Positively the very last time I try to upload anything in Tahiti!

Hoorah! At last I've managed to do this. You won't believe how much it has cost to upload these few nondescript pictures...certainly more than the haircut which you can't really see here anyway! Oh well........




The view from down the road. Moorea in the background.







The traditional boats, pirogues, I think the French called them, which were just about to sail off into the sunset.






The view across the road from the marina with the mountains in the background. They are usually bathed in cloud and as I write this, they can't be seen at all as it's pouring with rain...again!
We should be leaving here in a day or so for the Cook Islands possibly via one or two of the other smaller islands in the group. We have been put off Bora Bora as it's a hotbed of crime apparently. So much for the "most beautiful place on Earth" title! Huahine sounds quite nice and not touristy and there's another one beginning with M whose name I've forgotten but it has lots of vowels in it as do most of these places.
Tahiti has been an expensive experience with lovely people along with the flowers and the frenchness of it all but it'll be good to move on to a quieter place where it's easier to imagine how it must have been in Cook's or Bligh's day... I expect they'll have internet though....?

Hoorah! At last a photo after trying for hours and hours. This is me (!) with my head on the block in Nuku Hiva waiting to be sacrificed at one of the sacred "tiki" sites. Goodness only knows how many poor people were beheaded over this stone and then consumed by the villagers. The eyeballs were a delicacy!

Papeete and it's charms.

Once again, we are just a little bit behind the Rally as they all left a few days ago for Moorea which looks wonderful, just a few hours sail from here. We are waiting for people to repair things. This time, there is more of a communication problem, surprisingly because hardly anyone speaks enough English and my French is OK except over the phone where everyone jabbers away so quickly that I get completely lost and misunderstand those important little words that make sense of everything…. Oops!

The wifi continues to be pretty useless and expensive but I have come ashore now while the boat is full of repairmen to find a better spot so that I can hopefully upload a photo or two. I had my hair cut a couple of days ago and it’s now quite short…nice to feel the air on my head again and I want to put an up to date photo on this blog!
I’m sitting in a nice place by the sea, surrounded by birds, (bulbuls and mynas) but no wifi here so I will have to move again. At least it’s not too hot yet and the insects aren’t biting much…it’s 8.15am here, 7.15pm in the UK.

The five traditional Polynesian boats all left last night after being here for a few days for some celebrations etc. They all looked quite spectacular as they left in the fading light (at least one photo came out so fingers crossed for the uploading). The crews were putting on a show as they went, singing and dancing, and the boat from the Cook Islands that had been alongside us did the haka. They were also blowing on triton shells to summon all the crews back on board. I’m pleased we were still here and in the middle of it all. They are lovely people and obviously very happy with their lives, mostly simple and traditional except that they all have mobile phones now!!

Moving on along the coast a little to an open air cafe, I find that the wifi signal is excellent for a change so here goes with the photos..and sorry they are so poor. My camera just isn't up to the job. It can't be my lack of photography skills can it? It has cost me nearly £7 for an orange juice here though. This place is exorbitant!

Just a few photos of Nuku Hiva, Marquesas.. I hope!

The wifi link here in Papeete, Tahiti is so incredibly slow....and expensive! Papeete is pronounced "papa etay" in case you wondered or thereabouts. It's quite nice being in a marina again for a while with unlimited water and electricity. I just wish the wifi was better because it really hurts having to pay nearly £3 an hour and then wasting it all waiting to get into hotmail or something similar.....then when you finally get through, your credit runs out! I am waiting to upload some photos for this blog but it just never happens and we go offline every single time as it has just done again.

Never mind...you'll get them sometime...maybe from Moorea where we are heading next in a day or two when the engine thing is fixed......I'm not sure if this engineer knows quite what he is doing......he's very nice but keeps dropping things in the bilges!!

Most of the other Bluewater boats left for Moorea a couple of days ago. It's quite close, just 5 hours sailing away and looks lovely from here. This place is nice though, if a little busy, lots of traffic but lots of good shopping too. I found ear candles. Hurrah!! I also bought some "cheap".... but still real...... black pearls from a market stall. The ones on sale in the jewellers shops are way too expensive for the likes of me. I simply wanted a small variety of shapes and colours which I found. The "perfect" (and incredibly expensive) ones look like ball bearings so I was told!

Just after the other boats left, our part of the marina was taken over by five strange craft which turned out to have come from other parts of Polynesia...New Zealand, Vanuatu, Samoa, Cook Islands and Fiji so we learnt. If I can get this wifi to work properly, I shall post a photo or two. Otherwise, you must wait a while!! These boats, about 70' long are only a year old but built in the traditional style with twin hulls, raised sterns and have no electricity or running water. They are crewed by 16 volunteers and hand steered across the ocean using the enormous tiller/oar which looks really dangerous to me! The crews come from all over Polynesia I believe and the purpose of the year long voyage is to maintain contacts between the Polynesian Islands as well as being eco friendly etc. They all look as if they are having a lovely time too.

