Pitufa.at

French Polynesia has recently allowed boat traffic between archipelagos again (no flights yet). Therefore everybody here in the Gambier is eager to leave, because winter has arrived with a strong, cold Southeasterly (mara’amu) howling over the islands.
Even though the direction of this mara’amu would be good to sail to the warm Tuamotus, conditions are a bit too rough to be fun (4 m waves), so we’re waiting for the next weather window.

In the meantime we’re busy writing and working on the boat, wearing socks and hoodies in the evenings while having a mulled cider for sundowner (instead of the usual cold beer).

On May 17 2013, exactly seven years ago we arrived in French Polynesia for the first time after a 24 day passage from Galapagos. Misled by popular sailing guides we had thought it prudent to wait until the end of the cyclone season, not knowing that this meant the end of summery weather here in the Gambier Islands. We stuck around until August and then fled from the cold, rainy and stormy weather up into the heat of the Marquesas.
We never thought then that we’d stay in FP for such a long time. Even though we explored westwards (Cooks and Tonga) twice, we always came back to the Gambier, our ‘cyclone season base’.

Now it’s getting colder again and usually we’d already be in the Tuamotus at this time of the year, but this year sailboats are not allowed to leave the archipelago they were in when the Covid-19 crisis started. We hope that these restrictions will be lifted before the weather gets nasty. Winter is coming…

Due to the Covid-19 crisis all inter-island travel was forbidden in French Polynesia and boats arriving from Panama/Mexico/Chile/etc. have been ‘piling up’ in the Marquesas and Gambier. It looks like some inter-island travel may be allowed soon and then a fleet will head for the atolls of the Tuamotus.

As we’ve been around the area for 7 years now (and we move a lot and have explored many places off the beaten track) we have seen many examples how not overly well informed ‘newbies’ can make quite a few mistakes at their first encounter with atolls, causing damage to their own boats, but also to nature.

Under our ‘for cruisers’ section you can find lots of blog entries and links to articles about…

- how to enter an atoll safely (not to rely on apps and software, but to arrive early and watch out for phenomena)
- how to navigate safely (not relying on other people’s Waypoints or on charts that are often wrong, but with good light and a look-out on the bow)
- how to anchor around coral (with good light, in water that’s shallow enough to find the sandy spots, with a floated chain and not blindly in the deep with alibi floats)
- how to stay safe at anchor (by keeping an eye on the weather all the time and moving with or in anticipation of shifting winds)
- how to keep good relations with locals (by asking for permission if in doubt and by going to the mayor’s office to find out about local customs/fees)
- how to minimise the impact on wildlife on the few motus that actually still have some (not to greedily stock up with coconut crabs, landcrabs, lobsters as their numbers are reduced already by locals without much sense of sustainability, not to disturb the few motus with bird colonies by having beach parties and bonfires)

If you’re heading towards the South Pacific in the future or if you’re already here, check out our info and feel free to write an email if you have additional questions!

Cruisers traditionally have a strong sense of community, but big anchorages are like big towns–you don’t know your neighbours and you don’t greet people on the streets (e.g. in Tahiti, Marina Taina). In the Gambier there are usually not too many boats around during cyclone seasons, so we tend to know most of them, but with new boats arriving and leaving it’s hard to meet everybody.

This year the COVID-19 lockdown has changed the situation completely: no inter-island travel is allowed, so there’s no fluctuation and by now we know all the crews who are confined to the archipelago with us. Many boats arrived with storm damages after the long trip from Mexico, Panama or Chile and of course there are no new parts available and no repair facilities ashore. Everybody’s helping out with treasures of the bilge, know-how is shared and creative solutions found. Fresh produce is shared, recipes get swapped and dinghies buzz between boats all day long. A crisis can bring out the worst, but also the best in people.

We are at anchor at a motu on the outer reef at the moment, where locals regularly swing by to forage, but the birds, fishies, shells, snails and crabs have nothing to fear from us–we only hunt for pics.
Our daily menus consist of the local veg and fruit that are readily available: papaya, bananas and (still) breadfruit). We creatively cook around the world with these ingredients. Dinner preparations usually start with the question ‘Which country shall it be tonight?’ and then we improvise.

Sometimes we buy a bag of ‘korori’ at a pearl farm and feast on luxury food for little money. Korori is the Japanese term for the mussel of the pearl oyster–those oysters that have not produced a pretty pearl are cracked open anyway, so we might as well top our curries, stews, salads, pasta and wok dishes with them.

Tahiti and Moorea (where 56 cases of covid-19 have been recorded so far, with only very few severe cases) are still in lock-down until the end of April, but the outer covid-free islands have been allowed to ease the restrictions. Now alcohol is sold again (only wine and beer in limited amounts though) and people are officially able to do ‘water activities’ again. Only large gatherings are still banned.

It looks like French Polynesia will have to self-isolate for a long time still without international or inter-island flights. For a country that relies on tourism as a main income that’s of course tough. So far the shelves here and in Tahiti are still full and we hope that supplies will keep coming in.

The volcanic islands of the Gambier are very fertile, but only few people grow vegetables and there’s hardly any local produce for sale. We always felt it was a shame that locals prefer to buy French fries from the store (instead of eating local breadfruit, maniok, taro or sweet potatoes) and lather them with Ketchup (instead of growing tomatoes). We hope that this crisis will raise awareness for the importance of local produce and that more people will start growing things. So far unfortunately the only change we see is that foraging has become more popular with people going out to the motus more often to hunt for crabs, lobsters, fish, etc.

