Pitufa.at

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.

Tahiti used to be a very convenient stop-over for us: once a year we went there to do a gigantic provisioning tour, stock up on spare-parts for the boat and all other things that aren’t available out on the islands. There were several options to anchor, but over the last few years sailboats have been shied out first of Arue and now the big anchorage off Marina Taina will supposedly be shut down in March, because influential investors want to build a hotel there. As the marinas are full during the high season, we are supposed to anchor down in Taravao (several hours by bus away from Papeete) without access to chandleries.

Sailboats are the target of a political propaganda campaign, blaming us for pollution, lack of fish, accidents in the lagoon, etc. The main argument is that sailboats use all facilities without paying anything. Of course that may be true for some live-aboards in the Societies, but most boats just stop for a few weeks (like we do), spend lots of money on shopping and it’s not exactly our fault that we’re not asked to pay a fee for rubbish and other communal facilities.

The atmosphere on the more remote islands is still as friendly as always, but for now we hope that there will be an option to anchor when we get back to Tahiti for our next shopping tour… We’ll keep you posted.

Read our article on this issue in the Blue Water Sailing magazine:

Birgit Hackl: Cruisers are no longer welcome in Tahiti, Blue Water Sailing, Winter 2020, p. 19–21. Read the current issue online.

Coral reefs suffer worldwide due to climate change and pollution–during our 6 years in the Pacific we’ve had to watch many reefs die…
Here in the Gambier we’ve also witnessed some damage, but there are still areas with 100 % healthy coral and especially this year we see young coral that prove that nature is still fighting and trying to recover.
The water temperature is cooler than usually in summer (26-27 degrees), which means that we wear two layers when snorkeling, but the coral thrives in cooler water!

We always make sure to anchor in sand and float our chain so we never touch and damage coral. Especially here, where many reefs are still beautiful it is painful to watch other cruisers anchor in deep water without any idea what their anchor and chain hits… Many put an ‘alibi-float’ to feel good about themselves, but anchoring blindly it’s pure luck if they don’t cause damage…

Each time we bring a banana-stack aboard a few blind passengers come with it. This way we ‘imported’ some geckos years ago who thrived in the smurfy environment. By now their great-grandchildren roam Pitufa. We don’t know how many we have, but we regularly see small ones in the garden under the sprayhood and adults everywhere inside and outside. Yesterday evening a seriously big and fat one was catching insects that had gathered in the light of the saloon lamp. It’s fun and interesting to have some wildlife aboard and we enjoy watching our little reptiles (they range from 2 to 15 cm) as they hunt, squabble over territory (get out of my basil pot!!!) and communicate with loud clicking sounds.

Leeloo used to catch and eat geckos, but by now she’s too old for such sporty activities and graciously ignores them…