Les voyageurs reviennent

 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 Tuesday night:  transfer to an alternative carrier and fly out on Wednesday evening or stick with Air France and fly out on Thursday evening.  If we went with the former, we would have to retrieve our luggage immediately (4 huge hold bags and 2 checked on cabin bags) and then check them in again 24h later in Charles de Gaulle airport and then again in San Francisco.  If we went for the latter option Air France would retain our bags until Tahiti.  Given that one bag carried our newly repaired headsail and was almost impossible to lift we chose the all-expenses paid Paris minibreak.  It seemed like a no-brainer particularly as skipper could now celebrate his birthday in style rather than over the Pacific with a TV dinner.  We did our best to celebrate in style but there was no escaping the fact that Paris under leaden grey November skies is not the same as Paris in warm spring sunshine!  We speed walked rather than ambled through windswept parks, metal seats abandoned to the cold, children’s play areas deserted.  Only the hardy Tai Chi devotees persisted from previous visits, practising their discipline all multi layered up in the company of swirling leaves.  When the cold got too much we retreated into galleries for warming coffees and croissants and enjoyed lunches courtesy of Air France in recommended eateries.   As night fell a compulsory stomp along the Seine was rewarded with fantastic views of the Eiffel Tower illuminations. It certainly wasn’t a bad effort as minibreaks go but there was no escaping the fact that we still had 25 hours of a 26-hour journey left to go and that does somewhat focus the mind!  

Venue for birthday lunch	Le Petit Palais
Eiffel Tower in all its glory	Pont d'Alma

Finally, the long-awaited departure hour was within touching distance.  Only then were we informed  of yet another “technical issue" with our ongoing plane.  Another long delay was anticipated while Air France sourced an alternative.  It seemed we were living in a scene out of “The Terminal” with Tom Hanks.  We were beginning to think we would never get out of Charles de Gaulle airport … but of course we did and although 4 hours delayed, we made up enough time in LA to catch our final flight to Raiatea with minutes to spare!  Two dinghy rides later and fully 4 days after leaving Glasgow we finally arrived.  It had been an epic.

Forest - Uturoa

Cruise ship -Uturoa

Now almost a week later the jet lag has subsided, and we are enjoying being back in familiar waters.  A lot has changed since we left.  Avocados are back in season, the new Carrefour supermarket has progressed beyond foundations to recognisable walls, our daylight hours have noticeably extended, there are more birds at sea and more birdsong on land, and as discussed with many during our visit home the sun is now almost directly overhead at midday giving us better solar power and a lot of heat to adjust to.  But much is familiar too: the gentle warmth of the wind out on deck, the delicious sea temperatures, the brilliance of the flowers, the night skies and the general kindness of strangers.  It’s not been hard returning to this place. 

Settling back was undoubtedly helped by the fact that Papillon had weathered our absence so well.  The bilges were dry, mould growth was at a minimal, the solar powered freezers had maintained their temperature of -18 degrees and all the mooring lines remained intact despite some very strong trade winds.  Marie from the kite surf school has to take much of the credit for this but it was definitely a relief to come back to a boat that was much the same as when we had left. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the dinghy.  Over the past 5 weeks she has developed a crack somewhere and is now leaking like a sieve at the stern.  While the weather was calm, we tried a couple of repairs but so far with no success.  There is nothing as dispiriting as having to bale out a dinghy on every trip so we must persist but currently the trade winds are blowing hard and we can scarcely leave the boat let alone flip over a heavy dinghy, so we must wait. Hopefully I will have better news next time.  Meanwhile, confined to barracks we are tackling a long list of outstanding jobs.  25 on the list in total – 26 if you throw in our unexpected dinghy issues.  Owning a boat in the tropics (or anywhere for that matter) is a bit like painting the Forth Road Bridge – it is never finished.  It can be a bit daunting but satisfying too when something works again.  We may have made no progress with the dinghy so far, but the new headsail and sunscreen courtesy of Saturn sails are a triumph, and, on his return, an energised Skipper resolved an ongoing issue with the starboard engine, so progress is most certainly being made. Motivation is high with the anticipated arrival of visitors in January, but I won’t pretend there is not a lot to do. 

Uturoa from above

Nod to Christmas in Champion

To cheer ourselves up at the end of long days we  have been experimenting with a new toy from the UK – a food processor. It was skipper’s choice and I have to admit I was sceptical at first but I am now a total convert. Who knew you could make such delicious meatballs and fish cakes on a boat out in the middle of the Pacific?  The possibilities for menu diversification are endless! Whilst enjoying our cordon bleu cookery in the evening sun we have been entertained by the acrobatics of enormous blue fish that have appeared in our absence.  They hoover up shoals of tiny fish that gather around the boat but only after leaping wildly out of the water first.  The slapping sound they make as they splash back down is ridiculous.  Before working out where the noise was coming from, we thought something big was actually colliding with the boat - quite alarming on the untrained ear but now just endlessly amusing.  As I’ve written so many times, it’s the little things!

Stormy days on the lagoon

End of another long day