Taihoae - Nuka Hiva

Off again. We were delayed a little leaving Oa Pou. The guy for the wood wasn't there all morning. Then we discovered that a marathon was being run and would end right there on "our" beach! So we stayed to watch. It is an anual event and folks from France came to run! A really big deal. Only 45 runners though, but one was a 3 time champion from France. It was a 42Km run almost all the way around the island.

They had food and crafts for sale, so Trinda and I went our separate ways.... She found a shark vertebrae and seed necklace that is real nice. I found fried rice and a local fruit cake. The announcer had a great time explaining how good this pie was to be and also how much it gives the "popping farts". So naturally I had to walk over and buy it with every one laughing and having such a good time. This morning Trinda confirmed the potency! There were only about 8 English speaking people in th e audience,
but he explained lots to us, and translated our comments back to the crowd. It was fun.

When the craftsman, Rata Ro, returned he only had a whole tree that he offered to cut up for my steering oar. I told him it was OK, I'd look else where. Then he cave me a piece of wood to repair the dinghy oar that broke into while we were first launching it here.

Then this morning we headed out for Nuka Hiva. We were low on water, so I started the watermaker again. The bay at Oa Pou was too dirty. It stopped up my filters. Minutes later t was blowing the antifreeze out again. So with the sails up and making over 5 knots on our way for 265 miles, I went to work on the watermaker yet again. It turns out the rubber impeller in the watermaker boost pump has eaten itself! Darn! I don't have an extra for that either! I find a transfer pump that I have been using
with the diesel and temporarily install it.

Well, we made Nuka Hiva. Saturday about noon. Everything is closed til Monday! I can't even get the internet til then!!!

Oa Pou - 2

Spelling.... Yeah I had it wrong. I hope it is the last time I fail to spell the name of one of these places correctly! Ha!

We Had a nice pot luck last night. Lots of raw fish. Trinda made the ceviche and 3 other people brought fish, tuna and some kind of "yellow Jack". It was god. One local sauce was soya, oyster sauce, mayonnaise, catsup and garlic. Very tasty. She also took a chocolate cake, the wacky cake mix.

This morning we had to go to the gendarme to check in again. It turns out that we have to say hello in every port, even in the remote Tuamotu's. We are to find a policeman and report in so he can call the main office to say where we are. The office in Hiva Oa did not enter us in the computer. So we had to wait there while he entered all the info in again. At least it didn't cost anything this time. It was 62,700 cfp to check in using the agent. That may be almost $700 US. If we had known, we might
have been able to have saved a significant part of that. Oh well, its only money.

We went to the local hospital where they gave us, FREE, drugs for anti-elephantism. It seems to be a real problem here. We have seem numerous locals with large arms and legs and feet. We will take the pills tonight after supper, as directed. It is supposed to last for 1 year.

Guess what we are having for lunch and supper again? If you guessed fish, you win again! Yep, grilled dorado and breadfruit. The bananas didn't make it. We still have 2 hands that went straight from green to mostly black! They are good still, if after eating 7 hands in a little over a week, you can call them good. But at least not mushy.

A local guy at the pot luck is a craftsman that makes oars for the racing out-rigger canoes. He says he has some hardwood that should be good for my wind vane steering oar. I am to meet him at his shop tomorrow morning with my dimensions. He seems quite a character. When Survivor filmed on Nuka Hiva, they later needed some original music. The director flew him to Los Angles, where he wrote and maybe performed the vocal for the show. He said he sings more than is a musician. It will be interesting
getting acquainted with him. One of the other boats setup the pot luck at his house. They have been in or around French Polynesia for a year, but are now on their way back to Hawaii.

Ou Pau

FISH!! Fish!! Finally. On the way to Oa Pau we finally caught a darado! A BIG one, maybe 53 inches long to the split in the tail! It took both Donnie and I to hold it up for the pictures. We already had caviche once and are taking it to a pot luck tonight here on the beach.

We left Hiva Oa about midnight and sailed through the night. Wind was good. We made about 6.5 knots most of the time. This morning about 8, he hit my lure. It was a 3 inch purple and pink plastic squid. We were only doing 5 knots when he hit, but we couldn't stop. It was 20 minutes before I could reel him up to the boat. Donnie had the net and Trinda the gaff. It did take all 3 to get him aboard. I also made a tray of teriaki fish jerky. It is not done yet, so reports for it will come later.

There are 6 other boats here. Also the inter-island supply ship came in just behind us. It is the same one from Hiva Oa. It is kind of fun to watch it maneuver into these little bays and tie up to the old docks. It took all day to unload in Hiva Oa, but only a couple hours here. They first unload their own fork lifts then the containers. Here they unpacked the containers and loaded them up again.

Havamenu - Hiva Oa

The guide books said it was "uninhabited, pick all the fruit you want while in season and bathe in the beautiful river." ... The natives forgot to read the guide book. There are 3 parties here, a vacationing group of fishermen from Tahiti, a big group we recognized from Atuona and a group living in a hut that is apparently maintaining the fruit trees and trails between them.

There was one other boat here, Avventura. A couple of young guys from California. They had a breadfruit and not much idea how to cook it, so Trinda invited them and their breadfruit to supper. She fried it with bacon bits and onions. We all enjoyed it. If any of you have any special recipes for breadfruit, please e-mail them to the winlink address.

Oh well, we hiked up past them, looked at the coconuts and funny trees, then waded in the river.

