Pitufa.at

At the moment there’s still southwesterly swell coming up (but that should become less frequent and violent as summer comes to the southern hemisphere), at the same time northerly swell comes down (and will become more with winter setting in up there) and in combination with predominant wind plus windseas from the east, finding a calm spot in the open bays of the Marquesas is quite a tricky business… Even in bays that look quite protected on the chart, swell and waves that get reflected from the rocky shores can turn the anchorage into a witches cauldron of confused cross seas and standing waves–in that case even a stern anchor can’t help the situation.

We’re reasonably comfy anchored (of course with a stern anchor that keeps Pitufa’s bow to the swell…) in the giant bay of Taiohae off the main town of the Marquesas on the southern side of Nuku Hiva. Due to the cyclone panic more yachts than in a regular year are anchored here (about 40) and we enjoy the company of a surprisingly international crowd.

When the anchor drops after a long passage, but the boat keeps pitching and rolling merrily, you know you’ve arrived in the Marquesas… Unlike the other archipelagos of Fr. Poly, these islands have no protecting fringe reefs and their coasts and bays are open to the waves and mighty swell of the Pacific. During El Nino years they are supposed to be safely out of the cyclone belt, so we’re happy that we made it here just with today’s official start of the cyclone season. Wherever we went in the Tuamotus, there was no other topic. During the last strong El Nino, French Polynesia was hit several times and the media have triggered a wide-spread panic among the people. Everybody’s expecting the worst, roofs are strapped down to mooring weights and even the woman at the post office in Tikehau gave me an unbelieving stare when I casually mentioned that we were here by sailing boat. Don’t you know that the cyclone season is coming?

The passage here wasn’t easy and last night was extra annoying with squalls that changed the wind directions quicker than we could tack the boat (shit, now we’re sailing right back on our GPS track, let’s tack again…) and when the wind then died down completely, we decided to head for the nearest island Ua Pou instead of motoring another 25 nm to the main island Nuku Hiva. This way we’ve come back to the bay that was our last stop in the Marquesas exactly two years ago (before heading to the Gambier again). A group of dolphins accompanied us in.

The anchorages in the Marquesas may lack comfort, but they certainly have style. Here in Vaiehu at the western coast of Ua Pou we are surrounded by vertical cliffs and towering spires. The bay looks quite protected on the chart, but the swell somehow makes it in anyway. It looks like the ocean’s breathing in first, rocks emerge from the sea, water sparkles in countless cascades down the shore and then the swell surges into the bay, lifting the boat gently, but crashing violently on the cliffs and spraying out from blow holes all around us. This dramatic spectacle is repeated twice a minute, but never gets boring.

Onyl 75 miles to go, so we hope to arrive in Nuku Hiva tomorrow morning.

Today we have got a nice ESE-erly breeze and are on a direct course to Nuku Hiva. 190 miles to go on a course of 19 deg. Summer is coming and we are sailing towards the equator — it’s getting incredibly hot…

The light winds continued. This morning it was calm enough to take a bath in the Ocean (while holding on to the ladder). Now we are on the way north towards the Marquesas.

After a night of very light winds the dreaded calm finally got us this morning and we ended up motoring (the waves were still too high to just sit on the water…). After a few hours the engine died–the clogged fuel line was fortunately easy to find and clear.
Now we’ve just got enough of a breeze to keep Pitufa sailing again with 2 to 3 knots (an old lady on a rollator walker could overtake us, but we don’t complain as long as the sails don’t flap). Keep your fingers crossed that the breeze will stay (or pick up) during the night

The forcasts claim, there is no wind today, but we are riding 20+ knots from the SE. Wild, but definitely better than motoring.

We are out at sea again. Not much wind at the moment in this area, so we hope it will pick up soon.