We have tried a few different sailmail and winlink stations and have found some reliable connections to get weather, emails and even the bbc and reuters newsfeed. Additionally we informed boats over in the main village that the mobile phone network was down–maybe that helped or it was just a coincidence, but the network’s back up! That’s nice for us, but vital for the handful of locals who live away from the main island in quarantine and couldn’t even phone their families on other islands for a while…

Today is day 14 of the quarantine in the Gambier–so far we have not heard of any covid-19 cases in the village and we really, really hope that it stays this way. The next supply ship will arrive in 10 days, then the next quarantine countdown will start ticking again… We won’t go there as we have all the supplies we’ll need for the next few months, but of course many other cruisers and most locals are looking forward to the ship despite the health risk it imposes. Testing the supply ship crews before they leave Tahiti would lower the risk for the outer islands, but we don’t think that’s being done yet.

So far there are only around 20 sailboats in the Gambier (and it is no longer a port of entry so no more new boats should arrive), so we are not perceived as a great competition for the local population regarding supplies etc. We get the feeling that the people here realise that we’re just as well quarantined as they are (or even better) and we haven’t had any negative encounters. On the contrary: locals make an effort to supply the anchorage in Rikitea with eggs and even fresh produce. We heard that cruisers in the Marquesas have collected info about skilled professionals among the sailors to offer support to the commune–a great idea and one we should propagate here as well.

I usually get up in the morning, put the coffee on the stove, turn on the computer and get weather forecasts, news and emails with a wobbly internet connection via the local mobile phone network while the water in the espresso-pot bubbles up (every other day I whip up a bread dough with my third and fourth hand simultaneously, but that’s another blog entry).

This morning neither the data-stick nor the telephone showed a single bar of phone connection. Hmpf. Whenever we’re away from civilisation I do the above mentioned ritual with our SSB radio (and pactor modem), but when I got a connection to our usual Sailmail station (private network of radio stations) I got a message that the station had been without internet connection for 107 hours. No internet, no messages. Double-hmpf.

In the end I got weather via the Winlink station in Hawaii (network of stations for HAM users), but as US winlink stations no longer serve non-US-citizens (apart from weather forecasts) I still had no emails. In the end another sailmail station in Niue provided a very weak link to download emails and we read our usual morning info hours after coffee.

All those complications made us contemplate what would happen if those services on which we rely for vital weather info and our connection to the world should suddenly stop working. Normally impossible, but who would have thought that curfews could be imposed, flight connections shut down and shops closed indefinitely? Nothing seems certain anymore.

Our neighbour’s practising using a sextant and learning astronavigation in case GPS should fail…

The mobile phone network is still down, but If you see this blog entry I’ve managed to find a sailmail station

French Polynesia has been in a lock-down for three days now. The rules are very strict: people must stay in their homes except for very urgent errands, cruisers are not allowed to go ashore, all water activities are banned, etc.

We were able to get some diesel and petrol from the supply ship two days ago, now we are provisioned for several months and won’t be a liability for French Polynesia–no additional mouths to feed and as safe as possible in our self-isolation.

Unfortunately international flights were coming in for a long time, so there are several cases already in Tahiti and even on outer islands. The last flight arrived here in the Gambier two days ago–now we have to wait for 2 weeks and hope that the archipelago will stay covid-19-free…

Despite this serious situation we couldn’t help but smiling when we read on the Austrian news that there are help-hotlines for people who have to cope with working from home, home-schooling their kids, being self-sufficient with long-term provisioning–all things that remind us of the cruising life

Measures and restrictions are changing hourly now, nobody quite knows what’s going on between rumours and info. Yesterday we heard that the island nations further west had closed their ports for sailboats (Cook Islands, Tonga), this morning we got an email from a friend that French Polynesia automatically extends visas for those who need them and that sailboats need to stay in quarantine for 14 days after arrival (time at sea counted), this afternoon we heard that no foreign vessels are allowed anymore here.
I got a text message from the police man in Rapa Iti (Austral Islands) that he’s sorry, but that they won’t allow sailboats in their bay and friends in Raivavae sent the same info. A charter catamaran brought the virus to Fakarava (Tuamotus), so that explains why people now see sailboats with fear and anger…
We’ll see what tomorrow’s news will bring.

Unlike most people who live ashore we are not constantly surrounded by radio and television with hourly news updates. Sometimes we don’t look at news for long periods of time as it’s usually just frustrating to read what’s going on in the world without being able to change anything, so quite often we focus on the big and small worries of our little world here…

We first read about the coronavirus on the BBC newsfeed we get via SSB radio and pactor modem–just headlines no articles. We were confused, asked friends via emails for explanations and started reading the headlines on a daily basis. The speed of the escalation around the world quickly had us worrying badly, we found another source of info, an Austrian news broadcast on the SSB radio (most other countries have stopped those oldfashioned broadcasts in the times of modern communication, but good old Austria still booms out with waltz music followed by news on 6155 AM at 6:00 UTC).

For us out here the world still looks the same and it seems impossible to imagine the locked-down cities, closed schools and shops and empty streets in Europe (and many other parts of the world).

Last week the virus arrived in Tahiti on an Air France plane, nobody knows how many people got infected on that flight and afterwards, but the first case was reported from Fakarava (an atoll in the Tuamotus). Most of the little islands have just a medical centre with a nurse and no means of dealing with an epidemic. The big hospital in Tahiti is far away (e.g. 900 nm from the Gambier where we are). There are rumours that Air Tahiti will stop inter-island flights, but the supply ships are supposed to keep on bringing goods to the outer islands–if they should stay away panic will rise quickly.

While most cruisers we know don’t worry too much we have stocked up on provisioning in the main village here (disinfecting everything and ourselves back home on the boat) and are preparing to go into quarantine. ‘Better safe than sorry’ is a motto that has been working nicely for us before, so we hope that our friends and family ashore stay safe and await further news.