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2020
11
Sep

Cruising in times of Covid19

French Polynesian officials have announced the first 2 deaths: an elderly couple (both 81) died at the hospital in Papeete this week, more than 800 cases have been registered since July 15.
Of course those numbers are still very low in comparison to many other countries, but it’s still alarming…

The majority of the sailboats that were either here before or have arrived this year will stay in French Polynesia, as most islands further west are still closed. Only Fiji has opened its borders (with lots of regulations in place), Indonesia is partly open, New Zealand announced that some applications would be considered if crews would spend more than 50.000 NZD, but that deal is uncertain as well.

We wanted to sail westwards next year, but it’s impossible to make plans at the moment. The future of cruising seems very uncertain at the moment.

2020
09
Sep

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.

2020
09
Sep

Just quickly order some things…

Yesterday we sailed over from Apataki to Fakarava (a rough ride despite a very benign weather forecast) as we urgently have to do some internet chores. In July we were told by other cruisers how easy it was to have things sent from the US by containership: just get an account at DGX, have stuff sent to their store house and they send it on. Straightforward and quick. Great!
We had been wondering how to get a dinghy from Costa Rica a wind generator from the UK to Tahiti anyway, so we got in touch with DGX and ordered a few more things to join the package. Foam for a sofa cushion, fabric for the saloon, cat food for Leeloo–all arrived quickly in L.A.. Only the two important bits (dinghy and wind generator) took their time. By mid-August we got worried and enquired: the sales guy at Apex finally admitted that our dinghy hadn’t even been produced yet(!) and tracking the TNT shipment with our precious generator showed that it was still ‘in transit’ after a month. They had lost it…
Now 2 months have passed since we started the project, the dinghy finally made it, but the generator’s still missing… Different time zones, no internet–we’re close to going bananas with all the delays.

2020
05
Sep

Strangely empty Apataki

There is a haul-out place in the SE corner of Apataki, so we did not expect much wildlife there–surprisingly enough the bommies were quite lively with relatively healthy coral and some small fishies. There were even a few terns flying around. Sailing up the eastern side we were happy to see lots of endemic shrubs, so we expected nesting birds–but nothing. The motus are silent and empty and the few small fish that are around scatter in panic when they see a human shadows. It seems the lagoon is overfished, but then we hardly see local boats. Very strange.

2020
25
Aug

Arrived in Apataki

We arrived during the night, slowed down and tacked up and down fishing–no luck… At 8 the pass looked do-able (still quite some standing waves inside the pass, so wind against current, not so ideal), but the pass is so wide that we went in anyway, were tossed around a bit, but not too badly. Now we’re sailing close-hauled again to the S side of the lagoon, where we’ll anchor behind a little motu, clean the boat and get some rest. The cat ate like a lumberjack during the passage, but did a prolonged howling concert last night–we think she was just bored…

2020
25
Aug

Many factors to consider

‘Sailing where the wind takes us’ sounds romantic, but in the end chosing an atoll relies on many factors: we have to reach it tacking through neighbouring atolls so the wind must play along, atolls have only tiny openings that are greatly affected by tidal currents and a yacht must never try to enter with wind against current (resulting in high, standing waves) and thirdly arrival must be in daylight with good visibilty to reach an anchorage through bommie-strewn waters.

Yesterday we were bashing along against 25 knots of winds, heeling so badly that it was barely possible to walk inside the boat while Pitufa jumped over 2 to 3 m waves–but we were making great speed on a good course. Today the breeze is lighter and we’re much more comfy, but we won’t be able to reach our planned destination Toau (uninhabited atoll, cruiser friends are already there) as it is too far to the east. Ahe was another option, but we won’t make it in daylight tomorrow. So in the end we have decided to try Apataki, which we should be able to reach in 2 or 3 tacks and arrive on an outgoing tide (the pass faces west, the wind’s from the east, so wind and current in one direction) with plenty of time to cross the lagoon in daylight. At least that’s the theory–we’ll see ;-)

2020
23
Aug

Towards the Tuamotus

260 confirmed Covid-19 cases in French Polynesia, the president announced ‘new measures’ for Monday–it’s good timing that we’re fully provisioned, prepared and ready to go. The SE wind (mara’amu) that was blowing strongly for the last few days is easing off a bit and we should have good conditions to set out towards the Tuamotus. Over 70 ring atolls are out there–we’ll set the windvane to 45 degrees and see to which one it will takes us. Some have a pass for boats, others don’t, some have small villages, other are uninhabited–all of them are far from civilisation and it will be nice to be offline again for a change ;-)

2020
19
Aug

Fuel consumption

We went to the petrol station this morning to top up our diesel tank and jerry cans–180 litres and we were full again. To us living on a sailboat means being close to nature and treading lightly, so we try to use less than 300 l a year.

