We are Legal!

0800 Position 9-55S 139-07W. At anchor in Iwaiwanui Bay, Tahuata.

At 9M yesterday the whole crew dinghied ashore to meet the agent. Sandra showed up at the dock a half hour later in her pickup truck with her toddler son. "Can you help us with immigration?", we asked.

"You'll need bonds or airline tickets," she replied. That sounded familiar… Further discussion revealed that we couldn't use her company's services her unless the entire crew had French Polynesian health insurance, which we didn't.

"That's the same story about insurance the agency gave me when I asked a couple of months ago," said Rob. Hmmm… So we were on our own.

Off we went hiking into town again. This time we went directly to the bank where Rob, Mike, and Bill purchased a bond.

Longy and I had return airline tickets, but the Gendarmes required that our ticket confirmations be emailed to them. How do we do that? It couldn't be done from the boat with our super slow email capabilities that can't send graphics. We could buy a WIFI card at the post office though, which would allow us email access there. That we did, but there was a power outage on the north side of town that included the post office. No WIFI there. We walked to the other side of town to the bank where the power and WIFI was still on and sent the emails, and then headed back to the Gendarmerie. Of course, the office had just closed for lunch when we got there. The Gendarmes must eat a lot, because "lunch" lasts from noon until 2 PM.

Did I mention that it was pouring off and on the entire time we were traipsing around Atuona. I was the only one who brought a raincoat.

At 2PM we were standing at the Gendarmerie gate, in the pouring rain, with other cruisers who were also trying to check in. "I'm am sorry Messieurs. We did not receive your email," was the answer we got from the officials. After further discussion, it was decided that we could load our flight confirmation emails onto a thumb drive and submit that. Off we went again to the bank, where we could get WIFI, to download the confirmations onto a thumb drive. Back to the Gendarmerie, submit the thumb drive, only to get the response, "I am sorry Messieurs. The thumb drive is empty." Rob had used his Mac to load the thumb drive. Perhaps their PC couldn't read it?

Now, you might imagine that we are getting a little bit frustrated by this time. Rob is starting to boil over, and the collapse of NATO is imminent. The head cheese offers Rob to come look at his computer to prove to him that our emails never came in. They go into a back office, look at the computer, and "Sacra bleu, it is a miracle! Here are the emails".

The whole process took seven hours. We probably hiked five miles… in the pouring rain.

As you might imagine, we had had enough of Atuona. We went back to the boat, pulled up the anchor, and motor sailed back to the north end of Tahuata where we dropped the hook for the night in the bay next to the one we were in previously.

It poured all night long with some thunder and lightning, but we didn't care. We weren't in Atuona anymore.

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