We arrived today in Ahe and anchored off the village in the South of the small atoll. Work on the giant Mahi Mahi we pulled in just before the pass is still in progress. It took us two days for a distance we easily could do in less than one in the right winds…

It’s slow going, tacking so close-hauled. To make 70 nm as the bird flies we’ve had to sail over 100 since yesterday. First it was very squally with Pitufa heeling down to the toe-rail in the gusts. Of course the fishing line snapped tight during one of these squalls, Christian had a hard time pulling the medium sized Bonito in while trying not to fall overboard himself. Killing and gutting was done as usual still out on the aft deck (also not so funny on the slanting deck) and then I carried the pieces into the galley, planning on filetting them later in calmer weather. That wasn’t according to Leeloo’s plan though. As soon as she smelled the fish she managed to climb out of her sea berth (a cardboard box she sleeps in when it’s rough), stalked into the galley and protested until I cut a few pieces for her which she devoured with one paw propped up against the wall to avoid sliding into her lunch. Brave little shellback

We left Tikehau at noon, the destination is yet unknown. We will see how far east the wind (on the nbose) will allow us to go.

After we had left Bora Bora, we slogged in two tedious days of sailing very slowly, as close-hauled as possible in light winds to Raiatea and then on to Huahine. On the way to Huahine we considered heading on straight to the Tuamotus, but the weatherforecast predicted fickle winds, so we decided to stop once more. We were lucky to do so, because 4 miles off Huahine the genoa suddenly flapped wildly–the clew had ripped out of the giant foresail! We quickly lowered the sail and contemplated the damage. The clew is held by 4 robust straps that are sewn on to 9 layers of dacron (heavy sail cloth), but the thick nylon thread had disintegrated in the tropical UV-light and the whole thing had just ripped off. We didn’t know what to do. The weather forecast showed a 2 day long weather window, if we missed that we’d have to sit out another week in Huahine in strong southeasterlies (these winds are called ‘Maramu’ in Fr. Poly). Should we try to repair the damage? Stow away the wet, sa
lty sail and put up the smaller foresail (yankee) or our spare genoa?

Christian frenetically started repairing, while I hitched a ride ashore to buy fresh veggies for our time in the Tuamotus. After 4 hours of hard work trying to find the existing holes in the layers of heavy fabric, he had only managed to restitch one of the 4 straps. No way we’d be able to head out the same day at this progress. In the meantime the sail had dried, so we provisionally folded the heap of chaotic sail on deck (impossible to fold the 60 square metre big thing with the dinghy stored on deck in passage-mode), emptied the forecabin to get into the sail locker, got out the yankee, put it on the roller and stuffed the genoa on top of everything in the forecabin. Wheh.

We then quickly prepared the Bonito we had caught underway in jars in the pressure cooker and by 9 o’clock in the evening we were ready to set sail again. A breeze had just set in, so we sailed into the night, destination once more the Tuamotus. The wind turned out to be much stronger than predicted, so we only took 1 and a half days for the 190 nautical miles and reached Tikehau still in the afternoon (when the wind had got lighter we already feared having to spend the night waiting for daylight off the island…).

Tikehau only has one pass which is notorious for its strong currents, but we were lucky. After being tossed around by some big eddies at the entrance we made it into the lagoon against 3 knots of current without further complications, spent a night next to the pass and then motored across the lagoon to the southeast corner, to find a safe spot to sit out the gale-force maramu winds that were predicted for the next day. Good that we hadn’t delayed, the maramu set in with a bang 10 hours earlier than predicted. Now we’re sitting snug behind the lee side of a motu, with the additional protection of a reef east of us while it’s blowing 30 knots (54 km/h) and the lagoon behind us is a boiling witches cauldron of whitecaps.
It looks like the maramu will be followed by a phase of lighter northeasterly wind that will hopefully blow us further east along the Tuamotus. From now on we won’t have time to linger but will have to use every available weather window to head on.

After two days close-hauled sailing (crawling along walls rather than walking on the floor…) we’ve reached Tikehau.

After a few complications we are finally on our way to the Tuamotus. We hope the wind will last.