Passages, Places

We arrived in the Bay of Virgins on Fatu Hiva before 2:00 p.m, in front of the village of Hanavave. There were about six or so boats in the anchorage and no room for us in water less than 70 feet deep. Migration came in right behind us and found a spot in a slightly shallower area. Waveriders, Andrew and Liane, came in behind us as well.

Fatu Hiva is a storied place, perhaps one of the most beautiful islands in the world. It has a population of about 700 people and is accessible only by boat or helicopter. The Bay of Virgins is surrounded by steep walls of tall, distinctive rock formations and lush greenery, including hundreds of coconut palms. The peaks of the mountains are often shrouded in fog. And while we were there, the wind gusted down from the mountains, through the valleys and through the anchorage, sending gusts of 20 to 40 knot winds to harass the boats. While we were there, boats came and went, with many staying as long as we did, in anticipation of an inter-island festival to begin on July 7. The anchorage is mostly deep and several of the boats dragged and had to re-anchor, sometimes more than once.

The day after our arrival, Wednesday, we went ashore, leaving the dinghy behind a breakwater that forms a safe little harbor. As we began walking through the town, we met a man by the name of Cristian in front of the house. He invited us to his home to see his carvings and I bought a rather large tiki carving. We made arrangements with him to come to his house the next night for dinner and he would give us fruit. From there we walked a couple of miles to the waterfall, meeting up with Andrew and Liane on the way. We visited the waterfall without swimming in the pool because it had some scum on the top, then walked back to town.

As we were heading back to the dinghy, we met Patrick, who gave us bananas and invited us to go with him to the other town, Omoa, in his truck the next day. We joined Patrick at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday and he drove us through hairpin turns up over a steep mountain and down into Omoa. There we shopped at the magasin (market) for a few provisions (they didn’t have much) and met with a woman by the name of Glenda to look at her carvings and tapa cloths. I bought three tapas, Marshall bought one and Johno bought one and a stone carving of a manta. She gave Dana and me each a necklace. Patrick drove us around to see a bit of the town and then we headed back to Hanavave. At the summit, Dana and Johno got out and walked the two hours back and Marshall and I continued on with Patrick back to the dinghy.

Later in the afternoon, Marshall and I went back to shore and met up with Dana and Johno. We tried to watch a local practice for the festival but no one was there yet, so we wandered into a neighborhood behind the soccer field. As we walked aimlessly, we met Angela, whose husband carves beautiful bowls out of rosewood. We met Priscilla, who promised us mangos for the next day. And we met Kulina, who invited us to their house for a dinner.

Later, we met up with Bruce and Alene of Migration for a delicious dinner at Cristian’s house, where he gave us more fruit. On our way to Cristian’s, we met Alex and Yvette of Blue Beryl. This young Dutch couple is quite adventurous and energetic. They told us the story of getting dismasted between the Galapagos and the Marquesas. Alex worked with another cruiser (Tim on Candine) to salvage a mast from another boat and re-rig his boat. It was quite an epic story.

We started the next morning by going to shore to meet up with Priscilla for the mangos. It turned out that she wanted to trade them for rope, so I dashed back to the boat to get some rope. On my way back, I met up with my crew and a man named Sopi, who was coming home from the hills with a pack horse carrying coconuts and bananas. He saw the rope and wanted it. So I cut it in two and gave him half. He then took us to his home to show us his carvings. While he was showing Marshall and Dana and Johno his carvings and how to husk the coconuts, his wife asked me for perfume. So I went back to the boat and got her some perfume.

We invited Migration and Blue Beryl to join us that day, Friday, on a hunt for a grotto that Dana’s parents had found in 1992. We set out from the anchorage, going north toward the tip of Fatu Hiva and managed to find the grotto. We anchored the dinghies, swam to shore and crawled behind some boulders to find the hidden brackish pool. We swam around in it to explore. And as we left, Bruce and Alex brought out large pieces of plastic that had been left there.

On the way to the grotto we found a beautiful tunnel-like cave with lustrous teal water. On the way back from the grotto, we stopped by again so Dana could scatter some of her dad’s ashes there. He surely would have seen it and loved it in 1992.

That night we went to Migration (a large trimaran with tons of deck space) for a potluck with other boats, including Blue Beryl, Pablo and Candine. It was a lovely night that passed by too quickly to talk to each person.

Our plan after the potluck was to leave at 3:00 a.m. to go to the Tuamotus. We had a narrow weather window to get there between light winds and really heavy winds. Our new friends at the potluck encouraged us to stay another week for the festival. When we got back, the crew had a meeting and decided to indeed stay.

