Pitufa.at

At the moment there’s still southwesterly swell coming up (but that should become less frequent and violent as summer comes to the southern hemisphere), at the same time northerly swell comes down (and will become more with winter setting in up there) and in combination with predominant wind plus windseas from the east, finding a calm spot in the open bays of the Marquesas is… Continue reading »

When the anchor drops after a long passage, but the boat keeps pitching and rolling merrily, you know you’ve arrived in the Marquesas… Unlike the other archipelagos of Fr. Poly, these islands have no protecting fringe reefs and their coasts and bays are open to the waves and mighty swell of the Pacific. During El Nino years they are supposed to be safely out of… Continue reading »

The light winds continued. This morning it was calm enough to take a bath in the Ocean (while holding on to the ladder). Now we are on the way north towards the Marquesas.

After a night of very light winds the dreaded calm finally got us this morning and we ended up motoring (the waves were still too high to just sit on the water…). After a few hours the engine died–the clogged fuel line was fortunately easy to find and clear. Now we’ve just got enough of a breeze to keep Pitufa sailing again with 2 to… Continue reading »

It’s slow going, tacking so close-hauled. To make 70 nm as the bird flies we’ve had to sail over 100 since yesterday. First it was very squally with Pitufa heeling down to the toe-rail in the gusts. Of course the fishing line snapped tight during one of these squalls, Christian had a hard time pulling the medium sized Bonito in while trying not to fall… Continue reading »

After we had left Bora Bora, we slogged in two tedious days of sailing very slowly, as close-hauled as possible in light winds to Raiatea and then on to Huahine. On the way to Huahine we considered heading on straight to the Tuamotus, but the weatherforecast predicted fickle winds, so we decided to stop once more. We were lucky to do so, because 4 miles… Continue reading »

After two days close-hauled sailing (crawling along walls rather than walking on the floor…) we’ve reached Tikehau.

On Sunday we had a beautiful sailing day with flat seas (we’ve seldom seen the Pacific so calm) and a light breeze from the south-southwest that was just enough to keep Pitufa’s gennaker filled and flying. It was veeeery slow sailing (7 hours for just 25 nm ), but we were not in a hurry and enjoyed the ride that was smooth enough for Leeloo… Continue reading »

We have moved to a buoy field next to the pass, close to a manta ray protection area. The big rays come there apparently every day to get some grooming from the little cleaning brigade fishies. Unfortunately visibility wasn’t great, so when we went snorkeling in that area, we could only see the outlines of the rays far below us in about 10 metres. We… Continue reading »