09:27S 134:08W

 

Lovesail is putting on a sprint for our final approach to the Marquesas.  Wind picked up yesterday evening and we had a rollicking ride through the night, averaging over 7 knots.  Lucy’s watch held the record speed of 12.4 kts.  Yikes!  Skipper came on deck and second reef went into the main pronto.  Today continues in similar vein.  The miles are flying by and we now expect to make our landfall on Friday morning – under two days from now.  Slight change of plan:  we are now making for Fatu-Hiva, not Hiva-Oa.  I know that won’t make much difference to most of my readers, so let me explain.  The islands lie in a line running roughly from bottom right to top left.  With the wind coming from the right, that means we can start cruising at the bottom right and work our way along the islands .  It’s more difficult to go the other way because we have to head into the wind .  Fatu-Hiva, our new destination is down in the bottom right corner.  The only problem is that the rally is supposed to go to the other place, which is further up the chain.  So we’ll meet up with them all a couple of days later.

Hanavave on Fatu-Hiva is billed as “the most beautiful bay in the Pacific”.  Anyway, it’s not to be missed.  The island is renowned for its traditional arts and crafts, ancient stone monuments, etc.  Furthermore Thor Heyerdahl lived there in the ‘30s while going “back to nature”.  It didn’t work out and neither did his theories about the Pacific islands being settled from the East.

 

Not much to show you by way of photos. But here’s a shot of our cat’s cradle rig for down wind sailing.  Interesting, heh?