Holidays and the island of Moorea. Or why we disappeared for a week. How we sailed away for three days and came back on the sixth. How to amuse yourselves when it is dead calm, there are islands all around, and the engine has died. What you use to plug holes in an engine in the field.
There was no sign of trouble... Setting off from Tahiti
The school holidays have begun in Tahiti, which means we can take a trip with our friends to the neighbouring island of Moorea.
We decide to leave around noon on Monday. The boat gets a thorough going-over: everything put away, tied down, and secured against falling. Beyond the barrier reef surrounding Tahiti, it ought to be rough: it had been blowing pretty hard for several days. But today it is almost dead calm, so we will have to motor.
Nothing enhances a journey quite like an abundance of assorted grub. Knowing this secret, the crew of the round-the-world sailing yacht Blagovestie, with whom we have become close friends and alongside whom we have been anchored for the past three weeks, head off to buy provisions. Our captain and young sailor take the opportunity to pile into their dinghy. Their tender—also known as a dinghy, also known as a boat—is almost as brave as ours, only stronger: a whole crowd can fit into it without seriously compromising its buoyancy.
A photo of our tender and the other crew’s tender the day before sailing to the island of Moorea.
Our tender takes a witch to the coven
The other crew’s tender brings the witches back from the coven
At lunchtime, the crew of Theophania, embracing their fins, provisions, and bedding, boarded Lady Mary. The bags were distributed evenly around the corners, we weighed anchor, and set a course from Tahiti to Moorea. It is 20 miles to Cook’s Bay; we hope to make it in four hours.
“Well, well,” said our Yacht Brownie, scratching his head as he scurried around the bilge. “Things are rather too cheerful aboard here...”
At that moment, the engine seemed to sigh and grew a little quieter.
“Oops!” thought the first mate, squeezing between the cockpit bench and the helm pedestal. “I must have knocked the throttle.” And she nudged the throttle lever forwards.
The engine purred more evenly, and our large crew settled into tea-drinking, conversation, and contemplation of the mountainous new island.
The crew of the round-the-world yacht Blagovestie lived on Moorea for about a year and know the island like the backs of their hands. Today we will anchor in Cook’s Bay, and tomorrow we will move to Opunohu Bay, which is where Cook’s ship actually anchored. There is even a monument to him there in the shape of a huge globe. For some reason, though, Cook’s name went to the neighbouring harbour—probably so it would not feel left out :).
Cook’s Bay, island of Moorea
In Cook’s Bay, somewhere beneath a cliff, in an enormous tree above a pineapple field, lives an amazing fellow named Zhenya—a BASE jumper and, as he later confessed to our young sailor, a part-time pirate. He wrote to us on Facebook. After reading his page, I became convinced that our neighbour across the Pacific was completely bonkers :). I told him as much. “We’re coming to test this hypothesis,” I said. “Be ready to receive us, Yevgeny.”
Meanwhile... A few words about the engine
Close to the Tahitian shore, the modem, which we had practically expropriated from the others, picked up a signal reliably, giving half the crew something to do. Between the islands, the internet finally told us to get lost and enjoy nature, so we fixed our eyes on the horizon, dreaming of a beautiful sunset in Cook’s Bay.
Now, we remember that the brownie is still scurrying around the bilge. Deprived of our attention, the old fellow known as Yacht Brownie reminded us of his presence... with an unexpected silence. The engine died smoothly and refused to respond to any external stimulus. Andrey and Max opened up the bilge.
“Looks like the fuel filter is clogged,” the captain pronounced.
“Will that take long?” the youngsters asked anxiously.
“No, just take it apart, replace it, and that’s it.”
For about an hour, we sat in the cockpit, lazily coaxing the wind to blow just a tiny bit. The wind blew precisely that tiny bit—just enough, together with the current, to carry us back towards Tahiti, but no more.
The captains were having fun in the bilge; the engine did not respond to the filter replacement. The children and ladies languished in the heat until Natasha suggested going for a swim.
“Swimming?” Interesting—why had that not occurred to us? We moved the tender’s painter so we could climb aboard through it. I grabbed a brush, and for the next hour and a half dodged people jumping from the deck and climbing into the tender. A couple of times I thought I was going to be crushed between the boat and the yacht, but it all worked out.
Towards sunset, the Yacht Brownie was distracted from the engine, and the latter, tired of sneezing and snorting, suddenly rumbled to life.
“Hooray!!!” cried the mermaids, popping back aboard one after another.
