At Sea Again - Marquesas to Tuamotus
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sat 3 Jun 2017 22:46
We leave the Marquesas with mixed feelings. They are beautiful and fascinating Islands. 150 years ago a sailing visitor would have found the same spectacular rocky peaks, verdant growth and rolly anchorages. Today the populations are a lot smaller and there are only scattered remains of the villages with their stone building platforms that terraced the valleys in former times. You hear and see the singing and drumming that once echoed around the islands but the ceremonial lifestyles and village populations have long gone. We can only rely upon the accounts of Melville and Stephenson to get beneath the undergrowth and lichens that now cover the remains. More time might have provided a better insight but you can only roll around your anchorage and endure the torrential rain for so long!
The Tuamotos where we're now headed are, by contrast, low coral atolls that, until the advent of the chart plotter, were given a wide berth by passing yachts. We are hopeful of crystal clear water, white coral sand, palm trees and sheltered anchorages. We have chosen three islands to visit on our way through to Tahiti and should be at the first in around two days.
Here at sea I have begun to appreciate what the string wave maps of the ancient Polynesians were all about. I could never understand what a spiders web within a wooden frame was meant to represent. What we have found is that the waves don't all come from the same direction. There will be those blown in the direction of the wind but also others following an underlying swell that cut across. This often results in a rather confused lumpy sea that can cause quite unpleasant and violent rolling. The ancients recognised this and recorded the two directions as string lines. Furthermore the directions of the waves vary between the islands and it is this that allowed the creation of the maps that could be read and compared with the conditions on passage. Arthur Grimble writing in "A Return to the Islands" describes a navigator smelling the sea air to know where he was. I can't say I have worked that one out yet.
After two uncomfortable days of 20kts wind and lumpy sea the clouds have now evaporated, the sea calmed and we are cruising along comfortably at six knots and enjoying the ride. Annie is making bread and preparing her new fishing line, I have repaired the beloved Bodem flask that broke into its inner and outer parts when flung onto the floor by a big lurch, the watermaker has purred into life when required, my beard trimmer will actually hold a charge when charged for long enough - so life is good! We now just need to time our arrival at Kauehi to coincide with high tide at the pass through the reef into the lagoon at 1300 on Monday (Tahiti time).
