Goodbye to the Society Islands; We Love You!

We are always reluctant to leave Rick’s favorite island, Bora Bora, but we had deliveries awaiting in Raiatea, so off we went on May 3o to Apooiti in Raiatea, motor sailing most of the way because it was upwind. Unfortunately, an intermittent problem we were having with our navigation system became permanent during this trip, rendering our autopilot and our wind instruments inoperable. Yet another problem to solve!

It felt like old home week to return to what has become our home base on Raiatea. We were especially happy to see Susan and Rob from Athanor, and Roy from Mabrouka. We picked up our solar panels from the Carenage shipyard that had been delivered by warrantee at no charge from the manufacturer in Italy; we picked up our new stereo and other goodies from Athanor, who had just flown in from Seattle; and we retrieved our Cetol teak treatment from a boat in the anchorage who had, in turn, been given it to hold for us by a boat who sailed it here from Mexico, who had been given it by some Canadian friends who bought it for us!

Over our five years of cruising, we have met a lot of people, but I would say only a handful of them are people we long to stay in touch with even after this voyage ends. Susan and Rob are one of the couples included in that small group. They get along with each other well and are fun to be with, but not only that, they seem to be tuned in to a similar world outlook and way of being as Rick and I. Rob is kind and smart but very understated and humble; he reminds me a lot of Rick. And Susan is also kind and considerate but also speaks her mind, like I do! She is funny and interesting and both of them like to talk about things that matter. We are so glad we met them and are sorry we aren’t going to be on the same sailing path much longer. Fortunately, they have a home in Seattle and another in Marin county, so we expect to be able to see them when we aren’t sailing as well.

We have known Roy since he pulled up next to us at the Monterrey Yacht Club Guest Dock in 2014 and asked us to please move! No, he didn’t exactly say that, but he probably should have – we were enjoying it so much there that we didn’t want to leave, but it was time to give it up so someone else you use it. We sailed in the Baja Haha together down to Mexico and we have crossed paths several times since then. He made the crossing to French Polynesia a year before we did but has remained here. He is mostly a single-hander in a classic, nautical-looking boat, picking up crew where he can find them. He will be leaving for Tonga about the same time we will.

We took advantage of our short stay at the side-tie at Apooiti Marina in Raiatea to install the new solar panels and the stereo. What a treat both were. All of a sudden we had power through the night for the fridge due to the solar panels restoring battery power during the day, and finally we could use Bluetooth without cables for stereo speaker sound for our onboard movies. Oh the joys of technology. And we took advantage of the unlimited fresh water supply at the dock to hand-wash laundry, wash the boat and fill the water tanks.

Athanor, Mabrouka and Cool Change were all itching to get away from the populated area of Raiatea once a weather event passed, so on June 8 we set sail north to circumnavigate Raiatea, heading for the southeast side near a pass and motu named Nao Nao (pronounced Now Now). We were fortunate to find the only three mooring balls down there uninhabited. They were nicely placed behind a motu that provided protection from the prevailing wind and waves. Athanor lost her engine on the way down, making her mooring ball retrieval a little more exciting – Rob hopped in his dinghy and picked Rick up from our boat to help, and then they pushed Athanor “by the hip” up to the mooring ball and tied her off, with Susan steering. As it turned out, Athanor just had a bad connection that caused the engine not to start, but while troubleshooting, they discovered that one of their two alternators was failing so they needed to replace that. Such is the cruising life – fixing boats in paradise!

We all spent ten days together at Nao Nao. It was really fun. We all gathered almost every night on one of the boats or another for dinner or cocktails. We went snorkeling around the other side of a nearby motu, and we took an ill-fated picnic to an alluring beach at sunset only to be eaten alive by no no’s. We took a long walk around the southern point of Raiatea along the infrequently traveled road, we shopped daily at the small grocery store in the small town of Fatuna, and we hitchhiked for an hour’s ride each way into Uturoa, the principal town of Raiatea, when we were getting low on supplies. Susan and Rob brought a few bagfuls of soccer balls and supplies to the local school (they were sure to bring at least two balls so the girls could have one as well as the boys).

