Leaving the Marquesas, July 26

We are very pleased to report that we got our rigging piece installed fairly easily on Friday. Hurray, we are a sailboat again! And hurray for a project being easierthan we imagined it would be - for once!
On Friday we had the rigging installed by 10AM, then went ashore for a celebratory ice cream and made a few phone calls. Then back to the boat to stow as much stuff as possible for traveling. In the afternoon Jeff cooked up a bunch of food. It usually takes us a few days to get our sealegs back at the beginning of a passage, so it's nice to have some easy to eat/reheat food in the fridge. This time we have some chicken parmesan, asian style chicken wings, and pasta salad, and probably some other stuff I've forgotten.
On Saturday we got up at 4AM and went ashore for the weekly farmers market. We were able to get some nice fresh fruit and veggies, and we walked to the store and got a bunch of fresh baguettes (these are quite inexpensive here in French Polynesia - apparently they are subsidized by the French who must have learned their lesson about expensive bread). Then back to the boat where packed and stowed the dingy, the propane tanks, and a few other last minute items. We left Nuka Hiva at about 8AM.
We are now on our way to the Tuamotus, which are about 400 miles away. They are predicting light winds so we are expecting the trip to take 4-5 days. We will be submitting Yotreps position reports so you can follow our progress on that website, if you like.
We are excited to see something different. The Marquesas are tal, steep,l volcanic islands with very few reefs. The Tuamotus are low lying atolls. Some are just a ring of reef of around a big circle of water, some have a ring of land around a circle of water, and others are more like a low-lying island with a ring of reef around them. We'll report more later after we've actually seen em.

Taiohae and Anaho, Nuka Hiva, July 10-24

On July 10 we motored back over to Taiohae Bay to check on the status of our rigging delivery. We were told it was in Tahiti and would arrive on Saturday or Monday, so we decided to hang out and do town stuff and enjoy the Bastille Day festivities that were going on all weekend. Sunday night was supposed to be the big night, but Fred still wasn't feeling great, so we made dinner on the boat and Jeff and Angie headed up to the big tent afterward. We got there at the tail end of that evening's dancing competitions (the festivities go on throughout the entire month of July). We saw a couples dancing competition and then some young boys doing what we refer to as Nuka Hiva break dancing. They mostly kept their lower bodies really still while doing as much as possible with their arms, while accompanied by some sort of strange euro techno music. I was reminded a bit of the dancing in Napolean Dynamite. It was great. Then there was a big pause which we didn't last through - we've gotten into the Marquesan habit of early to bed early to rise, although it seems lots of Marquesans broke that tradition this night because we could here the bass thumping through the wee hours of the morning.
Also on Monday we recieved a big package from Johnny C, who is forwarding mail to us in addition to helping us locate stateside items we can't get here (thanks John!). We were very excited to get the mail, but it turns out this package was the only one that had been in Tahiti for us and the rigging was still in Australia and it would be at least Friday before it could get to Tahiti, so we stocked up on fresh baguettes and headed for Anaho Bay.
The trip to Anaho bay, on July 16, was very rough, but definitly worth it. There are no roads to this bay, and only a couple houses on shore. The anchorage is great with a nice breeze most of the time, but very calm water. A welcome relief after Taiohae Bay, which is very rolly - so much so that it was affecting our sleep. Also, in Anaho Bay there is snorkeling, which I'm sure it's clear by now that we all enjoy. LUckily we were comfortable here, because Fred wasn't feeling well still when we first arrived, then Jeff and Angie also got his bug and everybody was a bit poorly for awhile. Because of that we didn't explore much here, but we did snorkel some and it was a great recovery spot.
We stayed till the following Monday when we were hoping to hear that our rigging had arrived in Nuka Hiva. No such luck, so we enlisted Tom and Amy's stateside help in tracking the package down (thanks!). Much, much confusion then ensued, but eventually the package was tracked down in Tahiti and we got our guy there to get it on a plane here and we drove from Taiohae Bay in a rental car over to the airport on July 24 to pick it up. It was a crazy drive. We went up and down very steep slopes on a very skinny road. It was easy not to get lost since the directions were "take the one road out of town and keep going straight". It's true, if you do that and manage to stay on the road, and not collide with any of the horses, cows or goats that are in the road, you eventually pull directly into the airport parking lot. We were surprised to see three Air Tahiti planes here, and were delighted to get the rigging into our own hands. It's up on the deck now straightening out some, and we're hoping to get it installed tomorrow.
We also wanted to let you all know that we have pictures to go with all the blog entries, but the internet connection here is way too slow to get them uploaded, so we'll have to add them later.

