7th July 2024
Opunohu Bay, Moorea, French Polynesia – Fare, Huahine, French Polynesia via Hana Iti, Huahine, French Polynesia
Some surprises are good, some are bad. We like good surprises and do everything we can to avoid the bad. Continuing our push to the west, our lives have been full of both good and bad surprises.
Leaving Moorea and our new found friends behind us we were in for our first surprise. Usually the sun just sinks into the sea beaming its last rays and is replaced by twinkling stars or bright planets. Tonight was different. For what felt like an eternity, the sun, that was already below the horizon, lit up the underside of the clouds that floated above us, and we were ensconced in a world of red. Those red clouds were then reflected in the sea and turned Ruffian’s sails a shade of pink. Heading west we’ve seen many 100’s of sunsets but this was a really nice surprise.
With those westerly miles over, we turned right and made our approach to Huahine. With this change of course, we started to hear some scary metal grinding noises emanating from Ruffian’s steering. Iain dived downstairs and started pulling cabinetry apart to get the the quadrant, while Fiona had the more sensible idea of simply turning off the autopilot and was rewarded with silence.
As Iain revealed the workings of the steering and Fiona then re-engaged the autopilot, the grinding noises started again and the problem was obvious. After countless hours and many 1000’s of miles the bracket that transfers all the load from the radial drives to the quadrant had failed. Cracks were emanating from every hole and the bolted connection, that held the bracket to the bulkhead, had completely sheared. This was going to take some fixing and was going to be one of those surprises that wasn’t going to be short lived.
Hoping that we’d had our only nasty surprise, we were in for nice surprise after nice surprise. Expecting dead coral and a lack of sea life we found fishies that were used to being fed and held no fear of man. Thinking that we’d be friendless and lonely we found Shimshal who gave solace in our autopilot woes and allowed us to look for solutions at the bottom of glasses and under burger buns.
Finding Shimshal wasn’t the only surprise meeting with culture that we experienced. We also found a culture on Ruffian that we’d been happy to avoid in all our time on board; cockroaches!
As Fiona was emptying a rarely used cupboard the cockroaches that had been happily slumbering were woken and scuttled all over her hands, up her arms and just seemed to evaporate. Her skin was crawling, but the hunt for the nests and homes couldn’t wait. 1 cockroach can quickly turn into 1000 and the thought of these guys crawling over us while we slept, nestling in the food that we hoped to eat or simply watching us while we were at work, drove us on.
Lockers were emptied, cleaned and filled with noxious chemicals which could seep into every dark corner that we couldn’t reach. Cabinetry was removed to expose parts of Ruffian that hadn’t seen light for many years in a bid to give no respite to our foe. Where we found darkness and dirt we left Borax tablets as a treat for these critters to take back to their nests hoping they’d poison their friends and spread our death and destruction in their communities.
Day after day we checked the status of these poisonous landmines that were laying in wait, and day after day we found dead cockroaches who had crawled away to die quietly. As the days went on, the cockroach corpses piled up, and as the body-count grew their prevalence reduced. We were winning the war, but there were going to be lots of battles on the road to extermination.
With the nice and nasty surprises having a score line of 2 all, it was time for the scales to tip in our favour, and with our Bromptons in hand they were about to. Along the waterfront the traffic was at a standstill, an impromptu arena was being formed and lots of people were armed with machetes and axes. We’d not stumbled into some sort of vigilante justice, we’d stumbled into the annual coconut cutting and husking competition.
This was clearly a serious affair as the teams of 2 lined up their coconuts, positioned their stools and waited for the starting whistle. After a countdown and a long blow, the coconut shards started to fly. With every strike we thought that the contestants were about to loose feet or toes as the safety kit seemed to comprise solely of shorts, flip-flops and a modicum of luck.
With the coconuts split, the teams then unsheathed long flexible knives and started working on the white flesh, and at breakneck speed. Now hands and fingers were at risk. With our hearts in our mouths team after team finished their chucking, the champion was crowned and thankfully the on-site ambulance remained unused.
Onboard our trusty Bromptons the surprises started to come thick and fast. Ancient fish traps emerged from the sea, temples of long ago kings were discovered deep in the jungle and endless beaches fringed every road we cycled down. The nice surprises were winning the war against the nasty ones and long may that continue.
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