Tuesday was a busy day. It started with some friends delivering Fay's order from the boulangerie, more croissants, pain de chocolat and baguettes. Next was a tour of the Dream Pearls pearl farm about 10km south of Rotoava. Lu-lu picked us up at 8:30 and drove us to his farm. Farming pearls is a much more elaborate process than I had imagined.
Lu-lu buys one year old oysters from another farm elsewhere in the Tuamotus. To initiate the process they drive a small wedge into the oyster to open the shell and allow the oyster to "relax" a bit into the slightly opened position. Then one of several Chinese technicians who commute between China and the Tuamotus inserts a nucleus into the oyster. This work is all done with what appears to be surgical quality stainless steel instruments. The nucleus is a piece of oyster shell from Mississippi that has been machined into a sphere in sizes ranging from 4mm to as much as 16mm. Additionally they insert a 1mm square piece of shell in the color that they would like the oyster to build onto the nucleus. It's not clear to me why the oyster mimics that color, but that is apparently how it works. Then they close it up, drill a hole in the shell and tie them to a sort of tubular net that protects the oysters from predators. They hang the nets in the lagoon and leave them for about two years.
To harvest the pearls they haul the nets ashore, cut the oysters loose and again insert a small wedge into the shell. The Chinese technicians then remove the pearl and insert another nucleus slightly larger than the previous nucelus. One oyster ends up producing 2-3 pearls before they scrap the oyster; the meat is eaten and the shells are shipped to Asia to be made into buttons (aka "mother of pearl").
If all goes well, the oyster has built a perfect layer of nacre around the nucleus, about 1mm thick. In practice not all the pearls are round, and they have varying numbers of imperfections, apparently at least in part a function of cleanliness of the nucleus and insertion process. The pearls are classified by shape, luster, size and color, then sold in bulk primarily to Japanese firms which distribute them world wide. The farm that we visited produces about 80,000 pearls / year.
There is of course a showroom at the farm and with Fay's birthday just a few weeks away she had an enjoyable time picking out her present!
Later on Tuesday we raised anchor (another story for another time), moved about five miles south and anchored in front of the White Sands Hotel so that we could have dinner there that evening. It was worth the trouble. It was the first upscale restaurant meal we had had since early March in Panama and it was excellent. We pooled our orders and had risotto, parrot fish, a nice New Zealand steak with mushrooms, and several glasses of decent chardonnay and merlot, all capped off by creme brulé and swiss chocolate truffle cake.
Wednesday was moving day so we were up at 6am to be at the pass by 8am for slack current. All went well and we had a pleasant sail to Anse Amyot on Toau. Anse Amyot is not really a pass, more like a cove protected by a very shallow reef from the main lagoon. The one family that lives here has put down moorings so we're on a mooring for the first time since Bonaire. It's nice not hearing our chain scraping across coral and with so little fetch even when it blows 20-30kts for a couple of hours as it did earlier today the chop is small so New Morning is not tossing around.
The report from some other boats that went diving this morning was not great so we've canceled the dive plans and this afternoon we'll go snorkeling right off the boat.
