Pitufa.at

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.

Yesterday the situation we had prepared for ocurred: a sudden 180-degree windshift to the south, the wind picked up to 20-30 knots within minutes and a cloudy sky that made the reefs invisible–luckily we just had to put on our rain gear and follow our GPS track to get safely back over the 8 miles to the sheltered anchorage on the southern side of the lagoon. During the night the wind went down (and remained south) and this morning the weather was perfectly sunny again. We picked up the anchor and explored further westwards along the southern barrier reef. What a difference to yesterday: Pitufa was gliding over flat waters just pulled by the genoa on a beam reach, passing white sand banks, tiny motus with a few palm trees on them, the numerous reefs were easily visible, glittering like saphires in the dark blue of the lagoon. Yesterday the situation we had prepared for ocurred: a sudden 180-degree windshift to the south, the wind picked up to 20-30 knots within minutes and a cloudy sky that made the reefs invisible–luckily we just had to put on our rain gear and follow our GPS track to get safely back over the 8 miles to the sheltered anchorage on the southern side of the lagoon. During the night the wind went down (and remained south) and this morning the weather was perfectly sunny again. We picked up the anchor and explored further westwards along the southern barrier reef. What a difference to yesterday: Pitufa was gliding over flat waters just pulled by the genoa on a beam reach, passing white sand banks, tiny motus with a few palm trees on them, the numerous reefs were easily visible, glittering like saphires in the dark blue of the lagoon. I know I repeat myself, but today’s anchorage tops all others we’ve seen here: a densely forested motu with a white sand beach framed by shallow reefs with thousands of colourful fishies and Pitufa’s floating in the middle of a turquoise swimming pool

We spent a few more days in the anchorage in the SE corner. When the wind dropped a bit we did some more exploring around the uncharted lagoon. We motorsailed 9 miles west to an anchorage at the southern reef, avoiding dozens of coral heads on the way and anchored Pitufa behind a Z-shaped reef that comes off the barrier reef giving protection from the north-east to the south. This place is so pretty, it’s almost too kitchy to be true: We’re anchored in deep-turquoise, crystal-clear water in 8 metres, in front of us the water shades from light-turquoise to light-mint, the bommies are full of colourful corals and fish. The little island ahead consists of fine white sand and it’s a bird nesting place. We saw Boobies with their fluffy babies, lots of terns, frigate birds, different sand pipers, a tiny species that we identified with the help of wikikpedia as a ‘polynesian sand piper’ that’s endemic to the Tuamotus and only about a hundred inviduals can still be found on the few r at-free motus (rats abandoned the European ships for their own patch of paradise whenever ships anchored off islands…). At the moment it’s blowing hard (the grib files predict winds around 20+ knots until Sunday) so it’s too splashy and cool for out-door activities. Instead we’ll use the time to do some indoor chores. That’s the problem with the Tuamotus: the islands are too low to give protection from the wind. Many cruisers like breezy anchorages, but we prefer calm spots (especially Leeloo, who frequently climbs up to the cockpit to check whether we’ve finally come to our senses and turned off the stupid wind )