Author Archives: Christine

About Christine

The one that makes it all happen

Point Venus, off Tahiti

THE HMS BOUNTY

The HMS Bounty,was a Royal Navy three-mast ship. She was made famous by the movie “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando. Fletcher Christian, the second in command staged a mutiny against Captain Bligh at Point Venus. The Captain and 19 sailors escaped. Meanwhile the rest of the crew settled in Tahiti. The sculpture below presets the mutineers’ names and the Tahitians who accompanied them.

HMS Bounty Marker

PIROGUE – CANOE’S

The Tahitian word for canoe or “pirogue” is “Va’a.” These were used to travel between Hawaii, New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands. This is no small feat as they are thousands of miles apart. There were two types of pirogues in Polynesia.

Single Hull with an equalizer used for fishing and short trips between the islands.
Double Hull used for big journeys and war.

In addition, Polynesians used pirogues as a receptacle for dead people to transition from life to death. Young boys used Pirogues to transition into becoming a man. They boys transition would be through their first shark or bonito fishing exposition. Certainly a beautiful and ancient Polynesian tradition.

Pirogue – Polynesian Outriggers

LIGHTHOUSE

The lighthouse called “Te-ara-o-Tahiti” or “Tepaina Venuti” was built in 1867. Coral rubble and cut stones from the Gambiers were used to construct it. It is an eight-floor square lighthouse that originally measured 25 meters high. However, seven meters were added and its electrification was realized in 1963. During the war, 1939-1945, the inhabitants hid the lighthouse by painting coconut trees, palms, and nuts on its lower facades. The lighthouse standing in the middle of the coconut grove became virtually invisible to the Japanese enemy. Consequently, they had no reference point to land.

Te-ara-o-Tahiti lighthouse

Here is a photo of Captain Cook

Captain Cook

This beautiful statute had no plaque, but it was too pretty to not show you.

Sculpture representing history

Additional photos at Point Venus:

Sunset off Point Venus

Point Venus Bay

In Route to Tahiti, with a Slight Delay

And the Fun Begins

For the most part, lifting the hook (anchor) is relatively easy. Matt and I have a good routine down with hand signals that reduce the stress on the boat, anchor, and chain. However, before raising the anchor, we realized it was wrapped around something. We assumed it was a bombie (coral head). It was obvious something was off by the direction and pull of the chain in the water.

When we arrived, we dropped the hook in 12 meters of water 8 days prior. We put out 70 meters of chain and used 4 floats to keep the chain off the sea floor and above the coral heads. Even when you do everything right, bad things happen. We were able to lift 20 meters of chain before the windlass ground to a stop. Matt slowly maneuvered the boat forward, backward, and sideways while I tried to continue to free the chain. After about 20 minutes, it gave and continued up.

Tangled Up in Rebar

Another 10 meters and we saw what the problem was. One of our floats had caught on another float that was attached to two 8’ x 8’ pieces of rebar. WTF! The rebar pieces each had several floats attached to them. What a disaster!

Pulled up rebar while at anchor

Matt was able to hack one line away to free one of the 8’x8’ pieces of rebar which promptly floated away. We hated that it drifted away as it might become a problem for another cruiser, but there was nothing we could do as we were still attached to the 2^nd piece.

Rebar mess with image from bathroom escape hatch

After more boat maneuvering and another 40 minutes, we were finally able to bring the last piece all the way up in order to hack the line and release it. This piece sunk. Ugh! Again a potential problem for another cruiser. Our anchor still was not coming up so Matt had to do some more maneuvering before I was able to lift it up. And when she came up, she was slightly bent – out new, stainless steel anchor.

Bent anchor shaft

It was truly a frightening experience because each time Matt backed down the entire bow, bow sprit, anchor roller, and forestay lurched forward and then popped back. It felt as if the front of the boat would literally rip off. Luckily, it was more bark than bite.

Leaving the Hao Pass

Finally, on our way, and 40 minutes behind schedule, we pushed the engines hard to get to the pass as close to slack tide as possible. (See blog from 8 August on slack tide). The ideal time to exit the pass was 1500, but due to our anchor delay we approached at 1545. We could see white caps and rough water ahead, but there was an outgoing tide. We approached the pass with 6 kts of boat speed and by the time we hit the center we were going 12kts (so we had 6kts of current). It also pulled us from the port side of the pass to the center where the waves were more violent. But we made it out safely.

Matt at the helm as we exited the Hao Pass

The trip to Tahiti is starting off rough, but we were finally on our way. The weather forecasts showed little to no wind, so motoring we go. Two days later we found just enough wind to hoist our large spinnaker. She was flying beautifully for several hours until a rogue wave bounced the boat and collapsed the sail just enough to catch the clew on a cleat on our bow peak – rip. Thank goodness it was only a 3’ tear. We were able to pull the sail down and repair it with rip stop. However, by the time we were done, we lost the wind. It took another 30 hours to get the wind back to fly her again – good as new.

Fishing in the Pacific

We have not had much luck fishing (or trolling) since we came through the Panama Canal (March 2018). We’ve caught several fish, but none that were edible. In fact, it has been well over a year since we caught an edible fish. But that all changed on our route to Tahiti. We caught a small, but fat tuna!

Tasty Yummy Tuna

Arriving Pointe Venus After Dark

We managed to time our arrival after dark so we had to change our route from Papeete to Pointe Venus off of Mahina. Normally, we don’t enter a new anchorage at dark as it just isn’t safe. However, our research and charts showed this bay to be wide-open, deep and protected from the wind and waves. We also got feedback from cruisers on our SSB net so we felt comfortable with entering after dark.

