Tonga - The Friendly Isles

The Tongan people lived up to their name of friendliness, but not overly so.  They are a proud and good looking people, rather large.  English is spoken quite widely and literacy is high.  On the island of Taunga, still in the Vava’u group, we met the local headman who called himself King Six.  He and his wife Pauline and four beautiful children invited us to dinner one evening. We struggled with the food a bit – mostly yams, baked unripe bananas, tapioca and taro.  But the fresh fish, pawpaw and grated coconut were good and the company excellent.  We took in the usual gifts of wine, tinned food, clothing and some toys for the kids.

Pauline had a wound on her leg which she admitted had not healed for some time. It looked infected to me but there was no doctor on her island so she had just left it. I worried about her leg and tried to bully her about going to a doctor.  The children’s legs were also covered in lumps and bumps from what looked like insect bites. The next day, Sunday, we took in a tube of antibiotic cream which I had been persuaded to buy in case we ever cut ourselves on the coral. Fortunately, we never did.  Tongans are a very religious people (Methodist) and they invited us, rather determinedly, to attend church with them – there was a lot of good singing.  They have a queer system here where the cash donations made in church are announced loudly for everyone to hear. We yachties all thought it a rather unpleasant system, forcing parishioners to contribute generously, whether they could afford it or not or be considered mean by their neighbours.  After church we went back to King Six and Pauline’s house for tea.  They gave us some mangoes, pawpaws and bananas from their garden, and Pauline presented me with a gift of a lovely tapa which she had made herself.  Tapas are made from the beaten bark of the paper Mulberry tree and then painted with traditional designs, and are common all over Polynesia.  They have special social significance in Tonga and I was very honoured to receive one as a gift.

On Vakaietu Island we went snorkelling at the ‘coral garden’.  We parked the dinghy on the sand and then, at high tide had to swim over a shallow bar to reach the ‘garden’ which then dipped quite deeply into the ocean.  This was quite amazing and by far the most beautiful coral and tropical fish we’d ever seen (or ever would again).  Returning over the bar later was a tense business as the water level had now dropped, surfing in with the incoming tide, our bellies just inches over the sharp tips of the coral reef.

On 10 October we left the Vava’u group and headed south for the Ha’apai group of islands, stopping first at Lifuka harbour to do the official check-in (they liked yachts to check in to each of the island groups).   This was a mere formality, but we had forgotten that our visas had expired on the 6^th!  The Immigration man (who was also the local policeman) was very nice about it and let it pass.

Lifuka Harbour in my new t-shirt

It was very beautiful and typically ‘tropical islandish’ in this area, the water shallow, clear and the most divine colour again.

At Nomuka Island Mike met three Tongan women with whom he traded some freeze-dried meat we had aboard for fresh water and brought them aboard for coffee.  The following day they invited us back to their house where they fed us dried octopus meat burnt on the naked flame of coconut husks and fresh coconut juice. 

We had seen plenty of these octopuses stretched out tightly on sticks stuck in the sand, drying in the sun, and had been curious – so it was interesting to get to try it.  Rugged sort of way to cook, but the octopus was tasty, quite chewy. Then they gave us some papaws, coconuts, bananas, lemons and one dried octopus to take home.  After that we brought them back to the boat for coffee again and gave them videos, music tapes, a lipstick and some stationery.  Their English wasn’t good but they were nice girls. Entertaining experience.

Three ladies paddling Mike to shore

On the island of Kelefesia, we met up with John and Christina on the catamaran, Taraipo.  Poor old Taraipo had suffered a dismasting in the Atlantic and now again in the Tuomotus.  It was currently running under a jury rig, so struggled to move well against the wind, but otherwise managed rather well.  Christina was an uninhibited blond Swede and was standing naked on deck hanging up her towel as we came in to anchor nearby.  She waved to us and invited us over for a drink - I never saw Mike prepare the dinghy so fast!  (Sorry guys, no picture of that one.)  They were good fun and Kelefesia was a lovely anchorage with just our two boats.



We got totally into eating coconuts and would scavenge for the brown ones, though we still couldn’t crack them open ourselves, nor could we climb the trees to collect the delicious green ones.  If lucky, we would find an obliging kid to do it for us – they could skim up like monkeys.

On 21 October we sailed on southwards to the capital of Nuku’alofa. The trip started out well but then, inevitably, the wind blew up and the rest of the trip was particularly nasty. Poor Forever spent many hours beating against the wind into huge waves. The problem was exacerbated on two counts; firstly, we didn’t have good charts for the area so weren’t sure of a good spot to stop, and secondly, the virus in my computer (which I’d first noticed in the Bahamas) had got worse and it was becoming more and more difficult to boot up. In defeat, we finally anchored very unsatisfactorily for the night against a reef and bounced unhappily all night. The wind eased the next day and we were able to continue to Pangaimotu Island where we anchored. On the way in Mike caught a fish, a delicious mahi mahi, but in the excitement of getting it aboard, the fishing gaff that Colin had so kindly given us back in the Marquesas was lost. My fault - naturally. We spent four days at Nuku’alofa and shared our fresh fish at dinner on Freyja with the Canadians Basil and Angela.

