Another amazing day

Another amazing day. 

Today we were lazy and got up late, missed the truck so Mat had to ride his bike to the store to pick up bread and juice. We ate in the morning and then worked on some pics. We then went out into the lagoon and mat gave me another windsurfing lesson. I'm improving lots, being that it was my third day I was actually able to go up and back, even travel upwind and get further up the lagoon than I started. We had stronger winds today so i got to hook the harness up to the wishbone and lean back into the wind. At one point mat left the canoe right in the path of me and when i ran into it he thought it was hilarious. I don't know why crashing and breaking 8k in gear is funny, but mat loved it. Windsurfing is pretty dang fun and so challenging. I can feel a new hobby coming on, haha. Its a good thing I have a ton of storage space now at home.

After that we hung out for a while in the backyard, avoiding the hot sun. Yvon came over to pick us up so that I could snap some shots of the master copy of their new outrigger canoe. I shot some cool pics of the guys working in the shaping room, I think he will be happy with them. One guy, the shaper, named Poi from Maui is pretty cool to talk to. We talked a bit about what Maui is like vs. Tahiti. He mentioned that Tahiti is a 3rd world country. I guess I never really thought of it that way, but I guess in some ways it is. 

Next up Yvon brought us back home so we could load up our down wind gear. We had the 14' Are NuiFourteen and the Are Va'a OC-1 canoe. We were dropped at Teahupoo, and then paddled out to the pass. We paddled a ways out into the ocean to get ready to make the trek down the coast in the open ocean. I think we were just over a mile out, maybe more at times. Today was a perfect down wind. wind swell, and power, it was amazing. On the paddle out into the ocean I was curing and hating life because the wind was so strong and I had to fight from getting pushed into the waves that crash on the reef. No time to rest and you could only paddle on one side because the wind was blowing so hard that you had to turn non stop to just go straight. Every time I fell off the board mat thought it was hilarious haha. I finally got out far enough so I was able to enjoy the paddle now. The wind swell was big so with minimal effort i could catch the swells and get small surf rides. It was amazing. I could do this for hours and hours. However if the wind or swell got bad you'd want to quit this soon. I think after a while you can start to get really sea sick with all the motion and movement you're making. 

During the downwind paddle A shark came up to me, maybe 1 ft away. It was kind of freaky, since it was unexpected. It was probably a 4-5ft reef shark, black tip. I didn't seem to fall as much after seeing it haha.

the down wind paddle was great almost all of the way. Right at the end we had a head swell come at us, which made things sort of choppy and also meant that you couldn't surf the big swells that came from behind anymore. We made it into the big pass and then went over to the sandbar island aka motu to rest for a minute and let the water out of my leaking SUP board. It really needs some repairs, I think I'll do some temp tape work tomorrow to try and help the poor board. 

Here is a video from the down wind: 

And here is a video from the motu aka sandbar that we stopped at:

Mat doing OC-1 down wind. you can see how turbulent the water is in this one.



Please don't hate me lol.

After that we paddled the rest of the way in, listening to the locals practice traditional warrior sounding drum songs. Again, it is making me want to move here so bad! The distance ended up being 20km or 11 miles.

We bbq'd the fish that the neighbor gave to us from a couple days before, and had it with rice and some mayo that has mustard in it. pretty delicious. 

After dinner I worked on some pics and then tried to get some star and moon shots. Some clouds kept getting in the way, stubborn mountain, making weather on me, so i guess I'll have to try another night. 

I'm going to sleep good tonight.