Pitufa.at

Protected anchorages, golden palm-fringed beaches, pine-clad mountains in the background, pristine waters and remote motus–yes, we’re happy to be back in our favourite corner of Fr. Polynesia!

It seems Pitufa’s having a great time rushing along and ploughing the deep azure of the Pacific with her bow. With just the main in the second reef, the tiny inner foresail and a piece of yankee we’ve still had a daily run of 130 miles. We can’t wait to reach our favourite islands in French Polynesia, just 160 miles to go, no worries about pass times (the lagoon’s too open to have strong currents) and protected anchorages ahead!

This trip’s not exactly fun, but then we didn’t expect it to be. We’re sailing as close to the wind as possible which sometimes shifts more easterly and then more northerly again, so we manage to stay on course. It’s steadily blowing between 15 and 20 knots (doesn’t sound like much, but feels like more when it’s on the nose) and the waves are high and short with Pitufa’s bow plunging into them, but the skies are blue and we’re making good progress. We caught a bonito the day before yesterday (fishing’s great between the Tuamotus, maybe the fishing fleets stay outside?), so now all available jars on Pitufa are filled, all 3 of us have fish for every meal so it won’t spoil and we don’t put lures out any more.

Usually an ocean passage resembles a journey through a more or less hilly blue desert, but this time our course goes right trough the Tuamotus, just last night we passed 3 of them within a few miles, so we have to constantly adjust the course. The passage started quite rough yesterday with changing winds and high, confused waves. We soon had a huge mahi-mahi (dorade) on the lure. The poor guy gave quite a fight, the struggle and the following blood bath in a combination with a mighty hangover from the previous day proved too much for Christian’s stomach, poor little Leeloo followed Christian’s example when she smelled the fish. Unfortuately we can’t run our fridge during the night at the moment, because our elderly batteries gave up last week (new ones are already on the way to the Gambier), so the fish had to be processed immediately. I spent 3 hours in the careening galley fileting, cutting (at least I managed not to get seasick) and with the help of the pressure cooker produced 12 big jars of fish preserves–that should last a while

Yesterday we moved further south into the ‘duck’s breast’ and found a pretty anchorage in front of two uninhabited motus. This morning we were contemplating the weather predictions, trying to decide whether the predicted easterly winds would be strong enough and last long enough to take us the 175 miles to Amanu. In the end we decided to stay here and do a boat project instead. Christian saw some corrosion on the aft deck last week, opened it (when aluminium gets into the air the corrosion stops), the paint around it came off as well, he got carried away a bit and we ended up with half a square metre of bare aluminium that doesn’t look especially neat and is also a safety risk as it’s really slippery when wet. Instead of sailing off we got the disk grinder and sandpaper out, of course as soon as we’d done that the breeze picked up and turned from east to northeast (grrrr…), but anyway, instead of blowing us to Amanu the wind provided the energy to run the power tools.

We were first eager to get away from Makemo after we’d done all the shopping, as the village anchorage lacks protection and privacy, the water inside the lagoon’s a bit murky and navigation’s really tricky with tons of little bastard-bommies that are hardly visible (no turquoise sand to mark them, just dark coral coming up). But the north-easterlies obviously haven’t looked up the wind statistics for November and haven’t bothered showing up yet, so we’ve decided to stay a bit and give the atoll a chance. Makemo’s shape reminds of a duck and we’re now in the beak in the South-eastern corner, where it’s nice and quiet, just some boats go by to the copra shacks that dot the long northern motu. The only permanently inhabited house is just opposite our anchorage, so we beached the dinghy to say hello yesterday. An elderly Polynesian lives there alone with family members coming by regularly, collecting copra, etc. Hubert’s a real character! He has turned the coral rubble around his house into a kitschy stone garden with flowers and plants growing in every possible container (coconut shells, tin cans, etc.), colourful self-made decorations on shrubs and even on the palm trees around the house (yes, he’s a he-she, men dressing up and acting like women are rather common in the Polynesian society) He showed us around the garden, pointed out local edible plants (a small plant with round leaves and yellow flowers that grows basically everywhere and tastes like something in between young spinach and sorrel; a shrub with leaves that can be boiled as veggies and a special type of coconut on which the outer green bit that you usually hack off with the machete is tender, white and tastes slightly nutty. It was really interesting and that knowledge will help to widen our diet when we get back to remote places again. In return we brought Hubert seeds we still had on the boat (tomatoes, lettuce) and two branches of our spinach to layer and he invited us to share his fish fritters and coconut booze, so we had to row home once more to get some of our home-brewn for him to try Today we wanted to explore further south, but just when we were ready to lift the anchor huge clouds built up and now it’s dark-grey outside and pouring down, so we’re not leaving and doing indoor chores instead. If it wasn’t so warm it could be a typical November day in Austria

