Un-Believable Water

The ocean is un-believable out here. Today has been fantastically smooth, a long, low swell with O sea. Nice!!! This is day two, no actually it is into day three now, it is 2:00 am, of our trip from Marquises to the Tuamotos. We are at 12 44.834 S and 143 46.666 W and we haven't seen anything on the 12 mile radar screen but rain clouds since we left yesterday morning and we've only run into a bit of rain so far. Today and yesterday were sunny and blue and the nights both moon lit. We are missing John, he is good company, but he was so anxious to get back to Prince Rupert and it's cool rainy spring (why?). We are managing the night shifts between the three of us, no problem and spent the day lounging in the fly bridge after our heavy work schedule. You know things are slack when it becomes fun to polish the stainless!

We received an email from a good friend, still in the work world trying to make his "90th million" and I quote, "I read your blog you guys still suck! I'm starting a blog about my day at work..." and he goes on to whine about his personnel/work problems to a tune much the same as a sad country song where the truck broke, the dog ran away and so on. We had a good laugh, he made our day.

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Moving On

We came back to Taiohae early Sunday morning from our jaunt to Daniel's Bay (English Name). We had rain overnight so mopped the boat all down and when we got all anchored up again, it rained some more, so we mopped some more. It is so hot here that it would probably evaporate quickly, but we are needing something to do for activity sake. Russell and John headed into town early afternoon, something about building courage to get tattoos done. Marquises is the prime location for tattooing here in the South Pacific and we have been admiring the exotic tattoos that many of the other boaters here have had done. It makes us feel a little left out not to have a permanent souvenir, Oh well, I did get a nice bone bracelet and a carved wooden bowl. Glen and I puttered on the boat a bit then went to shore to see if we could get internet service and find out what the rest of the world is up too. We succeeded on the internet, but it was so slow that we only got a bit of banking done and caught up on the recent news before we got fed up. Nice to see our dollar is over par right now. With beer at $7.00 equivalent here we need a good exchange. Only one restaurant/bar is open in town on Sunday and nothing else. Russell arranged for a ride for us to meet he and John for dinner (20 min walk otherwise). Luckily or un-luckily for our two guys, the tattoo artist is also closed on Sundays, so they just spent a nice afternoon chatting with all of the other boaters that came in and out of the bar. Dinner was good, because I didn't have to cook it or do the dishes. Russell offered to free the dingy from the fray at the bottom of the ladder at the dingy quay on our way back to the boat. It is quite the system, a large concrete wall with one ladder and one tie ring with a minimum of 10 rubber dingys floating out from the wall like a cluster of balloons. Anyway complications arose and Russell up ended our dingy earning himself an evening bath in salt water. Fortunately his final action before descending the ladder was to give John his camera, also fortunate is that Russell can swim as we were all too busy laughing to save him. It will take a few days for him to live that one down.

Today, Monday, we had to get up early to make it in to the bank, it opens at 7:30 am. We all need cash, the cash machines ran out of money on Friday, nobody here takes credit cards and we have to head out to places even more remote than this, so cash is essential. Early out also gets you a nice loaf of fresh French bread and the pick of the fresh fruit and vegis. We also had to have John on the dock for his ride to the airport, he starts his way back to his real world today. He looked a little reluctant to leave. After our farewells, Glen, Russell and I headed back out to the big boat, pulled in all of our gear and headed out. We are now on our way to the Tuamotos, 550 miles away. Piece of Cake, only three night shifts and we are there. The water is great, the sky is clear, the temperature perfect and light winds. We are driving from the fly bridge with a full moon over our shoulders. Yes, still in paradise.

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Taioa Bay

Today started very early. We needed to run the dingy over to the local market for 4:30 am, this in order to get the best selection of fresh vegetables and fruits. We have another long run ahead of us in a few days, so we need to stock up a bit. The fruit here is heavenly..... Everything is ripened on the tree (or nearly so) and actually tastes like what it is supposed too (and more). We can't seem to get enough of any of it. So this was our opportunity and we scored big. Once back to the boat, in the still darkness, we went back to bed for a bit before our next adventure. O.K., up and ready to go, we finished our gigantic fresh donuts and coffee, loaded the dingy, hauled in the single flopper, upped the anchor and headed out of Taiohae Bay for Taioa Bay. There were three sail boats anchored in the Hakatea Anse (small lobe on the main bay) when we arrived, but we snuggled in nicely. By the end of the day there will be seven sail boats, one power boat and ourselves all squished in here. We reversed the leaving pack up, down with the anchor, out with the flopper and un-loaded the dingy. The white sandy beach was calling our names, so with our cooler of beverages on ice, we headed in to shore, beached the dingy and began our well deserved swim in the warm ocean water. It is so salty that swimming is very easy, even I can float and for that matter swim! Talked to a young man on the beach, he has a copra business, which is drying coconuts for the purposes of making oils for perfumes. He looked pretty content with his small house on the beautiful beach, the palm trees waving over head and the rugged volcanic mountains in the background. He had several horses tethered on the beach grasses, he loads his finished product on the horses to haul to the nearest village, a four hour journey (return) for him. There are a lot of horses on these islands, you will see them tethered all over the place, the people use them for transportation because of the rough terrain and because they like to ride too.

