Pitufa.at

We used to call anchorages comfy as long as the dishes didn’t slide off the table, but after spending so much time in protected lagoons we’ve raised our standards to ‘no boat movement at all’. Yesterday’s anchorage on the western side of Akamaru didn’t quite come up to those expectations, we complained a bit about the rolling during the night, but enjoyed our visit to the friendly village and a kayak tour along the west coast even more.

Today we sailed down to the three small, high islands in the very south of the archipelago for the first time. It was an astonishingly pleasant sail, almost calmer than the time in the anchorage before–Leeloo even went sunbathing out on deck. We passed the ragged islets Manui and Makaroa and when we arrived at our destination Kamaka, the American owner of the island (the only private island around here) hailed us on the radio, sounding quite glad to have visitors and explained where we could anchor. We were really tempted to stay, but watching the westerly swell wandering by, we chickened out despite the assurances of the owner that we’d picked an unusally calm day for visiting his island We had considered sailing over to Pitcairn recently (about 300 nm away), but now we know that we’re just too spoiled to brave anchoring basically on the open sea, next to that ragged rock, where the full force of the southern ocean slams into Bounty Bay…

The Gambier have a new attraction: a petting zoo! Pierre and Lolo (the cruisers who live on Taravai) have taken their two tame goats Fuego and Cacao (we’ve known them since they were babies) over to the tiny island Motu-o-ari off the village for holidays where they greet visitors bleeting happily. They marched all around the island with us and looked so sad when we left by dinghy, that we immideately had to return with a bunch of bananas for them

You may have wondered why we haven’t posted in a while–we were just too busy to spend time on the computer. Right now we have visitors from Austria (Birgit’s dad and his girlfriend stay with us for 2 weeks) and with the gorgeous summer weather we can be really active: anchorages around the motus, Mangareva and Taravai, long walks along the coast and on the islands, a visit to the pearl engraving class in Rikitea, an excursion to a pearl farm, bicycle tours, exotic fruits/veggies and tasting of our homebrewn etc. – it’s the ‘All-inclusive Gambier-visitor program deluxe’

The summer weather is continuing, we’re having a good time anchored off Tauna doing some small jobs on the boat and excursions (snorkeling, kayaking, etc.) in between. Today there was less wind than the days before so we ventured out towards Motu Gaioio in the NE corner of the archipelago. It didn’t look that far on the chart, about 2nm (almost 4 km) away, but fighting with our elderly inflatable kayak that stubbornly tries to head into the wind or to align with the waves (there was quite some chop coming over the outer reef) it felt considerably further… We then walked around the island, had a picnic and finally started paddling back towards our tiny motu (Tauna) and the barely visible white dot next to it (Pitufa). As you can see from the fact that I’m now sitting here writing a blog, we’ve made it back. We’ll definitely sleep well this night, but getting up tomorrow might be a different story

Out here in the Pacific geology isn’t something theoretical that happened in ancient times, but even to the untrained eye an obviously ongoing event. Continental plates are moving, the sea bottom rises and from a depth of about 3000 m a new, actively vulcanic island rises (like Fernandina at the western end of the Galapagos archipelago). The ragged cliffs rise higher and higher, developing a lush vegetation on the fertile soil, while the ocean crashes unhindered against the shores (like in the Marquesas). In tropical seas corals start to grow around the island at some point, forming a protective fringe reef with a calm lagoon inside (like in the Society Islands). After some time the high islands start sinking down into the sea again, leaving only the peaks of the mountains as islands, while the fringe reef becomes an outlying barrier with motus on top (like here in the Gambier). At some point the mountains disappear entirely, leaving only a coral ring with some motus behind ( like in the Tuamotus). Sometimes the bottom rises under an atoll, lifting the coral shelf high up (like Henderson Island in the Pitcairn group). The fringing reef of the Gambier is sinking slowly back into the sea, in the east and south it’s completely submerged already, only in the north it’s still a continous motu barrier. The stormy Pacific batters these small oases in the vast ocean continously. We were very surprised when we returned to Tauna this summer (our first and still one of our favourite motus) to find the sandbank gone (it had previously stretched out a few hundred metres from the island) and the motu itself ragged and considerably smaller. A severe storm has caused that damage in spring. Remember the eulogy blog for our dinghy that was murdered by a freighter in Tahiti and the adjoining picture of it sitting on a sandbank? Well, that’s exactly this sandbank and it must have left the surface of the sea at approximately the same time as our dingsi did… We asked our friend Herve, who grew up in the Gambier and he remembers more motus that have disappeared since his childhood, so geology really happens within a short time here (about 30 years ago). We’re now back in Tauna, enjoying the shrunken, but still gorgeous motu with its colonies of white terns, noddies, greater crested terns, some red-footed boobies, and frigate birds.

The weather’s still changeable here, but then it’s weird all over the region with lots of depressions rushing over Tahiti and down the poor Australes just west of us, so we don’t complain about a few rainy days in between. The only thing that’s annoying is that the humid weather’s just what the mushrooms enjoy–not the yummy ones, but the nasty ones that start growing all over the furniture and inside the lockers whenever we have to keep the hatches closed in the rain.
The best remedy we’ve found so far is to wipe everything with vinegar water and then safe the varnish by adding a layer of lemon oil. In rough seas we sometimes wish for a bigger, more stable boat, whenever we do provisioning we’d love to have more lockers, but when fighting the mushrooms we feel that Pitufa’s rather too big for us

We’ve had northwesterly winds plus sunny, blue skies now for several days, which is very unusual, but ideal for a visit to the northern corner. After the grey weather period we had, we enjoy the summer weather to the fullest. That’s something we’ve really learned in the Gambier: carpe diem–seize the day, you can never be sure how long the sun will be out! In this weather the colours here are mindboggling: motus so white you think you’ll get snowblind and sparkling turquoise shallow sandbanks dropping off into the darkblue of the lagoon remind us of our time in the Tuamotus, but turning around we see the emerald green forested high islands in the background that we missed during our stay in the low atolls.
This morning we took the kayak out for a snorkeling tour along the bommies that dot the sandbank behind the outer reef and were amazed once again by the crystal clear water, the huge fish swarms and the healthy condition of the corals here. Nature in the Gambier is lucky to have escaped overpopulation, mass tourism and industrialisation so far.

Today we dropped off Christian’s sister on the airport island. After two weeks of activity-filled holidays with snorkeling (her first shark encounters!), kayaking and hiking (up Mt. Mokoto) she has to get back to chilly Europe and for us it’s back to daily routine jobs (quite some maintenance jobs are waiting).