We reached the village of Makemo the day before yesterday, unfortunately we had to motor all the 25 nm over the reef-dotted lagoon (much worse than Tahanea) as the wind was southeasterly all the time, so just where we had to go. The anchorage in front of the village is a bit of a witches cauldron with cross seas and funny effects from the pass. We snuggled in behind the pier with bow- and stern anchor, where the water’s a bit calmer.

The village looks a bit run down, there’s quite some rubbish and a sad looking abandoned wind farm a bit out of town suggests that people aren’t that keen on the positive sides of progress (more into satellite dishes). The vibes are friendly though, there’s always quite something going on on the dock, fishermen coming in, people fishing off the pier and football and other games are played all day in the multi purpose hall next to the dock. we were also lucky with groceries, there’s a real supermarket here where you can actually walk between shelves and choose stuff yourself and the supply ship had just left before we arrived so we were able to stock up luxuries like carrots, cabbage, onions and even apples As we’d read that Makemo was ‘productive’ we’d hoped to get some local fruit, but in the gardens only few and rather scrawny looking papaya trees and banana plants grow, breadfruits aren’t ripe yet. At least eggs and honey are produced locally. The northern side of the atoll’s one big island and palm trees are cultivated in mono culture for copra productio. Interestingly the southern side of the atoll doesn’t have any motus at all, just the barrier reef.

We snorkeled the pass today, the visibility wasn’t too great, but we saw more swarm fishies than anywhere else we’ve snorkeled before and as the pass is about a mile long the conveyor belt journey lasted really long. There isn’t much else to do here though, so we hope for northerly winds to take us to Amanu (one of the eastern atolls) soon.

Surprise, suprise, after postponing the departure from Tahanea (or should I say Smurf Island?) so often, that we didn’t really believe anymore we’d actually leave at some point , we used a perfect looking weather window (light breeze from the southeast with calm seas) to sail out yesterday. Of course the passage wasn’t as easy as expected, instead of gliding majestically under full sails on a peaceful ocean we ended up clause-hauled and reefing down completely in order to arrive after dawn and just before slackwater in the pass. Anyway, now we’re in Makemo, a large atoll with a big settlement and we’ve been told several(!) minimarkets. At the moment we’re tugged in behind the protection of a reef halfway down the lagoon to sit out the still lively breeze (the anchorage in front of the village is too open).

Yesterday we returned to Tahanea’s beautiful south, as the weather’s turned excellent again: blue sky with puffy cumulus and a light southerly breeze. Before we had a couple of overcast, oppressive days while the fringe of a front became stationary over our area and brought northerly winds. So we had to stay in the (in our opinion) boring northern part. Now, the fine weather is ideal for exploring yet another southern anchorage even further to the west. We anchored in the shelter of a long reef with several curious black-tip reef sharks circling Pitufa and inspecting the funny metal thing we had dropped onto the bottom. Today we kayaked around the nearby motus and then strolled from one motu to the next which are (almost continuously) connected by a sandbank. While kayaking back to Pitufa, we repeatedly spotted fountains of spray about a mile away in the lagoon. At first, we were not quite sure what it was, the calm conditions could not cause such breakers and the outer reef is much further away… Of course, WHALES! This must be WHALES! We paddled back us quickly as we could, changed our means of transport and dinghied close to them, put diving goggles on and jumped in the water. It was a mother humpback wale with her baby What an amazing experience… We didn’t stay long though, because we didn’t want to get Mom worried about her baby.