Yesterday was very interesting, we hired a 4x4 and driver to tour us around the island. Richard our guide spoke very good English and there wasn't a question about his home/country that he could not answer for us. The tour was roughly seven hours long, we started at 8:00 am. The road system here is pretty good, nice concrete roads with nothing but switch back after switch back to get a vehicle up one side of a mountain and down the other side, they are narrow, but there isn't much traffic and you really can't get up any speed so they are not overly dangerous. (remember, we weren't driving). Nearly every tree or plant that grows here produces fruit, food or spice. It is very lush here, even though they are in a drought period. All of the flowers are beautiful, copious amounts of bogenvielia and hibiscus. Glen was thrilled to find chili peppers growing wild. We stopped at a local carver's house for some souvenirs and another house for a mango break. Richard took the ever present long pole with the small net on the end and pulled down several mangos which he cut on the spot for us to slurp and gobble down. We toured three other very small villages on beautiful bays on the north side of the island and had lunch at a small restaurant. Then we hiked over an archeological site and Richard explained some of the early Marquisan culture. There was lots of human sacrifice (literally) in their past. This would be a recommended "Thing to Do", we all had a really good time and the vehicle was a very comfortable suburban, so lots of room for the four of us (five with Richard).

Our evening was spent at Happy Hour at the Pearl Lodge, with pizza to sustain us. On our dingy ride home, we stopped at Oso Blanco for a night cap. They had just arrived in Taiohae in the morning from Fatu Oa. So we swapped tails of the high seas. Thus ends another perfect day in paradise.

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Fueling

Today we replenished our fuel supply. We used an agent here in French Polynesia and pre-purchased our estimated fuel needs in advance (a month ago) as the station here needed to be sure to have enough fuel on hand for us, Oso Blanco and the usual other boats/vehicles that need fuel here. The fuel dock is a large concrete slab, much like a commercial ship tie up, and we had to go stern in, anchor the bow and tie lines from each corner of the stern to the concrete slab to steady the boat. The swell was pretty large this morning and the wind was very stiff. The fuel hose was passed to us by a rope and the process began. The fuel guys were very nice and in no time we were finished - 3 hours and 8600 liters later. Feels good to be full.

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Nuku Hiva

We have moved on from Hiva Oa to the island of Nuku Hiva. We wanted to move anchorage from the main bay at Atuona on Hiva Oa to the north side of the island, and the bays did look inviting, if you were on land, but the white caps breaking on the shore lead us to believe that it would be pretty rough to anchor, so we moved on. We motored on to Nuku Hiva and arrived last evening at 10:00 pm in the dark. It is a nice large bay and the sea conditions are very calm compared to where we have been so far. We gave the boat a quick splash this morning then headed into town to explore. Nice little town and we will be back again for more adventures tomorrow. It is so nice not to be wobbling back and forth at anchor.

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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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Destination Count Down

We only have 300 miles left!! Woo Hoo! We are all starting to plan like little kids what we are going to do once we get off of the boat on to solid ground. The last two days have been pretty sloppy seas and we've all been ping ponging off of the walls in the passageways and doing fancy dance steps to keep up right in the open spaces. Cooking requires octopus arms as everything has to be held on to so it doesn't slide across the counter tops on to the floor. Yes this includes cooking pots - and yes that built in pot holder that I said I didn't need would be very handy right now. Who Knew?? The winds have been 15 to 20 knots. Our Airmar weather station thinks the winds are 7 knots, but the flag is right sideways, so we are assuming the Airmar is mistaken. With the winds so high and the seas so big, we can't keep the doors open to the cabin as we fill the interior of the boat with salt spray - too much fun to clean up. So the doors are closed and the air con is on until we get landed. This decision was aided by the fact that we calculate we will have an abundance of fuel on our arrival so can spare the extra needed to run the generator 24 hr/day. We are expecting to arrive in Hiva Oa on the morning of April 17 and if that is the case, then the trip will have taken us 16 days as initially planned. Our position is 6 15.220 S and 134 59.721 W, we are slogging along at 7.6 knots, the sun is shinning - it's 29.7 degrees. Time for me to head out for my umbrella drink holding practice (I'll use a beer as my prop) and my "total relaxation pose" workout.

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