Landing in French Polynesia

 Landing in Polynesia, September 2025

At five in the morning, we land in Tahiti after an eight-hour flight from San Francisco that went surprisingly easily. We’ve landed here before, on our previous visit—it feels familiar. Outside, the first light of day, and we’re standing in line for passport control. Despite the early hour, as we wait in line, we’re greeted by a small band playing local music and a dancer with a flower in her hair. You might think it’s just a tourist gimmick—and perhaps it is—but it’s also much more than that. Polynesians make a big deal of arrivals and departures! We’ve already seen several times how, even at entirely local events, they’ll play or drum in honor of newcomers and offer flower garlands as a welcome. Just outside the small airport, there’s a large shed where “mamas” sit weaving and selling flower leis, and the air there smells wonderful.

This time, passport control is festive for us: both Ayelet and I have European passports, and we enter the country with a light heart, knowing that we can leave whenever it suits us—not when our stay limit expires.

After a short rest in the terminal, we go to buy flight tickets to the island of Raiatea, where “Ester” awaits us for another cruise through this vast, island-filled country. Fortunately, we have local senior citizen cards, which not only give us about a 50% discount on the (quite expensive) ticket price but also make us feel like veterans and seasoned travelers in this land at the end of the world.

A short domestic flight of about an hour, and we land in Raiatea.

This time, our return to the boat is overshadowed by an annoying technical issue: toward the end of our previous voyage, there was a malfunction that made it difficult to use the mainsail effectively. The “boomvang,” a piston that supports the special boom housing our in-boom furling mainsail, collapsed and stopped supporting it. We didn’t know exactly what caused it but assumed it was a minor fault that would require replacing some part or another. When we left the boat in the yard—the “parking lot” for boats—we asked the local mechanic to take care of it. Since we were away for five months, we assumed it would be fixed before our return.

It wasn’t. Despite my repeated messages to both the yard and the mechanic, he only started working on it a month before our return—and even then didn’t inspect the issue thoroughly. Only my insistence on understanding what was wrong finally got him to check properly. It turned out that a very specific part (“gas spring”) was needed, one that isn’t available off the shelf but must be custom-made in Europe—a process that takes at least two months.

We arrived at the yard at nine in the morning, angry and frustrated by this whole story that would force a major change in our plans, and to our surprise, we found the mechanic—Fred, originally French—already aboard, conducting a routine inspection in our absence (a service that costs quite a bit). Cheerfully, and without taking a shred of responsibility for the mess, he welcomed us and didn’t seem at all troubled when we told him we’d have to wait at least two months for the replacement part. That’s just how it is. Well, at least we know well the nature of sailing life—it constantly brings surprises and changes and demands huge amounts of patience and acceptance.

We also know this: it’s never easy to pack up the boat for several months of haul-out and then return to it and prepare it again for sailing. The mess we left on board (intentionally, for preservation reasons) is quite discouraging and raises existential questions about whether, at our age, we really want all this…

On the first night, to make life easier, we took an Airbnb very close to the yard. Like most things here, accommodation is expensive. We’re paying €120 for something very simple and local: a cabin with thin walls, a plain bedroom, and a half-open veranda that serves as both kitchen and a sort of “living room.” Well, at least it’s authentic—this is really how locals live in many places we’ve visited. The good news, typical of encounters here, is that the hostess is very kind and makes every effort to make us feel welcome: she offers us chilled coconuts full of refreshing juice and some mangoes from the tree in her garden, from which we hear fruit dropping every few minutes. The mangoes look terrible—but taste absolutely divine!

After a short jet-lag nap, we return to the boat and throw ourselves into preparing it to get back in the water as soon as possible. We expect another two days until the big moment; in the meantime, we’re living “on the hard”. What does that mean? The boat is supported by stands that keep it about three meters above the ground. Every time we go in or out, we must climb a tall metal ladder. And why even go in and out? Well, because unlike when the boat is in the water, we can’t use the toilets—doing so would simply dump everything straight onto the ground below. Given how often I need to pee, if I had to go up and down every time, I’d develop outstanding fitness! The solution: we use buckets (half-liter yogurt containers we’ve collected plenty of along the way) for peeing, and once a day we empty them at the edge of the yard, right by the waterline. As for the more “solid” problem—no choice, I walk each morning to the yard’s restroom. It’s a long, annoying walk to an unappealing destination: clean, but very old-fashioned toilets.

