Pitufa.at

Polynesian peoples live all across the Pacific: New Zealand, Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa, Cooks Islands, French Polynesia as far up as Hawaii–apparently the ‘Lapita’ culture initally started out from an area around Taiwan and slowly discovered the Pacific islands eastwards. Once the discoverers settled down on the far stretched island groups they still had trading connections, but over the centuries they lost contact. Nowadays Polynesians from… Continue reading »

At the moment we’re having incredibly stable summer weather here in the Australs, hardly a breeze and rather humid. We’ve used the calm conditions to take down the high-cut yankee foresail in order to replace it with the bigger genoa that we’ll be using next. The genoa needs some maintenance first, so the sewing machine projects go on. Friends just recently mentioned that according to… Continue reading »

Raivavae has never seen so many sailboats at once (15 now) and as they are mainly kiddy boats and kite surfers they’re all hanging out at Motu Vaiamanu (also called ‘Piscine’, swimming pool–perfect for kids to play on the beach and kiters). That’s also the anchorage most locals recommend to sailboats and the owners have a little snack there and organise picnics for tourists (and… Continue reading »

Due to the Covid-19 situation most island states remain closed (Fiji is open, so a few boats went there and we hope they fared well in the cyclone that just hit Fiji badly…). Boats that would normally have continued west have stayed in French Poly, new ones have arrived, so there are more cruisers around this cyclone season than usually. Raivavae hardly ever sees more… Continue reading »

The alligator fake leather’s just a protective cover for the sofa mattress, on top of that (and on all the other 10 cushions around the saloon) we now have to sew fabric covers. Something unicoloured would of course look elegant, but a light colour’s waaay too easily stained and a dark colour would make the salon too gloomy. Thinking of cookie crumbles (especially on passage),… Continue reading »

Last time we did the upholstery in our saloon with low-quality fabric from Panama that went blotchy and ugly soon and had to be redone every other year. The mattress foam we got in Tahiti was even worse. Now, with new foam and fabric, we wanted to be on the safe side and decided to do the main seating area (and sleeping matress for in… Continue reading »

With 15 knots of wind from the East and steady conditions we are rushing along with 6 to 7 knots. The water temperature has already dropped from 29.1° C to 28.3°. 269 miles to go!

We are just motoring out of the pass S of Marina Taina–there’s not a breeze to be felt, but according to the forecast it’s blowing 15 knots out there. We just have to get away from the high mountains of Tahiti to find it… 390 nm to go to Raivavae!

The propaganda war against cruisers goes on in Tahiti. We saw in a magazine (Tahiti Pacifique) that after a horrible accident where a cruiser kid was killed by a speeding motorboat right next to his parents’ boat, not speeding in lagoons is critizised, but again the sailboats are blamed for ‘blocking channels’ and posing a risk?! The big anchorage off Marina Taina is (yet again)… Continue reading »

We arrived a week ago in Tahiti and went into super-busy mode immediately. Not on our to-do list (we have tons of projects with the things we ordered from the US), but with unexpected chores: We spent two days repairing the sail, one day repairing the kerosene stove, 2 days repairing our new(!) dinghy as the damn thing arrived with serious damage from the transport,… Continue reading »