I've been a bit lax of recent

My blogging has been a bit slow coming over the past couple of months due to the appalling Internet but I see it as a luxury anyway so not a problem. Proteus has charged about and everyone has had a fantastic time including having the pleasure of the company of David Glen, the editor of yachting world who has been writing an article about the Oyster World Rally. Unfortunately I have broken yet another camera in a similar fashion to the first one. Both through death by water ingress. The good news is I have just a few hours ago purchased a new one in Heathrow airport so we are good to go again. I'm currently sat at the airport in Abu Dhabi waiting to fly on to Sydney and ultimately mackay to catch up with proteus and the rest of the fleet after taking a holiday back in England and spending a lot of time with my fiancée, Alice and the rest of my family which has been fantastic. I've also spent a bit of time on my both my cars which even though I haven't driven one of them for 3 years and the other for 10 months have consumed a fair chunk of money. The flight I've just had was 7 hours and my next one is 14 hours roughly with a smaller 2 hour flight to top it all off. I'm looking forward to getting back on the boat and cracking on with some sailing but it is always sad to say goodbye to family and friends. I'll try to get on the case some more with some good pictures and text to go with

Bora Bora with the Bloody Mary's party

I'm now in areas with very limited Internet so photographs are hard to attach and upload but I wish I could put some on that we took of the huge breaking waves on the outer reef on our arrival to Bora Bora! Finding the passage through the reef was easy as it was the only patch that wasn't exploding into white spray at a great height. Once through the passage we were once more protected from the vast Pacific Ocean and in tranquil waters again. The favourable option was to take a mooring at Mai Kai marina which is essentially a wall to tie against or on a buoy. Not to be put off though the restaurant there was brilliant for food, atmosphere and most evenings there was a fantastic band to listen or dance to. After a night at Mai Kai we moved inside the reef to an anchorage outside of the Hilton hotel where Bryony and Tim stayed ashore for a couple of nights and I stepped up the pace on board with some servicing and polishing.

Normality resumes

The pearl regatta is over, we've collected all of our heavy gear and now it is time to relax and take it all in. We have upped anchor after the final party, left the motu (island) where it all concluded and headed around Tahaa. On route to our next anchorage we pass our first sighted pearl farm and drop the hook outside what is said to be the highest acclaimed hotel in the French Polynesia. It certainly looks fantastic although I couldn't afford to stay there at over €1000 a night so instead we opt to go for a snorkel through a narrow pass between two motus. To get there you have to leave the tender in the shallow waters and go overland to the seaward side of the pass, enter the water and let the current do the rest. What happened next was an unbelievable sight and an absolute maze of coral garden that was simply infested with all varieties of reef fish that were very curious of human presence and would come right up to your mask for a better look. The whole tour took about 15 minutes of drifting in water warmer than a bath until we were propelled out of the end of the pass and back towards the tender. With not much left to do the evening took us all to the hotel. I tied up the tender on a crescent shaped pontoon that swept towards the hotel and up to the bar for cocktails and to admire the geckos on the ceiling. Before leaving the following morning I took the tender with Bryony, Chris and Denise to the pearl farm to spend some money on black pearls that are famous in this part of the world. it also turned out to be a very educational stop as we learnt about the production of the pearl and its origin from the missisipi river. Next stop, Bora Bora

TPRX2013

Proteus has been entered into the annual Tahiti Pearl Regatta! Preparations have been made, new spinnaker, dinghy gone from the foredeck, second anchor and 100m of chain gone, a bit more muscle in the borrowed form of Jack on holiday from Sulana and off from Tahiti to Raiatea over 100 miles away where the regatta is actually taking place! I've seen so much traditional Polynesian dancing that I don't want to see anymore for at least a year but the evenings entertainment at whichever nearby island we finished the day at was excellent even if it didn't necessarily improve my performance the next day. Proteus excelled herself in all ranges of weather much to everyone's surprise after many comments like 'we'll be waiting in the bar for you' and we brought in a couple of first placed results. I feel like we could have done better overall after some of the race fleet missed marks and used their engines without declaring but the race commity seemed more occupied in the parties than the racing. Nether the less we had a great time, learnt a lot about what we can do with the boat out of normal cruising circumstances and got some awesome photographs of us underway. The fun and success we had has opened up a whole new world for Proteus unbeknowingly and now a new genoa is being ordered and Denise and Chris are very keen to do the Hamilton Island race week in Australia which will certainly be stepping it up a notch.