The boat before us (German sailboat, young, hip couple) had taken a long time, so I asked the guy from the station what had kept them. I couldn’t believe my ears (and actually asked twice) when he said that they had filled up 3.000 litres(!). There’s all kinds of different cruising lifestyles… Rushing around on a tight schedule without time and patience to wait for wind, running the generator every day to keep gadgets happy (instead of installing enough solar panels) leads to a high fuel consumption, but it still seems incredible that a single sailboat could use (and store!) that much fuel ;-)

2020
17
Aug

130 new Covid cases

Despite all safety measures it looks like the opening of borders resulted in the second Covid wave we dreaded. In the last month 130 cases were recorded in Tahiti–at the moment the counter hops up by a dozen on a daily basis. Of course that’s nothing compared to other countries, but still very worrying in a large island nation with 67 inhabited islands, but only one big, modern ICU unit in Tahiti…

Looking at supermarkets and other shops with masks and disinfectant everywhere we are still convinced that the locals are doing their best to contain the spreading of Covid-19, but apparently people visiting bars and restaurants have been acting less responsible. We read on the local news that a big ‘cluster’ that spread from papeete (77 cases) was also exported to France (51 people returning from Fr. Poly tested positive)–ironically enough the centre of this outbreak was gendarmes celebrating the end of their time here (of all people!!!) at a restaurant ignoring social distancing and masks…

We fear yet another lock-down with an inter-island travel ban, so we would like to leave Tahiti as quickly as possible. My voluntary quarantine of 7 days is over, we have stocked up on goodies and Pitufa’s basically ready for a passage, but so far there’s no weather window in sight…

2020
12
Aug

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!

2020
10
Aug

Travelling in times of Covid-19

I had to fly to Austria for family reasons and just got back to Tahiti. My greatest worry was that French Poly would close the borders again while I was away, so I only dared to stay for ten days in Austria. I was a bit shocked, how careless the majority of people act there: masks only in supermarkets, waiters wear them half-heartedly underneath their chins and I was frowned upon when I did my disinfecting rituals after touching surfaces…

The journey itself was surprisingly pleasant: The Air France flight via Vancouver (they don’t land in the US at the moment, but divert flights via Canada so I was spared the security hassle in L.A.) was almost empty, the few passengers each had a row for themselves and we could leisurly stretch out in the economy class… Boarding was done in small groups (each part of the airplane a separate zone) and people queued with large distances.
Two weeks later on the way back things had already changed: boarding in a big queue, no more social distancing, but still obligatory masks. It’s amazing how quickly the novelty factor wears off and people fall back into old habits–unfortunately our general motto ‘better safe than sorry’ doesn’t seem to be a wide-spread approach…

Before I flew to Austria I asked the Austrian embassy whether I’d need a covid test and they claimed that it was necessary because of the transit stop in Canada (ridiculous, as I did the test in covid-free Tahiti before flying) and I dutifully got one for 250 Euros–nobody ever asked for it. Passengers were not checked in Paris and in Vienna I simply walked out of the airport without finding anyone I could interest in my pretty Covid-test.

I knew I’d need a negative Covid test in order to make it back to Tahiti, but I was almost impossible to find a lab in Austria willing to perform one: I called ten labs and hospitals, was told that they were only testing on certain days (not suitable for my flight) or not at all in August… Finally I found one in Steyr (Upper Austria), where I then had to queue with 30 other people who needed a test–if you planned on spreading a virus that would be the way to go…
In the end I had a negative test in hand, on top of that I needed a French traveller form, an Etis application (online platform for travellers to French Polynesia) and an insurance certificate, all of them were checked in Vienna, Paris and Tahiti again. Additionally I got a self-test kit which I’ll have to hand in in 4 days. I was veeery nervous about my paperwork, but all worked out nicely and I made it safely back to Pitufa, Christian and Leeloo. Home sweet home!

2020
01
Aug

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.

2020
31
Jul

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…

2020
31
Jul

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

2020
27
Jul

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 our very first journey under sail. She’s lived full-time afloat now for 9 years on Pitufa, a truly old salt ;-)


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