March Friday 25
Well we made it across the pond to Hiva Oa Marquesas in French Polynesia, that was a 2800 mile leg at sea. Now any other sailing trip looks like a short weekend jaunt.
All went well except for the tear in the main sail below the second reef. It did not seem as long as the 20 days it actually was.
We had a day of rest the first day after arrival, and yesterday we rented a car and drove about two and a half hours across the island to see a Tiki site. It looked like a small version of Easter Island. The scenery is very dramatic and beautiful. Sorry I cannot upload photos as the local internet is another Internot, i.e. not really the internet.
The check in procedures are definitely French based. Even as owner and Captain of our yacht I have to do one of the following.
1. Produce an airline ticket out of the country to my home country.
2. Deposit a bond of about US $1800 into a bank to cover the price of an airline ticket to my home country. This is refunded when you leave the country. The bank refunded you in Polynesian Franks which is useless to us because we are leaving the country.
3. Pay US $102 to a local agent to print a letter that gives us an exemption from paying the bond or having an airline ticket.
Why should I need to buy an airline ticket when I have a perfectly good yacht to take us away from such bureaucratic stupidity?p Yesterday I did my good deed for the day by looking for and finding a lost stern anchor from one of the yachts in the fleet. I was glad to help because they are such nice people. It took about an hour of diving in water where the visibility was less than 6. We attached a line to a dinghy anchor and set this about 100 feet away from the boat. I would dive down and follow this line feeling an arm length either side of the line. Feeling for the anchor because I could see diddly squat. If I did not find it we would move the dinghy anchor a few feet in one direction and try again. We finally found it about 20 feet from the boat. The owners were very happy because it was a brand new anchor. They rewarded me with a very nice bottle of red wine. I hope I do not die from a 1000 diseases because the water here in the Harbour is not the cleanest water I have dived in.
Today once we check in the car and get our passports back we will head off to some other islands. Hopefully they will have better water than where we are now.
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