Papillon in the Pacific

  La Orana! A lot of this week has been about sailing starting with our exhilarating trip back from Huahine with Fred and Zuzannah.  It wasn’t quite as we had imagined.  French Fred was very experienced – his boat hopping across the Atlantic and the Pacific giving him more ocean miles than both of us put together, but we hadn’t realised that Zuzannah (from the Czech Republic)  had never been on a boat before!  The wind was blowing hard and the swell outside of the lagoon expected to be over 2m– conditions that could be scary for the uninitiated.    Anna banana - you can never have enough!   Zuzannah - still smiling The safety briefing was certainly longer than predicted but with everybody still committed at the end, Fred and I went forward to raise the heavily reefed mainsail and cast off our mooring lines and within moments we were off.  I was fully expecting a swift retreat back into the lagoon once the strength of ...

La Orana!  It was Bastille Day in Raiatea this week – another excuse for a holiday parade and another excuse for celebrating Polynesian culture in all its glorious technicolour.    Watching for the parade to start   One of the dancers It was only by chance that we coincided with the celebrations. We had returned to the Raiatea moorings to rid ourselves (and Papillon) of boatyard dust and had completely forgotten the date but the blue flashing lights and wail of sirens greeting us as we arrived in town that morning gave the game away. Police cars, ambulances and fire engines were trundling up the main street being politely clapped on either side by a packed audience. With the civic duty out of the way enthusiasm levels began to rise and the Polynesian part of the parade could officially begin. I positioned myself beside a marquee sheltering some of the more elderly Raiatea residents on rows of little green plastic chairs. From behind they p...

La Orana! I write this from the CNI boatyard on the west coast of Raiatea. Directly to the south lies the Carenage boatyard, but like East and West Berlin until the fall of the wall the two communities seem like entirely separate spaces. We think the CNI is considered the poor relation but after 6 days we have no complaints. Our pitch looks out onto the lagoon and the breeze; the facilities are basic but blessed with the water pressure of a geyser; and all the staff have that French charm that we awkward Brits can only marvel at.      CNI Workshop   Competing boatyards: CNI (right);Carenage (left   View through the hulls to the bay We arrived last Wednesday. The entrance is impossibly narrow, and the long channel to the slipway complicated by multiple layers of mooring lines and buoys but skipper navigated through like a pro and before we knew it we were positioned over the hoist with one guy chucking us stern lin...