This wifi link is so bad that I'm having trouble even getting this typed so photos will definitely have to wait until next time now....Sorry.

I managed to get some time online in Nuka Hiva at huge expense but then spent all but 5 minutes or so trying to access hotmail etc and only managed in the end to get Facebook briefly to send a couple of quick messages and to post my blog, so sorry if you were expecting an email from me! The phone was expensive too and the credit I had lasted just two minutes! Apart from this I loved these islands and would have liked to visit the others in the group.

We spent 5 days in the Marquesas anchored in Taiohae Bay before setting out again for the 6 day sail to Tahiti having decided not to visit the Tuamotu archipelago which lies about 450 miles from Nuka Hiva en route to Tahiti. The Tuamotus are famous for black pearls and French nuclear tests and are an extensive range of very low lying coral atolls, Rangiroa being the largest.

Anyway, back to Nuka Hiva….I was dreading the infamous attack of the nono flies which frequently lead to hospital visits but in the end, they just weren’t biting (much) and I just had one half of my lower right leg exposed briefly, unDeeted, resulting in about 5 bites only. Phew!!

We spent the first day recovering from 19 nights at sea and getting our shorelegs back. The second day was spent repairing the tape on the foot of the yankee which we had to do by hand and which was an enormous effort, taking over 8 hours to sew about 5 metres. The third day was spent recovering from that and doing some provisioning (French cheese….lovely!!), but on the fourth day, we had a day out!

We hired a local guide, Richard, a lovely Polynesian who could do the “haka”( he says it originated in the Marquesas) to drive us around the best parts of the island in a 4x4 which we shared with a delightful young couple on another boat, Lucie and Jamie from Bamboozle.
The Marquesas are quite simply spectacular; rugged volcanic peaks and dense greenery everywhere. Apart from the scenery, the Marquesas are most famous for their cannibalism which only ended about 100 years ago. Google it for more info? A visit to the sites of the ritual sacrifices is a must…… a strange aura pervades in these damp gloomy areas….. unsurprisingly. The authorities are now starting to preserve these places thank goodness. They were full of mysterious stone carvings called tiki which were deteriorating rapidly. This is because they were carved from the native volcanic rock, basalt, which disintegrates easily because the minerals inside break down very quickly with rainwater etc. (We amateur geologists know these things!!) It felt just a little strange putting my head on the block for the photo knowing that countless others had been beheaded on this stone..though not sideways of course! The stone has been moved from its original position perhaps because the last known example of cannibalism took place in 1907 when a grandfather killed and ate his young grandson…there must be other descendants of this man still around? Once you’ve tried it…..? Who knows??

Next day was time to leave, not too early thankfully. We headed out southwest and enjoyed a good couple of days sailing before the weather turned as we approached the Tuamotos. A visit to Rangiroa would have been impossible under the circumstances as we sailed between two atolls in 40 knots and driving rain which lasted nearly 24 hours. Imagine trying to spot coral heads and land only about two metres above sea level when visibility is down to a few metres. We couldn’t see any land at all as we crossed the 150miles or so through this archipelago until the weather cleared the next day and we could just see some palm trees on the horizon about 8 miles away.

The last part of the sail to Tahiti was fairly uneventful except that we had to motor for some time as the wind died and then “something” went wrong with the engine so that we didn’t dare shut it down in case it wouldn’t start again……. And so it goes on but we are currently safely tied up in a marina with water, electricity and wifi.

Time to catch up with some sleep…. More soon.
PS Not sure if the photos will go this time as the connection is slow…
!

Having just sailed over 3000 miles....

Once again, it was time to go as the engine and generator were now purring nicely, stores bought and stowed, water and diesel acquired and the necessary clearing out procedure completed. We had bought most things we needed in Panama but there is always something extra that was overlooked. This time it was sugar and there was none, at least no white anyway, in Santa Cruz in any of the shops. There was also no cheese (apart from the cream variety) to be found. This is one of the minor problems living in isolated places! Hoping though that the Marquesas will have lots of delicious French cheeses to make up for a virtually cheese free three weeks!

We set off early, before breakfast with the intention of heading south from Santa Cruz then south west for some while to clear before nightfall “that” island, Tortuga which had caused us so much trouble on our unscheduled return to the Galapagos two weeks ago. This time again proved slightly problematic with unfavourable winds and currents so that we had to motor for most of the day to leave Tortuga clear enough to starboard…this we did in the end thank goodness! It’s actually a lovely little island, the remains of an almost perfectly circular volcano with a sunken crater. On another occasion, maybe a visit!!

