390: Leaving Tikehau… The End of Our Tuamotus Chapter

Alright guys, this is it. We are taking off from Tikiao after a month of being here. Wow, it has been amazing and our time in the Tuamotus is now coming to an end. We're headed back to Tahiti. Last-minute things before we check out of French Polynesia. It's kind of crazy to even say that. So we're gonna put the sail up this morning and then bring the anchor up and we're out of here. Goodbye, sweet Tikiao. Manta Station. We don't have a lot of sun yet this morning. It is barely up over the horizon, so watching on Google Maps, making sure we follow tracks and stay off the bommies this morning. We are about halfway through our trip out of the Atoll. It's about six miles to get to the pass, about an hour. And then we've got to go through the pass, which is not going to be favorable because, well, it's gonna be outgoing, which is fine, but it's gonna be very strong current. So we just got to be really careful. And then we've got 171 miles to Tahiti, which should take us about 24 hours. So, so far, so good. The winds are really good and steady. Right on the beam. So far, so good. Captain Brown's gonna sail us out here. He got the engines on just in case. Oh, wow, the pass is amazing. Wow. Definitely outgoing. We're not gonna win any races with speed, but doing six and a half knots, not too bad. Hey, babe, that was the first pass we sailed through. Did you know that? Good job. All right, 650, and we are finally headed south, the direction we need to be heading. Oh, man, this is champagne sailing for the moment. For the next 30 seconds, it's champagne sailing. Who knows what happens after that? Well, what started out as champagne sailing has become a little annoying. We have waves coming from the back quarter, which means that the boom was constantly banging, which is not good for the boom. The sail was filling and unfilling, which is not good for the sail. The jib was also collapsing, which is not good. So we've dropped the main. We don't have enough wind, really. We really need 15 knots of wind with the sea state. Sea state's pretty rough, or it's not rough, it's just constant waves, wind waves, from the hind quarter, which is a problem. So we're gonna wait till we get more wind, then we'll put the main back up and hopefully not have to run the engine super long. Right now we're running the engine, just doing a little motor sailing to try and keep up our pace. Well, we're making decent progress, but the wind continues to be wonky, so we have to run an engine and we've tied down our jib in two places to try and keep it from having too much of a snap every time we get hit with a wave from the beam. Hopefully later on we'll be able to raise the main again and get back on track with sailing. But for now, we've got enough fuel on the starboard engine, and it's running okay. We're doing about six knots. The wind is between eight and twelve usually. Not enough really to sail with the sea state on the hind quarter, so hopefully things will improve, but the great news is it's really calm. Because of all the motoring and the sea state really agitating the fuel tank, all of our really good fuel that we had put in there is now mixed up. Brown is changing the spin-on filter. Hopefully that'll help. But the sea state is definitely not helpful to what's going on with our fuel tanks. Good news. The wind started to pick up. We've got both the main and the jib out. We're doing 4.9 knots, 11 knots wind apparent, but that changes constantly and goes up to 15, 16 sometimes, so the arrival time is changing constantly, but man, it's so nice to have the engines off and we are sailing. What a beautiful day. It has literally been amazing. No squalls. They've been all around us, but haven't touched us. The sea state has gotten better and better throughout the day. All right, we are finally cruising. 6.1, 6.3. Doing only 16 knots of wind on the main. That is the time that our fat pig loves to sail. She does really well with 15 knots of wind. The sea state has been fantastic. It's picking up, obviously, because the wind is picking up, but it's still really, really good, thankfully. So, yeah, we're making up some time here. Brown's about to take over. Got a full moon. Doing 6.5 knots. Wind is really good. 16 on the beam. It is 1.15. We're on a weird schedule. Normally, we do 6 to 12, 12 to 6, but we just didn't get any sleep last night and then so coming into tonight was tough, so we just have been on and off as we have needed to be. We've got a full moon. I don't know if you can see, but it is totally white. It's amazing. Sea state is pretty bad. I wasn't able to sleep at all. Kind of being tossed about, but we've been keeping a good pace, which is good and should be getting in tomorrow, today, sometime in the morning. It's a brisk morning. You can see the sea state is pretty rough and wind is going up. We're at 21, 22 knots. Doing 6.5 knots, which we do like. Getting in a little bit sooner than we thought, maybe. See if it holds up. We are getting close. We can see Marea and Tahiti. Almost there. 