Daniel's Bay, Nuka Hiva, July 8-10

On July 8 we headed over to Daniel's Bay. The guys caught another tuna just as we were heading into the bay. This time they got a bigeye tuna, which is a good catch! While in the throes of our excitement we invited everyone in the bay over for cocktail hour on the God Spede. It was great fun! The crews from Seabright and Flame were there, along with a couple other boats with folks we hadn't met before. There is sort of a natural progression here from one island to another and we keep finding ourselves in different bays with the same boats over and over again, and many of those boats met each other in Panama or the Galapagos and crossed over from there at about the same time. Anyway, our first cocktail party was loads of fun, we had the crew from Seabright and Flame along with a couple other boats whose people we hadn't met before. Everyone brought along nibbles and drinks and Jeff cooked up some shrimp and we got to trade sea stories and info on upcoming islands.

The next day we took a hike to the waterfall. It was two hours each way. The beginning was through a beautiful village that had a lagoon, and horses and great gardens, then we did our first river crossing and hiked through a rain forest looking place, then more river crossings and eventually the trail led into a box canyon with really high spectacular cliffs and dead-ended at the worlds third highest waterfall. There wasn't a lot of water coming down (this is the dry season here, although it does still rain), but the whole place was still pretty amazing. There was a pond at the bottom with a big eel in it, so we didn't swim although we talked to other people later who said they did, and they still had all their arms and legs, so maybe we should have.

Unfortunately, this was Fred's first day with a bug that we would all eventually get. About halfway up the trail he started throwing up, and didn't stop until we got back to our first river crossing and got in and cooled off. The only good thing about this was that since he was throwing up he was behind Jeff when Jeff slipped on a rock and wound up halfway off the trail. He would have been all the way off, and down a ten foot drop, if Fred hadn't been able to grab his leg and stop him. It was a bit scary, but all OK in the end. Angie also took a spill at one point, but was no more than shaken up. Despite all this crazyness we all agreed it was a great experience and one of the best days we'd had in a long time!

Taiohae, Nuka Hiva, July 4 - 8

Our first stop at Nuka Hiva was in Taiohae Bay. This bay is home to the capitol city of the Marquesas islands. It's a pretty little town with nice plantings and the biggest bay that we have seen since our arrival in the marquesas. Big being a very relative term. Unfortunately, the water is a bit cloudy here and there are a lots of boats in the bay, and we are told there are sharks here, so swimming/snorkeling is not on the agenda. They do have a town landing that appears to be inviting from the anchorage, but upon closer inspection reveals a dillapidated ladder on an oystercovered seawall whose shells are just waiting to slice a neat hole in your dingy, that is if the bottom of the rusty ladder doesn't do it first... which it did to our English friends on Seabright. Nothing a patch couldn't fix. Once past the seawall things drastically improve. Right on the dock there is a small breakfast place (although we have no idea what they cook.. the coffee isn't bad though) and a telephone booth, and the nuka hiva extension of the yacht services company that we are using to process our visas, get duty free fuel, and receive replacement parts. This is convenient seeing as this is where we are going to replace our broken rigging. Said rigging is not slated to arrive until sometime next week so we will be touring the Island for some time. On certain days of the week a crepe and soft serve ice cream truck parks itself in front of the yacht services office and puts out a few tables in true french fashion...probably the best strawberry soft serve ice cream we have ever had as well.
As it was Jeff's birthday Angie and Fred decided to take him out to dinner on shore. We found a nice pension on the main road that had a beautiful view of the bay that served pizza from a brick oven as well as a full French and Marquesan menu all in French. Fresh vegtables are not readily found in the magazins here so we each orderd a salad (one salad would have been enough for the three of us). The main course consisted of pizza and some delicious muscles (jeff was able to decifer the menu for at least this item just in time) We hoped to follow dinner with a nice apertif...maybe some baileys and coffee? But as is the case here the full bar isn't really a full bar so we settled for khalua...about 6 ounces each and a cup of coffee..again we see our challenges with the french language. Needless to say it was a very interesting trip down the ladder to the dingy and back out to the boat, but we made it safe and sound.
On July 5 we managed to troubleshoot and fix the problem with the water maker. Turned out it was a bad electrical connection right at the electrical panel. we are getting much better at repairs than we used to be, but it's still exciting to get something big like this working again - especially since this is the one bay in the Marquesas islands where the water you can get on shore is not fit to drink because of the presence of goats and pigs in the water catchment area. No problem, now we can make our own again - yippee!
The bad news is that it doesn't seem like we'll be able to refill our propane tanks here. We have US style tanks that require some sort of an adaptor to fill from the local big tanks. One of the stores here that carries some hardware was filling our style tank up until last Saturday. Now they have stopped for reasons no one knows, and, strangely, they will not sell the adaptor they had to the yacht services people here. Seems we will have to buy one of the tanks they have for the houses here and figure out some way to hook it up to our system. We truly are NEVER bored. There is always something that needs figuring out.
On July 6 we got to experience the joy (fear?) of refueling here. There is a really tall concrete dock that is for bigger boats to tie up to. For small boats like us they have you put out an anchor med style where you put out an anchor off your bow and then back the boat up to the dock and you throw a line off the back of the boat and you sort of hover near the dock, and fill your tanks from an enormous fuel hose which drapes from the dock down into the water and back up on the boat. To make everything more interesting the wind changes direction in this bay every five minutes, but at least we have full fuel tanks again. Later we had a great curry dinner on Seabright with Jo, Dave and Beth. There was flatbread with it and we have been asking for the recipe ever since.

