Day one of our epic journey
March 20, 2025
We, Miriam, Mavic and Martin, left Subic at 1:00 this morning for NAIA, with three large check-in bags full of dive and sail gear for a 2 month cruise. Regis is already in Tahiti and has taken over the boat from the previous owner and was since busy with trip planning, paperwork and purchasing supplies. Karen had also arrived two days ago, after experiencing some delays on route. Mavic played driver today, she will join us later in Samoa. More crew will be joining us in Tahiti before we set sail. Others will join in Samoa, and possibly on other islands. It will be quite a dynamic crew composition until the boat reaches its new home.
After a 2.5 hour flight we got stuck in the very boring transfer area in Hong Kong for 4 hours until the transfer desk of New Zealand Air opened. Another three hours but partly spent at a nice restaurant with an IPA and a hamburger after getting our boarding passes for the connecting flights and 6 more hours in Aukland, but all in all it was a pleasant trip without mishaps.
You never know what goes wrong on a long cruise like this, we had a bit of bad news when at the Manila airport. A hose broke in the bathroom of our apartment and flooded all rooms while we were away. So we had our “water ingress” already and can check that in the list of potential mishaps 🙂
21 hours later we arrived in Tahiti. As EU citizens we don’t need a visa and the immigration was cleared within minutes. Regis and Karen picked us up from the airport in a rented car and we had a welcome beer on the deck of Costa Rica before settling for a short sleep at 1:30 am of March 20 – yes, we earned one day by crossing the dateline.
Tomorrow at 8:00 we’ll get an introduction to the boat by the previous owners.
By Fairwind Scribe