The next day, Saturday, Dana, Johno and Marshall hiked with Alex and Yvette back up to the waterfall while I stayed on the boat to run the watermaker and defrost the freezer. On their hike, they ran into Ian and Laura (on Rala), who we had met in Daniel’s Bay on Nuku Hiva.

On Sunday at 8:00 a.m. we joined Bruce and Alene for the Catholic church service. It was mostly singing and a bit of prayer in Marquesan. It was beautiful and captivating. I can’t think of an hour better spent. Patrick, who we knew was a devout Catholic was one of the church elders who participated in the service.

The service was not well attended that day because the supply boat had come in that morning and the townspeople were at the dock, waiting to get their deliveries. After church, most of the attendees headed to the magasin, not necessarily to shop, but just to be social. We were there too, trying to buy cooking gas with Migration, but the store did not want to sell it to non-locals because there has been a shortage in the Marquesas.

We ran into Ian and Laura on Rala and I learned they were having trouble with weather downloads and were headed to the Tuamotus. So later that afternoon I took my weather download over to their boat and shared it with Ian, and he shared tips he had learned about making it into the passes of the Tuamotu atolls. We planned on getting together the next day on Aldabra, but the wind came up that afternoon and a lot of boats started dragging their anchors. Rala tried to re-anchor several times, helped by other cruisers late into the evening. They finally anchored for the night but it was an intense night of gusty winds so they pulled up anchor the next day to head for a shallower anchorage. I imagine that they will get a couple of nights rest before heading to the Tuamotus but I wasn’t able to say farewell.

Monday brought more gusty winds in the anchorage. Dana and Johno went for a walk to the top of a mountain. Marshall and I cleaned the cockpit and he visited with other boats in the anchorage. I made some hummus. Migration and Blue Beryl joined us on Aldabra in the evening for sundowners, appetizers and hot dogs to celebrate the fourth of July. Migration is the only other American boat in the anchorage.

Monday night was an intense night of winds, which carried through all day on Tuesday. I did get into the water at one point to clear a thru-hull that was backed up with critters in it. But it was an otherwise lazy writing and reading day for all of us while we waited out the winds, which were gusting in the 30-knot range.

On Wednesday morning, another windy and rainy day, Dana and Johno set off from town to walk the 17 kilometers up and over the hill to Omoa. In the afternoon, Alex and Yvette from Blue Beryl took our dinghy over to pick Dana and Johno up. They were joined by Sam from Pablo in his dinghy. They had managed to get a bottle of cooking gas with the help of Graham on Pulsar. When they returned, Bruce from Migration came over to show us how to transfer the butane from the big bottle to our smaller tanks. We were pretty excited to be topped off with cooking gas since we’d been rationing ourselves by not using the oven.

On Thursday, I baked banana bread and the others did chores. We took the dinghy the three miles to Omoa for the start of the festival. We started by having lunch at the snack where we could use wifi. Dana and Johno booked their flights to return home in August. We then joined in watching the performances, which lasted until after 10 p.m., after which we took the dinghy back to Hanavave, arriving at 11:30 p.m. 

On Friday, Marshall and Dana and Johno went back to the festival in the afternoon, first to do Internet and then to watch the evening dancing. I stayed back and ran the motor and the watermaker and did some chores. Earlier that day, we tried to convince a boat that had anchored in front of us to move. They weren’t inclined to do so, and left for the festival. Shortly afterward, as we were in our dinghy talking to Alex, the new boat hit Alex’s boat. We used dinghies to push it away and Alex put a stern anchor on the new boat. Meanwhile Migration went over to Omoa in their dinghy to send the people on that boat back to move their boat, which they did.

Saturday was to be our last day at the festival. We decided to take Aldabra over to Omoa and anchor to avoid the long dinghy ride between the two bays. We planned to pull up anchor after the festivities and sail to the Tuamotus. Unfortunately, we anchored too close to Antje, and while we were ashore, our boat hit their boat and damaged their steering vane, an essential part of their sailing needs. After we successfully avoided all the boat-collision drama in Hanavave, we now caused a huge problem for Antje. Although we did pull up anchor that night for the Tuamotus, I regret not staying there to help mitigate the hardship for Antje.

The dancing that night by the Nuku Hiva and Fatu Hiva groups was spectacular. A great way to end our magical visit to Fatu Hiva. We made wonderful new friends among the cruisers and the islanders. I started missing them all as soon as we were underway.