So now that we have been at sea for 48 hours and have long passed the spot where the engine and generator failed us last time, I thought I would start to keep an occasional diary of this trip as it will be the longest leg of a circumnavigation that any cruising yacht normally does, longer by over 250 miles than the Atlantic crossing from east to west. I have to say that although Moonshiner has had an awful lot of trouble these past 6 months with engine, genny, electrics etc, the hull, sails and rigging have caused no problems at all and this is after all what a sailing boat is all about so I am looking forward to about three weeks of good sailing!

After a day of indifferent winds where we wallowed a little doing just about 3 knots, the wind picked up and settled during the second night so that we are now able to make over 7 knots on average with two reefs in the main and yankee. If all goes well, we should be able to continue now like this for most of the journey. This is because we are already in the SE trade wind belt which hadn’t yet established itself last time…hence all the rain and squally weather which the other Rally boats had to endure for some days until they were far enough south and west. It would seem that March is still too early to leave the Galapagos for the Marquesas? It’ll be interesting to see what our journey time is compared with other similar size boats on the Rally….. just so long as the trade winds continue like this that is!

I am hoping to see some wildlife other than the usual flying fish and frigate birds. Yesterday afternoon, I saw my first large whale (longer than the boat!) which was spouting regularly as it swam slowly by. I think it was a humpback, going by the dorsal fin. It would have been nice to see it breach but it was just idling along. Still, it was a sight all the same.

Doing the night watch from midnight is a wonderful time to look at the stars as long as the sky is clear which it was last night. Scorpio dominates the sky overhead at this time and it’s interesting to be able to see the Southern Cross and the Plough on the opposite side of the sky at the same time. The heavens “move” exactly overhead from east to west just like the sun at this latitude making it easier to envisage things in relation to one another. My aim is to identify some of the southern stars and constellations that I haven’t seen before. The Milky Way was very clear too. I have just finished reading the Robert Graves “Greek Myths” which says that the Milky Way was formed when Hera breast fed baby Heracles after being coerced to do so by Athene. Heracles sucked so strongly that Hera, in some considerable pain, violently pulled him off the breast and some milk spurted across the sky leaving that “milky” trail…

It’s been quite cold out here so far too. I wore my cotton guernsey for warmth last night on watch, the first time I’ve worn it since the Atlantic 16 months ago.

Day 5
Still going great guns mostly over 7 knots and little sign of squalls apart from a few drops of rain last night. We are fairly near to a mystical “box” on the chart within which there are supposed to be unsettled conditions. We are trying to stay out of this area which covers 18 degrees of longitude and 5 of latitude (95 to 103 W and 03 to 08S) for obvious reasons and managing quite well so far!! We have covered over 600 miles since starting on passage on day 2. Not bad going!

There has been very little wildlife above the waves to see apart from some storm petrels and shearwaters and only one turtle so far as well as the humpback but several small squid committed suicide on deck last night. I found them this morning as dawn broke. I’d been wondering what the smell was!! Other boats on the rally reported being inundated by flying fish on deck and even being directly hit on occasion. Quite frightening I should think to be suddenly thumped by a lump of cold kamikaze fish in the dark!

Day 7
Managing to cover over 180 miles a day which is amazing! We decided to do 6 hour watches each covering the hours of darkness, so that’s 6pm to 6am local time. Dick does 6pm to midnight and I do midnight to 6am or thereabouts. This is working out quite well as it means we get a decent night’s sleep in one go rather than having to get up more than once each night.
The watches have been easy as the wind stays pretty well constant at 15-20 knots throughout the day and night and the odd patch of dark cloud brings only a slight wind shift and a few spots of rain so there is little sail handling to do. I listen to my mp3 player during my time on deck and watch the stars when it’s clear enough. I was looking at the Southern Cross last night and at the two bright stars nearby, Rigel Kent and Hadar and wondering where the names came from. Certainly not named by the ancient Greeks as they weren’t visible to them. They sound like an unlikely pairing of a daftly named private investigator, and his Australian Viking sidekick, the not so horrible….!

I also tend to ponder at these times, things like the obsession with adding rice grains to salt cellars, supposedly to keep the salt dry. Well, I can tell you that salt has a much greater affinity to water than rice does. Try putting some rice and salt together in a saucer with a little water…… Hmm!


Day12
Strangely enough, the Pacific is now proving not to be “pacific” and is at least as lumpy as the Atlantic was, for these last 5 days anyway. The magic box that we so carefully avoided didn’t end conveniently at 108W long, 03S lat but continued out westwards snaking right into the boat’s route and just making everything a little less comfortable with a fair amount of sea finding its way inconveniently into the boat when least expected! Oh well….. at least nothing important (like this computer) got wet and all the hatches are now closed!!
We are now about two thirds across with just over a thousand miles to go and keeping up a good pace, hardly surprising with up to 30knots of wind and 10foot seas. The main now has three reefs and we are using the staysail rather than the yankee which is hard to handle in strong winds but are still doing over 7 knots on average.
Night watches can be long but at least I have the dawn to see around 6am local time (now -8 hours GMT) each morning. A rosy dawn is a good thing in the tropics where the weather comes from the east unlike around the UK so I changed the rhyme to…

Red sky in the morning, a great day is dawning
Red sky at night, sailors take fright!

