Pitufa.at

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• Merry Christmas!

  Our Christmas this year is quite special as we are invited to a Polynesian wedding. Our friends here in Anatonu (N side of Raivavae) have done their best to organise this big event according to the pandemic rules. A very traditional wedding with earth ovens (umu), Tahitian dancing, etc. in combination with disinfectant, masks and distancing rules The highest tree this year in Pitufa’s sprayhood… Continue reading »

• Gluten-free cruising

  Ever since Christian had some health problems 5 years ago we’ve been cooking and baking gluten-free. In the beginning that was quite a challenge: I googled recipes and dismissed most because we couldn’t get the ingredients for them out here. I experimented a lot and found a few basic rules for gluten-free flour: – corn starch (available in minimarkets around the world) makes doughs hard… Continue reading »

• Miss Pfaff

  We managed to get several metres of heavy-duty dacron material (some from a sailmaker after all others had refused to sell any, some from fellow cruisers–thanks!), got the sail down, stuffed it into the saloon and set to work. The photo’s not quite realistic, we didn’t have a third person to take the pic so you can’t see how Christian had to hold up the… Continue reading »

• 10 Fun Ways To Flood A Bilge…

  Birgit Hackl, Christian Feldbauer: 10 Fun Ways To Flood A Bilge, All At Sea Caribbean, November 2020, p. 38–42. Download the whole magazine for free or read the online version of this article.

• Gennaker

  This morning the wind dropped to 5 to 9 knots and Pitufa was stumbling along goose-winged. We got out the gennaker–it took us about an hour until we had everything sorted out, quite a cumbersome procedure. Now Pitufa’s flying along under that huge blue-yellow lightwind sail and it’s so calm that Leeloo came up to check whether we’re already at anchor. Pitufa’s companionway ladder is… Continue reading »

• Almost like at anchor

  We’re having a slow, but comfy ride. A bit rolly sometimes, but mostly like being at anchor. I’ve written two articles in two days and now I’m working on a ‘through the tuamotus’ gallery for our blog. Christian’s proof-reading my book and programming. Very different from our recent trips (climbing along walls, extreme cooking with ballistic ingredients, but mostly seasickish lying around, trying to hold… Continue reading »

• Hunting and fishing

  In some remote places of French Polynesia there is still an abundancy of fish and clams on the reefs and coconut crabs hide on motus. The resources of such tiny eco-systems are very limited though and overhunting and overfishing is always a problem when locals do raids without much thought of sustainability. Cruisers sometimes go along with this ‘living off the land’ mentality and get… Continue reading »

• Protecting birds

  We are very worried about shrinking bird populations in French Polynesia. Locals burn down motus for more palm tree plantations, but also cruisers unthinkingly disturb the few remaining ‘wild’ little islands. If you get lucky and find one of those motus with shrubs, high, deciduous trees and circling birds explore with care: you might see red-footed boobies nesting in trees, frigate birds, noddies and white… Continue reading »

• Article on our Mooring Project for Rapa Iti in Yachtrevue Magazine

  Christian Feldbauer, Birgit Hackl: Mit Rat und Tat–Eine Muring für Rapa Iti, Yachtrevue, August 2020, p.40–43.

• New Gallery Viewer!

  Yeah, our blog has finally got a new photo-gallery viewer! It’s modern, intuitive, user-friendly, supports swiping, and works great on desktop as well as mobile devices (at least in my humble opinion). Please let me know if you encounter any bugs. Enjoy all our galleries with the new viewer–happy swiping!

• Article on shaft seals in All-at-Sea August issue

  Birgit Hackl, Christian Feldbauer: Dripless Shaft Seals, All At Sea Caribbean, August 2020, p. 40–44. Free download from allatsea.net.

• Post forwarding

  Dlvr.it seems to work! As we blog bilingual, I added another service to share our German posts to another facebook page @Pitufa.at for our German-speaking friends. Another Test…

• Automatically posting to facebook?

  I am testing a service to automatically share our blog posts on our facebook page. It’s called dlvr.it, and I’m not sure yet whether it works or not. We will know as soon as this post shows up at @sy.pitufa…

• Happy birthday Leeloo

  Sometime in July our Leeloo turned 20–quite an age for a cat… She’s seen a lot during this long life: she lived in our garden flat with us in Austria, went on a student exchange with me to Madrid as a kitten, roamed Swedish forests, resided in our British ‘long garden’ in Cambridge and when we decided to start sailing in 2009 came along on… Continue reading »

• ProfiSeal Drip-Less Shaft Seal–Long-Term Test

  Pitufa’s previous owner was German, so she came with many gadgets ‘made in Germany’. One of those is our shaft seal: a ProfiSeal (www.profiseal.com), based on the design of drip-less face seals. Instead of a flimsy rubber harmonica (like on the PSS), it features a solid metal housing that is flange-mounted to the stern tube. Inside the housing, a rotary unit (fixed to the shaft)… Continue reading »