Pitufa.at

The supply situation on remote islands is tricky. In the days before supply ships the Polynesians managed to live off the land, but nowadays everybody depends on imported goods. The supply ship from Rarotonga comes by every 2 or 3 months, another ships brings ordered things from Hawaii about twice a year.

You’d think that people would try to be as self-sufficient as possible under such conditions, but apart from a few scrawny banana, papaya and breadfruit trees we haven’t seen many examples for gardening. Chickens roam the island, but instead of building chicken houses and collecting eggs, the locals wait for imported eggs from Rarotonga or take eggs from the seabird colonies.

We are used to depending on our own supplies in remote areas, so we’re still eating as well as usual. The fresh produce we bought 5 weeks ago in Raiatea is coming to an end (just a few carrots and christophines are left), but before leaving Raiatea we extended our herb garden (basil, mint, coriander, parsley, chives, etc.) with a few pots of bok choy (chinese cabbage) and arrugula plants. Both are doing fabulously and we can daily harvest fresh greens.

Beverage-wise we’re also doing fine, with a watermaker that keeps the tanks filled and the second batch of homebrew-beer (from ready-made kits) bubbling along happily

The main village Omoka lies on the western side of the atoll, so the anchorage is exposed to the prevailing easterly winds. When we visited Omoka last week Pitufa was pitching horribly in steep high waves and we hardly got any sleep. We therefore fled the next morning to a more protected place. Now we’re anchored on a beautiful, light-turquoise sandy shelf in just 3 m depth right next to the Northern motu. It’s not far to the NW-pass, so we snorkeled there yesterday. We didn’t find much coral in that pass, but again huge swarms of fish and 10 curious black-tip reef sharks circled us all the time–apparently they are used to spearfishing divers and were waiting for scraps. Of course they were disappointed that we only shoot fish with our underwater camera…
The motu itself is also quite special with a fringe of palm trees on the lagoon side, but shrubs and trees with nesting seabirds right behind it and a stunningly red salt lake in the middle.

On the 4th of August the Cook Islands celebrate their Consitution day followed by a week of cultural festivals. Every 2 to 3 years the government provides free transport by ship to all people from outer islands to Rarotonga (the capital) to participate in the celebrations.

Today 130 people from Tongareva returned after more than a month down in Rarotonga. After some fabulous day in the southern corner of the atoll with crystal clear water, nice snorkeling and more birdwatching we sailed across the lagoon this morning (dodging bommies all the way…) to the main village Omoka just in time to see the barges with the people come in–there were tearful reuinions, lots of flower bouquets and of course lots of goods from Rarotonga the villagers brought with them. While watching the hubbub on the dock we were invited to join the reception later, so we walked to the meeting where choirs and a huge buffet with traditional food (most interesting, some unfortunately protected) welcomed the homecomers.

We started talking to the former mayor who proved to be an interesting source of information and promptly invited us to his home in the evening. Searching for his house we walked through a few backyards asking for directions and were invited each time to stay and sit down for a chat. We have become used to Polynesian hospitality in remote places, but Tongareva surpasses all previous experiences. Of course the fact that English is an official language here (next to Cook Islands Maori) makes things much easier for us…

This morning we are getting ready to leave Car o line Atoll. As hobby-ornithologists we enjoyed our stay here immensely–there are not many places left in the Pacific where such big colonies are still nesting. As going ashore is impossible unless the sea’s completely calm we didn’t spend as much time on the motus as we would have liked to, but of course the snorkeling was also interesting.

It was an exciting week, but of course we also worried a lot. Each time we ventured ashore we had to deal with the hassle of paddling the dinghy up on the shelf without getting caught by breakers. And of course during our time ashore the nagging worries at the back of our heads remained: What if the swell picked up and we wouldn’t be able to get off in time? What if the dinghy got flipped in a breaker and we’d be stranded miles from the boat without a working outboard engine? What if the wind shifted and Pitufa was swept against the reef before we could get to her? What if she broke free and was gone by the time we returned??

