we slept like the dead. It was fabulous. Oh man, does it feel good to get great sleep. This morning we are off to the fuel dock. Going to fill up with fuel so that when we depart from here sometime in the next week we don't have to go to the fuel dock. We can just head straight out. So, exciting times. I can't believe this is actually happening. We did this so many times with people here last year talking about, oh this will be us eventually. And it's now us. Last time we're filling up. This is it. Before we head off. It's so wild to think that we're not worried about our engines starting anymore. After the months of constantly worrying about that now they're starting with no problem. It's just so nice. This is crazy. There were no boats here. Now two boats just pulled in right before us. So we gotta hang out. We thought this was going to be a super easy fill up, but it's not. The fuel station requires you to have photocopies so that you can give them three documents. Your arrival papers, your boat document, and your fuel certificate. Which is a duty free fuel certificate. Probably because boats passing here might try and get fuel so they're super careful about who gets fuel. Anyway, I don't have copies to give her of two of the documents So I need to go down to the photocopy store and get these made. It's a five minute walk she said, so not that big of a deal. Just thankful she's allowing us to stay at the dock. I can't imagine having to take the boat off and then get the copies and come back and do this. So that's nice that she's allowing that. Alright, I have the copies. I just got them here at LPV. $1.25 for a black and white copy. I am so thankful to have it but holy cow. Heading back to the boat. It says 90% full. Can you hear that? Yep. Don't stop. Alright, we're off. Time to get all the stuff away. Last night was a tough night. I knew I smelled diesel when I went to bed and thought something's wrong. Actually I smelled diesel after we filled the fuel and Brown didn't smell it so he's like no no it's nothing. Well last night I started getting a headache and I couldn't sleep and look at that lovely mess that we've got. We overfilled the tanks when we filled them up so all the fuel is everywhere. The Mopeka sensor said 90% but it was clearly higher than 90% and the good news is we've been able to readjust the Mopeka the bad news is we've got a pretty big cleanup. It's in each of our compartments including what was a really nice clean bilge is now filled with fuel. It's a process. We just sucked out everything in the bilge and the second bilge and now we're getting the main stuff. It's just so wonderful sharing with you all of our mess ups so that you feel a whole lot smarter. One example of that is us overfilling our fuel tanks so overfilling is way worse than underfilling and the temptation to overfill is higher especially when you're going into a long series of passages heading west during a war in the Middle East where fuel might double or become unobtainable so it's that greedy let's shove as much in your cheeks as you possibly can and that's what we tried to do however our universal Mopeka has a sensor it's a sonic sensor that goes on underneath the fuel tank and on the setup it asks what the tank height is and so I put 18 inches in there it's vertical and when I was filling I could hear the fuel come up but it was only 90% and we still overfilled so what went wrong? what I did not take into consideration is the taper in our tanks so what this was reading right here is that we had 10 more percent to go but there was more fuel in the tank than this was showing right here so what we're doing is we're taking this number which says 18 right now I'm going to give us a little margin of safety and we're going to take this from 18 to 16 which 16 was the first one where it says 100 and we're going to take it down to 15 so this is probably 97% full at this point but it says 100 so we've probably got a 3 or 4% safety margin in there so we don't overfill again so this is you know exciting life on the boat right sweetie? and spend 4 hours cleaning it up not only that but we were woken up at night I couldn't sleep because the diesel fumes were so bad she's the one that has the more sensitive schnoz and she recognized it first and we had to sleep outside which ok the breeze was nice you got to do what you got to do sometimes so that's our story we want to pay it forward so maybe this won't happen to you and hit that subscribe button hit the like button and please share we'd love to hear from you also thank you so much we finished the cleanup of all of the fuel so we're going to take advantage of having that project off of the list and head into town and do a circumnavigation of Bora it's probably our last time to be able to do this ok that's crazy we had no intention of checking out right now but it's so perfect things are moving so smoothly and it's meant to be and you know what I think our minds and everything are getting to the point where it's time to go boat's prepared we're all filled up with fuel the gendarme could not have been nicer and we have submitted the paperwork at 3 o'clock on a Monday and we're getting it back tomorrow in less than 24 hours which is incredible beautiful very very thankful for that alright let's go provision if all goes to plan today we will be checked out of French Polynesia and ready to hit the road tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock heading to Maupiti so we are going to move back to the Yacht Club it's only a couple of miles away so that tomorrow morning we can just do a straight shot out the pass and head on to Maupiti wow that just feels so weird to say but it is reality now we're excited so I'm going to prep the lines so that we're ready to go look how beautiful this is it's incredible I finished prepping the lines they're ready to just be released and we can head on the reason why we are checking out a lot earlier than we thought we would we never would have come down here to this anchorage is we've got a great weather window to get into Maupiti we'll talk about what it takes to get in there but it's a very specific forecast that allows you to get into that atoll we went to the gendarme thinking there's no way they would allow us to leave within 24 hours so we figured it was just you know we're going to check with them and when they say no we know we're going to be here another week which would have been fine but they said no problem so we said let's go for it so that's why we are leaving Bora Bora only after a couple of days and heading on out last time we were here there was a boat on every mooring it's pretty crazy how empty it is right now we're all set almost time to go into the city this could either be a big dud or a life changing moment alright moment of truth here we go look at that in the background wow it's official I can't believe it they're kicking us out that literally took about 30 seconds we walked in they handed us the papers and stamped our passport once you do that it lights the fuse you've got 24 hours before you leave and they track it here let me tell you we're truly out of here we're getting the last little errands done so that we can head out first thing in the morning time to go for a little provisioning and then back to the boat doing a quick stop in Bora Bora home depot hoping to find some oxalic acid we'll see alright successful stop in the Bora Bora home depot and we got our oxalic acid we are almost to the super u man it is hot hot hot alright here we go the super u here is a little bit cheaper than the chin lee not as nice very small aisles but otherwise they've got a ton of stuff here we are loaded up heading back to get some papaya and one last shop at the chin lee see what we find there we have a couple of things we still need to get I just got 5 beautiful papaya for $1500 which is like $14 that's an incredible price normally they were like $6 a piece that's just amazing we are in chin lee now and looking for our final products which is mascarpone for our friends that are already in malpiti and we don't really need anything just kind of walking through last time $7.50 for one she gave me $3 for $7.50 leaving the land of thankfully this is our last stop we don't have much room or the ability to carry much more at this point we are all provisioned this is it last time on Bora Bora taking it all in our last sunset in Bora Bora and as we take it all in we've got 5 or 6 charter boats flying in here this must be when everybody checked in what is it? I guess everyone checked in today it's Tuesday yeah fun run tonight pretty spectacular