When you live ashore in the tropics you have to arrange yourself with mosquitoes and lots of other bugs. Around towns authorities spray against bugs in many areas, but here on Taravai everything’s organic and non-toxic, so we have to live with and around the winged fiends. They are worse on rainy days and less on sunny and breezy days, but they’re always around. The… Continue reading »
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2017
26
Jan
2017
21
Jan
Water tank project
One of our aluminium watertanks (250 litres volume) started leaking a while ago. No big deal as we have a second one and a watertank, but now that we’ve settled into the little house on Taravai we have started the repair project. The tank is built in underneath the sofa (the rounded wound covers it partly) and the inspection holes we cut into the aluminium… Continue reading »
2017
19
Jan
Life ashore
Last week we worked every day in the garden, got rid of the metre high weed in the veggie garden behind the house, removed fallen over trees from the garden, mowed the grass on the big property, got rid of old rubbish, etc. On Sunday we hosted a house-warming party with 25 people (6 boats and some Polynesian neighbours), a BBQ and a big potluck… Continue reading »
2017
13
Jan
Fruity days
We have 5 lemon trees full of big, juicy fruits in our garden, a mango tree with loaded branches and two papaya trees that we can harvest from every day. Leaving the fruities to rot under the trees doesn’t feel right, so we do our best to make use of them. Today we made 3 litres of papaya-mango sorbet (we have a gigantic freezer in… Continue reading »
2017
08
Jan
A house on Taravai
In Tahanea one of our two water tanks started leaking, so we’ve only been using the other one since October. As we have a watermaker that’s no big deal, but we should still repair it at some point. We’ll have to cut away part of the wood underneath the sofa, cut open the aluminium tank, sand the corrosion craters (one of the previous owners must… Continue reading »
2017
07
Jan
Kerosene stove
It seems that always when things are just a little bit too perfect, something annoying has to happen. These nuisances usually involve either the engine, the fridge, the watermaker or the kerosene stove–the big 4 that worry us in remote places where there’s no professional help available in case of a problem. This time it was Bertie’s turn (that’s the name of our malevolent kerosene… Continue reading »
2017
05
Jan
Picture perfect 360 degrees around
Usually life in the Gambier is very quiet, but the past two weeks have been quite eventful. We had a wonderful potluck/BBQ on christmas day with our Polynesian friends on Taravai and got to know 4 other cruising boats who spend the cyclone season here (11 in total). In Rikitea the community set up a party shed on the 30th and there were snacks and… Continue reading »