We also met an interesting young couple from Hawaii who were anchored in the same bay as we were. Joel was probably in his late 20’s, and quite the confident adventurer. His parents had sailed to French Polynesia before he was born, shipwrecked on a reef right in that bay, and ended up staying on Raiatea for several years, where his father developed a successful boat-building business. While there, Noel’s parents met another young foreigner who was trying to find his way in life, opting to come to French Polynesia rather than going to college. The young foreigner’s father decided that he would buy a piece of property on Raiatea for his son if his son promised to improve it. So, that son did improve the property, and also went back to school to become an engineer and quite an entrepreneur. Today, decades later, Joel is working for that same son, who is now approaching retirement age, and seems to be acting as Joel’s benefactor. Meanwhile, Joel is following in his parents’ and their friend’s adventurous, entrepreneurial footsteps. Joel single-handed his small sailboat from Hawaii to Raiatea, has worked as a fisherman amongst other jobs but learned the solar installation trade in Hawaii. He was installing a large solar array for his benefactor, and has dreams of building a home of his own and having his own boating business on Raiatea. Meanwhile, Joel’s girlfriend told me she was a massage therapist, so I jumped at the chance when she offered me a massage. They took me to Joel’s benefactor’s home up on the hill, where I received a Hawaiian-style massage on top of a padded picnic table with the ocean breezes caressing me.

We loved being away from it all in the Nao Nao bay, but, how many times must I say it, cruising is fixing boats in paradise. Our particular fix at the time was our navigation system. This was a system that was installed by factory-trained technicians, not by us, so we didn’t have a clue how it worked or what was wrong with it. At first, Rick thought it was maybe a grounding problem, so it took a while to rule that out. Then, we thought maybe it was a software problem, so we did a soft reset and reloaded the software. All that did was make us loose a bunch of settings we had customized, so they all needed to be put in again, but the problems still remained. Fortunately, we had manuals, and a strong enough cell signal to make a phone call to the manufacturer’s tech support, with whom we spoke (after a lengthy wait time) a minimum of four times. It wasn’t an easy fix, though – tracking down a bad link in an electronics system is like finding a needle in a haystack. After what was probably a total of maybe 40 hours of testing and troubleshooting, we found the bad link: a $30 5-way connector. We couldn’t have diagnosed the problem had Rob from Athanor not loaned us his own Nav system spares. Thank you Rob! Well, to look on the bright side, Rick is now pretty darn familiar with the system so if it goes out again, we will know where to start; Rick was able to reroute the system temporarily to make almost everything works without the 5-way connector; and, best of all, Susan’s brother was arriving from the States for a visit in two weeks and could bring the replacement part with him!

We all finally decided it was about time to move on from Nao Nao, but the weather was still unsettled. Mabrouka and Cool Change decided to continue our circumnavigation of the island by heading west, while Athanor headed northeast towards their eventual linking up with Susan’s brother.

For the next week or two, we just meandered around Raiatea and Taha’a, both inside the same reef, and reveled in the magic of it all. We didn’t want to get too far away because we were anxious to get that electronics part from Susan’s brother. In addition, Rick had managed to get a really bad ear infection. His ears seem to be prone to infection anyway, but we think it was probably some intense snorkeling in Bora that put him over the edge. We made him an appointment with the same doctor who saw me for my UTI, who then referred him to a specialist who flies into Raiatea from Tahiti one day every other week to see patients. Rick saw that specialist twice, who gave him a prescription for several medications that cleared up the infection, and who also cleaned out Rick’s ear over a period of both visits and charged him only $50, total. Rick is good to go again.

In the meantime, however, back in California, Rick’s youngest sister’s husband Neal appeared to be loosing his 19-year struggle against leukemia. They were trying some last ditch efforts but it didn’t look promising. While Rick and I hadn’t definitely decided to leave French Polynesia to head west yet, we chose to act as though we were going so we wouldn’t be caught unprepared if we did ultimately decide to go. And as part of that planning, we realized that if we were going to go home to see our brother-in-law, there was only a short window we could do it before we set out west, after which we basically would have no way to fly home on short notice. Whether it was “the right time” to come home to see our brother-in-law or not, it was the only time that we had. So within three days we had our tickets and set out on the 36 hour voyage home (including an overnight layover in Tahiti). We left Cool Change at the guest dock of Marina Apooiti with a storm imminent, under the watchful eyes of Mabrouka and Athanor.

