We're Here!!

We arrived at the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquises the morning of April 17, 2010. We caught the fragrance of the trees just as the land began to loom from the clouds at dawn. We were chasing rain clouds in along our route but couldn't catch them, we were hoping for a fresh water wash before we anchored up - No luck. The harbor here is very small and was full of sail boats, so Oso Blanco and ourselves planted anchor just outside the breakwater in good holding mud. A good hold is necessary as the swell comes right on in. Oso B. has a stern anchor out with their flopper stoppers and is fairing better in the rocking than we are without a stern anchor(have to get one A.S.A.P.). Our floppers have suffered too as the first night both retrieval lines jumped off of the blades, hummm? wonder how we will pull them back in? then we lost the port blade on the second night and fouled the starboard one. No problem, we straightened out the foul and we will dive down and find the lost one, we are only in 40 feet of water. We sent John and Russell off to do a tour of the island and Glen and I did the dive. Long story short - the visibility was absolutely zero, minus zero in fact so we cannot find the flopper blade. We are single floppered now, which helps, but not much, with the swell. So we will fall out of bed again tonight and hopefully future anchorages will prove smoother. Enough whinning.

Anchors down and both boat's crews raced to put dingys in the water to finally feel solid ground under their feet. And how sweet it was. We met Sandra on land, she is our customs representative here, the main office opened on Monday. Sandra filled us in on some of the sights and gave us a ride into town, about 3 km, so we could have a look around. We all enjoyed stretching our legs so much, that after a brief look around - all shops closed at noon and a lovely lunch that somebody else cooked for us, we all walked back to the dingy dock and our boats. Sandra made a reservation for all of us at a family run restaurant named Alex's (his home)for dinner. So 6:00 pm found us all back on the dingy dock waiting for Alex to pick us up and take us for dinner. He and his family provided a lovely meal of traditional dishes and we boat people soaked up the attention and pampering. French is very necessary for smooth communication, but we are getting by with our high school versions and a Fr/Eng dictionary. We constantly find ourselves saying Si when we should be saying Oui, but slowly we will work out of Spanish mode and into French mode. The town is quaint and clean, everything a person needs is just an "ask" away. Glen and I and John went to Mass on Sunday morning. Of course we couldn't understand the service, but the singing was absolutely stunning, like attending the finest concert. We just had to thank God for getting us here safely.
We washed the boat Sunday. Whew, what a job! Salt and soot all over and bobbing back and forth in the swell, but we all put on our sun tanning attitudes and enjoyed splashing ourselves as well as the boat with water. Can't ask for a nicer place to have to do a bit of hard labor. We had a leisurely meal on the boat in order to enjoy the results of our hard work, not to mention the refreshments that we used to congratulate ourselves with, for the crossing and the job well done.

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