There were a lot of yachts there all waiting to make the last hop to New Zealand. A lot of the boats we knew had already left Tonga for Fiji, but we made the decision to stay longer in Tonga for now and go there later if we felt like it. Mike wasn’t keen on Fiji for some reason and I didn’t mind either way. The cyclone season, which officially begins on the 1st of November, was looming large. We all kept a sharp eye on the weather forecast as cyclones can arrive early. It was time to go south, beyond the cyclone belt, and we were ready but with very mixed feelings.

We felt so sad to be leaving these divine island nations of the Pacific. To me, there was something incredibly exotic about the Pacific, it was somewhere I had never even dreamed of visiting, so to actually be there was – well, extraordinary. We’d had an amazingly good, relaxed, laid back and sociable time and we’d met some great people. We barely ever saw or heard any news from the rest of the world – wars, bombs and floods ruined lives, World War III could have broken out and we wouldn’t have known it, and at the time we couldn’t have cared less. And – importantly for us – we’d spent remarkably little money, all things considered. I worked out that we had only spent about £800 in the seven months since Panama.

But there were good reasons to move on. Despite our frugality, our financial situation had become extremely dire by then, what little capital we’d started out with was now seriously depleted. We comforted ourselves with the thought that we would find work in New Zealand to boost our cruising kitty. And there was also the exciting possibility that we might actually find a new life there. Returning to our homeland, Zimbabwe, was no longer an option for us and we were hoping to find somewhere a bit more sunny than the UK to settle. Mike’s brother, Nick, was (and still is) living in Auckland with his family and Mike was looking forward to seeing family again.


So, on 25 October 2004 we stocked up with water, fuel and the bare minimum of fresh food, and set off on the last 1100 miles to New Zealand.



Tonga - Vava'u Group

The Kingdom of Tonga is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands (of which 52 are inhabited) scattered over 700,000 square kilometres of ocean. Tonga also became known as the Friendly Islands because of the friendly reception accorded to Captain James Cook on his first visit there in 1773. Apart from being the only sovereign monarchy among the island nations of the Pacific, Tonga is also the only island nation in the region to have avoided formal colonisation.

It is contrary to Tongan culture and etiquette to criticize the monarchy, but we were aware that the king then, Taufa’ahau (King George Tupou IV), was not as popular as he might have liked. He was elderly at that time and his son and heir was also not terribly popular. We heard, very much on the grapevine, that the crown princess was much better liked and the people considered her a better option. This was not to be, of course, and I read in Wikipedia that the prince was made King George Tupou V in 2006, though democracy is on the march and most of the power is scheduled to transfer to government this year.

On 7 September (actually the 6th but Tonga cheat with the Date Line to be the same as Fiji) we arrived on the north coast of Vava’u island just at sunset. Our electronic charts were not terribly accurate in this part of the world, so rather than continue in the dark, we stopped and anchored in a large uninhabited bay, not actually designated for anchoring according to our chart. The water was very deep and calm and we were all alone. Playing Scrabble after dinner we suddenly heard this whooshy sigh right outside. Somewhat nervous, but excited, we crept quietly up the companionway and there it was again – a whale breathing right next to the boat! It was a pitch black night and we couldn’t see a thing, but we could hear him. Lovely.

The next day we moved round to the port of Neiafu. Upon arrival we had to tie up on the main wharf, terrifyingly close to all manner of enormous ships, and then plod into the departments of Quarantine and Agriculture, both of whom wanted to be paid so I left Mike with them and rushed off and found a cash machine to withdraw money, and then on to Customs and Immigration, which were free. Then we returned to our boat and waited for the Quarantine men to come and check our boat (nothing was confiscated) and only then could we go off and anchor.

Neaifu was a large, crowded, but not particularly nice anchorage. However it was very friendly and we bumped into various good old friends – Petima, Aliesha, Solvesta, Globitou, Moose, and made several new friends.

It was Dick’s birthday so he and Pam organised a Tongan Feast and generously invited us all to celebrate.  This whole event was really good fun with crafts to buy and children dancing. The Tongan girls dance very differently from the Polynesians – whereas the Polynesians gracefully sway their entire bodies, the Tongan girls remain still and do it all with their arms and hands, equally gracefully.

We drank rum and chilled coconut juice served in the shell and beers.  The food, cooked outside in a trench called an Umu oven, was delicious – all we could eat, and then some.

The Umu oven. From left: Duncan, Dick, Pam, Pierre Philippe, Nicole, Katrine, me, Ruedi, Pieter and Colin.

The food was presented in small portions on banana leaves and as fast as we ate, they would replenish the stock. Mike and Colin got a little competitive about how many empty leaves they could stock up! Mike won, needless to say.

Me, Nicole, Jocelyne and Mike

At the end of the feast there was a kava ceremony - the communal drinking of a beverage made from the peppery kava plant – not alcoholic, but in some way narcotic – along with music.

The Kava Ceremony

Tonga is a beautiful country and enjoys a very temperate climate. The hump-backed whales come to the Vava’u group at this time of year to breed, so we were lucky. It is also the land of pigs in my mind, as there were pigs running around everywhere just like domestic dogs, and so cute looking. They made excellent eating, of course! The island of Vava’u and others in the group sprawl over the ocean with many dozens of lovely bays in which to anchor and explore, so we remained in the area for some weeks and had a gorgeous time. We met lots of friendly new yachts and met up with our old friends on Hi C’s and also Freelance, with whom we had transited the Panama Canal. We saw wild horses and did some great snorkelling in a beautiful cave.



