Bora Bora: Not According to Plan

We arrived in Bora Bora a few days ago with the plan to checkout of the country and then relax and play tourist for a few days before we leave for places to the west–likely Tonga. Things didn’t go to plan.

The checkout process here takes several days. To checkout, one reports to the Gendarmerie–the police station–and fills in multiple forms. The forms are then sent to Papeete where various departments, i.e., Immigration, clear us to leave the country. A few days later one returns to the Gendarmerie to have one’s passport stamped, receive copies of the various forms and then one is permitted to leave the country.

A few mornings ago, we went to the Gendarmerie and filled in the necessary forms. Afterwards, we explored the town a little before returning to the boat. That afternoon, while making water, a high-pressure hose on our watermaker split. Before we realized it, several litres of water had sprayed around the engine room soaking everything with corrosive salty water–not ideal. To make matters worse, the hose that split was our spare hose. We had put it on while in Papeete and hadn’t had a chance to have a new spare hose made.

Bora Bora is very pretty. It has one main island with an extinct volcano at its centre. Around the main island are several smaller islands–motus. Around all of this is a protective fringing reef which makes for lovely calm turquoise waters. We’ve been told that many people arrive to the island, go to their resort and don’t leave the resort until they fly home. I’m sure it’s a wonderful experience.

It’s beautiful here but there isn’t a lot of other infrastructure. More specifically, there are limited boat repair facilities. Soon after the hose blew, we started googling and messaging friends to see how we could get a new hose made. It looked like we wouldn’t be able to get a hose made here on Bora Bora. We had five days before we had to leave the country and without a way to make water, we couldn’t leave.

First thing the next morning, we tried re-using an old hose that we had but it wouldn’t seal. No surprise there as the reason we replaced it was because we couldn’t get it to seal. We jumped into the dinghy and headed into town where we went to the local hardware store. Unfortunately, they couldn’t help us and didn’t know where one could be found/made on the island. Luckily, a little further down the road we found a small boat repair yard. They work on smaller runabouts and outboard engines–not boats like Cambria. We didn’t think they’d have what we needed but we went in and asked anyway. As expected, they didn’t have the hose we needed but they did know a guy on the island that works on hydraulic systems. With their help, we gave him a call. He said he could help us and would be there in ten minutes.

Ten minutes later he arrived and confirmed that he could make a new hose. We ordered two–one to use now and one for a spare. He left and returned two hours later with two new hoses in hand.

I wish I could say that we returned to the boat, put a new hose on and everything worked perfectly, but I can’t. When we tried the new hose, we couldn’t get it to seal well. When we used the watermaker, water dripped from the same place as before. We rethreaded the nuts a couple of times but no amount of tightening resulted in a good seal. After some messaging back and forth with the man that made the hose, we decided to try the other new hose. It worked but we still don’t know why the first one wouldn’t seal. Also, if it doesn’t seal, it’s not exactly a good spare.

The guy took back the hose to check it. In the end, he made us another one even though the previous one looked okay. He’s been very good about it. The watermaker was fitted in Britain shortly after the boat was made. That was 25 years ago. Perhaps, the fitting we are trying to join is slightly different from today’s standards. I don’t know and it doesn’t look like we will know with the resources we have to work with here.

Today’s song is Should I Stay or Should I Go by the Clash. I’m sure we could return to the Gendarmerie, explain our situation and ask for a visa extension while we sort out the problem. If we go, we carry enough fresh water to comfortably last us 2 – 3 weeks. This is more than enough to get us to our next stop. These hoses last for years. It was very unusual that the other one split so soon. Even if we need to use the new spare hose and it doesn’t seal well, we can still make water. It will drip and make a mess in the engine room but it will work.

Decision made. We’ll go.