Tour de Huahine

For the last five years I’ve wanted to rent a motor scooter to explore the islands. Meryl, remembering our epic motor scooter ride around Tahiti 43 years ago where I returned to our hotel with third degree sunburns all over my body (remember, this was our honeymoon night), has been very cool to the idea ever since. So I was ecstatic when she said OK to us renting a scooter ($35 for four hours) for a tour of Huahine.

A little older and hopefully a little wiser, we began our tour of Huahine lathered in sunscreen.

We basically left Fare and headed north on the coast road around the island clockwise.

It was a little difficult to steer and certainly not in the class of my former BMW RT1100 touring bike, but it would do. We headed north of the main town of Fare along the coast road along Lake Fauna Nui to the small village of Maeva where they have reconstructed several marae along the shoreline. Essentially large meeting places with floors of large flat rocks and vertical flat rocks and stone tikis, the marae are places reserved for the ceremonial, cultural, and religious activities of the village. In the early days the marae was a place where the heads of households came to ask for help from their deceased ancestors. The marae were also the place of chiefs and priests, and of the political structure of the island. Officials from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii came and helped excavate and restore the marae to their present condition in the 1950s and 60s. 

A rendition of what the marae looked like in ancient times.

The marae site after reconstruction efforts by locals and the staff of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii.

The interior of the Fare Potee which now serves as a museum for the archeology site.

Fishing traps not much changed since the ancient days of Polynesia.

A large thatched roof house, called the Fare Potee, sits on stilts over the shallow Lake Fauna Nui and serves as a museum housing various artifacts found on the site, including mortars and pestals, fishing implements, and knives.

The late Bobby Holcomb sitting in his house in Maeva Village.

One of the many paintings by Bobby Holcomb.

One of our cruising friends, Steve on Liward, raved about a local guy named Bobby Holcomb, who he described as "the world's true free spirit.' There was a nice display at the Fare Potee about Bobby with examples of some of his art work. Bobby is now passed away, but his memory lives on with the people of Huahine. Bobby is best know as the lyricist for the highly popular Jimmy Buffet song "One Particular Harbor." He was born in Hawaii and was a back-up singer to Frank Zappa. He then traveled through Europe and lived with Salvador Dali where he gained an appreciation for painting. From there he traveled to the Middle East and Africa. A wealthy patron in France paid his fare to Tahiti, telling Bobby that Huahine was his place of destiny. Bobby spent his days in Huahine writing, painting, and being a spiritual beacon for the locals. Bobby had little material wealth but he lived a life beyond anything that money can buy.

The ancient fish wiers on Lake Fauna Nui 

As we continued our ride past the marae's we came upon the ancient fish traps in Lake Fauna Nui that are still used to this day. Shallow rock dams begin in a wide “V” shape and narrow down at the end. Fish enter the large V and eventually end up in nets at the narrow end of the V, a very efficient method of fishing for the locals. 

Further down the road began a very steep ascent up a mountain. I wasn’t sure our poor scooter was going to make but it just kept chugging along until we were at the top where we were treated to a beautiful view of Maroe Bay on the east side of the island. As slow as the ascent was up the mountain, the descent was equally hair-raising given the 14% grade of the road. I wasn’t sure how good the brakes were on the very well used scooter but we made it alive.

Photos of the Maroe Bay community clean-up.

Maybe the Mayor, maybe the President, who knows?

The gang that Shanghai'd us off our scooter. 

Meryl enjoying some really fresh coconut milk.

We crossed a bridge between the large island of Huahine Nui and the small island of Huahine Iti. It was ironic that we both commented as to how clean and beautiful the area along the bay was because just around the bend we were literally pulled off our scooter by what can be best described as the "Maroe Bay welcoming committee." The local community had just completed a clean-up of the district and were celebrating with a street-side party. Everyone came to shake our hand and learn our names and regale us with stories. Of the two guys in the picture, one claimed to be the Mayor and the other the President of French Polynesia, but I'm not sure. They treated us to a table full of local delicacies including fresh bananas, dried bananas, breadfruit chips, taro, and fresh-cut coconut juice with a straw inside. We had a hard time getting them to let us continue on our trip.

This is typical of the views around Huahine with the dark blue navigable water and the shallow sand areas colored baby blue.

