Pitufa.at

If you are cruising to, from, or around French Polynesia, you may be interested in checking in on the PolyMagNet. It’s an English-speaking SSB net where vessels underway can report their position and conditions, and boats at anchor pass on info about weather, anchoring, events, etc. in their area. It’s on air twice every day at 1800 UTC and 0400 UTC (8:00 AM and 6:00 PM Tahiti local time) on the frequency 8173 kHz USB.

During the past few days the weather hasn’t been great, so we did a maintenance week:
We dedicated one day to the Tohatsu outboard engine (changed the gear oil, greased all squeaky parts, replaced the worn out propeller, repaired the old propeller to have a spare one, etc.), resewed the dodger that is stretched between lifelines and toerail to keep spray out of the cockpit (the ‘pitufa’ letters were coming off and needed restitching all aroundaroundaround…), glued new handles onto the dinghy, spent one day with the Yanmar main engine (changed engine oil and filter, retensioned the V-belt, etc) and checked the watermaker (replaced the sediment filter, etc.).
It’s impossible to get bored on a cruising boat…

Our last visit to a supermarket (still in Tahiti) was on October 10, so more than 6 weeks ago and you could think that the diet on Pitufa is getting boring, but no, with some creativity (and of course the fresh greens from the boat garden) we still manage to keep up our gourmet standards

For breakfast/brunch we usually have fresh bread and cheese (for me) and salami-style sausages or patés (for Christian), for lunch we prepare a salad (using self-grown sprouts, spinach from the garden, the last remaining (bought) carrots, ocassionally a can of beans and left-over rice, pasta or quinoa) or a muesli with self-made yoghurt. In the evenings we prepare our main meal of the day and here’s for example what was on the menu last week:

- Tartare from a freshly caught snapper (chopped fish, chopped gherkins with honey, mustard and fresh cilantro) with buchwheat bread

- Poisson cru (raw fish marinated overnight in lemon juice with pieces of apple, beans, thai basil from the garden and onions in self-made cocounut milk) with rice

- Pasta with fried fish in a creamy white sauce with cabbage and basil from the garden

- Fried Snapper and steamed parsley potatoes and pumpkin in sauce hollandaise

- Stir-fry with snapper, (canned) bamboo sprouts, (canned) water chestnuts, thai basil from the garden and coconut rice

- Snapper in a crispy sesame seed panade with creamy pumpkin and mashed potatoes

- Potato burgers with (canned) sauerkraut

- Pizza with cheese, (canned) mushrooms and (canned) anchovies

- Teriyaki-style tofu with home-grown mung-bean sprouts

Bon appetit!

Last weekend our anchor winch started making ugly, grinding sounds and we got very worried, because neither the prospect of manually heaving up the anchor while moving regularly around the atoll during wind shifts nor sailing to a place with an airport to order spare parts and wait endlessly for them seemed like much fun. Fortunately Pitufa is a self-sufficient boat with lots of spare parts, scrap pieces and tools aboard, so we disassembled the winch hoping to be able to repair it here. It turned out that a bushing Christian had made during an extensive overhaul 1.5 years ago had been worn out. We didn’t have a bronze part in the right dimensions, but our neighbours on SY Ednbal had a hose coupling made of brass that almost fit, so Christian got out the lathe and got it into the right dimensions. The next day we assembled it again and voila–no more nasty sounds.

During the past 2 days the weather was calm and we explored three motus in the south that we hadn’t seen previously and discovered 4 more couples of nesting masked boobies–that brings the count to 15 couples of these beautiful and rather rare birds. It’s so sad that there aren’t many uninhabited atolls with endemic shrubs and trees as vegetation left, because sea birds need these safe havens to raise their chicks. Here on Tahanea we saw eggs and chicks of red-footed, brown and masked boobies when we were here in September (2 years ago) and now the same between October and November so it seems the nesting season goes on for quite a while.

