Pitufa.at

We arrived at noon and are now anchored off Rairua, the main village of Raivavae. The island’s mountains are hidden behind thick clouds, the sky is grey and it’s surprisingly cool. Last week when we suffered in the humid heat of Tahiti we were joking that soon we’d be complaining about the cold in the Austral Islands

What looked like a swift ride on the weather forecast has turned into an annoying passage. Since last night we’ve been motoring without any wind, managing only to sail for a few hours in a breeze first from the east and then the west which quickly disappeared again. Now we have 8 knots on the nose–fortunately we only have 20 more miles to go. We… Continue reading »

We were planning on riding the tail of a low that moved down Southeast and the forecast predicted a stiff breeze. Unfortunately the wind’s been much lighter and now it looks like we might run out of wind on the last day of the passage… 120nm to go

After a decent sailing day the wind died down last night to almost nothing. Unfortunately the waves didn’t, so we were hobbling along with banging sails and everything on the boat clanging along. 220 nm to go

Light winds, sunny skies–so far this is an easy passage! 320 nm to go

We haven’t had such an easy passage in a long time. The wind was strong (surprisingly just as predicted and also from the direction the forecast had promised), not so strong to build up huge waves (2 m were not even enough to make the cat seasick), but just enough to push heavy Pitufa along swiftly. Averaging 6 knots we needed less than 2 days… Continue reading »

We left Fakarava yesterday, but instead of sailing straight to the Australes as initially planned, we have to go to Tahiti first to do some repairs. We’re sailing swiftly along with 15 to 20 knots behind us and will reach Tahiti tomorrow. 120 nm to go!

The south pass into the lagoon of Fakarava is popular with dive tourists. Reef sharks hang out in all passes we’ve seen in the Tuamotus, but for some unknown reason the pass of Fakarava is teeming with grey reef sharks (apparently 200-300 live in the area). You see some of them while snorkelling, but most of them are deeper down, so it really makes sense… Continue reading »

Yesterday we left the lovely lagoon of Toau and sailed over to the neighbouring atoll Fakarava. We had a nice breeze, calm seas and only took 3 hours for the 13 nm ‘passage’. Unfortunately we weren’t lucky fishing this time, but Fakarava has one of the bigger villages in the Tuamotus (also quite some tourism) and so we stocked up on luxuries like tomatoes, eggplants… Continue reading »

Yesterday we made another small hop from the false pass on the Northern side of Toau down to the SE side where there’s a pass into the lagoon. The day started squally with sporty tacking up and down in shifting winds (the atoll kept jumping into our way, so we had to dodge it twice), but then we were sailing close-hauled along the edge of… Continue reading »