I began to get a bit desperate to actually see a whale reasonably close up, and then it finally happened. We’d anchored Forever in one of a series of small bays called The Blue Lagoon and then jumped into the dinghy to go exploring. Suddenly we spotted the spout of a whale through a gap in the bay leading out to the open sea so Mike throttled up and sped out there, cutting the engine before getting too close as we didn’t want to spook them. There seemed to be three of them, at least one quite small and one very large (whom I took to be the Mummy). They dived slowly in and out of the water, giving that lovely whooshy sigh as they surface and take breath. It was awesome, so much so that I forgot to get the camera out of my bag. Mike paddled awfully close and would have gone closer but I squawked in fright. They were really huge - Mike says at least 40 foot long. It was rather scary as they’d slide under the water and I’d be wondering if they were going to come up again right underneath our fragile little rubber dinghy. I was terrified they would do that tail whacking thing next to us as which would surely have knocked us into the water and there were no other boats to come to our rescue. It’s not that they want to do you any harm, but they are so very BIG. There were people who got in the water and swam with the whales (you could go on a ‘Swimming with Whales’ tour), but I was nervous because this was a mother with a baby – and we all know how nervy they can be. Mike wasn’t scared at all and thought I was a big wuss.


The weather was pleasant and warm and the sailing good. Tonga was much cheaper than the Societies had been which was a relief for all of us cruisers and on the strength of it we bought me a pretty t-shirt. Missing the delicious French baguettes, I practised my bread making and got quite good at it. Finally, after three years on the boat, Mike got the cockpit shower working. I was delighted, Mike less so, as he thought I used too much water!



The Cook Islands - Palmerston

The Cook Islands is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in free association with New Zealand. The fifteen small islands in the group have a total land area of 92.7 square miles, spread over a total area of 690,000 square miles of ocean. Despite its remote location, tourism is the country's number one industry, economically way ahead of offshore banking, pearls, marine and fruit exports.

On the advice of other cruisers, we chose to stop at the island of Palmerston as we’d heard that it was a particularly friendly place. Sailing from Bora Bora we arrived seven days later at this intriguing island which is inhabited by the descendants of an Englishman called William Marsters and various Polynesian wives.

Marsters had built a house with the timber from various shipwrecks, which still stands today and serves as a storeroom and cyclone shelter. He divided the island into portions for each of the three families, wisely laying down rules to protect against intermarriage and providing for the distribution of property. Land is allocated by matriarchal progression within the family groups and private ownership of land is not recognized.

William Marsters’ grave and his original house, at left.

There seem to be a variety of stories of how this Gloucestershire man came to the island and how many Polynesian wives he had, (having deserted his English wife and children in England) and how many children he fathered (between 17 and 26). His descendants number well over a thousand, dispersed through the rest of the Cooks and New Zealand. At the time we visited, there were about 60 people living there, from three separate families and all bearing the Marsters name.

Palmerston is really an atoll. Atolls are made when a volcano pierces the ocean’s surface creating an island. Over time a coral reef grows up around the shoreline and bit by bit the volcanic centre begins sinking. Already established, the coral continues to grow as the land sinks, never getting any higher than the surface of the water until finally the volcano tip is gone leaving only the ring of coral reef surrounding a relatively shallow lagoon. On larger parts of the reef, plant life can survive, soil gathers and islands (motus) are created. The village of Palmerston is situated on the largest of this type of island within the reef.

We arrived on a Saturday afternoon and found four other yachts already there, including Moose, anchored outside against the reef - not an ideal spot, but the wind was ok at the time. A small boat came out of the lagoon (only very shallow-keeled boats can enter the lagoon) and a couple of men, speaking impeccable English, helped us find a spot and get the anchor in. That evening a launch came out to do the most polite check in we had ever encountered. In theory, because the Cooks enjoy this free association with New Zealand, they obey New Zealand’s rules of quarantine and our boat was formally checked, but they approved everything and nothing was confiscated. This was fortunate as we had not been warned of this and still had a fairly full larder from Bora Bora.

Palmerston is part of the Cooks, but because of it’s unique history it is somehow separate from the rest of the group. Of course, it is very isolated and a long boat ride to the next island. We found them a charming, friendly and incredibly hospitable people. The three families on the island take it in turns to look after the cruisers, and the hospitality was really quite extraordinary. The morning after our arrival, Simon, head of the reigning family at that time came out in his motor boat and ferried all of us cruisers ashore (15 people from 5 boats) in relays. The ride in this little vessel through the gap in the reef, invisible to us until caught up and buffeted by the churning froth, was terrifying, but a piece of cake for Simon.

Simon and the kids, Forever anchored in the background

Once safely inside the lagoon and brought ashore to the village, all visitors were offered, for the duration of our trip, the full use of the family homes, including showers and washing machine – not knowing this we hadn’t brought in our dirty laundry or towels for a shower. All of this was offered at no cost; there didn’t seem to be any currency on the island. Of course, we all took in gifts of fresh or tinned food, rice, clothing, fishing tackle, books, cd’s, dvd’s or toys for the children, so everyone benefits from the trade. The islanders all speak beautiful, slightly old fashioned, English as their first language and have to be taught the local Maori language. There were many gorgeous children with delightful manners - all pre-teens as the older kids were apparently away at school.