Back to having fun

I haven't written in a while due to being completely preoccupied with ocean passages, amazing sights, great sailing and the odd party. The sail from the Galapagos seems a very long time ago and was generally very light airs mixed with large lightning storms towards the later part which probably had a large part to play with us losing our wind instrument information which we have now fixed with a $3000 new part. We flew into Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas for 12 hours just to take on fuel as we had used a fair amount in the light airs just to make up time. It was a great surprise to find the Oyster 54, Babe with Paul and Trish who were now behind the main fleet due to heading home for a couple of weeks. This encounter helped build beaten moral massively especially as they held off leaving that day and we all headed to the local hotel and had a fantastic steak for dinner, much needed after 16 days at sea and rubbish, chewy steak back in the Galapagos. Nuka Hiva looked amazing but no time to rest we set off for the Tuamotos in convoy with Babe which made very good speed in the lighter sailing airs. On the approach to the largest settlement, Rangiroa, there was a huge squall with no visibility and lots more lightning all around us which is very unnerving with 90ft of carbon fibre mast above you. This brought on the need for Tosh to put on his rubber soled shoes and when clear enough we aimed for the very narrow pass into the lagoon within the atolls. It is such an incredible contrast to go from being in thousands of meters of depth, rough seas and strong winds to the calm, tranquil environment in a lagoon surrounded by coral atolls. Our arrival here was very welcoming as we had caught up with the bulk of the Oyster fleet after such a long time. The hotel ashore of where we anchored was one of the best I have ever seen so we enjoyed a few beers whilst watching small sharks forming bait balls of fish and occasionally sighting a target and darting into the bait for a feed. Unfortunately the restaurant was full but Alan, Will and Jack kindly took us in and fed us on board Sulana. Next morning we sprung up early and had a quick snorkel at the coral 'aquarium' inside the pass to Rangiroa. THERE WERE FISH AND SHARKS ALL OVER THE PLACE! This was all great and very exciting but Tahiti was beckoning so we had to get going. All of the crew had a lot of work and catching up to do around the boat after so many miles at sea and in preparation of Chris and Denise arriving once more although we still had time for an amazing party put on by Oyster which involved a lot of Polynesian dancers and fire jugglers. We now have a new cruising chute delivered from NZ ready to be used in the Tahiti Pearl Regatta. Lovely

THERE'S BITS EVERYWHERE!!!

We have onboard three men who speak Spanish but little English and three English people who speak little Spanish but all seems to be going well, I suspect due to the relationship that we have made with our main mechanic over the past couple of weeks. All parts are now present and correct and with any luck this will be my final blog entry for some time given that the engine and gearbox will run fine in the next few hours. The bad news is that we are now approximately three weeks behind the front of the fleet and we will be forced to miss out the Marquases and point at Tahiti instead to make up lost time and to meet the boss. It has been a big drama that at times seemed never ending and although moral has taken a bit of a battering at times everyone has stayed friends with no real falling outs. This of course has been aided by the sheer amount of cake that Bryony made of the many bananas that we had for the crossing but had ripened too soon. Onwards to Tahiti

Still here

It didn't go to plan. The engine is still in pieces, even more so. It transpires that the head has been leaking due to being warped. We didn't do a bad job in panama when replacing the head gasket but didn't have access to all the services we needed such as getting the head checked and skimmed before the canal transit. So the cylinder head is now on it's way to Guayaquil on the main land to get a skim. This has put us back another few days and time is now getting very short and I can't help but get the feeling that the general mood on board is slightly less jovial than usual. On the plus side we have time to get on with more daily tasks such as polishing and generally making things shiny and well functioning. Tosh and I went for a sneaky dive on the pretence of cleaning and inspecting the hull if the rangers asked what we were up to. The bottom of the boat gets a lot of growth very quickly being parked here. It was an interesting dive with a lot of swell trying to sweep us around, away and into the boat with my dive watch beeping as a warning I was coming up too quickly due to the amount of movement in the water. Whilst giving the hull a scrub we were followed by a lot of curious puffer fish that had a very easy meal on the algae that we were knocking off. We even had a white tip shark come by for a look.