Once Neal was taken off antibiotics and released from the hospital, he had a couple of good days and then deteriorated quickly. We caught him when he was still aware, although we wished we could have been there just a day or two earlier. We said our goodbyes to him from us and our kids, and then set about seeing what we could do to make the lives of Rick’s sister Elena and her four 13-year olds just a little less impossible for them, during the short period we were home. I took on setting up a picture of Elena’s finances for her, since Neal had been the money manager in the family, and Rick took on projects around the house like fixing holes in the wall! We stayed with Rick’s mom, who was struggling herself with her daughter’s grief. Neal passed away less than 36 hours after we first saw him.

As a testament to the enormous hearts of Neal and Elena, they were surrounded by wonderful and supportive friends, in addition to extended family, throughout the ordeal of Neal’s deteriorating condition and the aftermath of his death. There was a gathering of family and friends every day and every night at Elena’s and Neal’s home. Meals were showing up at their doorstep daily; people were volunteering to help clean out Elena’s garage, organize her closets, everything! An estimated 300 people filled the rafters at the Greek Orthodox Church the day of his funeral, and 200 people joined in the sit-down dinner at the church after the cemetery.

Inspite of all the support Elena had, the situation, as you can imagine, was devastating for all of us. The sadness Rick and I felt were nothing compared to what Elena and the kids must have been dealing with, yet Rick and I were emotionally and physically exhausted when we returned to French Polynesia.

Neither of us said it to the other at first, but something about that trip home made each of us decide independently that continuing on west to Australia in our sailboat was the right choice. It was not so much a decision as an intuition. Maybe it was the reminder of how short life is and how important it is to grab each day by the horns and make the most of it. Or maybe it was the hint of things to come – we have already had two deaths in the family over the last five years since we have been cruising, and no one is getting any younger – it is only going to get worse. Illness or tragedy in the lives of either a family member or friend, or even in our own lives, could bring this voyage to a halt at any time. We had better do it while we still can!

After that epiphany, all the other arguments against going became less significant. Now we have our new solar panels so power isn’t a reason not to go. The passages will be a lot shorter than our 27-day passage, so passages are not a reason not to go. We are going to stop for the cyclone season in Tonga and can have new batteries delivered there if need be, so batteries are not a reason not to go. The electronics have been fixed, the staysail furling line has been replaced with a smaller diameter line so it isn’t binding up any more, the scuba diving certifications we wanted to get before we left have been achieved, blah blah blah. Nothing has been stopping us all along that wasn’t simply in our own heads.

Once that was decided, after one last stop at the coral garden in Tahaa and goodbye dinners with Athanor, we headed back to Bora, our jumping off point for our trip to Tonga. In Bora, we enjoyed the Heiva festivities, a month-long celebration of traditional song, dance and sporting events. And I take back what I said about Bora loosing its culture: it’s housekeeping may be lacking, but the performances and competitions we saw demonstrate a people who are firmly committed to preserving their traditions.

It is with excitement for what lies ahead mixed with some melancholy for what we leave behind, that we plan to set sail on Thursday, June 25, if the weather gods cooperate, for the 1300 nautical mile journey to Tonga by way of Palmerston Atoll and Nuie. We have our dinners cooked ahead of time and frozen for the journey, we have our fuel tank and jugs filled, we have full water tanks, and we will have our check-out of the country paperwork complete tomorrow, along with our last-minute fresh fruit and vegetable shopping. Our checklist is getting shorter by the minute. At least three other sailboats are leaving for the same destination from Bora at the same time as we are, and Rick has already set up a daily radio net with them to follow each other’s progress and assist each other in whatever way we can. You can follow our journey by clicking on the following map share link:

https://share.delorme.com/RickandCindyPatrinellis

Bon Voyage!