Port Phaeton

0800 Position 17-44S 149-20W. At anchor in Port Phaeton, Tahiti

Part of Van Diemen's pre-cruise refit was the replacement of all of her sailing instruments. The new instrument package has just about every sailing instrument available, but there are only a few that I consider really useful. The apparent wind indicator is one of them. Unfortunately, it wasn't working when we left California, and countless hours of effort by Longy and Rob along the way were unsuccessful in fixing the problem. Before Longy left they had discussed switching two of the three wires that come from the sensor on the top of the mast as a possible fix. Yesterday morning after breakfast Rob switched the wires and "Sacrebleu! A miracle, Messieur! She is working!"

At 11AM we weighed anchor and headed out Teaianui Pass bound for Teahupoo, Tahiti Iti's famous surf break on the southern barrier reef. The wind was light so we powered around the south east end of Tahiti Iti to get there. When we arrived at Teahupoo we found the waves to be quite small, but there was still a crowd of folks out trying to catch them.

Most of us have seen videos of big wave surfers riding the waves at Teahupoo, and in the videos the channel into the lagoon on the west side of the break looks wide and deep. Rob wanted to take Van Diemen into the lagoon through that channel. The cruising guides said that it was impassable, but we were going to give it a go anyway. The closer we got the worse it looked. We bailed out at the last minute and headed west for Port Phaeton, a large deep river system estuary that lies in the isthmus between Tahiti Iti and Tahiti Nui.

We dropped the hook at 230PM near the head of the almost landlocked bay, having successfully cheated death one more time.

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