At midday a copious lunch was presented by Simon’s sister-in-law, Shirley.  A long table was laid in the sand outside her home and the 15 cruisers plus her own family were fed a feast of chicken, baby booby birds (harvested rather unsportingly from their nests as they are too young to fly), fish, rice, coconut, salad, and various other unidentified items which we bravely tried out – some delicious, some not.  Icy cold fruit juices were served as well as coffee and tea.  I believe a meal of this magnitude is presented every day, and later in the afternoon tea and cakes were produced.  The island is so small that we were able to take a walk around it in a couple of hours.

A couple of the yachts had remained there enjoying this outstanding place for over two weeks, but, to our great dismay the wind increased and swung around that evening, backing us onto the reef. All the yachts passed an awful night with two of them losing their anchors. We compared notes with Moose on the radio - they tried anchoring on the other side of the island, but also gave up and in great disappointment, we all left.

So, off we went in strong winds and ugly waves, but when it is really rough, so theory has it, the sea is the safest place to be. We had planned to stop at the island of Niue, but the wind continued unfavourably, so we just kept on going for another six days till we got to the Vava’u group in Tonga. Mike caught a good fish near Tonga which fed us for some days.
During this trip we passed through the longitude of W165 which put us at exactly


HALF WAY AROUND THE WORLD


in an east/west direction, since our most easterly point had been E15 - in Italy. It had only taken us three years! As we travelled westwards, we were adjusting our clocks back one hour every 900 nautical miles. At the Equator 1 degree of longitude is 60 miles and each time zone is 15 degrees, therefore 60 x 15 = 900 miles. The circumference of the earth at the Equator is exactly 900 x 24 = 21600 nautical miles (slightly more in statute miles).


Note: I left my camera on board that one day we went ashore at Palmerston, so all the photos in this blog are from Moose’s library. My grateful thanks to Duncan and Irene. They spent longer there and got to know the locals better than we did and you can read their account in their wonderful cruising blog: http://www.getjealous.com/



The Society Islands

The Society Islands are mostly mountainous islands formed by volcanic events some millions of years ago with a mix of small coral atolls. There are about 13 main islands, including Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine and Bora Bora, made world famous by the paintings of Paul Gaugin and the words of James Michener.

Bora Bora - Pearl of the Pacific

3 July 2004. 
Leaving the Tuomotus, we hit fierce winds and big waves as soon as we got outside the pass and had an extremely fast sail to Tahiti – so fast that we arrived in the middle of the night which had not been our intention at all.

Papeete Harbour is theoretically easy to enter at night, so we did, though we found it scarily confusing and were convinced we were about to hit rocks until the very last minute. We called up the authorities on the VHF who advised us to anchor where we could and come into the port in the morning. We anchored a good way up wind of a French yacht in an area marked on our chart with a little anchor sign. We were the only two yachts so we figured it would be OK. We tidied everything up and then went to bed, only to be awoken a few hours later with a horrible loud crunch. We shot up the stairs, both stark naked, to find the French boat bumped up against us and a furious wind howling. The wind had swung around and the French boat was now upwind of us, and had dragged onto us. The French couple were also on deck, also stark naked. There we were - four middle aged, naked yachties, yelling a mixture of French and English obscenities, trying to fend the two boats off each other. It didn’t help that they were convinced that we had dragged and were trying to get us to get our anchor up; with them pressing down on us heavily, that would have been impossible anyway. We finally persuaded them to lift their anchor and they moved off and anchored elsewhere, but in the meantime they had badly damaged our pulpit, cracked the teak toe rail supporting it, and broken the port light. Mike was furious, but we went back to bed, only to be awakened early next morning by these same folk wanting to swap phone numbers so we could pay for their damage! I politely put them straight and they sailed away quickly before I started about them paying for our damages.


The next day we moved round to the main anchorage, Maeva, which was very full. The hard winds we had felt out at sea had hit Tahiti badly and many yachts had dragged anchors and suffered damage during the storm. The weather continued to be awful; storms raged for days trapping us all on our boats and poor Forever swung and bounced uncomfortably, inches away from a very rocky reef. However, we had Globitou as neighbours and spent happy hours socialising with Jocylene and Ruedi. When the weather finally calmed we could get into the town of Papeete which was quite charming, very cosmopolitan. The largest city we had seen since Panama, there was great shopping to be had, but expensive of course. We went a bit mad on French cheeses, baguettes (about the only cheap thing to be found) and good wine. The much missed green vegetables could be found, but at a price. Most importantly, the 4th of July was our wedding anniversary and we bought me the black pearl. I decorated my boat with Gaugin post cards and bright cushions.
 

Mike’s hair was extremely blond by then and even I had developed fair-ish ends from the sun.  Our friend Huub came and stayed with us a few days before joining a boat going on to the Cook Islands.  He was lightening his luggage and generously passed all sorts of treasure on to us, including another black pearl which I saved for my sister.  We stayed in Tahiti for three weeks, meeting up with many old friends, then we moved on through the group, firstly to the lovely Moorea, only 12 miles away and easily visible from Tahiti.

The island of Moorea from Papeete

Moorea is like a tropical garden with silver pineapple fields and a beautiful lagoon.  We anchored in Opunohu Bay in nice shallow water outside a children’s holiday camp.  The sunsets were glorious – not like Africa of course - but breathtakingly beautiful.

We took a long, wonderful walk over the mountain to Cook’s Bay on the other side and Mike joined Peter and Irene from Catspaw and walked to the Belvedere at the top of the island.  There were manta rays in the anchorage at Moorea and various yachties bravely went swimming with them.

Huahine was our next port of call. Like Tahiti, it is divided into two islands – Huahine Nui, the large, and Huahine Iti, the small.  It is actually a coral atoll with a fringing reef.  After a horrid bumpy night’s sailing, we entered the pass and cruised down the lagoon heading for the recommended Baie d’Avea.  By chance, we decided that was too far and stopped rather in the bay of Haapu and were very glad we did.  Anchored in solitary splendour we met a charming local family, Enoch and Josyanne and their kids, traded for mangoes (made delicious chutney) good eating fish, some very chewy sea snails and a few containers of drinking water.

We took a long walk down to Baie d’Avea, getting a lift part of both ways fortunately, and passed many vanilla plantations. Other boats came into our idyllic spot so we moved up to the main anchorage and picturesque little village of Fare where we stayed for seven days, socializing with Catspaw and HiC’s. The snorkelling was not bad.

Our next stop was Raiatea which is enclosed in a huge fringing reef with the island of Tahaa. It was lovely there, but we didn’t stay long and moved on to our favourite island - Bora Bora.

Captain Cook baptised Bora Bora ‘the pearl of the Pacific’ (I totally agree with him) and its lagoon is considered the most beautiful in the world.

We spent three magical weeks here and this was probably our happiest and most memorable time in the Pacific. By this time, the wind had totally died and our time there was blissfully tranquil. The anchorage was good, the waters crystal clear and calm, the weather balmy and we bumped into many of our friends including Des and Ali and their boys on Ali Nuii whom we had not seen since Isabella. The snorkelling was brilliant.

Pot luck barbeque on the beach - Mary, me and Irene

Mike and I took the usual long walks and scavenged a whole hand of bananas from a felled tree, some of those divinely tasty pamplemousse and a couple of excellent mangoes.

Broken-hearted, AGAIN, we finally left the Society Isles on 21^st August and headed ever westwards towards the Cook Islands.

Note: Our video camera had given up the ghost in the middle of the Panama Canal, and I was now running out of film for the camera, so many of the pictures in the posts from the Galapagos to the Cooks are from the libraries of other cruisers.  I hope they do not mind that I use them. 

The Tuomotu Archipelago

The Tuomotus are the largest of the Polynesian archipelagos (in fact, the largest in the world) extending over more than 20,000 square km and includes 76 islands and atolls of which only 41 are populated with a total of about 16,000 people. They are administered as a subdivision of the French Polynesian government. Though French is an official language, the islands are very remote and the locals tend to speak their own language. The economy has been revived recently by the cultivation of black pearls; there is also the production of copra and a small amount of tourism. The islands in the area are coral ‘low islands’ – basically high sand bars built on coral reefs – apart from the ubiquitous coconut trees (for copra) any agriculture is purely subsistence.

The Tuomotus were not called ‘the dangerous islands’ for nothing. Spread out in a random pattern, almost completely flat, no more than 5 to 10 feet above sea level and with practically no vegetation on many, they are all but invisible to approaching boats.  Ancient mariners, without the benefit of satellite navigation, were brave indeed to pass this way and many did not survive the attempt.   Even today, many in our number and particularly the single handers like Colin on Solvesta, decided to give them a miss and went directly to the Society Isles.

In 1947 the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, Thor Heyerdahl, set off from Peru with friends in a flat raft made from balsa logs to cross the Pacific Ocean, intending to prove that the Polynesian people originated from South America rather than from Asia. His raft finally smashed onto the reefs of the atoll Raroia after 101 days at sea and 4300 miles. We read his wonderfully interesting book ‘Kon Tiki’, the name of his raft, which has been translated into over 50 languages, and has inspired many other such adventures in rafts. Anthropologists, however, still believe that Polynesia was settled from the east.

Our trip was 590 nautical miles and took us six days, travelling slowly and erratically with variable winds, much rain and heavy squalls. Our Panamanian onions finally finished on this trip and there were only a few potatoes left. They had lasted nearly three months. The wind died completely towards the end, and on our last day we only managed 42 miles, and only five miles all night!

We had originally planned to go to the atoll Manihi, home of many black pearl farms, but our cruising guide gave the island a rather bad write up, and then we overheard on the SSB someone else saying that it was difficult to anchor there, so we changed our minds and went straight to Rangiroa, which is the biggest of the atolls and at the western, and therefore furthest, end of the group.

With radio assistance from our friends on Aliesha, we timed our arrival perfectly and entered the Tiputa Pass at slack high water without much difficulty. The atoll was overfilled at the time, so that even at slack water there was a continuous outpouring of water through the pass, and despite our 50 hp engine running well, the boat slowed right down to two knots. Not everyone was so lucky and we saw one boat forced to abandon the attempt to enter when his boat finally started drifting backwards! We saw three good yachts recently wrecked on the reefs outside the passes, but even this sight didn’t seem to deter a number of yachts that we saw foolishly trying to enter against the flow. Exiting could also be dangerous as the outward flow of water could get unreasonably strong. Timing was important and we thought it amazing how many yachts ignored it.  Even with GPS, which is not exact in this remote area, navigation was hazardous and one had to remain very wide awake and hawk-eyed.

Tiputa Pass

Once inside the atoll, anchoring at Rangiroa was tricky with a strong wind blowing and we dragged a few times before settling. Once again, we bumped into a few friendly yachts, almost literally when our anchor dragged! We had drinks on one yacht and they showed us all the pearls they had traded for on Manihi, which atoll they said was wonderful, the people hospitable and no problem anchoring! So, it doesn’t always pay to listen to what other people say.

Rangiroa is such a big atoll that you don’t get the impression of being in an atoll at all; the lagoon is so vast it could enclose the entire island of Tahiti. As this was our only stop, it was difficult for us to assess the Tuomotus properly. To us, Rangiroa was just a very flat tropical island, dotted with coconut trees, like so many others, with nothing special about it. The vegetation was too sparse and the soil too sandy to qualify as beautiful in my book, but it certainly had its own charm.

We took some long walks around the small settlements where the people live basic but comfortable lives. These people are extremely isolated and communication wasn’t always easy, but they were friendly and interested in foreigners. I am sorry to say we did not visit the pearl farm and didn’t buy a pearl. I had been promised a black pearl as a wedding anniversary present, but we decided to get it in Tahiti, as a local Rangiroan girl advised that we would get better value and a better selection there.

3 July 2004. After four days, we left Rangiroa through the second pass, the Avatoru Pass, again at the correct time and again without difficulty.



The Marquesas

When people ask which part of our seven year cruise was the best, I always say it was the Pacific – from the Galapagos in the east to New Caledonia in the west – literally hundreds of beautiful, mostly fertile islands with good anchorages, plenty of warm sunshine, and inhabited by handsome, hospitable people. We only spent one season there but there were yachts that cruised about for many years and never tired of all that beauty or the lazy laid back way of life.  There were others who, by the time we reached New Zealand, said they were ‘islanded out’ and sick of it all.  Rather like that British chick in ‘White Mischief’ in Kenya who yawns boredly and says ‘Oh, no, not another bloody beautiful day!’  Mike and I never got tired of it.

 

The Marquesas are a small group of fourteen islands near the Equator, about 1500 miles from Tahiti and are administered as a subdivision of both the French Central State and the Government of French Polynesia.  As there are no barrier reefs, the Marquesan coastlines are either indented with bays or end in abrupt cliffs with soaring jagged mountain peaks.  Heavy cloud tends to hang over the islands giving them a dreamy, mysterious air.  Surprisingly, despite the lush appearance, the islands are quite dry and frequently suffer from drought.  Water was therefore a bit of a problem for us, though we did manage to find enough, and during our visit there was a reasonable amount of rainfall so we could collect our own.  Nature runs rampant here; herds of goats and packs of wild horses roam in complete freedom.

They are stunningly beautiful and lived up to every expectation of tropical Pacific islands. The Marquesans take a pride in their difference to (and perhaps superiority over) the rest of Polynesia, with their own language, songs, haka dances, tattoos, carvings, tapa cloths and cooking. The official languages of French Polynesia are French and Tahitian but the Marquesans communicate in their own language and many of them also speak English.  The artist Paul Gaugin lived, worked and was buried here and his name is to be found everywhere. The French singer/songwriter/actor Jacques Brel was also buried here.

4 June 2004

We made landfall at the southernmost island of Fatu Hiva and anchored in the Baie de Vierges (Bay of Virgins), originally called the Bay de Verges (Bay of Penises) because of the extraordinary phallic-shaped rocks jutting up around the bay. The name was changed, inevitably, by the missionaries and is, in my opinion, the lesser for it. Delighted to be on land again we went for a long walk up to the top of the central mountain and collected a bag of ripe guavas. It was a very steep climb and coming back down again was agony for my poor knees. The people were friendly and kind and one shopkeeper’s husband took us to his home and gave us some delicious giant grapefruit (pamplemousse), green pawpaws (papaya) and mandarins from his garden. Nicole and Pieter from Petima arranged a dinner for the yachties in the anchorage at the home of one of the islanders, Rosa. We paid $5 ahead, took our own drinks and a ‘gift’ for our hosts. Mike and I took a Barry White cd which Rosa and her friends practically swooned over – an inadvertently good choice! Life on these islands is similar to that of the islands in the Caribbean – perfectly idyllic on the surface. When I said as much to my hostess, she agreed and said “but the young people get very bored”.  That may be, but the young people we met were charming and courteous, without exception.

The dinner was delicious – chicken (very ruggedly chopped), breadfruit and green papaya, swimming in spicy coconut milk, rice and various other odd starchy things, unidentifiable puddings. Lots of good music was played and our hosts willingly tucked into our alcohol, getting more than a little merry. We had been told that alcohol is strongly discouraged amongst the locals as they have weak heads and a tendency to abuse. It was a fun evening and we rowed back to our boats before things got totally out of hand.

We spent four days on Fatu Hiva, then moved on to the island of Tahuata where we were boarded by two French Douaniers (customs officials). Hilariously, one of them thought he perhaps knew me from thirty years ago in Paris. I HAD been in Paris 30 years before, and have the same name as the woman he had known, but I’m sure I would have remembered a ‘liaison’ with this gentleman. He kept staring hard at me, not quite accepting that I was not her, and he received a few hard stares in return from Mike, who didn’t find it quite as hilarious as I did. This was a lovely anchorage with manta rays in the water. We swam and snorkelled, wined and dined and had a sociable time for five days.

We did the formal check in at Taiohae on the main island of Nuku Hiva where we met up with many of our cruising friends who had made the big crossing with us. We had no check out papers from the Galapagos, but no one was remotely fazed here and didn’t even ask for them. There were no charges levied to visit all the islands in French Polynesia, and we were given a three month permit, and one year for the boat.

Huub celebrated his 36th birthday party on the wharf and the whole crowd attended. Some locals produced banjos and there was singing and dancing. Later I sneaked off with Nicole and Jocylene and went to watch some of the local youngsters practicing their haka dancing in preparation for the forthcoming festivals. My only previous knowledge of hakas was watching the All Blacks rugby team who perform a haka before every match. These hakas were less aggressive but more artistic and beautiful. The movements are somewhat different from African dancing but, like Africa, the strong drum beat forms the central musical theme. Stirring stuff.

Getting a tattoo in the Marquesas is considered one of the ultimate rites of passage, and most of the other women in our group went off and got one. Marquesan designs are particularly lovely and I was desperate to get one too, just a weeny little manta ray at the top of my thigh. I sneaked off one afternoon to get it done, but Mike caught me and nearly had a heart attack. He begged me not to, so what could I do? I still regret it.

There were no self service coin laundries to be found, and it was very expensive to get washing done at a French laundry, so we cruising women gathered sociably on the quai with our big rubber buckets, and rubba dub dub. Internet access was a nightmare, difficult to find and very costly so we tended not to bother. Our friends on Moose kindly sent an email via their SSB to my brother in London to let him know we had arrived safely. Our salt water pump had developed a leak and Pieter spent many hours with Mike repairing it. Nicole is a superb cook and we had a particularly great fondue meal on their boat Petima to celebrate Colin’s birthday.

Although things were extremely expensive to buy in the shops in French Polynesia, we managed to live through those months very cheaply. The locals were often quite happy to give limes, pawpaws, bananas, grapefruit and coconuts – all you had to do was ask. They never asked for anything in return, but we always gave something anyway, which they accepted happily. Fruit grows in profusion here, falling off the trees, so we lived on a diet of these fruits for the next few months. Our lives were healthy, sociable and so incredibly simple. We drank juice made from fresh limes, caught fish, cooked grated green papaya in a little butter with garlic and onion as a vegetable, and had plenty of rice and other dry goods on board. (But I must admit that one of the best things about getting to New Zealand was finding green vegetables again, which we had begun to miss terribly.)

With a bit of good rain about we had managed to collect some water, but we finally left the harbour of Taiohae as the water there was not drinkable and moved round to an anchorage called Daniel’s Bay where we managed to fill our tanks. (The French locals buy water in bottles – something we always refused to do and insisted on finding tap water or rainwater to drink.) At Daniel’s Bay we took a very long walk one day with a few other cruisers through deep forest to find a rather special waterfall. Mike dragged me across the deep, fast flowing river four times going and another four times returning, and up some sharp cliffs – exhausting but very interesting. On the way back we stopped at Daniel’s place, signed his visitors’ book and chatted to his wife Antoinette whose legs were so swollen she could no longer walk. Daniel, armed with a shot gun and a couple of dogs, went off with a few cruisers to shoot a goat!

We heard here that there were a lot of small flying biting mites, (they called them nonos) which can leave a very unpleasant rash.  Luckily we were not affected by them but a few cruisers were and we felt very sorry for them.

Our last stop was on the island Ua Pou.  We shared the anchorage with just one other boat, Hi C’s, and had a very sociable time with Cyril and Jackie. Going ashore one day we met a young Marquesan man, Mooi, who produced a wheelbarrow which he then proceeded to fill with fruit and vegetables from his garden and freshly caught fish which he insisted on giving us.  The next day he escorted Jackie, Cyril and I (Mike had gone AWOL) for a long tour over the island and to a waterfall where we had a much needed swim in the romantic pool at the bottom.

He skimmed with remarkable ease (for such a large young man) up a coconut tree, picked green nuts and sliced them open with his panga for us to drink the slightly effervescent, refreshing water within.  Thus I discovered that coconut milk/cream is not the juice within the nut, but is made from pouring boiling water over the grated white flesh.  Having extracted the cream, we would dry and toast the gratings as a delicious snack.

Coconuts were to be found lying about all over the place but proved, for us mere mortals, to be exceedingly difficult to get into. Mike and I spent one comical afternoon trying to break open a nut. Mike’s panga was not up to the job and we had husk chips all over the boat by the time we got even a small crack in it. The islanders have a special spike for the job and even so it is a bit of an art which few of us ever mastered.


That afternoon Mike had wandered off on his own and was found by a group of island women who took him to their home and fed him a feast of crab, lobster and prawns on the understanding that he would give them a bottle of booze the next day - he gladly agreed. So, the following day we duly rowed in with a silk sarong and some fishing lures for Mooi and our last bottle of gin for the ladies. They were all delighted and it was a good trade for us. We’d not bought nearly enough cheap booze in Panama!

