Tahiti Yacht Club

21 Jun 06
Mooring Ball, Tahiti Yacht Club, Arue,
Society Islands,
South Pacific
17'31.4S/149'32.0W

Greetings from the Tahiti Yacht Club!! We are moored up to the Yacht Club's mooring balls (six dollars a day!!) and have access to all the clubs facilities, hot showers, cheap laundry, WIFI, fresh water and a bar with ice cold Hinano on draft. These are the first real showers we have had since Mexico (although showering in Rick’s Bar really doesn’t count).

We are about 4 miles from downtown Papeete. We almost biffed a reef coming in the channel, as it is not marked very well. They sent out a boat that waved us off just before we saw the reef. They guided us down the correct channel to the Yacht Club.

Most people envision Tahiti’s romantic sunny beaches filled with happy islanders paddling their canoes around the harbor. The reality of Tahiti is two-lane roads with bumper to bumper traffic, lots of stores full of imported garbage, no beaches, dirty water, and people on cell phones. The best part is the one-hour, commercial free, hardcore west coast gangsta rap music that would never be played in the U.S. due to the language. Every song must have the sound of a gun shot going off, or they will not play it.

Needless to say, it is great to be back in civilization for a week to resupply, get mail, and fix broken boat items. We are looking forward to getting back “out there”.

We are back in the land of the Internet. When there is a WiFi connection, we are going to try to get all of our pictures posted.

Also, we are able to make phone calls using our laptop and a headset using Skype. If you have not installed Skype yet, then get it!! Not only are computer-to-computer phone calls free, but we can call the States to a regular phone for 1 cent a minute. The coolest part is, if you have Skype on your end, and we hook our WIFI, you can see that we are online and you can chat with us. Our SKYPE address is sandpipertomandamy. So go to SKYPE and download it so we can talk to all of you!!

Using a regular phone here requires you to buy a phone card for $15.00 and it only lasts for about 7 minutes.

We would like to give a huge shout out to Shawn Lootens and my mom for sending us packages!!! Thank you so much for all the loot. it’s all greatly appreciated!!

Tom and Amy