Plenty of wildlife - not all of it welcome!

 

La Orana!

This week we have been circumnavigating Moorea.  I could start with the spectacular but to keep things real I’m going share some of the challenges aboard first.   

Rotui from the North

Sunrise setting off the new solar panels

Look away now if you don’t like creepy crawlies because this next bit is about cockroaches and specifically certain stowaways we have picked up on our journey so far.  The first sighting was months ago back in Uturoa marina.  I was sorting clothes out for the machine when a huge one scuttled out of the dirty washing bag and up the wall of our cabin. I’m not sure where the quick thinking came from, but I grabbed a beaker from beside the bed, trapped it against the wall and dispatched it far away into the sea.  Turning to google we discovered that cockroach eggs can take up to 60 days to hatch!!  Various sticky traps were laid, and the countdown began.  By day 50 we were feeling confident that we had cracked the problem, but pride comes before a fall and on day 58 (I’m not kidding) I found another big one immobilised in one of the traps. A flurry of tiny ones followed all of which got removed and then nothing again…until this week when a medium sized one was spotted by skipper on the deck.   Heroic efforts were made but it got away.  The decision was made to bring out the big guns: a 1:1 ratio of boric acid to condensed milk allegedly does the job.  We mixed it up and planted bottle tops of the stuff in various nooks and crannies around the boat.  Apparently, cockroaches are cannibals so if one eats the boric acid and dies any cockroach that consumes it will also die.  We will believe it when we (don’t) see it but so far so good on that front…although I should say we haven’t seen any dead cockroaches either!

Maatea lagoon to offset the cockroach story

Moths and ants have been another issue for us liveaboards this week.  The moths arrive with dried foods such as flour, couscous, pasta and lentils.  The unopened packets contain their eggs which then hatch out over time into pupae and finally fly off as moths.  We have learnt to buy packets with a good sell by date and to use them as quickly as possible but it's still a bit of a lottery.  This week I made a quiche.  I can assure you that the flour I used to make the quiche pastry was sieved and “clean”  but the handful I grabbed to roll the pastry out onto had two pupae in it.  It was a close one!  I’m ashamed to say I didn’t confess to skipper until after the quiche had been declared a “nice change” but the rest of the packet was discarded into the sea as fish food once again.  It’s a good thing that flour is on the red foods list and heavily subsidised!  I don’t think I’ve had a single packet that has made more than one meal.  The ants come aboard via fruit and vegetables which in an ideal world get rinsed before stowage. So far our ant colony hasn't posed too much of a problem but this week a major purge was attempted using a makeup wipe soaked in bleach and threaded onto the end of a knitting needle to get into all those awkward spots.  I’m not sure how successful it has been, but it made me feel a little more pro-active at least! 

Mouaputa -the mountain with the hole at the top

Leaving Maatea

Moving on from living creatures the final issue  distracting us this week has been our Rainman water maker.  Our new ppm (parts per million of salt) meter is  consistently giving readings over 500 on our “product” water which is too high.  Its not massively high – you certainly can’t taste the salt but its too high to drink regularly unless you want to develop kidney stones.  We have tried making water inside and outside the lagoon to test different locations, but the readings remain remarkably consistent and much higher than the water we can collect on land (100-150ppm).  Ideally you would like a ppm of less than 200 so it is certainly a problem.  We are now in communication with the Rainman water maker company in Australia to try and identify what’s happening. So far, we have ruled out the power supply, and the ppm meter so it is beginning to look like it’s the membranes themselves.  To address this, we have spent the past few days flushing them through first with a solution of alkali and then with one of acid to try and clean them up.  This method is reported to work on older membranes by some users but so far, we have had no success.  It’s frustrating but at least clear cut.  Saulius, our contact at Rainman has certainly been impressed with our meticulous efforts.  I don’t like to tell him that “experiments” were my bread and butter for the last 40 years!!  Hopefully it means a new set of membranes will be winging their way out here very soon but meantime our two water tanks are now clearly designated “drinking” and washing” and never the two shall meet!

515ppm😓

skipper at the helm

So that has been our life this week – I think you will agree not remotely glamorous but alongside the mundane the sail around Moorea has been memorable.  The first two nights were spent at a couple of beautiful reef anchorages on the north side of the island.  On the third day we woke to a breath-taking sunrise and completely still conditions. Turtles, manta rays, giant angel fish and black tipped sharks were all swimming in the water around the boat.  It was magical.  

As soon as the tour boats arrived, they upped and left, as did we and that’s when the rain started.  The rest of that day was just like a day sail in Argyll.  It was the first time in 5 months that I was so drenched that I actually felt cold onboard.  Fleeces even had to be retrieved from faraway holdalls!

Passage through the coral in the drizzle

Argyll colours

About 5 hours later we made it round to our anchorage on the south west side of the island at Maatea.  The pass into the lagoon was nice and wide.  Going through we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins that seemed to have made it their life’s mission to break the world aerial summersaulting record for dolphins – quite extraordinary acrobatics!  Once inside the lagoon dolphins were quickly forgotten however as things became a little more complicated.   All the warnings we had read about the inaccuracies of Navionics (our “google maps” of the sea) in French Polynesia came true.  Absolutely nothing on the chart added up to what we were seeing,  it was very disconcerting.  Shallow areas were being shown as deep and visa-versa. Visual inspection became our best navigational tool but even with such good visibility through the water anchoring was a nightmare.  3 attempts were made before we finally got a good grip on the sandy reef, away from the shelf,  in a sufficient depth of water, with plenty of swinging room and avoiding any coral heads (fussy or what that skipper of mine!).  3 times I dived overboard mask and snorkel at the ready to inspect the anchor.  I can’t imagine doing that as obligingly in Scotland! Exhausting stuff but it was worth it as the wind blew up overnight and we felt perfectly safe.  

Finally in the lagoon in Maatea

Beacon on the reef to keep us right

The next morning, we explored Maatea.  It was tiny but amazingly the supermarket had eggs making it a red-letter day for us!  The eggs thing here is a mystery. French Polynesia has literally hundreds of chickens wandering randomly around through its towns and forests but literally no eggs on the supermarket shelves for days at a time.  We don’t understand it at all but have learnt to snap them up when we see them!  On a purely superficial level the south end of the island seemed a little more down at heel compared to the North - a bit gritty if truth be told.  Perhaps the alleged “trickle down” effect of all the tourism on the north coast isn't playing out here.  Having said that it can only go up.  The houses with shore frontage might have looked a little ramshackle but they had views to die for and a turquoise blue lagoon right on their doorstep. I suspect  Maatea could look very different in 10 years time. 

I write this tonight in a new anchorage in Vaiare Bay on the east side of Moorea looking across to the bright lights of Tahiti 10 miles away.  It is yet another beautiful lagoon.  The water is crystal clear.  We have seen sharks, rays, dolphins and plenty other fish we can’t even hope to identify.  The sea is absolutely teeming with life.  While we wait for the chicken to cook (not a Polynesian one I hasten to add) the Southern Cross is visible and the almost full moon is rising.  As far as circumnavigations go this one has been pretty special. 

Silver surfers (literally) at the reef

Anchoring in Vaiare lagoon on the reef