Manifestation.

After leaving from Manihi in the Tuamotus, enroute to Tahiti, I stabbed my toe on a block and broke a toe. Nothing new, but painful still. Fixing it with masking tape, intended for use on other things but broken toes, I set sail to Rangiroa in hopes to have someone looking at it. Well, someone looked at it all right, handed me some more masking tape, just what I was looking for, and advised me to take it easy. I would have loved to go snorkeling there as I heard wonderful things about their drift-dives but could not put on fins, for goodness sake, I could not even row the dinghy, and so I became a prisoner aboard Symbiosis. My plan, to arrive in Tahiti just a couple of days after my daughter, had to be canceled. The time I had on my hand now, I used to rearrange the boats inside as I had now more space. The winds inside the atoll blew with about 15 knots and if my toe would not have been broken, I could have rowed the dinghy ashore and send a message to Jeanette about the delay but it did not let off. I waited and when the wind finally eased, I left this lovely place. Once outside the atoll, the winds were coming from the NE, made for a good ride, but I had to hand steer most of the time and it made it impossible to rest. At night it occurred to me, to rig the wind vane and see if it would do the job as it was supposed to and it seemed to hold course and I stretched out on the cockpit seat and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes an hour later, the trim tab jumped the groove and floated on its pendant like a hooked fish, faithfully in the wake of Symbiosis. The course was steady 360 degrees instead of 215. After resetting the course, installing the trim tab, trimming the vane and relieving myself, I returned to my place and kept an eye on the steering unit for an hour. It held its course. I closed my eyes to rest. Again, awakening about an hour later I found the boats course to be a steady 360 degrees. The trim tab was still in place. The conclusion is; the boat wants to go to the North Pole and just waits for me to close my eyes to change course. I guess it’s a battle of wills.

In the late afternoon I sighted land, Tahiti, and watching it, my thoughts turned to my childhood dreams, when I first heard about Tahiti and how much I wanted to one day see it and live there, how my dreams turned into reality. In the evening I entered the Passe de Taunoa and turned starboard toward an industrial area, winding channel, no lighted markers and almost running into a reef, managed to find an area to set anchor and sleep. There was no one in the area where I anchored and I found out later; it is not allowed to anchor there because it is a shipyard. It makes no difference to a dead-tired sailor, but nevertheless, I weighted the anchor and followed my track out the harbor and into the entrance to Papeete, followed south along the airstrip and ended up in marina Taina. This happened to be in the morning hours before I had any breakfast and to my surprise, there is a voice sounding just like that of my daughter. Poking my head out from the hutch, there is Jeanette in the flesh, in a dinghy with a fellow names Mike from a boat called “This side up” I saw first time in Hiva Oa.
They hooked up and Irma, my ex-partner, will sail with him to New Zealand while Jeanette will be with them for a while in this area until she returns to Canada, unless a shark will get to her before she can make her escape.
So, here I am, without crew, no computer I can use to navigate with and no paper charts from the area other than small scale, lots of detail but useless for longer passages.
A very good friend has sent me some money to prevent me from eating my socks, (I run out of shoes) and now as I’m getting popular doing massages, I am able to buy some delicacies like bread and butter and food for my and Irma’s cat. In case I find a boat to sail to the mainland, I will leave my boat here for a few weeks while getting my account reactivated in Canada and then return.
Ah, the adventures one has when one has decided to be free.