Papillon in the Pacific

La Orana! Blog writing was delayed this week by the weather and our ongoing dinghy dramas. Murphy’s law could not have been more apt. A dry day was essential for the repair but instead we got 7 straight days of wind and heavy rain! Excellent weather to test out our new tarpaulin for rainwater collection (big success!) and to precisely locate the dinghy leak using food dye (another big success) but completely hopeless weather for carrying out the actual repair. Patience was required.   sunsets to entertain   the turbulent weather has spoilt us for sunsets As the rain drummed down on the cockpit roof, we turned to inside jobs, me to a lot of canvas sewing projects and Skipper to his electrics. Who knew I had married such an electrical whiz kid? Terms such as volts, currents and watts which perpetually confuse seem to have no such mysteries for Skipper. 3 more flexible solar panels were installed, and external voltage meters wired up to each sta...

 La Orana! 6 weeks after signing off in Charles de Gaulle airport we are back aboard Papillon safe and sound.      Sunset on our return   Metro station on the way The trip home was lovely but frenzied – Christmas on an adrenalin rush!   I thought we might be conflicted returning to French Polynesia after all that family and friend time but the appeal of a rest hopefully in some sunshine, put any such doubts firmly to bed.   We were exhausted when Rob dropped us off at Edinburgh airport   first thing on Tuesday 7 th October.   Little did we know what the next 4 days would hold.   If we had, we might not have let him leave us there as this was not a journey for the exhausted.     After a very straightforward check in it transpired that our first flight to Paris was delayed… for almost 6 hours meaning that we missed our Tahiti connection by some margin.   The choices were stark at 8pm  that Tues...