Every time I walk there around six in the morning, I recall the joke about the German who tells his doctor, “Doctor, I have a problem: every morning at exactly 6:30, I have a bowel movement.” The doctor asks, “What’s the problem? Regularity is great!” The German replies, “The problem is, I only wake up at seven.”

Ayelet, meanwhile, has a different strategy for this crucial issue: she simply holds it in for a few days.

As part of preparing the boat, we “jump” to the nearest supermarket for supplies—which isn’t actually that near and requires a taxi ride ($15 each way). The supermarket is a Carrefour that opened here recently—large, new, and well stocked with all the French goodies. Naturally, everything is outrageously expensive, especially fruit and vegetables, which are important to us and only available if you come on the right day, when the supply ship from Tahiti arrives.

Our first shopping trip was at the end of the day and on the wrong day—so the fruit and veg were disappointing—but we returned a few days later, after the boat was back in the water, and it was fine. To celebrate the new supermarket, a group of five elderly men played local music at the entrance (pleasant but repetitive and quickly boring), and there was something touching in its provincial charm.

Speaking of provincial charm—and its cousin, remoteness—when I thought about what exactly “does it” for me when we visit islands around the world, I realized that the more remote and provincial a place feels, the more I enjoy it. I even coined a term for it: “the remoteness index.” I think anyone who loves Greece can easily understand what I mean—a big part of its magic, in the islands and elsewhere, is that feeling of stepping back in time to something simple, provincial, and remote.

And while we’re still at the supermarket—another familiar and charming Polynesian phenomenon: as we waited for the rain to ease, two large, heavy-set “women” arrived, wearing makeup and moving with exaggeratedly feminine gestures. They were trans women—a very common phenomenon here that has nothing to do with the Western concept of transgender identity. Here it’s part of the culture, and we were told that in many families one of the children takes on that role from a young age. It’s accepted and feels entirely natural, not modern or revolutionary at all.

Back to the boat, still on land, waiting for us to straighten her up. What’s on the list? Lots of interior organization (mostly Ilat’s domain), tightening and arranging ropes on deck, cleaning the anchor chain: the anchor and seventy meters of chain lie on a wooden platform under the bow. We start hauling it up with the windlass while I stand below, scrubbing the rising chain with a wire brush. The job takes at least an hour, by the end of which I’m covered in rust, hair full of tiny metal flakes that will take a while to get rid of.

Another task—climbing to the top of the mast. Thankfully, this isn’t routine, but this time it’s needed to install a pulley and rope to hold the boom in place of the broken piston. To climb, I strap myself into a harness attached to a halyard, and as I climb, Ilat shortens the halyard to secure me in case I fall. The climb (in our case, not all boats have this) is on small steps protruding from both sides of the mast—far from comfortable—and at my age, it’s not easy. The mast is about sixteen meters above the deck, and once at the top, I stand on tiny steps, one hand hugging the mast so I don’t fall, another holding the pulley, a third attaching it to the mast, and a fourth threading the rope through… Not easy at all. There’s no time to fear heights, so it doesn’t interfere much.

We spend most of our days inside the boat, since there’s a lot to organize—and outside, it’s hot, and sometimes there are tropical downpours. But inside the boat—amazingly—it’s cool and pleasant. Why? A story: when we were in the marina near the Panama Canal, there was a lot of waiting and heat and humidity were insane. We saw that some other boats had installed ordinary home window air conditioners. It turned out you could buy one, made in China, for about $150. Despite Tomer’s disapproval of “luxury” and my reluctance to add yet another item to the boat, Ilat insisted—and saved us from great suffering! We bought one, installed it, and were relieved. The idea was that, since it wasn’t expensive, we’d sell or give it away to a neighbor when we resumed sailing. We didn’t find anyone to give it to, and Tomer and I wanted to throw it away to save space—but as everyone knows, Ayelet has firm opinions, and this time they prevailed. So the AC stayed—and has since saved us more than once during haul-outs and re-launch preparations. Bravo, Ayelet!

Another of her great deeds: she learned about a certain inexpensive acid that can be used to whiten the fiberglass hull from rust stains—and there were many of those. We arrived on Monday morning (October 29, 2025) and were ready to launch by Thursday noon. To lower the boat into the water, they lift it with a big hydraulic trailer, and a tractor drives it between trees and parked cars to the launch ramp—a funny sight. Then that’s it: the trailer rolls us into the water, we start the engine, check for leaks (it’s happened before, in Trinidad), cast off the lines, and head out to anchor nearby.