August 21, 2012
That’s the question we hear. Here’s the answer for yesterday:
6:05AM – Woke up late and missed the sunrise. Darn. Usually we see it. Drank coffee. Watched the sky, sea, island…
8:00AM – Go in to shore and walk to town. Breakfast at a place that was reputed to have incredible croissants and pan du chocolate (basically croissants with a little chocolate inside, yum). They did. Wonderful. Next, walk to Air Tahiti’s office to pick up our radar. (Our radar started acting up after we left Tahiti. Simrad sent us a new one.) Cab back to the boat. It’s about a 30 minute walk to town – too far to carry a very big box.
10:30AM – Install Radar. That went well. One trip up the mast to take the old one down. A short rest on deck to wait for my legs to stop shaking, and another trip up the mast to install the new radar.
11:23AM – Whales! Right off our boat. While I’m putting the finishing touches on the radar, Cyndi, who was diligently looking for boat wakes that could shake me off the mast, spotted whales just a short way from our boat. As soon as I got down, we jumped in the dingy to get a closer view. By the time we got there, there were probably 20 boats following the mother and baby. We got very close and had a wonderful view. Sorry. We spent our time just looking and very little taking pictures so we didn’t get any good ones.
12:47PM – Played with the new radar for a while and left it running to test.
12:53PM – Incredible steaks for lunch with short-grained brown rice and huge, fresh carrots. The steaks here are amazing. I’ve never had better, anywhere. And they are inexpensive here.
1:30PM or so – Read, loaf, think, dream, nap, relax…
3:36PM – Dean and Sabina from the boat Local Talent stopped by. They’re anchored in town and were out for a dingy ride. We opened beers, sat around and talked story. While we were sitting in the cockpit, I noticed a bunch of small boats congregating in the channel outside our boat. That could only mean one thing: Whales! We jumped in Dean’s dingy and off we went for our second whale-watching excursion of the day. This time we had mom and baby surface 15 feet from the dingy. What a show! Mom and baby seemed to like the attention and were playing on the surface amongst the small boats, paddle boards and kayaks. Again, sorry. No pictures.
5:55PM – Sat in the cockpit eating cheese and crackers with a nice bottle of wine and watched the sunset. Wine progressed into rum. After enough rum, we decided to watch the first episode of the original Star Trek (thanks Herb for the old TV shows on disk!) We haven’t been watching many videos or TV shows while out here but it’s nice once in a while.
About 8:00PM – I fell asleep. I’m sure I had a smile on my face after another nice day in Bora Bora. -Rich