Ou Pou July 3 - July 4

On July 3rd we left at 4:30AM to head for Ou Pou. It was a 65 mile trip and we wanted to make sure we had enough daylight to get there. It gets very dark, very quickly here at about 6PM. The trip got off to a bad start when we the watermaker would not turn on. At first we assumed it was a belt problem we had had before, but pretty quickly ruled that out. Seems like power isn't getting to the unit, but it was too rocky and rolly for us to do much after determining that.
Things got much much better however when we were motoring along the shore of Ou Pou, not far from our destination harbor, when all of a sudden the fishing reel started screaming. Jeff grabbed the reel and Angie slowed the boat down and Fred went below for the gaff. After quite a fight Jeff managed to bring the fish alongside the boat and Fred gaffed it like he'd been gaffing his whole life. And what do you know, it was a 10-12 pound skipjack tuna! Hooray! The guys got the thing bled and filleted pretty quickly. We were left with 2 big ziplock bags of beautiful red meat and a deck that was covered in blood. Really looked like a murder zone. About 3 hours later, Jeff turned some of that fish into a fabulous dinner of seared tuna with stir fried rice. It doesn't get much fresher than that.
However, Fred and Jeff were not very impressed with the quick trip they made into town after anchoring, so the next morning Fred went back in super early, got us some more fresh baguettes and we headed on to Nuka Hiva to have Jeff's birthday there.

Tahuata June 29 - July 3

We all got up early on Sunday morning to get ready for the trip to Tahuata. Jeff and Fred went ashore to meet the bread truck (great baguettes are one of the bonuses around here). Unfortunately, their 6AM arrival time was too late, seems the entire town was there and had already put their orders in, but the guys got us some nice croissants instead. The bread truck also sold cigarettes, beer, wine and roasted chickens, and the guys say the beer was a big seller.
We had a rolly 7 hour ride to Hana Moe Noa bay, but it was worth it. This place was gorgeous! It had a big white sandy beach that was lined with coconut palms and very clear water in a nice protected bay. This was our first stop where there was no town at all and we really liked it. There was another little bay next to us and we took the dingy over there one day for some very nice snorkeling. We had a bit of a scare while snorkeling when we looked back and saw that a wave had reached up to where we had left the dingy on the beach and it was starting to get knocked around a bit. Fred's swim training came in handy here and he raced back to shore and got it before it was swamped or washed away. Whew.
This bay is also where we began making some cruising friends. We were visited by a really nice English couple, Dave and Jo, who are sailing with their super cute, red-headed, five year old daughter, Beth. We traded some books and they brought us some cake one day, and we spent a little time chatting in each others cockpits. We've looked forward to seeing their boat in other bays ever since.
We spent a really enjoyable couple days in this lovely bay. Fred swam each morning, then we'd have coffee and pamplemousse, and Jeff would make something delicious for breakfast, then we'd tackle a boat project, then go for an afternoon snorkel, then wash the saltwater out of our mouths with an after-swim beer, then Jeff would make something delicous for dinner, and Fred and Angie would do the dishes, then we'd watch a DVD, then off to bed then repeat again the next day. Very nice. Very relaxing.

Fatu Hiva June 25 - 29

On Wednesday we had great weather for our trip to Fatu Hiva. This is the southernmost island and the only one travelers can not get to by airplane or commercial boat, so we were excited to see it. The bay there was truly spectacular with impressive rock formations sticking way up right at the edge of the bay. Story has it that the bay was originally called the Bay of Penises (and its clear why it would be) but when the missionaries came they added another vowel to it and now it translates to the Bay of Virgins. Interesting what one little vowel can do.
We barely had the anchor down before we were all in the water. It was pretty clear but also pretty deep and dark in that harbor. No snorkeling, but we definitely enjoyed the refreshment of swimming! The next morning Fred took a long swim, then we noticed a local boat in distress and Fred and Jeff got in the dingy and towed them ashore where they got no thanks from the people they towed, but another guy immediately began bargaining with them for the tow roap they used. Nice. Unfortunately the rest of our shore encounters here went about the same, but we've talked to other boaters who had very different experiences there, so maybe we just had bad luck.
As Jeff and Fred came back in the dingy they thought they saw some fish jumping around in the water near the edge of the bay and motored over for a look and were treated to a dolphin show that included baby dolphins! They said it was better than Seaworld and they could almost reach out and touch them. We saw them frequently in the distance, often while we were having our afternoon swim. It's cool to be in the same water with them even when they are about a half mile away. We had a nice relaxing time in the bay here and also got some crud scrubbed off the hull and a few other boat chores taken care of.

Hiva Oa June 22 - June 25

I think we all a bit shell shocked our first day on Hiva Oa. We had made our landfall very early, so much so that we did circles with the boat outside the harbor waiting for good light before we went in, but after so many days at sea there was lots to be done to the boat before we went ashore. By the time we dealt with anchoring and digging the dingy out of the forepeak and blowing it up, and many other necessary tasks, it was early afternoon before we headed for shore. Here in the Marquesas that means it was quite hot and anyone with any sense is having a nap in the shade. I believe they call it the time of day when only mad dogs and Englishmen are astir. Well we were with them our first day. One of our cruising guides had said that it was quite easy to get a ride into town, even without putting your thumb out, but apparently that book is about 8 years old and things have changed. We couldn't get a ride with all our thumbs out, so we hoofed it about 2 miles over a big hill into town, panting and sweating the whole way. Just before town we found a small hotel with a lovely balconye with tables overlooking the bay. We gratefully sat in their shade and had our first icy cold Hinanos, the local beer from Tahiti - delicious. The kind folks there gave us our first pamplemousse, the local version of grapefruit. They are enormous and very sweet. We are big fans now and usually have one along with our morning coffee.
Next we wandered on into town, but found that everything was closed, since it was a Sunday, but we did locate all the stores, and the bank and post office and we enjoyed seeing the town. The houses were all pretty simple, but some of the yards are beautiful, with hibiscus and all sorts of other flowers, and fruit trees everywhere.
After our walkabout, we wandered back to the hotel balconey restaurant at about 3PM hoping to have a bite to eat, but they were not serving food until 6 PM. Fred voted for napping right there on their patio chairs until dinnertime, but I thought I might pass out from hunger before then, so Fred managed to talk the hotel man into driving us back to the harbor then and picking us up again at 7 PM, so we could return for dinner. We went back to the boat, had a snack, freshened up and returned to the shore at 7, waiting for our ride. We waited and waited and waited, until we became convinced that the hotel guy had forgotten us and we were tired of being dinner for the mosquitos instead of having dinner ourselves. Fred managed to bum us a different ride into town from Joseph (the first of about 6 Josephs we would eventually meet). When we got back to the restaurant they asked what we were doing there so early, and we found that we had not set our watches to local time correctly, and it was only 645 - doh! Anyway, we had a nice dinner, but barely managed to stay awake for the whole thing, and returned to the boat for our first full night sleep since leaving San Francisco.
The next day, Monday, was spent shopping and trying to figure out how to make phone calls and where one could get on the internet (it's at the post office here). This is when it became clear that Fred and Angie had forgotten more French than they remembered (Jeff says he'll help with the Spanish, but the French is up to us) and that very few of the locals speak much English at all. So things went a bit more slowly than we expected. This is also the day that we learned that pretty much everything closes from 1130 - 230, which is quite sensible here, but a bit inconvenient for boaters since the harbor is far away from the town.
ON Tuesday we officially checked through customs with the help of a yacht service Fred had arranged for ahead of time. That meant we got a ride into town, then did a few errands, then headed to the post office where we learned there was a 2 hour wait for the computer, so back to the boat we went. By this time we were really ready to get to a swimming spot. We had been advised against swimming where we were because of sharks, so we decided to head off to Fatu Hiva the next day.
That evening we had a bit of a surprise when the copra boat arrived. There are two copra boats which service the islands and bring goods in from Tahiti and pick up copra (dried coconut meat from which oil is extracted) and carry passengers. Inside the harbor they had a big area that you were not allowed to moor in because you have to leave room for these boats to maneuver to the dock. We wound up anchoring outside the breakwater because there was so little room left in the allowed area inside. It looked to us like the boats that were already outside had left an empty corridor that lined up with the entrance to the breakwater, so we assumed that was the path the copra boats would take. Wrong! We had just finished dinner on the boat and heard a strange noise outside and looked out to see the copra boat, which was much bigger than we had imagined, crusing right through the middle of the all the anchored sailboats. We weren't right alongside the path it chose to take, but it looked like they were about 10 feet away from some of the other sailboats, and they were just zooming right along. I think that if I'd been on one of those boats I might have dove off and tried to swim for it, sharks or no sharks!

The Crossing 5/30/08 to 6/22/08

For those of you who do not know the distance from san francisco to the Island of HIva Oa in French Polynesia is approximately 3000 miles. For better or worse our first passage is also one of the longest that we will have to make on our trip around the globe. We departed from Pier 39 in san francisco on Thursday 5/29/08 at 1030 PST. It wasn't long before we lost the sight of land 6/4/2008 and only three days after that we saw our last ship...at this point we realized the pacific is a very big ocean..the next time we saw a ship...any ship was about 400 miles out from the Marquesas(june 19th).
The two black tie affairs during the crossing lived up to their billing. The first was held on the 8th of june (fred's birthday). Jeff and Angie managed to smuggle presents aboard; bake a cake; and make steak and goat cheese quesadillas accompanied by a nice bottle of napa cab which we had picked up in San Francisco.
The second affair was preceeded by a stint in the doldrums or Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). A few notable things about the doldrums: they didn't last as long as we thought they would; it was the first time we were able to actually go swimming off of the god spede (although we were very conscious of the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere); and the embedded rain squalls were as advertised...short and fierce...some not so short.
Crossing the Equator has always had a certain je ne sais quoi in the sailing community. Essentially you are supposed to sacrafice something to neptune (god of the sea) upon your first crossing: sacrafices were as follows fred- beard. angie- nothing. jeff- something. (angie is slated to be pierced by neptune's trident in the not to distan future) and no, Hughsie, jeff's something wasn't the providence college jersey.
The crossing party consisted of: shots chosen by the person on shift(jeff) who picked jim beam...which thankfully had been baking in the heat for the past several weeks and was an old favorite of fred's (june 8th 1998 the last time he had one) and then we continued to melt under the equatorial sun.
The last week of our trip is when we saw the only two problems. Our electronic self steering broke one week out which wasn't a big deal until the second problem occured. On 6/20/08 a piece of our standing rigging broke just before midnight. It snapped at the top just under where it was attached to the mast. When it broke it came crashing down into the companionway luckliy not hurting a soul. Unfortunately, with the rigging broke and the electronic self steering out of commision we were left to hand steer the last two days into the Marquesas. We arrived to a crowded harbor in the town of Atuona on the Island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas on 6/22/08 tired and very happy.