We are anchored near the airport in Papeete. It’s an interesting spot. One must call on the VHF radio for permission from Port Control to enter the harbour. Then, when heading south, any vessels higher than 6 m must have permission to transit the area because the route crosses the airport runway. This means calling Port Control two more times, one for each end of the runway. It is well marked and easy to do but a unique experience for us.
When it was our turn to cross the runway, Port Control warned us that we had five minutes to cross. I noted the time and put the engine in gear. I didn’t realize we had current against us so was a little surprised that we could only do 4.7 kts with the engine at full revs. We made it across within the allotted time without a problem. Good thing, a plane landed nine minutes after the Port Captain cleared us to cross.
The place is busy. From us to the south end of the lagoon it is packed with boats on anchor. Our first afternoon here, we went to the nearby Carrefour grocery store and I have to say, I was overwhelmed. We haven’t been anywhere so populated for two months. The grocery store was huge compared to all the mom-and-pop stores we’ve been visiting recently. In those shops we were happy if they had a product we were looking for. Here, they not only have the product but they have many varieties of the same product.
It reminded me of The Paradox of Choice, a Ted Talk by Barry Schwartz. Basically in his research, Schwartz found that the more choices people have, the more they are dissatisfied with the choice they make. I wouldn’t say I was dissatisfied with the choices I made, but after spending time with one person on a 43′ boat, I was definitely overstimulated by the whole experience.
Most of our working lives we have lived in large cities–probably some of the largest in the world. Papeete is less than 30,000 people yet, I was glad to get back to the relative quiet of the boat.
Papeete is a good place to re-provision. We really haven’t done any major grocery shopping since leaving Mexico. We’re not sure what we’ll find between here and New Zealand so we’ll do some stocking up. Also, it’s a good place to get some boat jobs done. We have sent the genoa out for repair and we have a few things to check on the rigging. We don’t know how long we’ll be here but we hope to be done everything within a week. That means it will be ten days to two weeks.
Cormacks On Cambria 