Pitufa.at

There is no dentist in the Gambier, so after discovering a cavity two weeks ago I got increasingly worried. I didn’t know how serious it was, but in the end I decided to book an (expensive) flight to Tahiti to deal with this problem. I was lucky: the tooth problem was easily fixed, Adrian (SY Attila) organised everything beforehand for me in Tahiti, SY Liward… Continue reading »

When you live ashore in the tropics you have to arrange yourself with mosquitoes and lots of other bugs. Around towns authorities spray against bugs in many areas, but here on Taravai everything’s organic and non-toxic, so we have to live with and around the winged fiends. They are worse on rainy days and less on sunny and breezy days, but they’re always around. The… Continue reading »

One of our aluminium watertanks (250 litres volume) started leaking a while ago. No big deal as we have a second one and a watertank, but now that we’ve settled into the little house on Taravai we have started the repair project. The tank is built in underneath the sofa (the rounded wound covers it partly) and the inspection holes we cut into the aluminium… Continue reading »

Last week we worked every day in the garden, got rid of the metre high weed in the veggie garden behind the house, removed fallen over trees from the garden, mowed the grass on the big property, got rid of old rubbish, etc. On Sunday we hosted a house-warming party with 25 people (6 boats and some Polynesian neighbours), a BBQ and a big potluck… Continue reading »

We have 5 lemon trees full of big, juicy fruits in our garden, a mango tree with loaded branches and two papaya trees that we can harvest from every day. Leaving the fruities to rot under the trees doesn’t feel right, so we do our best to make use of them. Today we made 3 litres of papaya-mango sorbet (we have a gigantic freezer in… Continue reading »

It seems that always when things are just a little bit too perfect, something annoying has to happen. These nuisances usually involve either the engine, the fridge, the watermaker or the kerosene stove–the big 4 that worry us in remote places where there’s no professional help available in case of a problem. This time it was Bertie’s turn (that’s the name of our malevolent kerosene… Continue reading »

2016 has been a year with plenty of passage making. Much more than originally planned. Starting from the Marquesas where we spent the last cyclone season we sailed westwards via Tahiti and Niue to Tonga. Unlike the majority of the cruising boats crossing the Pacific we did not sail on to Fiji, New Zealand or Australia, but decided to sail back to French Polynesia against… Continue reading »

Dear readers and virtual travellers, we wish you all a merry Christmas and a healthy, happy, interesting new year! We hope you’ll keep on travelling along with us on our blog in 2017

We have returned to the Gambier islands for the fourth time, where we’ll spend the cyclone season 16/17. It’s good to be back in our favourite archipelago after this eventful year.