We thought today would just be an easy day getting ready to leave the Marquesas. The plan was to get up, go to the clinic for Elephantitis pills (yes, it’s a problem in French Polynesia and we don’t want it-the pills are free), go shopping for final fresh food, then get fuel in preparation for sailing to the next island chain, the Tuamotus.
Well…we made it into town-a little later than planned. Of course, laundry always takes longer than expected (about 2 hours!) That’s OK, things move pretty slowly. Ran into some friends on Black Dog at the dinghy dock and chatted for a while. OK, actually we gossiped, but it was well intentioned gossip. Anyway, we took our leave and looked for the clinic. The directions were something like- “Go up the hill toward the Gendarmerie. The clinic is ‘up there’. If you get to the hospital, you’ve gone too far”. A little vague, but workable. So up we went. We got to the hospital, whoops, too far. So back a bit. Nothing. Finally Ann went into the hospital to ask (and that’s another story we don’t have time for here) and they pointed; “not this house, but the one on the other side”. So back we went to the one we thought might be the clinic but since there was no signage, we were worried it was someone’s house. Turned out to be the clinic. The woman inside was very helpful and with broken English and our basic French we determined that you take the pills based on weight. Four for me, three for Ann. (My surprise was I’ve lost about 25 pounds since leaving the US! Yeah! Back to 252 which I haven’t weighed since the mid 1990’s). Ann has lost another 5 pounds too!
Once fortified with pills (they are not preventative, they are “for the larvae of the mosquito” as she told us, sort of like worming your cat so we’re to take them upon leaving French Poly), we headed to the store. Got there just in time to find it had closed for lunch. Rats. All stores here close from 12PM to 2:30PM. Oh well. Back to the dock where there’s an outdoor crepe shop. We sat down and ordered a couple “completes” with bacon, cheese, ham and egg. They were delicious!
We were just getting ready to go to the store when John from Orcinius called us on the hand-held VHF radio. They were ready to do the fuel thing. Fueling over at the fuel dock is a very scary experience with three foot waves and massive surge; it’s very hard on small pleasure craft. It’s more made for the supply ships that come in once a week. John has a couple custom 40 gallon fuel bladders and an electric pump for transferring fuel. We were going to go get 80 gallons in the bladders in the bottom of the dinghy and then back to Charisma and pump them out into our tank. Sounds much easier than Med-mooring (back in and tie up with your stern to the dock) at the dock in all of the surge.
First off, getting the fuel was pretty funny. The supply ship was in so we motored the dinghy just under the huge bow of the ship and next to the side of the wharf where there’s a steel ladder up about 15 feet to the dock level. I walked over to the fuel station and said I wanted 300 liters (about 80 gallons). They said I had to come back when the ship was gone since there was no room at the wharf. I said my boat was already tied up and pointed out at the bow of the ship. They looked at me kind of funny as from their perspective, there was nothing there but a huge ship bow. Finally I got it through I had a little dinghy with fuel bladders, etc, etc.
So, got the fuel. Now, with the dinghy almost sinking from the weight, we motored over to Charisma. This was going to be great! Easy as pie. We opened the fuel port, pulled the hose up, started the pump, it whirred with a passion and…nothing happened. No fuel came out. I won’t bore with all the detail of the rest of the afternoon except to say it was spent taking the pump apart to find a broken check valve. Once fixed, everything worked and we transferred the fuel, but voila, afternoon gone. No shopping. Day over.
Fortunately Ann had a much more productive afternoon albeit in the “sweat shop” of the cabin on a hot day. I found her slaving over the sewing machine with both fans on high and aimed at her perspiring forehead. While John and I were fooling with machinery on deck, Ann did a beautiful repair to the staysail cover and she made a bunch of tie-downs with buckles for the jerry cans on the bow. Now I don’t have to untie miles of rope when I want to get at the water, rum or diesel up on deck. I just unsnap the buckle on the tie-down and we’re good to go.
By the way, I may not have mentioned that one of our jerry cans is full of rum. We learned awhile back in Mexico that liquor is very, very expensive here in French Poly but you’re also not supposed to bring any in. Our solution- fill a 5 gallon “water” jerry can with rum. Hopefully it looks like water and customs won’t ask. Well, not quite fill, but we bought a bunch of 1 liter bottles of a decent yet cheap rum and poured it in. I think something like 10 liters or so. Now when we’re out of rum in the decanters in the cabin, we just go to the jerry jug bring a funnel and fill up. In Mexico the rum we’ve found here for $60 was about $10, so we’re doing pretty well on the operation.
So, there you have it. The going is easy, but never as easy as you think. But at least our rum is cheap.