We explored the south end of the island with expansive views out over the South Pacific with the deep blue color of the navigable waters and the baby blue of the sand and reef areas. We did go into the baby blue waters at times but you really have to keep a sharp look out for bommies and reefs.

We ran into a young French woman with two kids on a scooter who flagged us down. Her scooter wasn’t working and she wanted us to go ahead and find her husband (on another scooter that wasn’t working when we first passed them on the bridge). We finally connected with him and hopefully the family was reunited. Amazingly we did all that without speaking a word of French.

Back in town we ran into Steve and Lili from Liward with an Australian lady named Libby who is backpacking through the islands. We had lunch and chatted for awhile before returning to the boat,  a little road weary and in need of a nap.

Huahine: Paradise Found

We departed the Apataki Carenage at first light on Saturday, May 14th in a blinding rainstorm. I was very reluctant to leave so early when it would tough to spot the bommies and pearl farm buoys in the water. Luckily we had marked the buoy locations on our electronic charts on the way in and we used our new SAS Planet software (shows Google Earth photos) to spot the larger bommies. 

We were pleasantly surprised by slack water when we arrived at the Apataki's South Pass instead of 3 to 4-knots of current against us that was predicted.

We needed to leave early so we could transit the South Pass as close to slack water as possible, which was scheduled for 6:30 am. We arrived at around 8:15 am expecting a three- to four-knot flood but were pleasantly surprised with slack water. Maybe all the water pouring into the atoll over the last two weeks needed to go out and delayed the flood current. We’ll take it anyway we can get it.

We began the long 589-mile passage to Huahine in the Leeward Islands with squally southeasterly winds. Luckily the dark grey squalls were mainly rain with manageable wind not requiring any sail adjustments, but later in the day when the wind died we would have welcomed some squalls. In the lighter winds we had to sail a lower course that would take us 90 degrees south of our destination — not good. We had many sail changes from wing-on-wing to a poled out genoa on a light wind beam reach. When combined with the heavy cross swell we were averaging only four knots. The continuing “wapping” of the sails as the waves rocked the boat nearly drove both of us nuts. 

As you can see, we're headed about 80 degrees south of where we wanted to go ( the red line to the left of the boat). That's Tahiti in the bottom left corner and our destination of Huahine in the upper left).

On Sunday night we were headed so high the other direction (now towards Tahiti) we were almost going backwards so we decided to do my least favorite activity, a complete rig change from wing-on-wing to a jib set in the dark. We’d now done it so many times it went better that I anticipated, but we are both still very tired with the frequent course and sail changes. Luckily a squall system behind us provided some much needed wind and we made good progress on our rhumb line at six to seven knots throughout the night.

Huahine exemplifies everything a cruiser wants in a tropical island.

 Monday found us with light winds again so we bit the bullet and motor sailed most of the day so we would get in to Huahine by afternoon. I am always trepidatious about entering new islands but Huahine proved to be very easy with a wide, well defined pass. Two beautiful surfing waves famed the northern Avamoa Pass and we first looked for mooring buoys along the city shore but ended up anchoring on a sandy plateau behind the reef. The problem was we were very tired and I could feel the anchor skipping on the hard coral bottom as we tried to set it. I finally got my snorkel gear on and checked the anchor, finding it was not set but just up against a piece of coral. I debated about just leaving it as it was getting dark, but luckily the crew from Huzzah came over and showed us a better place to anchor where we got a good bite in some soft sand. Thank you Huzzah for giving us a peaceful night’s sleep.

Huahine is in the Leeward Islands about 100 miles northwest of Tahiti. It’s is nestled together with Taah’a/Raiatea and Bora Bora forming the Golden Triangle of tropical cruising. Cruisers from all over the world come to Raiatea to charter huge cats and cruise the island group. It’s a different group of sailors with 1-2 weeks to see it all so they seem in a hurry, sometimes have limited boating experience, and they know how to party. We are more accustomed to full-time cruising boats as neighbors and usually get to know the boats in the anchorage. 

You can see a bit of our anchor chain leading to our securely buried anchor. We are in about 14 ft of water.

Where we are anchored we can see our anchor in the crystal clear water underneath the boat in about 12 feet of water. Large mountain peaks shelter us from the prevailing easterly to south easterly trade winds and a huge reef protects us from the west. It’s about as perfect as you get in blue water cruising. For every sailor who has sat in front of a computer screen bored to tears at work, this is what you dream about and here we are.

Boats anchored right off the Hauhine Yacht Club (which is really just a bar).

Adding to the perfection is fairly fast Internet (accessible from the boat), a huge, well stocked grocery store, lots of cool shops, and a seaside bar with a great Happy Hour. Nothing could be finer that Huahine on a clear day.

From L to R: Ken, Walter, Gerry, Fred, Lili, and Steve

We ended up meeting the crew of Huzzah, Gerry, Ken and Fred at the Huahine Yacht Club for dinner. Sitting there sipping cold Hinano beers and watching another incredible sunset I began to realize that all the sacrifice, risk, and hard work getting the boat ready was all for this moment. As I tell Meryl, you got to go through a lot of tough days to get the perfect ones like this. The fresh tuna (thon in French) with a vanilla sauce made from locally grown vanilla was to die for (as the Valley Girls say).

The next day we went into the Super Marche and marveled at the breath and selection of foods, many of which we hadn’t seen since Tahiti last year. We stocked up on all our favorites, as well as the rare fresh fruits and vegetables (Meryl hadn’t seen broccoli for over a year in a store). As usual we had trouble just carrying it down to the dingy dock. 

We ran into Steve and Lili off of LiWard outside the grocery store. I had talked with Steve on the net but never met him in person. He mentioned he would be playing at the Yacht Club the next night and he reserved a couple of tables for us and his other friends. Sitting with the crew from Huzzah and Lili we throughly enjoyed a wide rendition of songs from Steve and his fellow musicians, singing everything from Jimmy Buffet to The Stones. What a great night with friends!

A perfect end to a perfect day.

The Apataki Boatyard Blues

One of our goals as cruisers is to become more adept at choosing what are known as “weather windows,” those precious four-to five-day periods of predicted following winds and light seas. Unfortunately, this is one of our weak points.  Sitting in Taiohae Bay in Nuka Hiva we were one of the few Magellan Net boats remaining, and our need to get going to the Tuamotus won out over our lack of patience and time.  Some boats simply do not move until everything is in perfect alignment including the wind, seas, swell, no squalls, and a full moon. You need to have a lot of time and patience to wait up to a month for the right window. That is just not us.

The wing-on-wing rig is the most stable downwind configuration for Flying Cloud. Each sail balances out the outer making for a smooth and non dramatic ride.

Even though we knew light winds were predicted toward the end of the passage, we departed Taiohae on Thursday, April 28th with a reasonable 12 -15 knot southeasterly  breeze that would die out in the coming days. Well, one can only hope. After that great first day our luck gave out and we struggled along in five-to eight-knot winds happy to maintain 4 knots or less. Fortunately the seas were very calm which made the sail more comfortable so we could easily do tasks and walk around on the boat. We had our typical double headsail rig out, with the genoa poled out to windward and the Code Zero poled out to leeward using the main boom. It’s a great downwind rig but you do need some wind to get it to work. We weren’t in hurry so we chose not to motor unless we were moving less than 3.5 knots. 

This is what a very large cruise ship looks like when you are very tired at 2:00 am at night.

The voyage was uneventful except for us sighting the Aranui 5 cruise ship on AIS steaming directly for us at 2:00 am at night. I called on the VHF to see if they saw us (we could see their strong Class A AIS signal way before they could see our weaker Class B signal) and they finally spotted us on radar. They passed us about a 1/4 mile off providing us with a scary light show on a very dark night.

The lighter winds and calmer seas allowed us to work easier on deck, although we always wear our safety harness and tether when out of the cockpit.

What should have been a four-day passage turned into a five-day passage and our carefully timed approach on May 5th to the North Pass at Apataki found us navigating the pass at 11:00 am with three to four knots in our favor. Reading eight to nine knots on the speedo, we transited the pass in record time. We then headed a short distance over on the northeastern side of Apataki and found a beautiful anchoring spot in the clearest and calmest water ever, but knew we would be unprotected in south to southeast winds. As usual after a five-day passage, we were dog tired and immediately took a refreshing  dip in the turquoise water followed by a very restful nap.

The peacefulness of this anchorage was very welcome after the long passage.

This sunset changed a thousand colors as we watched the sun sink into the west.

For some reason I thought that most of Apataki would be heavily commercialized like its neighbor Rangiroa but where we expected a large village we saw only palm trees. We were treated to one of the more spectacular sunsets we’ve seen on our voyage, a phantasmagoria of magenta and red overlaid on the dark grey clouds of an approaching front. It was one of those magical evenings of just sitting on the side of the boat, drinking a beer, and enjoying nature’s incredible light show. 

After a day of rest and recuperation we headed due south inside the atoll. As is typical in many of the Tuamotus atolls, our charting software only showed a strip of soundings down the west side of the atoll. Dodging bommies right and left we headed towards the South Pass and the village of Niutahi where our friend Ryan on Soul Rebel was anchored. As we approached we ran into a maze of pearl farm buoys. An aluminum skiff raced out towards us guiding us to a safe route around the pearl farm. Even Ryan admitted the anchorage was too rough in the prevailing winds so we continued around southeast about eight miles to the east side of the atoll. Once again we ran into a lot of buoys, but this time we marked them on our chart so we’d have a fighting chance when we returned this way to leave the atoll.

We felt very fortunate to be anchored in the lee of the southern shore as these squalls came ripping over the horizon. One night boats on the outside reports 40 to 50 knot winds.

The indomitable Franklin and Meryl.

We anchored in the highly protected lee of the southern shore and dinghied in to see how our friend Franklin on Dreamboat was doing with his rudder repair. Franklin is a singlehander from Keemah, TX , who also works full time on his boat as a computer programmer for a health care company. Luckily Franklin is the only guy who knows how the software works so he has some bargaining power as to his working environment. He gets up every morning at 3:00 am to work a full eight-hour shift, providing support and writing new code for the software. I’m always amazed at the people we meet who manage to continue their professional careers while cruising.

Franklin getting ready to dig a pit and drop his rudder down to start repair of the washer.

Franklin is a very optimistic guy, but still a little naive as to how everything works (or doesn’t work) in the tropics. He found a guy in Raiatea to machine a new bottom washer for his rudder and swore he’d have in flown in a couple days and be back in the water by the end of the week. Meryl and I just looked at each other thinking “he’ll be lucky to be back in the water in a month or two.”

The rather large yard at the Apataki Carenage. If you look closely you can see the huge cement blocks they use to anchor the boats.

As in all French boatyards, the only power is 220v which doesn’t work with US power tools or battery chargers. Plus the Carenage only runs their genset when their guys are out in the yard working on boats, so essentially Franklin was without power to do his repairs, and more importantly, to power his computer so he could do his programming job. Being the nice guys that we are we dug out (buried in the deepest confines of our boat) our Honda 2000 generator and gave it to him for the duration. He was a very happy camper.

Assam and his daughter-in-law Pauline who helps run the boatyard.

An extended family runs the Apataki Carenage, lead by the elder Assam who originally ran a pearl farm at the location. Over the years the black pearl industry got more and more competitive and Assam switched over to using the land to store boats during the cyclone season. The Carenage is the only boatyard for hundreds of miles, and more importantly, is in a very dry area of the Tuamotus so that boats stay mold free during their stay. It is still in the cyclone area, however, so they have huge cement blocks they use to anchor the boats.

There is no food or supplies at the Carenage, but Assam’s family does have a large chicken farm (246 chickens) so we had the freshest eggs on earth for the duration of our stay. They weren’t still hot when we got them, but close.

The next day a boat named Huzzah came into the anchorage and I reconnected with a guy from Tacoma, Gerry Gilbert, who I used to race T-Birds with. He had another former T-Birder, Ken, and Fred, a buddy from Boeing as crew onboard. The three guys had helped sail the boat from Puget Sound, down the West Coast, and then joined the BaHa HaHa to Mexico. It was great to sit and reminisce about the good old days racing T-Birds and growing up in Tacoma. I was able to share a lot of local knowledge and computer files with Gerry, and he helped me set up my Airmail software to work with the Iridium Go. Quid pro quo.

We also met several other cruisers, including Jeanne and Colin on Manali. Colin is 80 and has sailed over 250,000 miles, including five Pacific crossings. I figured he was maybe in his early sixties. Amazing what this lifestyle can do for you.

What do cruisers do all day? Try to connect to their email.

During our stay we did some snorkeling and beach walks, but a strong southerly keep us on our toes. The Carenage did have good Internet so most days cruisers would be sitting around the covered picnic table near the yard doing email. We also had a nice potluck with the crews of Dreamboat, Kiapa Nui, Manali, and Soul Rebel. Our Finnish friends on Irene showed up the last day and we reconnected with Topio and Eva who have left their boat in the Carenage for the last ten plus years.

The topic of conversation for several days was the wreck of a boat on an atoll just north of Apataki. I’m going to leave out the boat’s name to save embarrassment, but a friend of our’s was asked over to the boat to check out their chart plotter, which the owner didn’t think was working right. It turned out the chart plotter didn’t have any charts installed, only the world “base map” which shows only outlines of major islands. Our friend suggested the skipper go down to the Carenage and download navigation software for his iPad, or at the very least take screenshots of my friend’s charts for the area. For whatever reason that didn’t happen and later that night the boat ran up on a reef on their way to Rangiroa. They activated their EPIRP and a helicopter from Papeete did a dangerous night rescue of the four crew from the reef. Not much more to say about that, except that the Tuamotus are very tricky to navigate on a clear day with excellent charts, anything less is very risky.  

This is the port side of Bilboa which lost its engine in the North Pass and ran up on the reef.

As an aside:  When we walked around the yard on the first day we saw a 40 ft. sailboat that had lost it’s engine in the North Pass (the safer of the two passes) of Apataki and went up on the rocks. The crew from the Carenage got the salvage contract and patched a huge hole in the side of the boat with fiberglass and towed it back to the yard. Seeing that certainly put the fear of God in us. That’s two boats on reefs in less than a month.

We stayed over two weeks, a little longer than we anticipated, hoping Franklin’s part would arrive so we could leave with our genset, but no go. We finally made a deal with Franklin to keep the genset and hopefully hook up later with us down island. I know if I were Franklin I’d certainly appreciate the lifesaving loan of a genset. That’s how cruisers help other cruisers out here in the middle of nowhere.

Bouncing along the Backroads of Ua Pou

We arranged for a tour of Ua Pou with Jerome, a rather interesting chap who runs Pension Pukuee, perched overlooking the harbor in Hakahau. Jerome is a former French Army Marine who served tours of duty in Bosnia, Africa, and Afghanistan. I liked how he described his Army career, “I wanted to protect those who can’t protect themselves, the women, the children and others.”  He speaks passable English and has an impressive depth of knowledge on the local history, geology, flora and fauna of Ua Pou.

Pension Pukuee is run by Jerome and his Marquesan wife. It is on the hillside overlooking the harbor and features incredible views of the ocean and village of Hakahau.

This Ua Pou carver examines a boar's tusk that he will fashion into a necklace for Jerome's wife.

We first drove to his friend’s house who was a carver, and was working on a boar’s tusk carving for Jerome’s wife. The carver’s on Ua Pou are touted as some of the best in all the Marquesas. We then drove out of the village and up a switchbacked road from Hakahau, marveling at the incredible views of Ua Pou and looking across to Nuku Hiva. He said Ua Pou is unique in that most volcanic islands collapse seaward leaving an opening to the sea, whereas Ua Pou collapsed upon itself, leaving a series of knife-edged ridges and spectacular sharp-nosed peaks, called Poumaka, Poutetainui and Kohepu.

The windward, northeast side of Ua Pou features spectacular views such as this bay at Anjou.

We drove through spectacular green rolling hills of the highlands to the northeast side of the island near the airport at Anjou. While talking about the condition of the road, Jerome mentioned, as have many Marquesans, that it is difficult for the Marquesas to get funding for capital projects out of the government in Tahiti. For 17 years they had been applying for funds to pave the road to the airport, and hopefully next year they will start construction. As we were bouncing along on the rutted road I was thinking “you definitely have to have a 4-wheel drive vehicle to live here.” He also mentioned that on some islands, like Nuku Hiva, there is a higher percentage of public ownership of land, whereas on Ua Pou over 90% of the land is privately owned, which makes getting right of way for roads a difficult process.

Traveling the backroads of Ua Pou results in some unusual traffic jams, in this case a herd of recalcitrant goats.

Next we ran into a huge tracked crane going exactly .2 mph. We knew then it was going to be a long day, given this was the only road on this side of the island.

Jerome had been helping out some friends install a communications tower on the island and knew a secret road that accessed the ridge where the tower was located. The view over hundreds of miles of Pacific Ocean was spectacular. You could also look down to Baie des Requins (Shark Bay) where hundreds of black-tip sharks come to breed. Probably not a great place to go snorkeling.

Jerome at a lookout over Hakahetau.

Baie des Requins (Shark Bay) is famous as a breeding grounds for black tipped sharks.

We then drove down to the village of Hakahetau, a beautiful village nestled at the terminus of a valley with two rivers running into the ocean. There is a dock there, but trying to land a dingy or a boat would be very difficult because of the wind and swell present on the windward side of the island.

The quaint village of Haakuti with only 200 inhabitants.

It always humbles us to look out across hundreds of miles of Pacific Ocean to know that we crossed half of it, but still have another 2,500 miles to go.

We would be returning to the village for lunch, but first we went up another 4-wheel trek up a jungle-like road where we parked and began a short 500 meter hike to Vaiea Falls. Along the way Jerome pointed out various trees and plants, including the Bancoul tree with its versatile little nuts. About the size of a small chestnut, the Bancoul nut contains a macadamia-type nut that can be used as a laxative (“Take just 3,” warned Jerome), can be crushed into a oil for lamps, and the soot from the oil (collected as the smoke settled on coconut shell halves over the lamp) for ink for the famous Marquesan tattoos.

Walter and Meryl at Vaiea Falls.

The incredible Bancoul nut.

The necklace-shaped tattoos actually represent an upside down coconut shell that hangs over the Bancoul oil lamp and collects soot that is the basis for the original Marquesan tattoo inks.

I don't have a clue what this leaf is but I love the textures and colors of the photo.

Hiking through the jungle like trails to Vaiea Falls.

The falls were secluded and featured a perfect swimming hole at the base, surrounded by rock walls and overhanging greenery.  We had a slow peaceful hike back to the car and began the bone-jarring ride to the main road. It reminded Meryl and I of some of the roads we traveled while on safari in Africa.

Chef Tiiero cooks up a delicious lunch of carangue in a mustard/curry sauce. You gotta love French cooking.

Once back in Hakahetau we went to Jerome’s friend’s house where he runs a small kitchen for locals and the occasional tourist. Called Chez Tipiero, the owner is a former chef in the French Navy. We’d heard the food in the French Navy is spectacular (Jerome said during joint exercises he used to trade his meals to US Marines for clothing and knives.)  Tipiero, a happy rotund Frenchman married to a Marquesan woman, brought us a plate featuring carangue (jack) with a delicious mustard/curry sauce, fried potatoes, green beans, and corn on the cob. We were too full for desert until we saw Jerome’s apple crisp a la mode. To die for!

Fat, contented and happy we enjoyed the ride back to Hakahau entertained by Jerome’s descriptions of island life and why he lived there. After being in war torn zones for twenty-five years in the army, he was mesmerized by the tranquility of the Marquesas, Ua Pou especially. He had met and married a Marquesan woman in France and when her family decided to quit their pension business he leapt at the chance to continue the family enterprise. He mentioned that land ownership in the Marquesas always passed to the oldest son, so his opportunity to buy outright the pension was a stroke of luck.

We didn’t get to go on the east side tour which features a beach with the famous “flowerstone” rocks, only one to two locations in the world where these rocks exist. Jerome was nice enough to give Meryl a couple of the colorful stones, along with filling our memory stick with tons of Marquesan songs, some incredible drone footage of Ua Pou from the air, and a couple of movies about the Marquesas.

I was girded for the worse when we returned back to our dingy, which we had left tied to the commercial wharf (after our two previous disasters with the dingy) only to find it happily floating about 40 ft. away. It was nice to get back to our boat after a long day bouncing around the back roads of Ua Pou. We sat in the cockpit in the late afternoon light with sundowners and watched the local racing pirogues racing back and forth, a nice ending to a long day.

Tourist for a Day

We literally passed out after the anchor debacle and sleep soundly through the night.  We took most of the morning cleaning up the mess from anchor mud and then took a short trip into the village. Ua Pou is well known for it’s great dingy dock, but the entire port complex was torn up as they were building a new ship pier so the dingy dock was unavailable. We decided to just row our dingy the short distance into shore and pull it up on the beach. The bay shallows up quite fast and we found ourselves pulling the dingy in foot-deep water and then up the sandy beach. Each year older we get the dingy seems to get that much heavier.

A mountain of delicious fresh baguettes.

The Artisan Center had a good selection of local carved bowls and tikis, along with women's necklaces and other jewelry.

We had a nice walk around the village, shopping at three different grocery stores (magasins) and a nice bakery with a table piled high with fresh baguettes. We found out that the Aranui 5 cruise/freighter ship would be in port the next day so we decided to visit the Artisan Center to see if we could find a nice carved bowl before the screaming hoards of tourists descended. Ironically we found the exact bowl I was looking for, carved by a local named Petero out of Pacific rosewood. The bowls aren't cheap, but Ua Pou is famous for the quality of its carvers so it seemed like a deal to me. We also arranged with a local Frenchman named Jerome to take a tour of the island in two days, as he would be full up with the Aranui passengers the next day.

When we got back to the dingy it was low tide and we had a very long tug to get it back into the water since the beach has very little slope. We had to figure out a new dingy strategy for the next day.

Everyday the kids would come down to the beach to practice in the racing pirogues. These kids could really paddle!

One nice thing about Ua Pou is how active all the islanders are on the beach. One guy was exercising his horse, bounding through the small surf line while young kids were out playing in the surf or swimming. A large group of kids came down and took out a 12-person training pirogue, while others were in 6-man and single racing pirogues.  We had a front row seat to the various craft racing around the bay for the next few hours.

I almost forgot to mention the view! Ua Pou has one of the most spectacular harbors, with several needle-like spires raising up in the surrounding mountains. This time of year the hills are a rich green color; it’s almost like you are in a National Park rather than an island with over 2300 residents.

We sat in the cockpit with our sundowners and just enjoyed the spectacle of it all.

The huge Aranui 5 shoehorned in between the breakwater and the new cruise ship dock.

After a fitful night’s sleep we awoke at 6:15 am to a cacophony of noise as the huge Aranui 5 pulled into the dock. Adding to the confusion was the fact a new dock was under construction, so fitting the Aranui into the narrow space took a couple of big workboats pushing hard again the port bow of the ship to shoehorn it into the space.

We tried taking the dingy into the construction dock to tie up but it was being used to shuttle workers to the ship, so back to the beach. This time we tried Plan B by dropping an anchor attached to a loop of 100 ft. of line. We landed the dingy in foot-deep water and then pulled it back out to its anchor. It’s a kind of cool system taught to us by Dave on Maluhia that they use in Mexico. We then ran the line up to a palm tree and secured it with the dingy happily bobbing in the water about 50 ft. away.

The locals put on quite the welcome for the Aranui passengers. Here is a long buffet line featuring "A Taste of Ua Pou."

We went to the community center that was packed with Aranui tourists having a pre-lunch buffet of local fruits and other foods. We had heard the thing to do on for the Aranui crowd. Rosalie said she had room and the price was about US$23, a little pricy for us but it seemed like a plan at the time.

An Ua Pou dancer with a tapa loincloth and the requisite boar's tusk necklace.

We then walked down the street to a pae pae where local dancers were set to preform for the Aranui’s (my generic term for cruise ship passengers).  It was a good performance, especially the male dancers, but once you’d seen the big dance troupes at the Hiva Oa Festival you are kind of jaded. It was however, very fun to watch the Aranui crowd, a mixture of about 75% French, 10% Aussie and British, and a smattering of others, many of whom looked like they were on their death bed (but were probably our age).

We then went up to Rosalie’s and took some time trying to find a table with English speakers. We sat next to a nice British couple that traveled extensively around the world and had some interesting tales to tell. The food was OK, but we were there for the experience more than anything.

After lunch we took a short walk up to the magasin to do some more shopping, coming home with four heavy bags full of food. We always forget the long walk to the dingy when we stock up on food, and always regret buying heavy canned foods about one-way through the walk. Back on the beach we could see our dingy high and dry on the beach with a Frenchman in his black Speedo sitting on the bow. We were then horrified to see the entire dingy full of saltwater and sand. The waves had broken over the dingy and filled it to the brim. It took another 15 minutes to get enough water out so we could drag it down to the water. The recalcitrant Frenchman finally got off but didn’t think to help us lug the heavy dingy down to the water.

Back at the boat Meryl put the food away while I spent another 30 minutes trying to get all the sand out of the dingy. Our under seat storage bag had been immersed in the saltwater and I had to remove all the emergency equipment, which although it was sealed in plastic bags, was soaked all the way through, leading to another three hours of cleaning, oiling, and repackaging everything. 

I think Ua Pou is trying to tell us something.

The Knot that Binds

On April 11th we were packed up and ready to depart The Marquesas, with a stop over at Ua Pou along the way. We’d saved the best for last, as all our fellow cruisers said Ua Pou was one of their favorite islands. Leaving Taiohae Bay was difficult. While most of our friends from the last six months had already left or were on their way, it was hard leaving your home for the past half year. We knew we would miss the the friendly people, the baguettes, the somewhat workable Internet, and the ambiance of the village.

The spires of Ua Pou form a spectacular backdrop for boats at the inner harbor.

With a bright blue sky and 13 to 15 knots of wind on the port beam, we had an exhilarating 27 mile sail southeast to Ua Pou, one of the nicer day sails of our entire trip. 

We are in the center of the photo near the white fishing boat. With the wind blowing from the left of the picture to the right, we were just feet from the white boat until we could free enough chain to drop back. 

Unfortunately, our euphoria was soon to end. While the harbor is a good size, the area behind the breakwater is much smaller, meaning you have to use stern anchor so more boats can fit in the tighter space. We tried a new anchoring technique where we approached the beach as shallow as we dared, dropped the stern anchor, and then did a tight 180 degree turn out towards the harbor entrance. As Meryl let out the stern line and steered (no easy task), I got the bow anchor ready to drop. It wasn’t super windy, but with a moored fishing boat just to left of us and a 42 ft. Beneteau to the right, we were trying to shoehorn ourselves into a tight space. Everything was going well until disaster stuck!  The outgoing anchor chain had jammed itself in the vertical tube that guides the chain from the anchor locker and up through to the deck. I knew immediately what the issue was, I told Meryl to try and not hit the fishing boat that was precariously close to our port side, and ran down below and started moving tons of stuff that we store on top of the forward anchor locker.  

The Knot from Hell.

Normally the chain would fall back into the lower anchor locker. Here I've got the knot on top of the aft anchor locker but I can't get enough slack to actually work on the knot.

When I finally got the doors off I was staring at my worse nightmare, a knot of chain about the size of a large softball jammed at the base of the vertical tube.  When we had brought up the anchor chain at Taiohae Bay it piled up like a big mountain in the anchor locker. Normally most of it would fall down into the lower aft locker, but the top of the mountain essentially fell along the sides and new chain went over the top of that creating the iron knot. And that knot was now jammed as tight as (insert your favorite Southern homily here) possible in the vertical tube.

I had Meryl lower the chain a bit so I could see what the problem was, and kneeling over with my head down in the anchor locker (and trying not to fall in as the boat pitched in the waves) I started attacking the knot. After an hour of incredible frustration I had made little progress.  I could tell their were three double loops of chain, all of which were twisted around each other, making up the knot, which weighed about 25 pounds. I could barely lift it up before it’s weigh would pull me off balance. 

Plan Two was to try and get enough slack (again, incredibly hard to do) lift the knot through the forward hatch and get it up on deck where it would support it’s own weight and I could see what was going on. After another hour I was able to pull it apart enough to understand the knot, then it was simply identifying the three loops and passing everything through itself and then untwisting the mess.

I was completely exhausted and my arms were trembling with fatigue from dealing with the heavy 3/8” chain. Meryl was spent from trying to keep us from hitting the fishing boat on port and maneuvering the boat back and forth. Amazingly we weren’t yelling at each other and had worked well together throughout this mess.

With the chain now freely running we could slowing tighten the aft anchor while letting out the forward anchor. On top of everything else the anchor chain had been down on the bottom of Taiohae Bay for over two months and was covered with mud and sharp barnacles. My hands, even with gloves on, were like mincemeat and everything on the deck and the anchor locker was covered with stinky, gooey mud with occasional drops of blood.

After such a nice start of the day, and then dealing with the anchor mess, we looked at each other’s weary faces and said “screw it” and left the mess on deck and went down below to take a long nap -- we were both that exhausted. 

Such was the unexpected beginning of our rather weird stay at Ua Pou.