April 16 - Tahuata & Ua Pou, Marquesas

Blog 4.16 Tue
STATUS REPORT:
Lat. 10.8 deg. South; 141.8 deg. West
140 Mi SW of Futu Hiva, 300 mi to Takaroa, Tuamotu Is.
[amended at 13:40 to 332 mi to Ahi, bypassing Takaroa - too sketchy]

Sailing on mainsail and spinnaker, broad reach in 15kt winds, doing 8kt SOG.
Beautiful crystal clear day with few clouds and hot sun.  Steady 13-16 kt winds from ENE since dawn.  Light 5kt winds overnight in lumpy seas with lots of rolling.  Expect to make our first landfall in the Tuamotus at the atoll of Ahe then on to Rangiroa 70 mi to the west.

TAHUATA.  I cannot believe it's been over a week since I sat down to write, but we had a busy (and wifi-less) few days after Fatu Hiva.  Last Tue. we sailed to Tahuata where we found another small village, but this one had a little grocery that took our VISA card, so we bought $100 worth of groceries and snacks, including ice cream pops!




UA POU.  The next morning we set sail for a revised destination - Ua Pou.  This was a long day's sail and we dropped anchor in an isolated cove with no one else around.  There were caves at the waterline on the shore, and two water spouts which sprayed water in the air with every wave that arrived.  We usually take at least a little swim off the back of the boat to cool off after each day, then hose off with some shampoo and soap using the fresh water hose sprayer on the stern.

NUKU HIVA.  On Thursday we sailed to our primary destination in the Marquesas, Nuku Hiva.  This was a windy, close-hauled sail on starboard tack and it felt great to be flying at 8.5 kt over the slightly breaking seas toward the main harbor on Nuku Hiva.  Mike claimed that this was the first time he had a proper starboard tack close-hauled sail since leaving the Mediterranean last fall!!  The trip across the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean has been 95% downwind tradewinds sailing (except as we noted earlier the difficult sailing through the light and variable winds of the doldrums).

The harbor town of Taiohae is based around a large bay with dark volcanic sand beaches.  There are about 3,000 residents so it's a happening place compared to the rest of our stops since Santa Cruz, Galapagos.  There's wi fi, (very painfully slow and difficult), two groceries, 4-5 restaurants, and several small hotels/pensions.  There were probably 25 sailboats anchored in the harbor and most of them were Oysters.  We were amazed, because of the remoteness and small population,  to find that there were two different tour ships with a total of 3,000 passengers that arrived during the last three days of our stay there.  We used Quester's dinghy with its 15hp 2-stroke outboard as our personal taxi to get from the boat to the dock at the edge of town.  Brought back lots of fond memories of our MYSTIQUE's similar dinghy FUN FUN FUN which we unceremoniously tossed in the dumpster just before we sold our boat a year ago.

There were two highlights of our stay on Nuku Hiva.  The first was the very well organized Oyster World Rally party which started at 2:00 Friday and ended after dinner when when we left with Mike and Deb.  the whole island turned out for a cultural extravaganza including native dancing, music, catamaran racing, horseback riding, an unbelievable variety of native dishes for dinner, and a wide variety of local arts and crafts on display and for sale.  Between the Oyster party and the subsequent arrival of two tour boats the town was booming! We went to the Protestant church, which was unlike any other church we've ever been to.  There were Christmas decorations around the alter area including Santa!  The whole service was in Marquesian, except for a few sentences in French to welcome us.  Thank heavens we recognized the French enough to nod appropriately!

The second highlight was renting a small (AIR CONDITIONED!!!) Toyota pickup truck which we drove uphill 3,000' and over two volcanic ridges.  The road was little used and had more switchbacks per mile that Independence Pass.  It was great fun to see the lushness of the interior, the magnificent views, and just to drive on such a road.  The air  temperature at 3,000' was about 70F, so we actually turned off the air conditioner.  Bliss!

Since we have not purchased any cellular phone service for our i-Phone we communicated with each other and we went our different ways ashore using portable VHF walkie-talkies.  Very handy for coordinating activities.

THREE NIGHTS AT SEA.  After some last-minute business ashore on Monday morning, including downloading the tide tables and weather forecast for the Tuomotus, we set sail about 10:30 and have been sailing now for 24 hours.  In that time we have traveled 151 miles or 1/3 of the way.  It could have been much more except we lost our wind last night.  Now we're flying again with the spinnaker and plan to be at our first destination in Tuamotus on Thr. by mid-day.  Compared to the volcanic Panama, Galapagos and Marquesas we have been visiting, the Tuamotus are going to be very different.  They are rings of low-lying coral reefs with a few palm trees surrounding large open shallow bays which once contained volcanic caldrons but have since sunk into the sea.  There are about 73 of these shallow atolls in this chain and there must have been hundreds of ship wrecks there over the centuries because they are so hard to see, especially if you are sailing at night!  We're glad to have our GPSs.