Apataki : It’s great to be back home.

23rd February – 18th March 2018

Our stay in New Zealand and Australia seem  like distant memories since arriving back to GWTW. The flight back with Air New Zealand was once again wonderful. We had a single night stay in Papette at the Fare Swiss guesthouse and then it was off to the airport bright and early to catch the Air Tahiti flight back to Apataki .

    

After a super quick dash into the village grocery store to pick up some very basic supplies it was into the boatyard tender for the 10 mile run back across the lagoon. GWTW was in great shape after being home alone for a few months. All that hard work before we left her had really paid off.

We were hoping that we’d be able to launch within a week or so of our return but the man upstairs had other plans. The antifoul painting and the polishing was all finished and then of course there were a few things that needed fixing that were kind of our X –Factor. But no big deal really. Then when it came time to put us back into the water the weather gods stepped in and threw us a few days of strong NE winds which meant that we had to delay our launch date. As of today we are still on terra firma.

In the meanwhile we've been for walks to the ocean side of the atoll, spent lots of time in the water cooling off and had a few trips back over to the village a couple more times to stock up on provisions. Mind you the yard’s boat only  goes over on Fridays if there is someone flying in who needs a ride back  here to their boat.

Liam has been spearfishing on the reefs just out the front and has brought home a couple of very nice sized Groupers, we’ve listened to coconut after coconut fall to the ground with a startling thud just behind our boat and watched the nightly parade of hermit crabs crawl up the path towards the huge pile of leftover coconut shells after the copra harvest has finished each day.

And as for me, well I’ve been writing posts for the blog, reading, washing anything that doesn’t move, culling out of date supplies and doing lots of “Domestic Goddess” jobs. The intensity of the tropical sun, and that has registered 50c on our thermometer but usually hangs around 40c, takes its toll on us each day if we are working outside, and we fall into bed not long after 8.30 each night. Tonight will be no different.

Here’s hoping we get a window to launch this coming week.

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