Today we took the dinghy around to the next little bay, really just the other half of this one. The surf was big and the shore had rocks and coral so we anchored the dinghy off and swam ashore. It was quite a swim through the under tow. I put our rubber shoes in the snorkeling mesh collecting bag along with the mosquito repellent and my hat, and swam. Yeah, the hat got wet. There we hiked back quite a ways then we heard gun shots and became nervios. So we started back to the beach where we left the
swim fins and masks. On the way back, we saw the locals from the camp on the other side, on the top of the ridge, hunting. So we relaxed a little.

We managed to find a few breadfruit. Most of them were at the top of 100 foot tall trees. Donnie shinnied up a small, short tree and got the first one. Then we shook a few more out of other short trees. They may be green, but we'll try them anyway. We heard there were mangos ripe, but we failed to find those trees.

We are heading for Oa Pau tonight. It is about 60 miles, so we'll leave well after dark in hopes of a daylight land fall. It is about 20 miles from Nuka Hiva, where my replacement parts are supposed to be.

Tahuata - Nord Oste

Enough of the big city. We left Atuona and sailed down wind through the same channel. Much nicer trip down wind! Ha! We are in a little bay on the NW corner of Tahuata, close to where we were before.

There is no one living in this bay, so we helped our selves to some coconuts, pomel'le'muose (large great fruit), limes and a mango. Trinda and Donnie both walked too close to a wasp's nest with the usual effect. (benadril, back at the boat took care of the swelling).

Then we went snorkeling. I saw almost every fish from the movie, "Finding Nemo".

Trinda put her fishing pole out and left it over night. She has just bought a roll of 230 LB test line and a new lure. This morning it was gone! Pole, line lure. Even the pole holder. So the score is 9:2 with the fish ahead! ;( I cut a small piece of fish from the tuna we caught on the way here that was still on deck in a bucket, it was not a good one. And immediately caught 2 nice fish. A red snapper and something else. We decided to take them around to another boat or two and get a second opinion
about the edibility of them. It was unanimous that there is ciguatera here and we shouldn't eat either of them. But while telling the story of Trinda's pole, I realized that it might be here still. When we got back, we got the snorkel stuff and looked,, Yep! There it was, right under the boat, only 42 feet down! Just as clear as anything. I got the grapnel anchor out of the dinghy and from the surface, managed to snag the pole and bring it up. Her lure was firmly caught in a rock on the bottom. We
put the line in a wench and pulled it right up, lure and all!

Tomorrow we are going to the NW corner of Hiva Oa, Hauamenu. It is about 12 miles away.

Atuona - Hiva Oa

We motored up wind for about 2 hours to go around the corner of Tahuata to the main bay on Hiva Oa. There is always a wind blowing thru the channel, and today was no exception, about 25 knots on the nose the whole way. The bay we left had 30 to 35 with gusts to 40 knots to day so we out just in time.

This is one of the oficial immigration and customs entry points for the Marquesas. We found the agent's representative that we had e-mailed and met in Zihuatanejo today. She did not have our papers ready so we will meet her again tomorrow to check into the country.

We anchored with help from our friends on "Bold Spirit" from Port Orchard, Wa. They have been here a week waiting on auto pilot parts. Our parts are indeed now in Tahiti and will be shipped to us as soon as we tell them which harbor to ship them to.

We were hitch-hiking to town to meet the agent, walking down the road in the light rain, when Trinda slipped in the mud on the pavement. And, SPLAT, fell on her but in the mud. OOPS, so there was a side trail down to the shore next to the lagoon, so she strips down to bra and panties and does some laundry right there on the beach. No one was around, so it was OK I guess. We walked back up to the road and a few minutes later a pickup stopped and gave us a ride in the back the 3 miles to the town of
Atuona. Shortly after we started up in the pickup, Trinda's hat blew off in the road. Of course, the driver didn't see or stop, so she is down one more!

We got stir-fry from a van parked under a tree. Donnie and Trinda had pork and veggies. I had beef in oyster sauce. It was all good. We found a bank machine and got some Polynesian Francs, I thought 8000 would do, but it cost 1800 for lunch. I recalculated and tried for 30,000. I think that may be almost $250.

We went on to find a grocery store. We got some chicken breasts, pork chops, cabbage, butter and crackers for about 4000cfp. They have butter in a tin can, like beans? We haven't tried it yet, but intend to soon. We kept buying things in Mexico, to try, and then not trying them till it was too late to get more when they turned out good. So we are going to try the butter tonight, so we can get nm0ore tomorrow if we like it.

We ate the last 2 of the eggs from Zihuatanejo today. That's 5 weeks for eggs on the counter! Only one floated and was thrown away last week.

Tahauta Day 2

We moved successfully 45 miles north, from Fata Hiva to Tahuata.
We had a real nice dinner with the folks on Marcy. Bread fruit French fries, pepper jelly w/cream cheese, steak, pork chops, cabbage/rice sauté, kava fruit, coconut, wine, brownies, banana bread and port wine desert. And lots of nice stories. You meet someone, then 3000 miles later, across a whole ocean and there they are again!

It has been great so far. We intend to spend at least a couple weeks here in the Marquesas. Then on to some of the southern Tuamotu's. I haven't decided which one really as of yet.

Every thing here is fine with us. No new failures, HA! not much repaired either. We have a parts order supposedly coming via PSY , but I haven't given them a destination yet. Not much, just blocks for the wind vane, GPS antenna and Genoa track slides.

We have had our first experience trading with the natives and trying to figure out how to eat what we got back with. Kava fruit, great fruit and bread fruit so far, and oh yes , LOTS of bananas. I may turn yellow if I eat them fast enough that they don't spoil.

I understand the I will be able to access the internet when we get to Nuka Hiva. I hope to be able to upload the pictures for the stories then too.