Route Details

Departed Hao on Wednesday 29 May at 1545
Arrived Tahiti on Sunday 2 June at
Miles Traveled
Max speed
Average speed
We had two days of no wind and had to motor, but then we had two days of light wind and were actually able to fly the spinnaker.

Medical Care in French Polynesia

3 Replies

Please note that this blog on medical care has some “graphic” photos at the end. I included non-icky photos in the body of the blog, but the ones at the end are a bit graphic and gross and you may want to skip. Just know, that medical care in the U.S. is messed up and I received compassionate, good care in French Polynesia for free.

Matt and I no longer have health insurance. Considering we are not technically living in the U.S. anymore it did not make sense to carry a U.S. health policy. Once a year, I make an annual trip back to the States to visit my oncologist. Luckily, most doctors offer a 50% cash discount when not using insurance. My Prolia shot is gratis because I receive a grant from the pharmaceutical company. The rest of my medicine was purchased in Bonaire, Costa Rica, and Columbia at a significantly reduced price. With all that said, Matt and I do carry D.A.N. (Diver’s Assisted Network) which will get us immediate emergency medical care anywhere in the world and will transport us back to the States if need be.

In Need of a Doctor

For the past 30+ months, we had not needed any type of medical assistance. We were lucky. However, while we were in the Gambiers, I was either stung or bitten by something on the front side of my left ankle. I did not think anything of it as there are always mosquito and wasps in the islands. I know better than to scratch a bite so I left it alone and continued on living my life. Enjoying the beautiful waters, snorkeling, showering, hiking, etc… I circled it with a pen to see if the swelling and redness spread.

Strangely enough, a few of our friends also had wounds that were not healing. Josh was struck by a fish’s sharp tail (cut through his wet suit and put a deep gash in his leg). Andrew’s feet were torn up from raspberry bushes, John had a mysterious rash on his thigh, and Wilky had cuts on his hands. And nothing was healing on anyone.

It started forming a volcano, raised, with a hole in the middle and red all around it. Then it became more raised, warm to the touch, and pretty painful.

Initial bite, starting to get infected

We all stopped going in the water thinking that was not helping and decided, individually, to consider antibiotics. Shortly thereafter, Matt and I had to leave to begin our passage to Hao. While underway, on day 2, my volcano continued to get worse, raised, hot, swollen, and irritated. My foot and toes were so swollen I did not recognize it as my own.

See below for photo of swollen foot at its worse

My leg was kept elevated to reduce the swelling, but when I lowered it to step on it a horrible burning sensation ran up my leg. It only lasted a minute or two, but it was painful enough to make me cry a few times. It was a radiating, intense pain that started at my toes and shot up to my knee. Very unpleasant. Then a white, hard substance formed in the center.

Photo below shows photo of weird white center

Since we were at sea at the beginning of a 5-day passage, I decided to self medicate. I had started amoxicillin (500mg) twice a day and after 4 days it was not getting better. It was clear I needed to seek medical care.

Healthcare in French Polynesia

We easily found the hospital and were quickly escorted into a patient room. Maggie, our medical professional spoke English! We are not sure if she was a nurse or a doctor as she did not wear a name tag and introduced herself as “Maggie” no pretense or titles.

Hospital in Hao

The doctor assessed my leg and stated that I had a staff infection. She told me that I was not taking enough antibiotics and prescribed 3x the dose (1mg three times per day for 10 days). Then she also lanced my little volcano, cleaned it, treated it, and bandaged it up. She told us she had to call the chemist to order the medicine and that it would be flown in the next day.

Medical Supplies Given to Us for my Leg

We returned the next day to have my leg examined again. The wound was cleaned and re-wrapped. The following day we saw Maggie again who was not too pleased with the progress. She gave me the remainder of my antibiotic, a cleaning liquid and an antibiotic liquid to apply. She asked me to come back on Monday for another follow up.

Lanced and wrapped up

Costs for Medical Care

We were not charged for any of our visits, the treatment or medicine given at the hospital. We were not charged for the two bottles of cleaning agents or the pain medicine. The only thing we were charged for was 8 days of antibiotics at $28 (the other two days of antibiotics were free).

Five days after my initial visit to the FP hospital, my volcano had significantly decreased in size, swelling was gone, and pain was greatly reduced. My foot no longer hurt each time the blood rushed to it and I was able to walk with barely a limp. Cleaning it was no fun and pretty gross, but eventually it healed. On day 7 of treatment, the center white, hard thing came out when I took the bandage off. Did not feel pleasant at all. But I am thinking this is a good thing and now my volcano will close up and heal.

More images below

Maggie is incredibly professional and compassionate. She went above and beyond her job to assist us and I will be eternally grateful. You see we had a difficult time arranging for the medicine. Typically, she would give us a paper with the medicine written on it, then we contact the chemist to get the cost and place the order. Next we go to the post office to make payment, and pick up the medicine at the airport the following day. However, the post office was not taking payments that day.

So we ended up paying Maggie for the medicine. She called the chemist got the amount, went online and submitted the payment to the post office. We could not pay online as they wanted a bank transfer and bank transfers from the U.S. take 2-3 business days. Maggie paid and then went to the airport to pick it up and brought it to us the next day. Talk about customer service.

My doctor in Hao who provided great medical care.

Twelve days later, the antibiotics finished and a coagulant put on the mini volcano and I am almost back to normal. See last photo

Photos from Above that are not to pleasant to see: