May 18, 2007
Good news
Sabine has had an operation in the hospital to analyze some skin to find out if she has cancer. Result: negative; she is healthy! … and we enjoyed our 6th year of marriage 016 on the 10th of May … and Salina has really nice hair (natural!).
Teacher Patrick and his daughter Marie’s house was like a second home for us, during our stay in Taravao. There we have done also a clean up.
With teacher Gilles, we crossed the Tahiti peninsula. In the guide book it is announced a 2 days hike. We made it in 7 hours. The biggest problems were the dogs along the cost line. They are not used hiker passing. The local people in the mountains are living very remote and are already using solar energy!
Doctor “Blanche” from the hospital in Taravao controlled our first aid kit, updated it with some medicine and was always looking that Andri and Salina is fine.
Afterwards we sailed from Taravao to Papeete.
The shipyard Technimarine was busy repairing our ruder. The signs of the collision are eliminated. – Thank you very much, Alain!
In the mean time we have done the antifouling and 1000 other small jobs on our “to do list”.
Together with Dik, we were able to eliminate the peace in the motor block. We tried several weeks with different methods.
Teacher Francoise offered us her apartment during the time we worked on the boat by Technimarine. – Thanks Francoise, you become like a mother to us!
Tonight Peter, Jael and Sarah are joining the expedition. As soon as we have the new batteries from FULLRIVER, we will sail to Moorea, Raiatea, Huahine etc. to visit the schools. Thanks also to Tahiti Gaz for helping us!
We are looking forward to meet Annemarie end of the month. She already joined us in Patagonia.
Note: Watch “Bayrisches Fernsehen, Sendung Berg ab-Berg auf” in June. They will do a film about the TOPtoTOP Global Climate Expedition.
May 30, 2007
new batteries
By Peter Locher; thanks to iaoranet we were able to put this report on the web.
Moorea is a much nicer place to stay for a few days until we get our new batteries than Tahiti. After all the work on the busy main island it is a great feeling to sail again!
I am steering for the first time a yacht trying hard to follow a straight course through 2 m waves without getting dizzy. As Sara and Jael got sick on the boat during their first night they prefer to take the ferry and stay on land in a pension. We anchor close to baie de Oponou, which has a beautiful public sandy beach. Eleonore and Patrick from Tahiti joined us for the weekend.
Moorea is mountainous and has a few nice shady hikes up through the forest to the crater rim. We pass pineapple fields and an old marae, a Polynesian temple, on our way up to the Bellevedere, from where we enjoyed great views to the surrounding mountains and the sea below us. On the top of the “col des trois cocotiers” we celebrated Sara’s birthday. Back on the boat everybody is hungry. During the walk we met Lila and Philippe, who life on Moorea. We meet again for a barbecue on the beach the next evening and they gave us a lot of nice presents for future school visits – thanks a lot!
After setting up the main sail – an opportunity for Dario to climb the mast and to enjoy the airy view from there – and some planning for the crossings to come we sail back to the main island in quiet conditions. In the meantime our new batteries are read for pick-up thanks to the support of our shipping agent Michel from GONDRAND, Papeete. After some heavy, sweaty carrying we successfully solve the problem of how to wire up eight 6V-batteries into one 24V battery. Everything worked out fine and we are happy to have reliable electrical energy available on board again – thanks a lot to FULLRIVER for sponsoring us the batteries, to ALCO in Brisbane for organizing the delivery to Papeete and to Anke Altermann who helped us very much to come into contact with ALCO!