Traveling to Tahiti and arriving in Papeete

Day 2, Saturday August 26

In Papeete, Tahiti. This is the launching point of our 2-month sailing journey in the South Pacific. 

We flew from SFO to Papeete on French Bee Airlines and they had mounted video cameras on the exterior of the plane so you could view outside the plane while flying.  Pretty Cool!  Here is a link to the video from underneath the plane as we landed in Tahiti:  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f7Ol6OlXtYfRr9EIHUw7X5b16yr9UqNN/view?usp=drivesdk

We were greeted at the airport with native Polynesian dancers. 

We made our way to Marina de Papeete, where Xavier had docked for a few days while making some repairs. It was much easier for us to load our gear onto the yacht from the dock versus from a dingy. So that small detail was much appreciated. Xavier is very gracious and courteous and truly wants to make this a wonderful experience for everyone. And he is not a novice at making friends and engaging them on his sailing adventures.

Xavier and Mickey replaced the Windlass yesterday, the mechanism for raising and lowering the anchor. For anyone who has ever owned a boat, there is always some maintenance or repair to do.

We had some time to explore Papeete. Most of the town is centered around the marina area, which is full of sailboats, catamarans and large and small cruise ships. The town centers around the local church and the streets are small, narrow and spider out from the church. There are many restaurants, bars, clubs, and shopping. Remember, this is French Polynesia, so if you want to buy cosmetics and perfume, you have come to the right place!

After a lovely dinner on the beach, Mickey and I “crashed and burned” to catch up on 2 days without sleep. 

We plan to leave Papeete on Tuesday, weather permitting. See you next time.