20 more miles about when we're in, so ETA is about noon. Big winds. Big seas. Ready to get in. This is a little crazy. Wow. It may be that we need to go all the way in to get a calm place. Are you willing to sail it in? Maybe. Let's just see when we get closer. This is definitely not the way we wanted to have it end, man. This is tough. He thinks it's exciting. Not so much for me. The waves are crazy out here. Oh, so thankful to be approaching this and it being calm. The captain did an amazing job. We've got the best admiral in the world. Wow. Captain, you did great. All right, Papua New Guinea Port Control told us we've got to wait. We were given permission to go but then he just told us that two ferries are coming out and he doesn't want us to get in their way and neither do we. Thankfully, it's calm enough to just hang out here anyway. Little motorboat coming out. The perfect welcome back to Tahiti. Look at this. Wow, there's nothing like the calm of this port. This is amazing. Is that the anchor? Yeah. Brown's moving our anchor this direction so we are not anywhere near that bami out there. Oh, it's so good to be back and getting to see the sunset behind Marea. It's so beautiful. This clear water. Super shallow. Well, we are starting the beginning of the end of our time here in French Polynesia. But I have to start by walking you out to the front of the boat for this incredible view. Look at Marea. Oh, look at the clarity of the water. It's pretty incredible. Anyway, back to the task. So we are headed to into town this morning. We've got a checklist of stuff pretty much for every day that we're going to be here in Tahiti. And we've got to be out of Tahiti in a month so that we can get to the societies and check out there. But the good thing is, knock on wood, there's nothing seriously wrong. Other than our engines don't work. No, our engines do work. Anyway, it's the tank. Other than our tanks are dirty and the fuel is bad, but nothing else. Well, we're making, we're learning guys. When things happen and especially on a boat, lots of things happen. You learn new skills. You learn how to overcome. And you become wiser and this boat is really teaching us. It's amazing how much we know versus this time five years ago. So we're going in this morning because I ordered a new washing machine from America that was shipped here a month and over a month ago. Tahiti crew has it. I ordered it because we thought we were hit by lightning and our washing machine was going a bit wonky. Well, our washing machine has revived itself. I can't believe it. But we need to go pick it up. Plus we have not been to a grocery store in eons since we were in the Tuamotus for so long. So we are going to pick up some provisions and we also are going to dump all of our trash that we accumulated over a few months too. So lots of things to get done this morning. And then we got to be back for some stuff going on here at the boat. Our boat is completely covered in salt. We really need to get that cleaned off the boat too, but without rain, I don't think that's going to happen. Although Brown did repair the water maker this morning. Why don't we just pull the hose up from the marina and just wash everything down? Oh, that's right. We're not in a marina. So that's it. Goodness, we're not in a marina. Boy, we're excited to get back in a grocery store. This is going to be so fun to have everything available. I can't even believe it. I'm ecstatic. We have not had fruits and most veg for 30 days. The Carrefour is probably the best grocery store within 3,000 miles in the Pacific. So we're a dingy's ride away. We're very thankful for that. And we're off. Boy, it is really hot. I can't believe how hot it is right now. Oh, rotten fruit for sure. Yolanda! Oh, this is just the best. Look at all this food. All right, our washing machine is here. I would be a lot more excited if our other one wasn't working, but it is. Now we got a spare. A very expensive spare washing machine. Good thing it's light. Oh, another busy day. Brown is off to pick up the people who are going to make our new rain shades and install our new clears. As you can see, our clears are no longer clear. We can't see out and that is really not good. It's pretty dangerous if we have to have those down if it's pouring rain or whatever. In our rain shades, we're going to go with one one instead of having to use two. This, unfortunately, the Phifertex does not allow us to have rain. Otherwise, we get soaked in here. So it's kind of useless. It's great for sunshade, but not great for rain. And you just never have a season where there's no rain or very rarely anyway. So today they're going to come and take a look at what we've got and try and figure out the best way to do this and then they'll actually work on both of these towards the end of the month, which will be good. We have had a really busy time here in the Tahiti Anchorage since we've been back. It's been non-stop just trying to tick things off the list in preparation for our trip west, you know, just getting the boat ready, checking all of our safety items, our go bags and our E-perb and our communication devices and just everything just trying to tick a whole bunch of things off of the list so that, you know, in a month we're out of here and we don't want to be doing it then. We've got some things to repair like our fuel tank issue, our engine fuel tank issue. So we've got a lot to do but we are also enjoying getting to see friends that we haven't seen. Some in two years, some in four or five years. Some are people that are following us now that we didn't know about and we're getting to meet them. Lots of great social time here in Tahiti. It is so hot. As you can see, there's no wind because the mountains block all the wind. So the sun is just brutal in terms of the heat coming off of the surface of the water, but we are adapting to it slowly and hopefully we get a lot done today.