Hakatea Bay/Daniels Bay
Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Wed 21 Apr 2010 04:16
|
When you have a hangover you can guarantee
that your day will not go smoothly!
Amy was up bright and early to empty our
jerricans of fuel into the tanks so that our cans could be transferred onto Blue
Magic to be filled when Mark filled his tanks at the fuel dock. The filling of our tanks went smoothly with no problems
and the cans were loaded onto Blue Magic's decks. Paul and Amy were going
with Blue Magic along with Johan from Gaultine to help them fuel up as
we had been warned that the fuel dock was a nightmare because of the swell.
Anyway, what should have been a five minute job to pull up Blue Magic's stern
anchor ended up taking about an hour as they hauled up our main anchor in the
process. With only me on board that was great news but thankfully our
anchor managed to settle itself again and Jackamy didn't drag.
Much later than planned Blue Magic
eventually anchored stern to to the fuel dock and threw two lines to the shore
for Fionn and Simon to tie on, they don't know what they'd have done if they
weren't there to help. And after a very tense hour or so with Chrissy having to
continuously drive on and off the fuel dock because of the surge pushing them on
to the concrete the tanks were full and so were our cans.
They decided it would be best to raft up
along side us as it would be the easiest way to transfer the now full and very
heavy jerricans back to Jackamy. The rafting up went smoothly but we stayed
together while we prepared the boats to move round to the next bay where we were
meant to be having a BBQ with the other rally boats. While we were together the
lines were snatching as the wind was changing direction and causing the boats to
pull away from one another. Just as we finished pulling up our stern anchor we
heard a loud bang and splash and saw something shiny sinking quickly, it was one
of our fairleads! It had been rippped out because of the force on the stern
line that was tieing us and Blue Magic together. Not good
news!
Paul quickly donned his dive gear and jumped
in the water without a thought for the Tiger sharks that might be in the bay.
When he hit the bottom he couldn't even see his bright blue fins a few feet away
from him so he realised he had no chance of finding it unless he landed right on
top of it which just wasn't going to happen as the boats were continuously
moving. Understandably Paul was quite annoyed!
As it was now so late in the afternoon and
we were all exhausted we contemplated just staying put but we forced ourselves
to stop being miserable and we made the 5 mile journey to the next
bay, Daniel's Bay. It was here that Daniel, a local Marquesan, lived beside
a fresh water spring. That was before the TV programme 'Survivor' bought him out
and he moved back to the local village. Daniel had rigged up a pipeline raised
from the seabed by a buoy in the centre of the bay to which yachts could take on
water for the small price of a small present to him - sadly, all tihs is no
more!
 When we arrived the other rally boats were
all ashore on the beach having a BBQ but we decided to be real party poopers and
stay on the boat and watch a dvd. We knew we'd got to get up early to walk to
the waterfall so we wanted to be well rested for it, that's our excuse
anyway!
We met on shore at 08.00 with Fai Tira and
Chsalonina to begin the 2 hour hike up to Hakatea waterfall, the 3rd
highest waterfall in the world. The rest of the rally were paying to go with a
guide but we were all either stupid or sensible for choosing to opt out and do
it ourselves. We could either get horribly lost or find the waterfall quite
easily and save ourselves a few pounds and when it was the latter we were all
quite pleased with ourselves. It took around an hour and a half from start to
finish and it was a relatively easy walk. Once we'd walked through the
little village by the beach the path did narrow and we did have to cross a
few rivers but we managed perfectly well.
 
 
 The first and second
river
 The waterfall
We had been previously warned
that there wouldn't be much water in the waterfall as it hasn't rained for 6
months and they weren't joking, there was a trickle! But it was worth it just to
swim in the freezing cold pool at the bottom of the fall.
 How big was the eel
Jane!?!
Jane was the first one in and she
soon regretted being so eager. Something was swimming around her legs and she
was out of the pool and on that rock quicker than you can say "EEL"!!!! We could
see it hiding underneath the rock but still we all decided we'd walked a long
way for this and we needed to cool down so in we climbed. We soon discovered
that the eels weren't the only creature living in these waters, there were
shrimps/crayfish who liked to nibble on your feet - lovely!
  Pete the adventurer found a
secret section in the pool by climbing through a tiny hole in some rocks.
It was a cave directly at the bottom of the waterfall which made it quite eerie
and when anything unexpected touched you there were screams for fear of it being
a giant eel. After swimming for around three quarters of an hour we decided to
head back as the guides would we appearing with the rest of the rally
soon.
  
 When we returned to the dinghy
the tide had gone out and we were in around 2 ft of water. The engine was soon
hitting the bottom so Paul volunteered to row. The inlet was getting shallower
and shallower and we just been beaching ourselves so Chrissy, Mark and Amy
dragged us out through the channel and out past some of the rollers before it
got too deep and they had to jump back in. When Chrissy jumped back into the
dinghy she slipped off the side and went under the water and when Amy jumped
back in she fell straight into the bottom of the dinghy with her legs up over
her head! Very ladylike!
 After a spot of lunch we headed
back to Taiohae Bay to get ourselves sorted as we were planning on leaving the
next day, Wednesday.
|