Atuona - Hiva Oa

We arrived in Atuona Saturday afternoon to a crowded anchorage.  We managed to find a spot to drop the hook and get the stern anchor out to hold us more or less bow on to the incoming swell.  Not the best anchorage but we experienced worse on the US west coast so no complaints.  Rested and wandered around a bit on shore on Sunday and spent a lot of time trying to figure out if it was worth it to use an agent to handle the clearance process.  After talking to some friends who had checked in a few days earlier, we decided to do it ourselves.  Monday morning bright and early we set off to walk into the village and get the process started.

First, you go to the bank to purchase a bond, equivalent to the cost of a air ticket to your country of origin, in our case New Zealand.  The banks are not quick here but it was air conditioned so waiting inside was fine.  It probably took an hour and a half there.  You pay the bond fee either in cash or by credit card and tell them where you want your bond refunded when you are leaving.  We decided to collect our refund in Bora-Bora.  There is a fee for the bond which worked out to 37 dollars each.  Once you have your bond paper work, you then go to the post office to purchase stamps for a 3 month extended stay visa.  You also purchase a 65 franc stamp to use to mail your customs declaration to Papeete in Tahiti once you finish.  The post office was pretty quick.  You need to purchase 3000 francs worth of stamps for each person, so 6000 francs worth of stamps for Cathy and I cost about 82 dollars.  Then it was off to the Gendarme to get our passports stamped, our visa approved, and our customs declaration done.  There were a few ahead of us but we were only there for about 20 minutes.  The gendarme was very pleasant and had no problems approving our 90 day extended stay visa.   There was no cost for the Gendarme.  Then back to the post office to mail our customs declaration form to Papeete (remember the 65 franc stamp).  So all in all, the process cost us around 160 dollars.  We get our bond refunded to us in Bora-Bora and will take a bit of a hit on currency conversion when we exchange francs to NZ dollars but not too bad.  The agents fee to do this was going to end up being between 600 and 700 dollars US so for a bit of patience and walking around, we saved a packet!!!

We did a bit of shopping, bought some baguettes, a bit of meat, fresh eggs, fruity an veggies and then back to the boat.  It was scorching by this time.  When we got back to the boat, the skipper on the Swan 51 behind us hailed me over and said that we were on top of his anchor and he needed to pull up his bow anchor.  I dropped our stern anchor to swing away, and he picked up his anchor and reset behind us.  We got ourselves sorted out again and then the Swan had to send a diver down to un-foul his stern anchor.  The authorities here have put wire cages/or bags full of rocks throughout the bay to break the incoming swell.  He had managed to hook his stern anchor under one of them.  When he got his stern anchor loose, he started to rift towards a nice Tayana 48 that was anchored beside him.  Well with four dinghies pushing him sideways we managed to keep him of the other boats until he could get his stern anchor reset.  He was most grateful and appeared on deck with a t-shirt for each of the dinghies.  It turns out he is going around the world and had a bunch of shirts printed to take with hi,  His web-site is www.oncearaound.org.

Tuesday saw me back into the village to the post office to get connected to the internet.  When I got back to the boat, Cathy had the laundry done and we had a new boat right on top of us, a big ketch from Poland.  For some reason, despite there being many better spots to anchor, dropped his anchor in such a way as to foul our stern anchor, and the anchors off a couple of the boats beside us.  I stopped and had a pleasant conversation with him suggesting STRONGLY that they move somewhere a lot safer.  His solution was let out a lot more rode on his bow anchor and move his stern anchor farther back.  He almost took out our wind generator while he was doing this and when he settled, he was so close to our friends on Toketie that at one point David could have literally stepped aboard their boat.  We finally persuaded them that they really had to move as by this time they had also tripped our stern anchor.  They finally agreed and again, with a few dinghies to fend them off various boats in the anchorage, they dropped there hook again.  This time they only managed to almost hit 2 boats.  After another hour or so of pleasant conversation, they finally pulled up both anchors and with help from Steve on boat called Elusive, they moved them to a nice BIG space in the anchorage, away from everybody else.  An exciting time.

Today, we hope to get out of here and head over to Tahuata and check a couple of anchorages over there.  The swell is getting a bit uncomfortable here so time to head on.  We have until July 20^th to leave French Polynesia so we have lots of time to explore.