We take nothing but pictures and our impressions away from the island and of course we left nothing but footprints (as we always do). Car o line is a wildlife reserve and we hope that other cruisers respect it as we do. Even if somebody wanted to exploit the ressources of the island they would have a hard time: Anchoring on the steep shelf is a real challenge, lobstering would be quite difficult on the reef with breaking waves and even more so getting back to the boat unscathed in the dark, coconut crabs seem to live mainly on the southern and northern motu (where there are palm trees), but there’s no safe anchorage close to these motus. The ciguatera situation is also unclear.

All went well and we’re glad we came here. Now we hope that we’ll get our two anchors, chains and lines back aboard. The young brown boobies will miss their floating playground and we’ll miss them

Whenever the sea’s not completely calm going ashore is out of question here, so we’ve concentrated on the underwater world for the past few days. The reef looks different from what we’re used to: In the shallow water the coral’s mainly dead (apart from some baby staghorn giving it another try), but between 5 and 10 m and in some places down into the drop-off beautiful stone coral in different shapes (plenty of Pachyseris, they look like morels growing on a tree trunk…) cover impressive bommies and deep canyons in between.

There are many fish around, but not too many different species:
We always have a few grey reef sharks, black-tip reef sharks and white-tip reef sharks accompanying us, but they’re mainly small. As we’re out on the ocean here we expected to see some big oceanic species and were always hopefully keeping one eye out towards the dark-blue while holding on to the dinghy firmly Unfortunately we haven’t seen any of those big sharkies that must be out there…

Swarms of young black triggers hang out everywhere, barracudas follow us, but keep their distance, big snappers are everywhere, big jacks flash by, but apart from that all fish seem rather small (mainly surgeons, some napoleons, some parrots, few butterflies, etc.) and most surprisingly: no big groupers at all. We find that puzzling, maybe an illegal fishing vessel fished the big fish off? Or maybe the big sharkies come in at night and leave only small fish behind? (that would be nicer but is of course less likely).

The greatest attraction here are the green turtles: Each time we go snorkeling we see a few, most are small, but some measured more than a metre and they were all very curious, checked us out and stuck their stubby noses close to our cameras In the Tuamotus we don’t see as many turtles in a whole season as we do here in a day–they are still mercilessly hunted by the locals there…

From our anchorage we saw something that looked like a boat far down south inside the lagoon. First we thought it was just some optical illusion with maybe a palmtree and a bush behind it, but with the binoculars it became clear that there was really some kind of boat, but how was that possible with no pass into the lagoon? Was is a wreck that had been swept in? Had a boat with a lifting keel somewhow made it through the tiny boatpass on the eastern side?

2 days ago the conditions allowed us to explore down south and we were astonished to find the a rather well-preserved monohull (called Lyderic) with the stern beached and attached to strong moorings next to a make-shift hut made of driftwood. The mainsail had been used as a bed, the roof to collect water. It seems he used material and infrastructure left by the Falconer family who spent some years here before in the late 80s. We found tools, shoes and all other kinds of daily-life paraphernelia chaotically strewn around inside and outside the hut, like the owner had left in a hurry without taking much with him (I say he, because we only found big men’s shoes). Some of the things looked eerily new, like someone might still be hiding there (maybe watching us from afar). It was a creepy experience to snoop around his things…

In the evening we asked on our SSB net and friends found some info about the boat: apparently a French hermit lived on the island for a while before he was discovered by a research vessel in 2014 and removed by the Kiribati government in 2015.
He must have a had a tough time here, as the island is very dry mainly covered in coarse coral rubble. Remains of a Polynesian settlement on the northernmost motu prove that those seafarers tried to settle here, but also gave up after a while. Attempts to establish workers on a copra colony on the southernmost motu also weren’t overly successful.

We were puzzled by the fact that the hermit didn’t pick the southern motu where he would have had an easier time with lots of coconuts and presumably coconut crabs to catch (we haven’t seen coconut crabs on the western side–no wonder, there are hardly palmtrees here ) But we heard from French cruisers that the southern motu is infested with mosquitoes and no-nos.
We haven’t seen much fish in the lagoon and we heard from French cruisers that Ciguatera is also a problem here.