We had an excellent barbeque our last night on Hi C's.  We heard Moose and Aliesha on the VHF, both leaving for the Tuomotus that night and bid them goodbye.  We would be following them the next day whereas Hi C's were heading for Nuku Hiva and would come along later. 

26 June 2004


I could have spent many months here, but that spoilsport, time, kept marching on.  With much sorrow we said goodbye to these beautiful Marquesan Islands, and sailed on to the Tuomotu Archipelago.

Across the Pacific

On Saturday 8 May, 2004, we left the gorgeous Galapagos Islands with much regret as we will probably never get to this remote part of the world again. We had stayed there for 23 days, and would have liked to stay much longer, but the time had come to sail across the Pacific on the 3000 mile journey to the Marquesas. There was still so much to see and do before reaching New Zealand, which we needed to do before the onset of the cyclone season in November.

 It was a damp, overcast day with no wind. The sea was rolly but smooth and we saw lots of gigantic manta rays, leaping right out of the water. We also saw sharks, dolphins and lots of birds. There is an enormous amount of sea life in and around the Galapagos, but once we got beyond their waters, we saw almost nothing at all for the rest of the trip. The sea was a deep, tranquil and empty blue.

We set off in the company of a dozen other boats. After about 20 hours motoring, the wind kicked in and we could put the sails up. Initially everyone chatted on the VHF radio but we soon spread out and lost sight of each other, and (for us) radio contact. Most of the rest of them remained in contact twice a day via the SSB radio. Having a receiver only we tried to listen in to their net every day, but with only limited success - reception was often poor so we would lose interest for days at a time. The sea remained rolly and uncomfortable, but not as bad as the Atlantic crossing. I had been assured that the Pacific lived up to its name and was calmer than the Atlantic, but there wasn’t much in it, in my opinion.

Although this was not a race, AT ALL, it was with chagrin that we found ourselves at the back of the field. In fact, we came stone last, even beaten by the little 28 footer Kiwitt which completed the trip in 26 days to our 27. Forever is a Hallberg Rassy and these are good boats, renowned for winning rallies all over the place, so we can’t blame the boat. We were only just beaten by a half day by another, and larger, HR. So, what was our excuse? Well, the route we took was perhaps too southerly, losing the helpful westward current that may be found above 5 degrees south, and we didn’t have a cruising shute, jenniker, or spinnaker. Actually, this was not strictly true - we did have a spinnaker, but we had yet to take it out of its bag. We threatened to use it from time to time, but always managed to talk ourselves out of it, and so it remained in its bag, as it does to this day.

 However, the trip was a relaxed one and we made no effort to try and go faster. We practiced and became quite good at celestial navigation. That sounds a bit grand, and actually we only did sun sights, checking them off against the GPS every day for fun and were unreasonably pleased when we were only a mile or so out. I continued to study the stars and, with the help of a good book, managed to identify many more constellations and individual stars. I could now identify (and put a name to) the absolutely magnificent Scorpius, Sagitarius, Lupis, Libra, Centaurus, Canopus, The Southern Cross, the Big and Little Dipper, Polaris and the lovely Orion.

 Mike had become much better about calling me for sail changes at night, after a few stern lectures from other sailors!!! Good old George, the autopilot, starting giving us trouble again. Every couple of days he would break down, Mike would fiddle around and give him a bit of a clean, and then he’d work again for another couple of days. Frustrating, but we were glad when he did work which was most of the time. Mike fished occasionally and caught nothing until the last week, when he caught a huge sailfish, almost as big as himself. I am still amazed that he managed to get this beast onto the deck, as we had very elementary fishing gear and no gaff, but his determination knows no bounds. He climbed onto the back ladder, grabbed it by the gills, still struggling furiously, and hauled it aboard - with very little help from me. It fed us deliciously for seven days. We had raw fish with onions olive oil and lemon juice, baked fish, fried fish, sweet and sour fish and fish curry, after which we got sick of fish and threw the rest overboard.

The Pacific is a huge ocean (the biggest) and we saw nothing and no one. Once I got on the VHF and called out ‘All ships’ and to my surprise a gentleman who identified himself as Angel on an Ecuadorian fishing boat responded. We couldn’t see his vessel but he and I had a long chat. He offered to bring us some fish but Mike didn’t feel confident about it and instructed me not to give him our position. I felt a little bad refusing his generous offer – but he seemed to understand our reticence. Another time I called ‘All ships’, our friends on Globitou responded and it turned out they were just a little way behind us. The next day they hove over the horizon, travelling at such good speed that they managed to pass us in one day, coming close enough to wave.

In the middle of the trip, once well out of any shipping lanes, we gave up night watches altogether and both went to bed all night. We put the tricolour sailing light at the top of the mast on, and got up frequently in the night to pee, giving the horizon a thorough check; we never saw a thing. A couple of whales followed us for some hours, surfing down the rollers behind the boat, and we saw lots of birds. It always amazes me how far out to sea these birds can live. Towards the end of the trip, we had some well needed rain and were able to give the cockpit a wash as well as have refreshing showers ourselves.

 

And so, 27 days later we arrived in the majestic Marquesas Islands, me delighted as always to make landfall.

 

Add 1 country – Ecuador. Total 20 countries visited.

Latest mileage from Panama: 1162 + 3062. Total 15054 nm.

Here’s the map covering just this trip. The entire Pacific Ocean is too wide to show individual island groups proportionately.