We were doing some sort of magic with dinner without waiting to reach Moorea, Lady Mary was making up the mile she had drifted backwards, the captains were washing their hands of the matter, and the numerous youngsters were banging their spoons and demanding bread. Yacht Brownie, who also doubles as an ordinary brownie, began grumbling, poked his nose into the engine compartment, and rubbed his skinny, oily paws together... The engine rumbled for another three minutes, then died.
“Well, now!” What kind of trick was that?
And the captain tore the bilge apart again.
The wind was gradually carrying the yacht towards Tahiti. Just as well it was not carrying us towards the shore of Moorea. Had the light breeze been blowing the other way, Lady Mary would have crept onto the barrier reef in four or five hours. That would have been worse than a calm and a dead engine. Hoping to reach the island by the following day at least, our combined crew amused themselves however they could. Conversation for the first mates, a cartoon for the children; the captain, naturally, was in the bilge, with Max assisting.
Passage mode
By around ten in the evening, the youngsters had nearly settled into their bunks, Natasha and I were beginning to nod off, the captain was tinkering with the engine, and Max was keeping his finger on the pulse. They dismantled the manual diesel priming pump feeding the high-pressure fuel pump. A conference of the two captains established that the diaphragm in this pump had torn, allowing air into the system and, naturally, preventing any diesel from being injected where it was supposed to go. There was no spare diaphragm. Resuscitation measures included making one from materials to hand—history remains silent, for the moment, as to which ones. To bring the system back to life, they poured petrol from the dinghy’s tank; a disposable absorbent pad lay on the bottom, catching first diesel, then petrol...
“Guys, what’s the prognosis?” It was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress a yawn.
“We’ll think of something.”
“Ahh... umm... I’m so sleepy.” That was cowardice on my part: we were at sea, close to shore, in pitch darkness by then, and really ought to have been keeping watch...
But Natasha came to the rescue:
“There’s no chance of lying down on the little sofa in the saloon yet. I’ll sleep in the cockpit anyway—outside, that is—and keep an eye on things.”
It was evening, and there was nothing else to do...
Turning the navigation iPad towards her, I collapsed into the aft cabin with a sense of duty done. Through my drowsiness, I could hear the starter’s futile snorts as it tried to engage with something or other in the engine. At some point around half past eleven, Yacht Brownie gave up on his sabotage and settled down to sleep in a locker in the bow. At which point the engine sneezed and puffed, coughed, and... finally produced something close to a steady rumble, to an exhausted “hooray” from the chief mechanics.
Hooray!
Lady Mary entered the passage between the reefs without stalling. At around one in the morning, the captain delicately awakened my lazy little body:
“Put on something warm; we’re going to anchor.”
I crawled out into the bay, fragrant with flowers, understanding even in the darkness how beautiful it must be.
“This is where we stayed a year ago,” Maxim said. “And over there, directly opposite the pier, is the school the girls attended. Over here on the left is an excellent hotel with a powerful internet connection. Yachts anchor closer to it, find out the password, and then you can download films straight from the boat...”
Yacht Brownie pricked up his ears, sniffed the air from his locker, and moved into the anchor locker, closer to the fragrant breeze. The anchor failed to set on the first attempt. Or the second. Or the third.
Cook’s Bay
Our young sailor, awakened by the endless clanking of the chain going out and coming back in, emerged through the forehatch:
“Oh, we’re here already! What time is it?”
“Half past one.”
“That early?”
Sailor Nastya also poked her head out to look around. Yacht Brownie kicked the tiresome chain, sobbed wearily, and curled up somewhere beneath the mast. Fourth attempt to anchor. Thirty metres of chain. Another thirty. And another twenty. We slowly eased astern. The shore and the neighbouring yachts edged forwards a little. The captain decided not to go full astern:
“Let’s call that anchored.”
And the crew settled in for the night. The sun would rise in four hours... Hello, beautiful Moorea!
“Oh, Andryukha!” I suddenly remembered. “How did you break the spell on the engine?”
“Well, we cut out a new diaphragm.”
“From what?”
“From a bicycle inner tube.”
“Whose bicycle was it?”
“Yours, Marinochka.”
....
To be continued!
Next, we will tell you whether the bicycle wheel’s death was in vain, where pineapples grow, and who he is—the Russian BASE jumper from the treehouse on the island of Moorea in Oceania. (And yes, by the way, that is him in the main photo for this report.)