This morning the wind picked up again and we sailed to a reef on the southern side. Instead of the predicted 10 knots we got 15 to 20 and we were bouncing miserably, so we lifted the anchor again and sailed to the small island in the middle of the lagoon where we had already spent a calm week during easterly winds. This time we finally named it: Ilot des schtroumpfs–Smurf Island

Last week the wind was predicted to turn from the North to the West, so we did a last snorkel in the pass (on the northern side of the lagoon), then lifted the anchor and used the calm weather to take Pitufa out through the pass, quickly caught a yellow fin tuna and were back inside the lagoon of Tahanea within an hour. Afterwards we sailed down to the southern side to hide behind a reef during the predicted westerly winds (it shifted twice between east and west instead, so we alternated between anchorages west and east of the reef…).

Two days ago a strong southeasterly set in, so we moved to the well protected southeastern corner of the atoll where we’re now sitting behind a motu while it’s blowing 25 knots and gusting up to 40. Timing is everything in an atoll! It’s important to always keep an eye on the weather and move in time. Of course the numerous GPS tracks we have by now all over the lagoon help us to reach safe spots (within distances between 5 and 15 miles) even in bad visibility…

We use the windy weather to do some sewing jobs and other domestic tasks to keep life comfy on Pitufa: we brewed beer (already the second batch ), made yoghurt (a weekly task), baked bread (every second day anyway), did tuna preserves, etc. etc. We’re almost out of veg provisions we brought, but with the thriving garden and different kinds of sprouts we still eat as well as one month ago when we set out from Tahiti

We are now anchored next to the western pass of Tahanea and used the opportunity to snorkel the pass yesterday and this morning. The amount of fishies in the pass is just amazing. In the deep water (about 10 m) we saw big groups of grey reef sharks and white tip reef sharks (the biggest we’ve seen so far) hunting swarm fish together with tuna and groupers almost as big as the sharks themselves. In the shallower areas the colours and variety of the coral is mindboggling and small reef fishies in all colours (butterflies, trigger fish, surgeon fish, parrots, etc.) are packed so tight that animal rights group would protest if it was an aquarium…

On the way back we trolled a lure behind the dinghy. At the first attempt we caught a grouper we could hardly lift into the dinghy. We didn’t really know what to do with that giant (more than 1 m) and in the end we released him back into the water (we used a single hook so hardly any damage done). At the second attempt we caught a fish so big that when we tried to roll in the line he pulled the dinghy backwards through the pass–thank goodness the hook bent open and we didn’t have to deal with that unknown monster. We bent the hook back in shape and at the third attempt we finally caught a reasonably sized grouper and had sashimi shortly after we got back home.

Cleaning fish in an anchorage of course attracts sharks and we have a group of 10 black tips circling Pitufa. They freak out as soon as bits of fish hit the water, but the resident surgeon fish under our boat are usually faster and snap the pieces away before the sharks can get there

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Usually we use windy days when neither splashy dinghy rides nor dumpy snorkeling seem appealing for indoor-projects. This time we have such nice protection from the tiny island that we can still go snorkeling and go ashore every day, but we’ve still found a nice balance between fun activities and ticking off some projects from the to-do list.

Yesterday we brewed beer (23 litres are bubbling now in two jerry cans and will be ready to be bottled soon) and today we sewed a new cover for the big hatch on the foredeck. The old one consisted of more patches than original material, but we kept postponing this difficult task. In the end it wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be. We did one corner after the other (with detailed fitting sessions in between), then we turned over the fringe with space to fit a chord in and in the end wiggling the chord in with the help of a wire snake turned out to be the most complicated bit. The new hatch cover fits better than the old one and we were proud enough to celebrate it with an orange-sparkling wine punch (certainly the best on the atoll)

Provisioning for a remote area is always tricky and we tend to focus so much on special goodies, that we usually forget to buy something basic like sugar (last time in Tahanea), salt (Maupihaa) and this time it’s black tea. Apart from that we’re doing fine. 12 days after our last visit to a supermarket we still have apples, a mango, half a stack of bananas, lemons, carrots, radishes, courgettes, broccholi, cucumbers and 2 pumpkins as a last reserve. The garden’s also doing well with basil, parsley, thai basil, cilantro, spinach and 3 tiny tomato plants and apart from that we have bags of mung beans and lentils to sprout.

On the bottom of the fridge sits a large box filled up with cheese and sausages to last us for a few months. Yesterday we ate the last of the tuna we caught on the way, so we’ll start trolling when we sail in the lagoon next time (no ciguatera here).