Absolutely no wildlife to see apart from the usual ocean birds but the sea is always nice to look at when the sun is out. I particularly like the lovely deep aquamarine colour which can be seen just below the white crests of the bigger breaking waves. I wish I could capture that on camera even though I’d probably never look at the picture again………!!

Day 19
I think that “box” which is rectangular on the chart is more like a trapezium with its upper left corner stretching several hundred miles westwards…….. but we are finally out of it after a week of lumpy seas etc. Unfortunately, the conditions have now changed to light E/SE winds so our progress has slowed somewhat. We have just over 350 miles to go as I write. We are better off than the boats about 1000 miles behind us though as they are becalmed and having to motor, not good when there is such a long distance to cover and a finite amount of fuel. We could safely motor the whole of the rest of the way from now on but there is no need as yet as we are still averaging 5 knots.

I made the second loaf of bread of this trip yesterday and it came out better than the first one which suffered from damp flour and then a fall onto the deck while it was proving! Incidentally, one of the drawbacks about the Galapagos is that everything natural; leather, wood, cotton, food etc gets mildewy very quickly and it’s an unpleasant surprise to open a locker after just a few days and find it and everything in it covered in a coating of mould.

Day21
We made it! Arrived this morning just about breakfast time giving us a total journey time of almost exactly three weeks to the hour. Now peacefully anchored in Taiohie bay along with about 20 other yachts, some of whom I recognize from back east somewhere. The final couple of days were uneventful… the wind virtually died so we motored for about 36 hours and we saw some spinner dolphins…the first marine wildlife (apart from birds and flying fish) for well over two weeks.
First impressions of the Marquesas ( Nuka Hivu) are hard to say as we haven’t been ashore yet but I’m looking forward to having a restaurant meal or two while we’re here and doing the 4x4 island tour if there’s enough time. We have a few things to mend on the boat too…hardly surprising after three weeks at sea but the generator and engine have both behaved impeccably I’m delighted to be able to say!!

And finally, as you are now reading this, it will mean that we have arrived safely...... This is short as internet connection is slow and expensive here but first impressions are that it's a lovely place if a bit rainy. Doing an island tour tomorrow and sailing off the day after that for Tahiti where you will have to wait for photos updates etc!!

Are we there yet? No we're not!!

So nearly another two weeks go by in “paradise” while we wait for the engine parts to arrive, this time from New York via Miami and Quito. The people who have helped to fix these latest problems have been wonderful as usual so no complaints there. We are now seriously behind the most of the Bluewater fleet however and have some major catching up to do; quite something when you have to make up over 3 thousand miles to start off with! At least the weather is supposed to be much better for the crossing in April rather than March……

Meanwhile, spending a lot of time sitting here at anchor on the boat because the tours to the other islands are either too expensive or fully booked at this time of year, I have had a lot of fun watching the wildlife (birds, fishes and sealions) at work and play. The water around here is teeming with life; millions of little fishes swim in huge shoals seeking protection beneath the boats but they are easy prey for everything else both above the water and below. Fast swimming fish charge at them from below actually breaking the surface and creating splashes and general confusion all around. This attracts the pelicans which swoop down and plunge their bills, expanded to full capacity, into the water to “net” some small fry that have escaped. The pelicans then slowly sieve out the water and gulp down the fish left inside. At the same time, the delightful brown noddies are hovering all around hoping to pick up a tiny fish too but the funniest sight is when they sit on the pelican’s heads ready to pick up the odd escapee. The pelicans don’t seem to mind in the least either! I wish I could have captured this on camera. Sorry. The sealions are funny too as they swim lazily around the huge shoals and gulp down the tiny fish as sort of titbit. They often turn over onto their backs and just float by without a care in the world. What a nice life!

Other things about these islands are not quite so entertaining….. we were warned about the water here and they were right. Many of the boat crews went down with amoebic dysentery, this vessel included. Nice! Still, the antibiotics are readily available from “Pharmacy Row”..this is the main street in Santa Cruz where quite literally every other shop sells drugs (and toiletries) without prescription. I’ve no idea why so many pharmacies and these drugs aren’t cheap either. I think the source of the illness may be the bar adopted by the Rally where we spent many a “Happy Hour” drinking one particular cocktail…possibly the ice…who knows? Anyway, I shall not be drinking said cocktail again. Sticking strictly to bottled stuff from now on!

This should positively be my last blog entry before we leave…..let’s hope so!!