Syzygy Sailing

Karen’s mom and my mom booked a vacation together to come visit us.  I love my mom and I love Karen and now I love Karen’s mom and so I’m glad they came halfway around the world to visit us. Thanks moms.

They flew into Tahiti and spent the night outside of Papaeete; the next day Karen accompanied them across to Moorea on the ferry while Jon and I sailed the boat across.

Jon and I anchored the boat just outside of Oponohu Bay.  After tidying up the boat, I set off in the dinghy to find the hotel.  It got dark and I encountered an obstacle course of reefs.  I was paddling, and pushing off coral with my foot, cringing when the bottom of the dinghy would scrape on coral, and constantly raising and lowering and turning the outboard off and on to avoid banging it on the bottom.  It took an hour and a half, the hotel ended up being about 2 miles away.  That part sucked.

But then the moms treated Karen and I to a few nights in the hotel with them, and that was simply fantastic.  It was wonderful to be off the boat, in a real bed, with a hot shower.  It had been over 90 days since our last hot shower in Mexico.  We ate good food and relaxed in front of the pool.  Heavenly.

We took the moms back to see the boat in the dinghy.  I should have learned from my trip the night before, but I have a short memory, and I’m stubborn.  It was daytime for this return trip, but it was also up into 15 knots of wind.  That dinghy isn’t too fast with four people on board.  Everyone was drenched inside of five minutes from the spray splashing over the bow, and it took an hour to make it back to the boat.  We had to bail the entire way.  It was a bit more than the moms had signed up for, I’m sure:

Later in the week we took the moms out to an area full of docile stingrays (the hotels have created this situation by regularly feeding them fish).  It was really, really incredible, to have stingrays come rub up against you looking for handouts: