Leaving Bora Bora

We're going to leave Bora Bora today. We've had some fun here but I don't think it'll go down as our favorite island. It's beautiful but it's a bit overrun with tourists (you know, people like us). To be fair, we haven't fully explored the island. We've been too busy working on stuff to get ready for the slightly longer passages ahead of us. We added some running back stays to stabilize the main mast (probably not necessary but gives us peace of mind), changed the oil and filters, made some improvements to our wind vane set up, and those sorts of things.

Our plan from here to Tonga is as follows: we'll go from Bora Bora to Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, then to Beveridge Reef, then to Nuie, and from Nuie we'll head on to Vava'u in Tonga. Then we'll stay in the various island groups of Tonga until sometime around early November. We were planning to have Rarotonga be our first stop after Bora Bora but it looks like there may be a mild front coming through about the time we plan to get there. The front will bring winds out of the north and from what we've heard, the harbor at Rarotonga (marginal in good conditions) is unsafe with winds from the north. That's why we've changed our plan to Aitutaki. At any rate, the plans are all shown on the map tab. Speaking of maps, I've added a small map on the right side of this page. In theory, that map will display our position reports to the Pacific Seafarer's Net. On multi day passages (like the ones coming up), we'll report our position via ham radio and the operators of the net will update the data set that feeds that little map. It only shows position reports from the last 30 days, so it's not showing anything as of the writing of this post but, if all goes according to plan, it should start to show our position sometime tomorrow.

I'm not sure when we'll have internet access again so we may not be able to update the blog again until Tonga. We may have access sooner but there's no need to worry if you don't see any updates 'til then. We've got to run now. We still need to top off our water tanks, roll up our dinghy, and pay our bill at the Bora Bora yacht club before we can get underway.

Bora Bora

We left Raiatea on Monday the 25th and had a nice day sail to Bora Bora. It was a downwind sail and we went through the hassle of setting up our whisker pole to run wing on wing downwind and it ended up paying off. Two larger sailboats had left Raiatea about 15 minutes before us and we ended up getting to the pass in Bora Bora about 15 minutes before them. We're not racers but we do like it when we can beat boats that are supposed to be faster than us.

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Get your own

We picked up a mooring ball at the Bora Bora Yacht Club. Don't worry, it's not as ritzy as it sounds. It's basically just a restaurant / bar with moorings and a dinghy dock. All the anchorages here are pretty deep. We could anchor but I generally pull our anchor up by hand (we have a manual windlass but it's awkward to use) and pulling up the anchor and chain from 60 feet is not fun and given the fairly low price of a mooring here, it seems totally worth it. So far, we've just been working on boat projects and hanging out with friends while we wait for good weather for the crossing to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. There are some pretty big seas forecast through the weekend. It wouldn't be anything we couldn't handle but, after our very uncomfortable trip to Tahiti, we'd rather just wait a few extra days for smooth sailing rather than charge out into big puke inducing seas with 25 knot winds.

For those of you who've been confused about where we are, I've updated the map. It now shows our trip as far as Raiatea. I may also try to add our projected path out to Tonga. I also updated the Calendar tab. The calendar now shows when we were in various places along the trip. Of course it'd probably be more useful to show where we're going to be in the future but that would require a level of clairvoyance that I've yet to attain.

Huahine to Raiatea

Our remaining days in Huahine were spent surfing, snorkeling, and hanging out with friends from Takalani, Blue Moon, and Reality. On one evening, we had a little BBQ on the beach and played petanque (the french version of bocci ball). The wind finally backed off a bit by the 20th so we were able to go surfing. It was a fairly long dinghy ride to the surf spot but it was worth it. It was by no means a world class wave that we were surfing but, then again, we are not world class surfers. There are much more powerful, steeper waves elsewhere around Huahine, so we had this one to ourselves. The waves break over sharp coral that's fairly shallow and looks even shallower because the water is so clear but we surfed there for three days in a row and the only injuries sustained were some very small cuts on Christine's hand. On our third day of surfing we took Stoph from Takalani surfing with us. It was his first time surfing but he did great. Later on, Stoph volunteered his dinghy (it's a bit faster than our dinghy) for some tow surfing. We basically just dragged each other around the anchorage for a while. It was a bit silly but quite fun and we got Rob and Jo from Blue Moon to give it a go as well.

Yesterday (the 23rd), we packed up and left Huahine. There wasn't much wind so we ended up motoring most of the way. Ordinarily, we would have just waited a couple of days to leave until the wind picked up again but, unfortunately, we're in a bit of a hurry now. Our visas from French Polynesia will expire on the 26th so we're supposed to check out from Bora Bora on the 25th. We could make the short crossing from Raiatea to Bora Bora today and make it on time except for one thing. We had Rob from Blue Moon take a look at our rigging on our main mast. Rob is a third generation boat builder and he designed and built his own boat. He said that, while our rigging was adjusted about as well as it could be, we could stabilize the main mast by adding some running backstays from the spreader tangs. Rob is a fairly quiet and unassuming guy but he was pretty definite about saying that he would add the running backstays before making the crossing to New Zealand so I'm inclined to take his suggestion seriously. In order to add the running backstays, I need a few more parts from a chandlery and that puts us in a bit of a dilemma. There are a several chandleries here on Raiatea but, as far as we know, none on Bora Bora. However, it's Sunday and everything is closed here. So basically, we either get our parts and check out a day late or we check out on time and don't get our parts. We may be able to get the parts we need in the Cooks or Tonga but we can't really count on it. So, at the moment, I think we're inclined to stay an extra day, get the parts, check out one day late, and hope that the french will forgive us.

We're in Huahine

Just a brief post to let everyone know we made it to Huahine. We're anchored down in the southeast corner and there's internet access from one of the nearby hotels that we're able to get on the boat. It's too windy down here to surf but, other than that, everything is fine. We'll post more later.

Back to the real world, sort of

After an uncomfortable two day passage complete with puking, we arrived in Papeete, Tahiti. Papeete is the biggest city in French Polynesia and as a result is the best place to re-provision and buy miscellaneous boat stuff. The anchorage near Marina Taina was completely packed with at least 150 boats. Many boats were on mooring balls making anchoring nearby even more tricky. We motored around for what felt like forever before settling on the shallow sand shelf out near the inner edge of the reef that forms the lagoon. To make a long story short, we ended up too close to a boat on a mooring ball, had to re-anchor with two anchors so we didn't swing into the shallow coral just offshore or the moored boats just inshore, and then dragged our bow anchor a couple days later when the wind picked up out of the south. That made for a sleepless night involving one failed attempt at re-anchoring in the same spot with help from our friends on Piko, more dragging, apparent resetting, followed by even more wind the next day and more dragging. Since we were getting dangerously close to yet another moored boat, we made an emergency attempt at re-anchoring during the windiest part of the day with the help of 3 dinghies and a bunch of friends. We finally got both anchors up and re-anchored in a new spot with plenty of scope this time and held just fine. Jared blames the lack of bow anchor scope for all the dragging, and the shallow layer of sand covering the reef.

Aside from the anchoring drama and the sort of culture shock of a bustling metropolis complete with traffic and filth, we had a lot of fun catching up with our friends Krister and Amanda on Britannia, Lauren(guy) and Lauren(girl) on Piko, Vincent and Crispin now crewing for Balquideer, and Dino on Hadar. We attempted to surf at a nearby reef pass break with Krister and pretty much failed (Krister caught some waves though). We are not quite good enough yet to surf world class surf in the company of world class surfers. Jared and Krister played guitar a lot and I attempted to sing at times. We had to say goodbye to Ryan and Alex on Shalimar unfortunately. They have family visiting and they are off to Moorea with them. Ryan's mom was kind enough to deliver a few things we ordered and we look forward to thanking her in person in Bora Bora in a couple of weeks. Jared went snorkeling on some plane wrecks off in the lagoon with the folks from Watchyagonnado, Ceilyhd, Britannia, and Piko, while I put away all of the new food. We did our downtown errands in one day and we were ready to move on a week after arriving. We were sad to be leaving our friends again, but we have very little time left on our visas and we want to explore the leeward Society Islands. We are technically supposed to leave French Polynesia on July 25th. I'm sure we'll cross paths with them again somewhere. I hear there's a really cool full moon party in Vavau, Tonga in September. Maybe we'll all end up there! If anyone has the funds and the time, come visit us in Tonga. It sounds awesome. We'll be there for the months of September and October.

Good Times in Toau

After a nice day sail from Fakarava's north pass we reached the false pass (a pass through the atoll's fringing reef that doesn't go all the way through) on the north western side of Toau called Anse Amyot (anse means cove). It is a unique place in the Tuamotus because not only is it a nice protected cove created by a false pass, but there are also about 15 moorings to tie up to. The moorings were installed by the couple who lives in Anse Amyot, Valentine and Gaston, and the payment they require is simply that you come ashore one night and have a feast with them for a reasonable fee. And what a feast it was with fresh tuna sashimi, fried fish, poisson cru, lobster focaccia, bbq lobster, rice, coconut bread, and a delicious coconut cake for dessert. Gaston catches all the fish and lobster himself with the help of his handy fish traps a lot of skill. Valentine has some killer recipes and is both a gifted cook and hostess. They both welcomed us into their lives as soon as we stepped ashore the first day and treated us like old friends for the rest of the week.

Our first full day in Anse Amyot was Jared's birthday. We did a dive on the wall outside of the lagoon with Ryan and the brits Mike and Hilda from the boat Quicksilver. Jared and I traded off using Ryan's spare tank which is why a lot the photos from the dive have Jared in them free diving. The wall was quite vertical and dropped off from about 20 feet to well beyond what we could see or dive to. There were no sharks but the coral looked pretty healthy. There also seemed to be less fish than we had seen at some other spots. The visibility was awesome as usual and the wow factor was high but it will be hard for any dive to come even close to the wow factor of that dive we did in Fakarava's north pass. We are so spoiled!

Since it happened to be Jared's birthday the day we met Valentine, she invited us to come ashore for a potluck dinner with our friends on Shalimar and Tuatara. Their old friend George was also there with his girlfriend Yael. George is a salty french guy who makes his living as a delivery captain and was bringing a fancy new catamaran to a charter company in Raietea in the Society Islands. A couple days earlier, George was out with Gaston fishing when everyone's worst nightmare happened. As he was placing the bag of bloody fish into the boat it slipped back out and a grey shark started heading right for him. Gaston told him to hold still and throw the bag of fish into the boat, but his fear got the best of him. He leaped half-way out of the water up onto the nearest coral head and the shark probably mistook his wiggling foot for a fleeing fish and went for it. Luckily, the bite was a gentle one and did not sever any major arteries, tendons, or nerves. Yael is a nurse and had all her medical supplies with her. She stitched him up and banned him from entering the water for a long time. She also was afraid to go back in the water for a few days even though all involved agreed that the bite had more to do with the bag full of wriggling bloody fish than with any sort of intensional shark on human violence.

Our pre-feast feast was delicious and full of laughter. Valentine speaks pretty good english and Gaston knows a few words, but his body language says it all. He's a total goof ball and very entertaining. George and Yael both spoke very good english, like most french people do thanks to their schooling, and we enjoyed their company thoroughly. Alex made brownies and Ryan made his now famous chocolate chip cookies. Yael made a cake and we sang happy birthday in french. We all pulled out our last bottles of booze and drank every last drop. Gaston had one too many drops and Valentine had to put him to bed early.

The next day we had our official feast after a perfect day of snorkeling and R&R. After stuffing ourselves to the gills we went inside to thank Valentine and Gaston and they invited to stay and hang out with them and an Austrian couple named Fleurian and Birgitte from the catamaran Fidelio. We shared many stories and laughed a lot. We learned that Anse Amyot has been in Valentine's family for as long as she can remember, or maybe it was her grandfather that first came there, I forget. Gaston came to help Valentine's brother with the fishing about 20 years ago and that's when Valentine met him. Gaston grew up on Tahiti near Port Phaeton. Valentine left the island to go live and work in Papeete for a while but then came back to help run the place when her brother became ill. She's been running the show with Gaston ever since. They harvest copra, fish, and pearls. They recently cut back on the pearling because catering to the cruising community has started taking up such a big part of their time. Ten years ago they would only see a handful of boats anchor in their little cove every year, now they have hundreds! Valentine's sister runs a small pension (hotel) on the island too with help from her nieces and cousins, but they all live in Fakarava most of the time it seems. Valentine told us about the good old days when they were all champion spear fishers. Her brother in particular was one of the best, able to dive very deep and spear very big fish. She also told us about one time when she saw a shark heading straight for her pregnant sister during a spear fishing competition and she had to spear the shark to save her!

The rest of the week is a blur of swimming, snorkeling, hiking, eating, singing, ukuleles, and just hanging out in paradise. We offered to give Valentine a hand with the preparations and serving of the next feast, a day that started with the ear splitting squeals of a pig in peril. Pork was on the menu for that evening. Alex and I helped prepare and serve the feast while Jared and Ryan sat around drinking beer. They were on dishes duty. Valentine's niece and cousins were on the island for the evening and after we were done with the dinner, we moved the party outside. Out came the ukuleles, and Kevin brought his guitar and his accordion. We sat around listening to some first class tahitian singing and music under a warm starry night. Our friend Vincent, who was crewing on a boat that was at the feast that night, joined us and donated a bottle of rum. Valentine mixed up some punch and the already very intoxicated Vincent drank some more. After pulling a couple of hilarious but painful looking stunts, we took him back to his boat. I only wish we had had a camera to preserve those moments and help sober Vincent understand why his face was swollen.

After a lunch time feast one day, we checked out Valentine's collection of black pearls, learned about pearl farming, and then played some petanque. Petanque is basically bocce ball but the balls are metal. All the islands around here are very serious about their pentaque and inter-island competitions are commonplace. It sounds like it's a big deal in France too. They also play for fun though, like Americans and bocce ball. Valentine and Gaston were both very good, as was George the salty frenchman. Ryan and Alex both turned out to be pretty good as well and Jared and I were definitely the worst of the lot. The last game we played I was teamed up with Valentine and we called ourselves the shark team. My competitive streak shone through at last and with the help of Valentine's superior skill we managed to defeat Gaston and Alex. I think Gaston is even more competitive than me and he was very surprised that we won. It was a great way to end the day.

After a couple of weather delays, we were finally set to leave. We spent one final happy hour with Gaston and Valentine. Valentine broke out the ukulele once again and Gaston rigged up a primitive bass with a bucket, a wooden broom handle, and a piece of rubbery line. Jared gave it a try and was a natural at it. Hopefully we can rig one up for our boat one of these days. I really wish we had ukulele too. Maybe we'll come across one down the road. Valentine talked about happy hours in the past where everyone brought a ukulele and had a big jam session/lesson. Sounds like a fun way to learn. Oh well, maybe next time! I sure hope we can make it back to Anse Amyot some day. Such an amazing place with amazing people and so many good times! Thank you Valentine and Gaston!

Tahanea and Zombie Hand (part 2)

We timed our afternoon departure from Makemo so that we'd arrive at Tahanea for the early morning slack current period. We were a little early so we had to heave to outside the pass for about an hour and wait for the sun to come up. The middle pass turned out to be much mellower than the pass at Makemo and our entry into the lagoon was uneventful. We anchored just north of the middle pass at around 8am and, to our surprise, there were 8 or 10 boats already anchored in that area. We expected to see a few boats but not quite that many. Among them were several boats we knew and were happy to see and Shalimar entered the pass right behind us and anchored nearby.

During our first evening at Tahanea we attended a beach barbeque pot luck sort of deal that the boats already there had organized. We already knew the crews of Blue Moon and Ceilydh (or however you spell the name of their boat - not that we're ones to talk when it comes to difficult to spell boat names) and we got to meet a bunch of new people as well. Unfortunately, we also got to meet the biting sand flies known as no nos. They come out around sunset and annoy the heck out of people for an hour or so but we stuck it out until they went back from whence they came. Food was eaten, guitars were played, drinks were drunk and so were people (a little bit). You had to be careful walking around because there were hundreds of hermit crabs crawling around and we didn't want to smash the poor little critters. They were slow moving but quite persistent. We tried to cover all the leftover food and we kept moving it around to try and keep it from the crabs but, eventually, we stopped paying attention for long enough and they swarmed the left over brownies. They busted through the tin foil and by the time we noticed, the pan was covered by a pile of several hundred sugar crazed hermit crabs.

The wind kept on blowing in the 15 to 18 knot range for a day or so after we got there but then it backed off. By the 16th it was dead calm. That would have sucked if were were trying to sail someplace but it was fantastic for being anchored. At one point, the surface of the water was so mirror flat that you could see the anchor and details of the coral heads 40 feet below the boat and the horizon took on that weird hazy look that the ocean gets on calm days where you can't really tell the ocean from the sky. We spent our days snorkeling and swimming around. We snorkeled the north pass several times where we saw sharks and manta rays. The passes were a bit tricky to snorkel because we needed to time it so that we were snorkeling during incoming current. We'd take the dinghy out of the pass just as the incoming current was starting to build, and throw the snorkelers into the water and drift back into the lagoon with the current. If the current wasn't going too hard, the dinghy driver would also hop in and snorkel while holding on to the dinghy. We also enjoyed some more relaxed snorkeling inside the lagoon and found some nice shallow coral areas right next to the anchorage. We also got to do a proper pass dive on scuba. Shalimar has two tanks, Ceilydh has a compressor, and Evan and Diane were nice enough to fill up Ryan's tanks. Since Ryan's wife Alex doesn't dive, he let Christine and I share one tank while he used the other. We dove the middle pass with folks from Ceilydh, Whatcha Gonna Do, and Piko. The group did two dives so Christine dove on the first dive and I dove on the second one.

The dive was nice but not super spectacular. If you're ever in Tahanea without scuba gear, you needn't be too sad. Everyone seemed to agree that snorkeling the smaller pass just to the north was in many ways better than diving the larger middle pass but it may be that we didn't go far enough out the pass to see more sharks and more dramatic bottom topography. At any rate, it was great to actually get in a dive and breathe underwater again.

We heard that there was an abandoned village a little south of where we were anchored where we could get water out of some rain collecting cisterns. Due to some poor planning and an initial misunderstanding of exactly where the village was located, we (including Ryan and Alex from Shalimar) decided to take our dinghies down there with our empty water jugs to get some water and explore the abandoned village. It turned out to be a much longer trip than any of us had anticipated. We ended up towing Shalimar's dinghy most of the way. Our dinghy is a little underpowered but Shalimar's dinghy just has an electric outboard with limited range and their battery wasn't fully charged. The return trip was interesting. Both of our dinghies were loaded down with water jugs and we had to cross two passes with outgoing current. While crossing the middle pass we had both of our outboards pinned and were only making about 1 or 2 knots against the current but we eventually managed to make it back just in time to attend another pot luck party - this time aboard the catamaran Ceilydh.

During our stay at Tahanea, I continued taking the Doxycycline pills I'd been taking for my rash and, for the most part, things continued to clear up. The exception was the backs of my hands. Little tiny blisters developed first on the back of my left hand (where the original infection had taken place) and then on my right hand. The instructions for the Doxycycline said to take it for 7 - 10 days even if the symptoms clear up earlier to avoid a return of the infection in a new antibiotic resistant version. I reached the 7 day mark and wanted to stop but wasn't sure if the little blisters were from the bacteria or something else. I was afraid that if it was from the bacteria that it would take off like crazy when I quit the antibiotics. The other possibility that occurred to me was that it was a reaction to the sun because the antibiotics cause extra sun sensitivity. So I just continued to take the pills and tried to keep my hands out of the sun. As you might imagine, keeping the backs of your hands out of the sun while living on a boat in the tropics is not easy. By the time we left Tahanea for Fakarava, both hands were swollen, painful, red, itchy, and covered in bumps. In short, they looked like zombie hands again. The whole thing didn't slow me down much until just before we left - then it got bad enough that I was starting to get a bit bummed out and worried. That's where we'll leave the zombie hand saga for now. The final installment will be the next post about Fakarava.

Makemo and the Saga of the Zombie Hand (part 1)

We ended up staying in Makemo for a week. It was a great week but it was marred a bit by what I came to refer to as my zombie hand and its associated rash. I apologize for the rather ugly nature of the things I'm about to describe but I feel duty bound to describe my affliction so that I don't leave you, the reader, with the impression that everything is always perfect out here.

Just before we left Nuku Hiva on June 1st, I got a bunch of bug bites on a trip to shore. This has not been an uncommon occurrence so I wasn't worried but a day or two into our crossing to Makemo, a couple of the bites on the back of my left hand turned ugly. They blistered and raised a bunch of smaller blisters all around them and started looking more like a poison oak rash than bug bites. I also developed a fever and runny nose that may or may not have been related. By the time we reached Makemo, the fever was gone but the back of my hand looked like the living dead and was oozing so much gunk that it was difficult to keep bandages on it. They'd get soaked and just slide off. I also stared developing a rash on my side and my elbow. I wasn't sure if the new rash was related to my zombie hand or merely the result of the poor level of personal hygiene that, in my fever induced stupor, I'd maintained during the 4 day passage. I resolved to bathe more frequently (an easy resolution given the amount of snorkeling that we did) and see if the rash cleared up. After almost a week of frequent snorkeling, the zombie hand patch had moderated a bit but was still slightly yucky and the expanded rash still looked about the same. I consulted the skin rash chapter of "Medicine for the Outdoors" and was thoroughly disgusted by the myriad stomach churning possibilities for what might be ailing my dermis. Once I calmed myself down again, I was able to narrow the possibilities. I'd already tried some benadryl with no discernible effect so I figured it wasn't an allergic reaction. From what I'd read, it seemed like some sort of bacterial infection was the most likely cause. I think my bug bites got infected and while being a filthy pig on passage, I let the bacterial filth from my zombie hand establish little frontier towns of rash on other parts of my body. These little towns were evidentially well enough established that a weeks worth of comparatively clean living wasn't sufficient evict the bacterial squatters. We had Doxycycline onboard (provided by a prescription from a travel clinic for exactly this kind of thing) so I decided to suffer the side effects (nausea, increased sun sensitivity, etc) in order to make sure that I didn't end up with some kind of full-body bacterial zombie costume. By the time we left Makemo, my hand was looking better and the other rash areas had started to abate. This is where we'll leave the saga of the zombie hand for now. There's more to come but friends and family need not worry, it's all ends up fine (I'm actually writing this on June 25th).

So, back to more pleasant things... There were two other boats anchored in the southeast corner when we arrived but they left within a day or two. Shalimar and Architeuthis were the only boats out there the rest of the time. The shore nearby (a thin strip of sandy soil between the reef and the lagoon covered with palm trees and various shrubs) was only sparsely inhabited. There seemed to be one small family run copra harvesting operation for every mile or two of shore line. I think all the land is owned but people are very friendly and don't seem to mind if you beach your dinghy on the uninhabited stretches and wander around, so that's exactly what we did. In fact, they don't seem to mind if you beach your dinghy in their front yard and say hello. That's what Ryan and Alex did and they made friends with a family there. The next day one of their new friends (I think he said his name was Nicodem - but I'm probably slaughtering the spelling) took Ryan and I spear fishing. He came and picked us up on a hand made wooden speedboat looking kind of deal. It had a big old two stroke outboard on the back and was steered from the bow with a sort of a vertical control stick kind of deal. That's the way most of the local boats are laid out here and it makes sense because the bow is the best place to look out for the shallow coral heads that you have to dodge in the lagoons.

Nicodem took us out to a very shallow area inside the southern edge of the lagoon and anchored us to the top of a small coral head. From the way he homed in on this particular coral head, climbed all the way out on the front of the bow and very gently set the anchor on a particular part of the coral head, I got the impression that this was a spot he came to often. Nicodem then proceeded to give us the most remarkable pre-dive briefing I've ever seen. He told us that we would stay together and all try to spear fish. When one of us succeeded in getting a fish, that person would immediately hoist the fish out of the water by holding the spear vertically and swim back to the boat in that manner (because sharks can sense a wounded fish in the water from a long way off and it gets them into the kind of mood you'd rather not have them in) while the other two swam behind looking for sharks. When we saw sharks we were to defend the fish carrier's back by slapping the surface of the water violently to scare off the shark and, if that failed, to prod the shark with our spear. He also told us to keep a special eye out for grey sharks because they're more aggressive than the black tip and white tip reef sharks. The thing that made the briefing so remarkable was the fact that it was conducted almost entirely in pantomime. Nicodem spoke almost no English and Ryan and I speak almost no French and even less Tahitian so Nicodem had to communicate all of this information via hand waving and facial expressions. It was amazing how quickly he managed to get all the details across.

In the water, it all happened just like we'd been told it would. Our guide speared at least twice as many fish as Ryan or I but we each managed to get a few. Nicodem was mostly targeting the squirrelfish and soldierfish so that's what we went after as well. This involved a lot of poking around under coral ledges and waiting for them to peek out from their little hiding spots so they could catch a spear in the face. The more fish we caught, the more sharks we saw and by the end of the dive we had a couple of white tip reef sharks, four or five black tips, and at least one grey. They came pretty close and were definitely interested but none of them were too large and none of them seemed willing to fight us for the fish. After we'd gotten all the fish we needed and attracted enough sharks to start making Nicodem nervous, we divvied up the fish and headed home. We invited Nicodem to come eat with us out on the boat but he said he politely declined. We thanked him and gave him some fruit that we'd brought from the Marquesas (apparently fruit is hard to get in the Tuamotus). It was a fun day and a delicious dinner and a good time was had by all.

After almost a week in the southeast corner of Makemo, we sailed back up to the pass and tied up to the big concrete pier for the night. Before we'd even finished tying up, we were accosted by a small group of little kids. They asked to come aboard the boat and since we'd had nothing but great interactions with the locals so far we agreed and helped them aboard. They were polite but they were quite a handful. They wanted to inspect everything on the boat. We let them play with Christine's camera, my guitar, our little video camera and a few other things. They asked to keep a few things but they weren't interested in anything that we were willing to part with. As we started to run out of ways to entertain them, Shalimar finished tying up next to us so we told them that our friend on the new boat spoke French so that we could pawn them off on poor Alexandra. Christine, by now eager to facilitate the hand off, got all three kids into our dinghy and rowed them over to Shalimar. Alex let them aboard but quickly decided to usher them back onto the pier. They immediately returned to us and climbed into our dingy. After a few minutes of being satisfied with that, they asked if they could take the oars and go row themselves around. I replied with the international facial expression equivalent of, "Uh, no way." They soon tired of the stationary dinghy and departed. They weren't bad kids or anything but I can't say I was entirely sad to see them go. The combination of the language barrier and my lack of child wrangling experience made the whole thing a bit stressful.

We used that afternoon for a bit of grocery shopping and then headed out the following day after a quick snorkel in the pass. We didn't time the exit out of the pass quite perfectly and had a bit of an exciting time bashing through the waves to get out but we made it with only mild discomfort and prepared for an overnight passage to Tahanea.

On to the Tuamotus

We left Nuku Hiva on June 1st and took a little over 4 days to cover the roughly 500 nautical miles to Makemo atoll in the Tuamotus. Winds were pretty good for the first three days of the passage with the exception of one squally night. A day or so into the passage we started to hear, on the radio and via weather faxes, about a big high pressure system that was going to be moving in from the southwest. The forecast was calling for some rain associated with a cold front followed by reinforced trade winds in the 25 knot range. We can handle that kind of weather with no real problem but the associated seas do make things a bit uncomfortable and, more importantly, they make the passes into the atolls much harder to negotiate.

Atolls are essentially old islands that have eroded or subsided into the sea leaving behind a ring of coral reef with a lagoon in the middle. Most of the atolls that we're interested in visiting are the ones that have navigable passes through the ring of coral. It's much nicer to get inside the lagoon so that you can be protected from the swell. Inside, you can be anchored in flat water even if the wind is blowing hard. The downside is that going through the passes is not always easy. As the tides and winds change, the ocean flows in and out of the atolls though the passes and the currents can get quite strong - up to 8 knots in some cases and, if the wind is opposing the current, really big waves can develop. There's no way that Architeuthis (or most cruising boats for that matter) could make progress against an 8 knot current so we had to time our entrance carefully.

Our first atoll was Makemo and we figured out that we would just be able to make the last slack current before the cold front hit bringing rain and higher winds but we'd have to hurry. Of course the winds decided to be fickle during the passage. We'd topped off the fuel in Nuku Hiva and didn't relish the idea of trying to enter the pass and make our way through the lagoon to the anchorage in rain and high wind so we opted to motor in conditions where, on more relaxed passages, we would have been content to just sail along slowly in light airs. We still like to avoid motoring if we can so our rush also inspired us to dig out our light air sails in an attempt to keep our speed up and get to Makemo in time. Fortunately, we were sailing with Shalimar and Alex was able to get the first ever photos of Architeuthis with all of her light air sails up - including our new asymmetrical spinnaker (rigged like a symmetrical spinnaker in this case because the wind was well aft).

After a full night of motoring, we made it to the pass at Makemo at the appointed time - just before slack current. We could see the dark clouds and rain of the cold front approaching from the southwest so we decided to tackle the pass before the current had completely slacked off. We bounced around in the turbulent waters and had to run our engine a bit harder than I typically like to and at one point were only making about 1.5 knots against the current (I'd guess the current was running a little less than 5 knots) but we made it through alright with Shalimar right behind us. Now we just had to make it to the anchorage in the southeast corner of the atoll, about 10 nm away.

When transiting through the lagoons of these atolls, you have to keep a lookout for coral heads. Some of these coral heads make miniature seamounts that reach from the bottom at 100 feet or more up to within a foot of the surface with a slope so steep that the depth sounder gives you practically no warning. Some of the atoll lagoons are well charted and have their hazardous coral heads marked. Makemo is not one of these. The only portion of the lagoon that's charted and marked is the area within a short distance of the pass. We knew the best protection from the coming winds would be found in the southeast corner so we hurrying off into uncharted waters. The good news is that, in the right condition such as those we were experiencing, the shallow dangerous coral heads are really easy to see. As long as the sun is above or behind you and the water's not too choppy, you can see these things coming from way off and steering around them is no problem.

The first hour and a half of our two hour trip down the inside of the lagoon was no problem but we could see the dark clouds closing in. With a couple of miles left to go, the sun got swallowed up by the dark clouds and what had been total flat calm turned into light wind out of the north. A few minutes later, the wind veered around to the south and picked up. Then it picked up a lot. Since we could still make out the shallow areas despite the deteriorating conditions and were just expecting the wind chop to build and build, we decided to just open up the throttle, keep the mainsail flying and get into the anchorage as quickly as we could. It was a bit tense for a while as we plowed through fairly shallow water at 6 plus knots but we made it to our intended anchorage and got the hook down before things got too bad. Shalimar opted for a slower approach but also made it without any problem albeit quite a while after us.

The wind blew hard for the next three or four days, reaching almost 40 knots during one gust but mostly hanging around the 20 to 25 knot neighborhood. Dinghy rides are really unpleasant and wet in that kind of wind so we spend a lot of the time just relaxing inside the boat but we were glad that we'd made the trek down to the southeast side of the lagoon. Our anchor held perfectly and we didn't roll at all because the ring of the atoll protected us from the swell. We later heard that the boats anchored closer to the pass and tied to the pier there had much more roll going on so we were glad we opted to trek down to the corner of the lagoon.

Traditional Double Canoes come to Taipivai Bay

We delayed our departure to the Tuamotus once again so we could see a fleet of seven traditional double canoes, called vaka moanas, come into Taipivai Bay on Nuku Hiva. The Marquesans threw them a grand party and served up a fabulous traditional lunch of assorted fruit and meats that we were invited to partake in as well. Five of the seven voyaging canoes sailed all the way from Auckland, New Zealand. The other two joined them in Fakarava in the Tuamotus, the only other stop before Nuku Hiva. From here they will sail on to Hawaii and then San Francisco. The canoes were constructed mostly out of traditional materials with the help of polynesian experts. Some of the modern modifications include fiberglass hulls and solar powered electric engines to help them on their way when the wind dies. Each canoe is crewed by about 20-30 people representing about ten different south pacific nations. For more information about the voyaging canoes check out the website: http://www.pacificvoyagers.org

We sailed into Controleur Bay just as the canoes were on the way into Taipivai and we caught up with the last canoe right before they doused their second sail. It was quite a magnificent scene; seven traditional double canoes, some with red sails and some with white, coasting into the dramatically beautiful Taipivai Bay, with several massive waterfalls dotting the distant scenery amidst the lush steeply sloping valley walls, sporadically illuminated by bursts of sunlight as the clouds passed by. Many Marquesans were out in their outrigger canoes welcoming the fleet and singing/chanting words in Marquesan. The crews on the vaka moanas often replied in their own versions of the polynesian dialect. The whole thing really gave us the surreal feeling of being transported back in time.

Soon all the boats were anchored and all the crews were ashore. We hurried to anchor ourselves and pump up the dingy. We picked up Ryan and Alex on Shalimar and made are way towards the black sand beach, weaving through the seven vaka moanas and admiring the unique artwork and craftsmanship while trying to imagine what it would be like to voyage across the sea on one. The welcoming ceremonies were under way as we drew near the large crowd that was gathered around a circle of open space where all the action was taking place. The seven different boat crews were each individually recognized and welcomed and they in turn performed their own customary greetings of some sort. Drumming accompanied the whole ceremony. The Nuku Hiva dancers performed a traditional Marquesan dance called the Pig Dance and then the male dancers invited all the visiting men to come out into the circle to learn a small part of it. This was a lot of fun to watch and pretty humorous to all those present.

After the welcoming and dancing was done, it was time to eat. A huge spread of all types of fruit from the island was unveiled while the locals went over to the roasting pits to get the meat ready. Soon the meat was bought over by the Marquesan dancers while singing and yelling something about food I presume. It appeared to be a variety of meat including pig, goat, and beef, prepared the traditional way and wrapped in leaves. Jared got himself a gigantic leg of meat to gnaw on while I had a delicious bowl of poisson cru, raw fish with garlic and coconut milk.

After eating to our heart's content, we wandered down the beach a ways a ran into some other cruisers partaking in the festivities. A New Zealander named Simon came over and started talking to us and we all had a million questions for him. He kindly answered them all and we learned a great deal about what life was like sailing aboard the vaka moanas. It sounds like the shape of the hulls has gradually been improved for sailing to windward, so much so that the oldest boat of the fleet is much slower than the newest one. It also sounds like they sail pretty well in general and offer a nice stable platform for the most part. The structure on the top of the middle of the boat houses the galley and all the sleeping births are in the hulls. Everyone takes turns steering the boat with the oar like tiller in the middle and going to windward sounds especially interesting. The skipper must alternate having the rudder in and out of the water to counteract the the boat's desire to head into the wind. To do this, you push up and down on the tiller instead of side to side, no easy feat in big sloppy seas when its really blowing hard!

We are very glad that we stayed for this special event and we feel very lucky to have witnessed it. I hope that our friends in California check out the itinerary on the website link above and make plans to go and see the vakas sailing under the Golden Gate bridge. It would be well worth it!

Rough Plans

We may not be able to update again before we head off to the Tuamotus so here's the plan:

We are going to a different bay, just west of here, tomorrow for a big festival they are having to welcome some polynesians arriving on traditional sailing catamarans. After that, we will top off our water and food and head out on Monday or Tuesday. Not sure if we will have internet again before we leave, but our friends on Shalimar have a modem so we can email you from their email if need be to let you know it's time to start checking our position again.

Our rough Tuamotu iterneray is as follows:



4-5 day passage to Makemo atoll

2-4 days in Makemo

1 day passage to Katiu atoll

2? days in Katiu

1 day passage to Tahanea atoll

3-4 days in Tahanea

Overnight passage to Fakarava atoll

5-8 days in Fakarava (internet possible)

Possible stop in Toau, just north of Fakarava time permitting, then on to Tahiti by the end of June, beginning of July. We will be buddy boating with Shalimar. We will only be checking into the Pac Seafarers Net on the passages between here and Makemo and our last atoll (Fakarava or Toau) and Tahiti (the multi-day passages).

Anaho Bay, Our Brush with Luxury, and Our Return to Taiohae Bay

While driving around Nuku Hiva, we were able to see a little bit of the north coast and we decided it was worth the trip up there with the boats to see it in a bit more detail. We left Taiohae Bay on the 20th and sailed upwind to Controller Bay on the southwest corner of the island off the village of Hooumi. On the way there we nervously watched behind us as a huge 120' sailboat passed uncomfortably close to Ryan and Alex. Shalimar (Ryan and Alex's boat) makes Architeuthis look small but this boat made Shalimar look like a toy. Shalimar escaped and anchored next to us for the night. In the morning we all sailed out around the point, up the east coast of the island, and around into Anaho Bay near the northeast corner. We arrived considerably ahead of Shalimar and saw the giant mega yacht already at anchor in the bay. Christine and I anchored while grumbling amongst ourselves about the evil James Bond yacht that had given our friends a scare.

After we'd been anchored for a few minutes, a guy came by on a kayak and asked us some questions about our boat and complemented Architeuthis on her good looks. We, of course, love it when people tell us how great our boat is so we invited him aboard so he could admire the woodworking and varnish. It turned out that Murray was one of a small group of friends who had chartered the nearly new and very very fancy mega yacht called Bliss - the selfsame mega yacht that had scared the pudding out of Shalimar on the previous day. In fact, Murray had been at the wheel. He'd been certain (because the electronic navigation equipment was telling him so) that Bliss was going to pass in front of Shalimar and they probably would have but, as Ryan watched the huge boat barreling toward him unsure if anyone aboard knew there was a fragile wooden boat ahead, he got understandably nervous and started up the engine to try and get out of the way. When Shalimar accelerated, Bliss had to alter course slightly to pass behind rather than in front. Shalimar was on starboard tack and therefore had right of way so, technically, should have stayed on course and maintained his speed. However, I'm of the opinion that in a situation where nobody's racing and you've got a million miles of open ocean to maneuver in the guy at the helm of 22 million dollar high speed mega yacht should cut the little guy some slack and make his pass in a manner which will avoid staining anyone's shorts. We discussed the drama with Murray and he was good natured about the whole thing. So good natured, in fact, that he invited Christine, Ryan, Alex and I over to Bliss for drinks despite the fact that Shalimar hadn't made it into the anchorage yet.

So, at the appointed hour, all four of us loaded into our dinghy and motored over to Bliss. Murray and one of the professional crew members were waiting on the giant fold down swim step thingy on the stern. The crew guy took our line and tied up our dinghy and we went aboard. We met all the people who'd chartered the boat. Aside from Murray, there were two well dressed British couples and the son of one of the couples. As we talked, two crew members in matching dresses with the boat's name embroidered on them continued to appear out of thin air and pour champagne in our glasses - which may help explain why I'm a bit hazy on our hosts' names. There was a Colin and an Alexander and perhaps a John but, regretfully, that's about as much as I can tell you. After a while, we were given a tour of the Bliss's accommodations. The companionway door (if it can be called a companionway at this scale) was a giant translucent double door that silently slid open as you walked toward it. No ducking necessary as we entered the air conditioned interior. It was quite fancy. The galley was literally larger than the entire below deck space on our boat. The engine room was clean enough to eat off of. The state rooms all had the beds meticulously made up with fresh sheets and a little chocolate mint next to the pillow and I came to believe that this bed making and mint distribution thing was a daily occurrence. It was a completely different world from Architeuthis. It was a world that, if given the chance, I probably wouldn't mind becoming accustomed to someday. For now though, I'm happy to be traveling on a smaller scale. If we were aboard a boat like Bliss, I don't think we'd be able to meet and interact with people the way we have. It seems to me that such luxury would have to isolate you not only from the more modest communities that you find on small islands in the south pacific but from the community of cruisers as well. We often approach strangers on boats in anchorages to say hello but, if Murray hadn't approached us, I'm sure we would have been too intimidated by the sheer size and fanciness of Bliss to motor up in our dinghy and knock on the side to say hello.

The next morning Bliss was gone and I failed to get up early enough to get any photos (this also might have had something to do with the bottomless champagne glass) of the outside of the boat so here's one I stole from the internet (in order to get an idea of how big this thing is, try to find the person in the picture - hint: it's the tiny ant sized thing near the port side steering wheel):

We spent several more days in Anaho Bay. We snorkeled, cleaned the bottom of the boat, went on a little hike, and spent some time with some new friends that we'd met in Taiohae. Pierre Paul and his wife Caroline are both doctors from France who've been working in Nuku Hiva for the past year or so. If I were a good blogger I would have already told you about meeting them about a week ago but, alas, I am not. Anyway, we met them in Taiohae bay and they invited us to their house so that we could use their filtration system to fill our water jugs (the tap water available at the dock is not for drinking). We ended up staying for diner and had a great time talking to them and they had told us that they were going to be at Anaho Bay. So we spent an afternoon aboard Shalimar with Pierre Paul, Caroline, and their three kids. Ryan and I rigged up a swing off the bow so the kids could swing out and jump in the water. It ended up being so fun that the kids had to wait in line while we all took our turns on it. Alex took some pictures of us all acting silly on the swing but we haven't copied those from her yet.

After four days in Anaho, we decided it was time to get going so we left on the 25th in squally conditions with lumpy uncomfortable seas and went back to Taiohae Bay after another one day stop at Controller Bay. We were planning on a quick trip to Taiohae for provisioning and the to head out for the Tuamotus almost immediately but the crappy sea conditions and reports we were hearing from boats already on their way convinced us to give it a few more days. We'll make at least one more brief post before we head off so you'll know exactly where we're going and approximately when we expect to arrive.

Nuku Hiva Rental Car Expedition (and a couple of boat pictures)

We teamed up with Shalimar (our friends Ryan and Alex) to rent a little car and tour Nuku Hiva a bit. When I say 'little car', I'm not kidding. I actually had to bow out as driver because I couldn't operate the controls with the seat far enough forward to allow someone to sit in the back seat. Anyway, the car was adequate with me as a passenger and the island was beautiful. For such a small island (well, I guess its the second largest in French Polynesia but it's around 20 miles across at its widest) it has a lot of diversity. The southern coast where we've been anchored is all steep valleys, cliffs, and dense lush vegetation but it turns out there's a desert on the west side of the island (which we didn't get all the way into) and a plateau in the middle that looks like the foothills of the Sierras in California complete with heards of cows and some wild horses running around here and there. A twenty minute drive from hot and humid jungle put us into cool grassy plains and pine forests (pines were introduced after contact with europeans but have spread all over the higher elevations). Ten minutes later we were up on a cloudy windswept ridge looking down at a miniature grand canyon. It was a bit surreal but all of it was beautiful and completely uncrowded. Natural wonders that would have attracted bus loads of camera toting gawkers back home were completely deserted here.

After our tour of the central part of the island, we drove through Taipivai (Melville's Typee Valley) and up to the northeast coast. On the way we stopped at a huge archeological site. We thought we were the only ones there until an old Marquesan dude walked out of the jungle and started talking to us. Luckily, Alex was with us and could translate from French to English for us. It turned out the guy (Alfonse) was the care taker of the site and often worked as a guide for tour groups that sometimes come to the site. He offered to show us around the site and we eagerly accepted. The site was amazing and while it would have been good to see it even without knowing what anything was, it was much better with Alfonse there to explain and Alex there to translate. In addition to being a compendium of historical information, Alfonse was also quite the comedian. He made a number of cannibal jokes and offhand comments about eating tourists that I particularly enjoyed. He probably spent upwards of two hours with us and asked nothing in return. I asked him what he normally charged for tours and we gave him that as thanks. Even with the two dozen or so nasty mosquito bites I ended up with (I was having an allergic reaction to them but seem to be over it now) it was well worth it.

Well pictures are worth a thousand words and I suppose that pictures with captions are worth even more so take a look at the slide show. If you click through to the pictures, on the picasa website, you'll also be able to see a map that shows where each photo was taken.

Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva

Taiohae Bay was a short day sail (about 20 nautical miles) from Ua Pou. All the islands have been beautiful but Nuku Hiva was extra pretty on approach. It was all big rocky cliffs, green jungle, and giant waterfalls. Nuku Hiva is the biggest island in the Marquesas and it's the administrative capital, main shipping port, and so on for the Marquesas. Knowing all this, I assumed that Taiohae to have a bit of that slimy border town feel to it but was pleasantly surprised to find it only marginally less laid back than the other islands we've visited. People here are still friendly but they seem a bit busier and not quite as enthralled with visitors as the people on some of the other islands. Having lived in tourist destination towns myself, I can't say that I blame them. They have a steady enough stream of visitors here that I'm sure the novelty has pretty much worn off.

One of my favorite things about this island is that I've already read about it without really knowing it. In 1842, Herman Melville came here as crew aboard a whaling ship. He and a friend jumped ship right here in Taiohae bay and, with great difficulty, made their way a couple of valleys east and Melville spent a month or more as guest/captive of the indigenous people there. He wrote a more or less factual account in the book 'Typee'. When I first read the book a couple of years ago some differences in the spellings of place names and my lack of familiarity with these islands left me a bit confused as to exactly where all this stuff was taking place. Since arriving here, I've found an electronic version of the book and Christine and I are reading it now on our Kindles. Being here makes the book even more interesting and it's fascinating to see what has and has not changed here in the intervening 170 years.

The first blog worthy thing we did after our arrival here was to go on a hike with some friends from other boats that we hadn't seen since Mexico. We climbed up a trail through the jungle to a rocky overlook near the mouth of the bay. Check out the pictures in the following slide show and be sure to check out the captions. Christine went through the trouble of adding all those in so we wouldn't have to type so much here.

As you can see in the pictures, we also went to church on Sunday. Well, we didn't actually go in (because I had to fix the outboard on the dinghy again so we were late) but we did hang around outside. The church itself was pretty cool. It's built of big stones, many of which show signs of ancient use for tool sharpening and there are a lot of cool wood carvings (that I failed to get good pictures of). One of the sort of curious things that we saw was carvings of the 'Marquasan Cross' on things in the Church. It's a very old symbol from these islands that happens to resemble a swastika. It, of course, has nothing to do with genocide and predates all that nazi business by many hundreds if not thousands of years but it is a bit odd to see it carved into stuff on a church. The singing in the church was beautiful. With very minimal accompaniment from a guitar and a drum, the whole congregation sang hymns in Marquasan that were unlike any I'd ever heard. If all churches had singing like that, there might be a slightly better chance of me signing up for a conversion. ...but a slightly better chance than absolutely no chance at all still isn't anything to get your hopes up about.

Still in Nuku Hiva

We're still in Nuku Hiva. So far we've done a bit of hiking, rented a car to tour the island, met some really nice French people who live here, and, of course, worked on the boat a bit. We have a bunch of photos to sort through and post and we need to write a couple of proper blog entries. We are going to leave Taiohae Bay today and go to Controller Bay and the village of Taipivai (where Herman Melville stayed as detailed in his book 'Typee'). After a day or so there, we'll head around the east end of the island up to Anaho bay. We'll probably stay there for a few days and then head back here to Taiohae bay for some final provisioning before we head out to the Tuamotus. It's only about 500 nautical miles to the Tuamotus but it doesn't sound like we can really count on getting much in the way of provisions out there so we'll stock up here with enough stuff to make it to Tahiti if necessary. At any rate, we'll post more when we stop back here before heading off to the Tuamotus.

Oh yeah, Ryan and Alex on Shalimar are coming with us to Anaho bay and we're going to see if we can all agree on a route through the Tuamotus as well.

Tahuata

Tahuata (not Tuahata as I misspelled it previously) was great. Hiva Oa was probably already worth the ordeal of the passage out here but, in case it wasn't, Tahuata definitely was. According to one of our guide books, Tahuata is the smallest inhabited island in the Marquesas archipelago, has no bank, and just one bed and breakfast type place to stay. There's a really nice anchorage on the island so quite a few cruising boats stop there but it's definitely not what you'd call a tourist destination.

The wind was blowing pretty good on April 20th so it only took us about 2 hours to sail south out of Tahauku Bay near Atuona on Hiva Oa, around Teaehoe Point and through the Bordelais Channel that separates the two islands and around to Hanamoenoa Bay on the northwest side of Tahuata. We anchored in about 25 feet of water clear enough to watch the anchor dig into the sand below us. We spent the first couple of days there working on repairs and projects, snorkeling, and hanging out with our friends Alex and Ryan who followed us from Hiva Oa on their wooden Mariner 40 'Shalimar'.

On May 3rd, 3 guys in a wooden outrigger canoe came into the anchorage and went around to all the boats offering to trade fruit for stuff. One of the guys, Nahau, is a surfer and, seeing our surfboards, tried to tell us about waves in the area. We speak almost no French and none of these guys speak much English so the signal to noise ratio was pretty dismal until our friends Ryan and Alex came to the rescue. Ryan is from California so he's as confused by French as we are but Alex grew up in France and went to University in Paris. She was able to ascertain that in addition to telling us about some waves that could be surfed, the three guys (Fiu, Mohuho, and Nahau) were inviting the four of us to go spear fishing with them the next morning and then eat with them at their place afterward. Christine and I have both been hoping for the opportunity to hang out with locals, get to know them, and see how they live so we answered with an enthusiastic yes.

We waited for an hour or more past the appointed time for our new friends to show up but since we understand that things happen at a different pace out here we weren't bothered. Once the outrigger had arrived, Christine and I hopped into our dinghy, Alex and Ryan got into theirs, and we followed Fiu and Mohuho around the point and out to a little reef a ways offshore. Christine got ready to throw our little dinghy anchor into the water and Mohuho motioned for her to stop. Instead, Fiu dove down 25ft or so and tied outrigger's bow line to a some exposed rock on the reef below and then directed us to tie our dinghies to the outrigger. They know the value of their reef and don't want anchors damaging it.

For the next hour or two, we snorkeled around watching giant manta rays (one having a wing span of at least 10 or 12 feet) swim under us while Fiu and Mohuho collected lunch with their spear guns. They got a large-ish Octopus (I think it was cyanea), some kind of snappers, and some surgeonfish. Given how much I appreciate cephalopods for their intelligence and complex behavior, I had mixed feelings about seeing an octopus struggling and inking with a spear through its face but, since these guys had been nice enough to feed us and invite us along, I wasn't about to complain. The shallowest part of the reef was over 20 feet below us so it took some skill to dive down there, line up your shot, and spear a fish. When they saw that I could make it to the bottom and stay there a little while, one of the guys offered to let me take a shot with his spear gun. I gave it a try and missed my fish and, unfortunately, bounced the spear off a rock. I felt like a bit of a doofus but the spear didn't appear to be bent and it wasn't the only time that day that a spear hit a rock. Ryan let me try with his pole spear too. I managed to touch a fish with that but didn't manage to actually kill anything. Part of my trouble was that, aside from a couple fish I'd seen them spear, I wasn't sure which were good to eat and I didn't want to kill something we weren't going to use. When we were all done, Mohuho, asked me to go down and untie their bow line from the reef below and I felt somewhat redeemed from poor spear fishing performance when I was able (just barely) to get the line up on my first try.

When all the boats were untied, we went in and landed on the sandy beach of the little bay were they live. Nahau, the surfer guy we'd met previously, and Moana, who we hadn't met before, already had a ton of fruit laid out on the table, had the grill going, and were preparing some kind of marine snail (the shells were already gone so I never did figure out what they were). While the octopus and fish was cooking, they gave us coconuts to drink from and showed us how to eat some unfamiliar fruit and how to scrape out and eat the lining of the coconuts after we'd finish drinking the fluid part.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm terrified of eating unfamiliar foods. However, in this setting, not wanting to try to explain to our hosts through Alex's translation why I was refusing to put the snail in my mouth, I managed to eat it. ...not that it was easy. The taste wasn't bad at all but the texture (and probably the thought of what it looked like) gave my gag reflex a couple of kicks that I had to suppress. I made it through the whole meal without anyone noticing my odd food phobias while silently thanking my lucky stars that vegetables don't make up much of the diet around here.

It turned out that all of that was just appetizers. The fish and octopus got done on the grill and they brought out several pots of stuff they'd prepared earlier. We were given plates and offered our pick of lobsters, a couple kinds of crab, coconut rice, shredded coconut salad, octopus, a few different kinds of fish, salted pork, and more fruit than you could shake a stick at. We had brought rum and soda to share and Alex a Ryan brought a bottle of wine. Both were well received.

While we ate, Alex asked them all of our questions and translated their responses for us. They told us that their family had owned the beach and the valley behind it for as long as anyone could remember and that the four of them lived in the village (Vaitahu) part of the year and in this valley the rest of the time. They made a living there by producing copra. Copra is basically dried out coconut innards. They gather coconuts of the appropriate ripeness, bust them open on a stick or metal bar stuck into the ground and lay the bits on a drying stand with a removable corrugated metal roof. When it rains they slide the roof over the copra. When the sun comes out, they slide the roof open again. Once they have enough dried out chunks, they sell them to a boat that comes to the island and takes it off to be turned into coconut oil. On the upside, this work didn't look to be dangerous or particularly strenuous and you couldn't ask for a more scenic job site but of course there's a downside. We didn't ask exactly how much this work paid but it was pretty clear that it didn't pay much. They had no electricity in their valley, no car, and no road to drive it on if they did have one. On the other hand, their water came from a well in the valley, they had pigs running around all over the place they could eat, and they also had access to all the fruit and fish they needed so their expenses were pretty minimal and they did have a few modern luxury items. In addition to the 20 + year old wooden outrigger with a small modern outboard engine, they also had a very fast looking fiberglass racing outrigger. For entertainment, they also had an iPod, a PSP, a cell phone, and some portable speakers

.

Alex probed them a bit about things they wished they had and general dissatisfactions about living on the island. Fiu mentioned wishing they had some solar panels and batteries so they could charge their gadgets and have better light at night but the main complaint didn't really have to do with something that could be bought. With only around 30 or so different families living on the island (and most of them being related to some degree), it seems that finding a girlfriend is pretty much an off-island activity and without much in the way of financial resources, getting off the island isn't easy. Nahau solves this problem by playing football (or what we Americans, for some reason, insist on calling soccer) in a league that takes him to games all over the archipelago where he has a chance of meeting girl who's not his cousin. As far as I could tell, the other guys just resigned themselves to the lack of female company.

After lunch they took us on a little tour of their valley. Fiu showed us the pig / goat trap they have set up. He even sprang it for us and showed us how to rebuild it. Nahau tried to show Ryan and I how to climb a coconut tree. I only got 4 or 5 feet off the ground before giving up. Ryan did a bit better but, for the time being, I think all the coconuts in the tall trees are safe from us. The valley was beautiful and really reminded me of reading Typee by Herman Melville (though that book is actually set on Nuku Hiva to the north - where we'll be going soon). The only draw back to the place was the bazillions of mosquitos.

After some group photos, we asked them to come by the boat on the following day so we could give them some gifts to thank them. We had offered to load their iPod and PSP up with music and the photos we'd taken so we took those with us back to the boat. They insisted that we take the leftover food and fruit so we loaded up our dinghies and headed off. Fiu and Nahau came by the next day (with even more fruit for us) and we invited them aboard. We managed to have a somewhat successful conversation with them in broken French and English, we played the guitar a bit, and showed them where we'd put the music and photos on their devices. We also gave them a little LED lantern we had that could be charged with a hand crank. We'd just about exhausted our conversational abilities when Alex and Ryan again came to our rescue and helped us say our goodbyes and get their address.

All in all it was an amazing experience. It was great to meet these guys who, in terms of material wealth, don't have much but exhibit such generosity and dignity. They knew that we had stuff that they would like to have and made it clear that they were willing to trade what they had for it but never asked to be given anything and never complained or showed the slightest irritation when they asked for something in trade that we were unwilling to part with. It was also really cool to meet people who have such a strong connection with their home. Being from a country populated predominantly by immigrants, it's amazing to me to imagine living in the valley that's belonged to your family for as long as anyone can remember.

Tattoos in Ua Pou

Our trip from Tahuata to Ua Pou did not pan out as we thought it would. What we estimated to be about a 12 hour passage took us about 17 hours and we were faced with the choice to heave to till morning or attempt the anchorage at night. Fortunately, the anchorage at Hakahau was pretty well lit up by lights lining the breakwater and all around the little cove. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of space to tuck into behind the breakwater where the best protection from the surge was and the other two boats there had both bow and stern anchors out. We managed to get ourselves situated right between them without too much drama, although the guy from the boat to starboard zoomed over in his dingy to try to help us out right in the middle of it all causing a little confusion. We paid him a visit the next day on our way to shore and it turns out that he, Eric, actually lives in Ua Pou 6 months of the year on his boat with his wife, Marielle, and two small daughters Make and Yaelle. Eric and Marielle are both doctors at the local hospital. They made their way over from France about 3 years back and cruised all over French Polynesia before settling in Ua Pou. They say that Ua Pou has the nicest people of all the places they've been and that it is their favorite island. Eric also had a very nice tattoo that we asked him about and he informed us that his good friend Kina was the man to see for a tattoo of that quality, thus began our tattoo mission.

Eric invited us over to their boat, Le Ouistiti (The Monkey in french?), that evening and we talked more about how we could go about getting tattoos from Kina. Turns out Kina lives in a village on the other side of the island but he usually comes to Hakahau once a week to see family. Eric was nice enough to call him for us and arrange a meeting. Eric and Marielle were really cool and we learned a lot about the region from them, including the best place to haul out the boat if we decide to do something about the boot stripe and bottom paint before New Zealand.



We spent the next couple of days checking out the sleepy little village of Hakahau, working on the boat, and Jared tried out the little surf break in the anchorage. Then on Tuesday we met up with Kina and headed over to his sister's house. Bill and Sue from Dilligaf came along so Bill could get a tattoo and Alex and Ryan from Shalimar came as well to observe and of course, as always, to translate (thanks Alex!). Kina's very pregnant sister, her husband, and her mother gave us a warm welcome and we felt comfortable at once. I volunteered to go first and Alex helped me discuss what it was I wanted with Kina. A man of few words, he sat there nodding and holding his chin looking very serious. You definitely got the sense that he takes his art very seriously and really puts his whole heart and mind into understanding his subject as best he can. I had decided on the area around my ankle bone and that I wanted a shark, a symbol of the journey there, a symbol of my love for Jared, and a symbol for the family I hope to have in the future. After he did a rough sketch on my ankle and I confirmed that it looked good, he got to work. It definitely hurt a bit more than I thought it would, kind of like I was being cut into with a knife or something. I winced a lot and was breathing pretty hard to get through certain areas, but I didn't cry. It was over within the hour, thank goodness! (I don't know how Jared managed to sit for a total of 20 hours to get his squid tattoo.) The result is a amazing and I am so happy with it. I really love the way some polynesian tattoos accentuate the natural lines of the body and that is exactly what I got. Jared took video of him describing each little detail so we would never forget. Jared was next, and then Bill. They both chose to get bands around their arms below the elbow. Jared's has a special symbol to represent his grandfather and father because of all the invaluable mechanical knowledge that was passed down through them that led to Jared having the necessary skills to do this trip. He also has a symbol of our marriage and one for the journey here.









We sat around with Kina's family all morning talking with them and sharing photos (I brought the iphone which has some wedding pics) and information about the island and their lives. They went outside and came back in with bags full of oranges and limes for all three boats. Such generous and friendly people! We were thrilled to once again get an inside look at how people live on these islands and spend some time with them. We can't thank Alex enough for all the translating and Eric for arranging it all for us.

Lethargy at Sea

You know that previous post about the first day out on the passage? Well, I started that post on the first or second day of the trip but didn't finish it until about two weeks later and this, the next post, I just now started and we're probably less than 24 hours from the end of the passage to the Marquesas. This was not the plan. The plan was to write a post every couple of days so that, when we arrived at an internet connection, I could post an exhaustive account of the passage. Other facets of the plan included things like learning french and reading a bunch of scientific journal papers and other productive uses of all the spare time we'd have. Well, very little of that productive stuff happened, least of all the blog post preparation.

What happened? Well, I can't really claim that there was a lack of free time. There were sporadic gobs of free time but most of it was a weird sort of low quality free time that I hadn't expected. When the winds were light, we were busy constantly messing with the sails try and keep the boat moving and prevent the sails from flapping around uselessly and jerking the rigging around. When it was blowing really hard, we were busy worrying, adjusting stuff, and generally just being scared. On the many occasions when things were broken, we were busy fixing them and cursing loudly. On the fairly rare occasions when the seas were calm and the wind was just right, we wanted to relax and enjoy the moment rather than type on the computer. Ruling out these circumstances, there was still a pretty significant amount of time to waste but it turns out that most of this remaining free time was crappy low-quality free time. We spent a pretty large percentage of our passage in really lumpy confused seas while trying to sail nearly dead downwind. This creates a pretty unpleasant and unpredictable motion on the boat. Sitting in one place isn't too bad but the normal daily tasks you don't usually even think about become quite a chore. Doing dishes, getting dressed, taking a leak, eating... all those things become such a nuisance as the boat does it's best to bounce you off the walls and ceiling that you use up all your energy just existing. Combine this with the mild sleep deprivation inherent in having a two person crew and you end up in a sort of sea torpor.

Once one enters this state and becomes a sea-sloth, the list of acceptable pastimes shortens significantly and the thought of doing anything productive becomes anathema. Acceptable sea-sloth pastimes include staring at the walls, thinking about productive things that you should be doing, wondering what important piece of equipment is going to break next, and making half-hearted threats and obscene gestures at dolphins and sea-birds. "You keep ridin' my bow wave Flipper and you're liable to end up with a boat hook in your blow hole." "I didn't epoxy and paint those spreaders so that some stupid booby could stand on 'em and crap all over my deck. You and your blue feet can get the !#@& out of here." Sure that was kind of fun for a while but the number one pastime of the sea-sloth ended up being reading. You could wedge yourself into a corner with a book or, more often, a Kindle and give your brain a rest from the current circumstances. I've read at least 13 books on the Kindle since we left Mexico but I've kind of lost track at this point. So, yeah, instead of writing blog entries I've been reading novels.

It doesn't seem like typing up a blog entry should be such a chore but there's something about typing and staring at a computer screen while rolling around in a boat that is particularly unpleasant. As much as I'm sure I'll someday regret not having written more, I don't foresee any major improvements in my blogger work ethic on the horizon. I think that part of what happens is that I get behind a few days and end up feeling like I have to write about everything that's happened since my last post. I get overwhelmed by the thought of all that writing and just give up altogether on the idea of comprehensive blow-by-blow coverage (If you've been reading this blog since we left California, you probably had no idea that kind of coverage was even a goal). I was thinking of making another post right after this one but I think I'm going to go read more of the Elmore Leonard novel I started yesterday.

First Day of the Passage from Mexico to the Marquesas

We left Barra de Navidad yesterday (March 26th, 2011) at around 11am. The winds were pretty light and directly out of the west (the direction we wanted to go) for the first few hours. There were sea birds diving all around us and we could see the water roiling with bait fish and their predators so we decided to put a line in the water and see what happened. Given our dismal record as fishermen (fisherpeople?), we weren't really expecting to catch anything. I had put the rod in its holder on the rail and started to work on the daily lubrication of the windvane steering system (see previous entry on the subject) when the line started paying out of the reel. My first reaction was to accuse Christine, who was sitting near the rod, of bumping it and letting line out. Thankfully, she pointed out the obvious for me; there was actually a fish on the line.

This was my first time with a fish over the size of about ten inches on a line and I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to do so, like any good American, I just did what I'd seen people do on TV. I took the rod out of the holder, braced in on my waist, let the fish run a bit of line out, increased the line tension, yanked the rod up in the air when I felt a little slack, and cranked the reel as I brought the pole back down. Apparently, this was the correct thing to do because I soon had some sort of tuna flopping around on the deck. It actually was pretty damn fun to reel the critter in, see what it was, and hoist it on deck. I can understand a bit of why people get so into sport fishing but there was one problem. Once we had it on deck, we quickly realized that while we knew the general principles of what comes next, we were really fuzzy on the details.

Christine gaffed our catch on to the deck where it promptly started to bleed all over the place. I knew that some violent clubbing of the fish's head was called for so I looked around from something club like. The only thing at hand was a long metal handle for our windless so I used that to whacked the crap out of fishy friend. More blood followed and this was where our grasp of fishing procedures ended and Christine had to consult a fishing handbook that we had on board. Turns out there's a lot to the process of killing one of these things correctly. Who knew? We followed the instructions as best we could and got some big fillets out of it but the meat was very dark. We ate as much of it as we could but it didn't taste great. I think we blew it on the processing and we felt pretty bad about killing a decent sized fish that high up in the food chain - not to mention the mess we made on deck - so we made a new rule. We will do no more fishing until two conditions are satisfied: 1) Our supply of fresh meat is exhausted. 2) We read up on how to properly kill these things for maximum tastiness.

Just to make matters more entertaining, we were under sail the whole time this was going on and with all the fish handling, boat handling took a back seat so we were steering a somewhat erratic course. It just so happened that the Mexican navy was within sight and decided to motor over on their big scary looking steel boat to have a look at us. We smiled and waved as they came around behind us and photographed the back of our boat, presumably to read our name and hailing port off the transom. Just as they passed behind us, I managed to lose hold of the bucket I was using to pull up salt water to rinse the deck with and it went overboard. So, within plain view of the navy, we tacked around awkwardly while still managing fishing gear and made a failed attempt to retrieve our bucket. Oh well, we have lots of buckets.

Ready to go!

Architeuthis is ready. We are loaded to the gills with food, water, beer, booze, surfboards, spare parts, and other miscellaneous crap. We are sitting lower in the water than ever before and kind of wish that we'd painted a little higher with the antifouling paint. Anyway, we're really excited and looking forward to the passage and to the arrival in the Marquesas. We'll talk to you all once we get there!