ende

2017
29
Mar

Dangerous times?

Living in peaceful, happy French Polynesia we sometimes manage to forget about the political and economical crises that buffet the planet, but whenever we open news pages and often when we receive e-mails the vibes are decidedly negative. More crimes, more wars, more terrorist attacks, more refugees, more scandals, more unemployed people, more fear and a general feeling that things are getting worse. The mass… Continue reading »

2017
29
Mar

Single-handers

Getting from the Gambier via Tahiti, Los Angeles, Paris and Vienna to my Mom’s home in Upper Austria is a tiring journey even when all connections work out perfectly, but with the friendly help of the US government it turned into a 6 day odyssey. In Tahiti the Air France personnel didn’t let me check in due to a problem with my ESTA visa (necessary… Continue reading »

2017
17
Mar

Busy times

We’ve been crazy busy during the past week. We finished the watertank project: cut the aluminium plates for the cover, drilled 140 holes, cut threads for the 140 screws, put it in place, adjusted the height on the wooden board under the sofa and got the saloon back into living-room shape, etc. Other cruisers were willing to take over the house-sitting, so we got garden… Continue reading »

2017
02
Mar

Windlass repair

When we wanted to head back to Taravai after the festival the windlass quit on us. We’d been carrying around new brushes for it for a month already, but had never got round to installing them between the work on the watertank, the house, the garden and everything around. Christian had to manually lift the anchor (no fun with 60 metres of chain down in… Continue reading »

2017
02
Mar

Cultural festival in the Gambier

Last weekend the first cultural festival of the Gambier took place, it was a surprisingly big event (given that only about 1400 people live in the Gambier) with exhibitions and info about plants, traditional food, etc. and of course handicraft stalls during the day on Friday and Saturday. In the evenings two phantastic dance events took place, with the groups dancing complicated legends and the… Continue reading »