After arriving in Taiohae Bay on Nuku Hiva on May 5, we checked into the country, got laundry done, worked on some boat projects and familiarized ourselves with the town. Kevin Ellis of Nuku Hiva Yacht Services helped us with the checkin and made that very smooth. While hanging out at his office, we met and chatted with other new arrivals.

My sister Wendy then arrived on Tuesday, May 10. That same day I got my paperwork done for my carte du sejour (temporary residency) and we bought some provisions (after the supply boat arrived).

We pulled up anchor the next day and went around to the west side of the island, where we found a nice private anchorage with somewhat decent snorkeling.

We hung out there for a few days and then rounded to the north side of the island, to a larger anchorage (still by ourselves) in front of a gorgeous view of tall mountains and a lush valley. We went ashore to meet the folks living there. They allowed us to walk about their property and they gave us breadfruit, apple cinnamon fruit, oranges, lemons and pamplemousse. The next day I baked brownies and Marshall and Wendy delivered them to the family onshore. I baked bread. And we continued to putter around with small projects while not snorkeling or reading.

Our next anchorage was Anaho Bay, said by many to be the most beautiful anchorage in all of French Polynesia. It was more crowded than our other bays. There were about 13 boats when we arrived and it went down to eight while we were there. The first day we went ashore and asked Juliette whether we could come to her place for dinner. She said yes, so we went back to shore for a 6:30 p.m. dinner. I had poisson cru that was delicious.

The next day we got up early and hiked over a pass to Hatiheu Bay. It took a couple of hours there and back but we saw all kinds of plants and birds that we needed to identify. On the other side, we walked around the town and got some ice cream. The town is quiet and gorgeous.

We left Anaho a couple days later and went back to Taiohae to do a bit of paperwork and arrange a land tour for Monday. We got everything done in Taiohae quickly and set out the next morning for Controleur Bay. The first couple of nights we we anchored in front of Taipivai, where Herman Melville stayed as a young man. We walked around the town and a very nice many named Vena gave us a stock of bananas.

On our last day in the bay, we took the boat over to Hakapaa to find a trail to a waterfall, but we were unsuccessful. After hanging out for most of the day, we headed back to Taiohae in time to anchor before dark.

On Monday morning, we went to the gendarmerie to have Pat taken off the crew list for the boat. Then we went on an island tour with a great guide named Mate. We started by going up the mountain out of the bay and into the interior, which is rich and lush. The road led us back to Taipivai, where we visited an artisan center. From there we went back to Hatiheu where we toured the ruins of an old village and then had lunch in the town. I had poisson cru again because it’s so good! We also drove west up the northern coast to see Aakapa Bay. The tour ended at the Hooumi valley in Controleur Bay. It was a great way to see parts of the island we wouldn’t have seen by boat.

Wendy and Pat flew out the next morning and the supply boat came in. So Marshall and I walked around and scoped out grocery stores to visit the next morning, once the shelves were restocked. When we did go back, we stocked up on things we’ll need once we leave Nuku Hiva.

We have a couple of weeks before our new crew, Dana and Johno arrive. So we’re doing boat projects, doing laundry, cooking, getting fuel and provisioning.

Getting diesel and gasoline at the fuel dock was a bit of an accomplishment. You take the dinghy in surging seas over to a wall and climb up a ladder with your fuel cans. In our case, we made two runs with six cans each (120 liters of diesel and 20 liters of gas). After you fill your fuel cans at the gas station, you lower each one into the dinghy with a rope. The price was right because we had a duty-free certificate. And Pierre at the gas station helped us haul the cans to the dinghy and even into the dinghy.

Our reward for the fuel run was to attend a festival that was a celebration of the first graduating class of the Patutiki tatoo school. In addition to demonstrations of tatooing and carving and painting on tapa cloth, they showed a great documentary about the significance of Marquesan tatooing and then there was dancing, and it was amazing. We attended the next night as well. Spellbinding. I’ll try to post a video eventually.

During the years in which I’ve been talking about this passage, I’ve often said that I hope the passage is so boring that it’s completely devoid of any interesting stories. And be prepared to be bored, because that is pretty much the case.

Once we left the harbor in San Diego, we motored until the wind came up, which was about two and a half hours. I can’t remember what my exact thoughts were at the time, but I certainly wasn’t relaxed. On the way out, we faced big swells and chilly air. When the wind came up, it was 25 knots on the beam with big seas. We put two reefs in the mainsail and rolled in the jib a bit. That didn’t hold back our speed. We were off on a wild ride. The enormity of what we were embarking on, the cold and the big seas all kept me on edge. I found myself just coping, tending to each task that presented itself and waiting for the other shoe to drop. What was going to go wrong and how would we fix it?

