15° 29 S / 144° 41 W

We returned to the main town of Taiohae, Nuku Hiva (still in the Marquesas) late last week to get supplies, finish our boat repairs & pick up our mail.  Since we knew that dining out would not be an option in the next group of islands (the Tuamotus), we decided to have a meal onshore at a little shoreside place that serves pizza from a wood burning oven along with the poisson cru (raw tuna marinated in lime juice and coconut milk with veggies) that we have come to love. We ended our night with a showing of our governor as Terminator 3 in the cockpit on our laptop with big drums pounding onshore (the locals were practicing for their upcoming big Saturday night & the commencement of the fete de Juillet -- weeks of festivities surrounding Bastille Day).

Cruising is not all play as we spent more than a few days & numerous dinghy trips in to buy provisions, refill our propane tanks, get diesel fuel, check out with the authorities & finally get our spreader fixed (for non-sailors, a spreader is essential as it helps hold up the mast). Bob gets major kudos in the handyman department. A local French guy crafted the new stainless part for us, but Bob was the one stuck up the mast for hours on end doing the actual installation. After that task was behind us, we were relieved that our mail had finally arrived from our forwarding service in Seattle. Our mail left Seattle as air mail on June 10 & finally arrived in Taiohae on July 8. Little did we know that after the mail reaches Papeete, Tahiti via air, it is then put on a very slow boat that brings mail & supplies to many villages throughout the Marquesas. The sturdy ‘Taporo’ mail boat is seen below leaving the harbor at the same time that we vacated for new cruising grounds. (So, yes, you holiday cards will arrive – it will just be a month or so after you send them).

We enjoyed an easy 4 hour sail to the next island of Ua Pou. The dramatic skyline includes seven vertical basaltic spires that make it look like a palace spiked with minarets. The tallest spire, Oave, is over 3,900 ft & is known as the most powerful (god like in their myths) in all the Marquesas Islands. En route to this beautiful landscape, we caught a good sized tuna that made Bob very proud of his new fishing techniques.

After anchoring at dusk off the main village of Hakahau, we attempted our hand at poisson cru with the fresh tuna but I think we were missing a secret ingredient. We checked out the village the next day & met some fellow cruisers from San Diego who were aboard a pretty little wooden boat ‘Lorina’ built in the 40s in Denmark. They shared stories of their leaks that they could not pinpoint & told us they had been somewhat stuck in this harbor waiting for the right winds as they did not have an engine! All this reminded me of why we bought a newer fiberglass boat for this cruise rather than rely on our older (1955) woodie ‘Mossie Estelle’ that sits lonely back in Berkeley. We offered to give these new friends a tow out of the bay the next day to help them get on their way (pic below). We hope we will meet them & other cruisers from our “Polly Needs Ya” radio net at our next landfall – Kauehi in the Tuamotus archiplelago. As I write this, it is 7:00 in the evening & we are just 30 miles away from landfall but we have taken some sail in just to slow down so we don’t reach our destination until the light & tide are right. It’s hard to have to slow down Althea when we have been out on the passage for several days but I guess it’s never good to tempt mother nature when it comes to coral passes.

Til next time….Courtney