We slept a full 12 hours last night. Got up to do a little more paperwork at the marina office and walk over to the market to buy some fresh tuna. I’m going to make tuna steaks done very rare with a salad for dinner. Tried to find baguettes as well and can’t find ’em! Damn! We’re going to ask around. They are so ubiquitous here, they are probably right under our noses and we just can’t see them.

Nice to be back.

View from neighbor's mast.

Taking it really easy today. We folded the sails, put on the covers and once we figure out how to use the darn card system for the water, we’ll hose down Charisma to get all the salt off, but that’s it for today, then nap time.

We’ve already been invited to a pot luck tomorrow night…so it starts. Kaila Vosa has been on the prowl. Can’t keep her away from people after being gone three weeks straight. We weren’t here five minutes before she headed down the dock looking for people to talk with 😉

So…feels really good to have made it here in pretty good time too. I’ve already got the full cruisers’ amnesia – good thing I blogged the passage, ’cause I can’t even remember the scary parts at this point. 😉

Papeete is nice, but very hot. We turned the boat around this morning so the sun isn’t glaring into the cockpit. Now we have some shade and the other bonus is, we’re looking right out onto the waterfront instead of across the bay at the shipyard. Great view! Also, the new marina here is really nice. Holds lots of boats, but with only another week or so before the Puddle Jump boats get here from the U.S., they still have a lot of organizing to do. For example their credit card reader doesn’t work. You have to pay everything in cash. The head of the marina was telling me that the marina is half private and half “administration”, which is “code” for French. He said the administration side is very, very slow to get things done. I told him I knew and that last time we were here three years ago, the Harbormaster had a leak in his ceiling sprinkler. Because things are so slow, he just put a garbage pail in the middle of the room to catch the water since for since for months he couldn’t get someone from the administration to fix it. He said; “That was me, and the ceiling still leaks”!

Ah, the French bureaucracy. Soon, it will almost be as bad as our congress.