I expected the first few days to be cold but conditions stayed that way for a good two weeks. Slowly, you get settled into the conditions and the routine of being at sea, functioning gets a bit easier, and the weather seems a bit more benevolent. The seas never really calmed down the whole trip, but as the weather got warmer, I started to relax a bit.

On the second night out, I decided to listen to music during my night watch. But toward the end of the new Jon Batiste album, which I was listening to for the first time, the rudder arm pin for the autopilot sheared off. I had to wake Pat and Marshall from well-deserved sleep to fix it while I hand steered. Fortunately, this had happened once before in 2016 and Pat was familiar with the issue. Plus, I had multiple spares of the pin. So, with Marshall’s help, Pat fixed it rather quickly. That was the last time I did anything on my night watch other than listen to the noises of the boat the wind and the sea.

We did a lot of sail changes on the passage. Sometimes we would be on some sort of a reach with a reefed main and jib. Other times we would lower the main and sail downwind on two jibs or even one. A few times we raised the spinnaker for a bit, but often the wind speed and angle weren’t right for the chute. During one of these sail changes, the engine over heated. It turned out that we got a vapor lock after long days of following seas, and the raw-water strainer was empty when the engine was started. That episode required changing the impeller and then flushing the impeller bits out of the hose that leads to the heat exchanger. A fried impeller was not new on Aldabra, so again, Pat and Marshall were able to make the repairs with ease.

We had a lot of prepared meals that had been frozen, so often meal prep was just about heating something up. We were really grateful for that because the big seas made it hard to use the galley. Each of us got thrown around pretty dramatically once or twice. Marshall was the only one who made some meals from scratch, and those were delicious breakfasts.

So, what was it like? One day is kind of like the next. The days go by very fast and the night watches seem long. At first we saw a lot of gray sky and gray ocean swells. We saw very little wildlife, some occasional birds and flying fish. Later we had some blue skies and blue seas when the sun came out. It was a full moon when we left so we didn’t start seeing stars until later. But it was fun to do some identification under Pat’s astronomer coaching.

I had expected that there would be a lot of time to read and study topics such as weather and destinations in the South Pacific. But there was very little down time. We each had two four-hour watches, one during the day and one at night. Then there was time to sleep and eat. I did weather downloads a couple of times a day and did some planning based on that. I also read a couple of Herman Melville books related to French Polynesia. Pat read, studied French and kept a journal. Marshall read, listened to podcasts, kept notes and participated in radio nets on the single-sideband radio. Both of them found things to fix.

We just took one day at a time, and the days got better as the climate got warmer. It was never scary or disagreeable. But as we approached Nuku Hiva, we all talked about how amazed we were that things had gone so well. None of us wanted to mention it earlier, because you never know what can happen, but close to the end of the trip, it felt easier to express relief about all the things that didn’t go wrong.

Our passage was so lucky that we didn’t even have windless days in the ITCZ. Most of the other boats making the passage talked about being becalmed for a few days or facing horrible squalls. We hardly noticed that we’d even been in the ITCZ.

There are so many things you prepare for on a passage like this. Broken boom, broken mast, hole in the hull or some other cause of taking on water, injury, sickness, non-functioning engine or non-functioning watermaker, ripped sails. You dread such things as non-functioning electronics, communications, refrigeration, stove, heads, solar panels. But all that stuff worked for us, and we were simply amazed.

So, what did fail besides the rudder-arm pin and the impeller? Here’s the list:

One of the depth sounders quit working, it may just need to be cleaned.

The spigot that diverts watermaker water from the galley sink (for testing) to the tank got bent pretty badly.

A latch on the Engels portable freezer broke.

The spinnaker pole became detached from the fitting that kept it on its track.

The spinnaker halyard got very chafed while being used to hoist the second jib.

A hinge on one of the toilet seats broke.

The CPT autopilot (backup) doesn’t stay in place for long periods of time so the belt gets loose.

The shower sump got clogged.

The boom preventer broke (as designed) and jumped overboard.

The electrical monitoring system got a bit confused at times.

The wind generator circuit breaker tripped and we didn’t discover it until after we anchored.

The kill solenoid on the engine stopped working, so we have to open up the engine compartment to kill the engine.

The hasp latches used to lock the lazarette broke.

The jib furling line frayed.

The companionway hatch started leaking in rain storms when the boat was heeling.

The steering cable groans.

Nothing major failed, and so many important elements worked consistently. We feel very lucky. Especially now that we are here in Nuku Hiva and three boats have come in with broken booms and one boat is still on the way after being dismasted.