Pitufa.at

For the first time on our journey we’ve made miles towards the east. Up till now we mainly sailed with the prevailing trades westwards. There’s a saying “a gentleman never sails to windward”, but going back towards the Tuamotus and later on the Gambier should be worth some bashing close-hauled on the wind. We’ll just have to be patient and wait for rare southerly and… Continue reading »

The last few days it’s been sunny and calm, so we tried out some anchorages along the outer reef. Our system of floating the chain over the coral heads with 2 or 3 fenders work nicely in these spots. The barrier reef is great for swimming and we even found some coral heads with a few elk-horn and brain corals still alive. Yesterday we took… Continue reading »

The last two days the weather has been gorgeous, a cool breeze and azure blue skies, so we took our dinghy up Faaroa river, the only navigable river in French Polynesia. We passed through lush vegetation, lots of gardens with bananas, bread fruit, papaya, manioc, soursop, etc. A man waved us to his garden and we bought a big stack of bananas, got some papayas… Continue reading »

Today we got a phone call from the hospital. The results for our dengue tests are definitely positive. The doctor told us that more cases from the carenage area had come up and advised us to warn our friends and fellow cruisers to be extra careful and use mosquito repellent at all times when going ashore. It’s been two weeks now since we got ill… Continue reading »

We didn’t want to worry anybody while we were in the middle of it, but the last week wasn’t funny at all. Christian and I both got 40C fever on Tuesday, together with thundering headaches, backache and pain behind the eyes all seemed to point to Dengue. I searched the internet for emergency numbers (only took me 1/2 an hour to find out that SAMU… Continue reading »

Yesterday we sailed out to an anchorage on the western barrier reef of Tahaa, where we wiggled Pitufa in between coral heads to a shallow sandbank where we anchored with less than 2 m under the keel. At a first glance the place was just perfect: a turquoise swimming pool with Pitufa swaying gently on a short chain that we had buoyed with two fenders… Continue reading »

So far we’ve had good experiences having parcels shipped from Germany to Tahiti with ‘DHL Paket’ (that’s probably just the regular mail parcel). Important is not to use ‘DHL express’ though, because if you do that the shipment is not only almost 10 times more expensive, but the parcel is also handled by an ‘agent’ who charges 120 euros for this service (customs paperwork or… Continue reading »

The last three months were quite tough. Remember? In April we caught a line in the prop in the Gambier, the shaft was pulled out several centimetres by the force and the thrust bearing was damaged (cracked housing) so that we could no longer use the engine. We had to sail straight to Tahiti to haul out there and spent two weeks repairing and waiting… Continue reading »

…are really positive. The high islands, motus and the fringing reef reminds us of the Isle Gambier and the slow, relaxed pace here is exactly what we like. Yesterday we moved into the deeply indented Haamene bay, where the water’s a bit murky, but the view of the lush green hills and the calm anchorage makes up for that. After dark the sound of drumming… Continue reading »

On Sunday morning we set out towards Raiatea in order to make sure we’d reach the island during daylight after a nightsail (120 nm). During the first hour we were in the lee of Tahiti, with no wind, but confused cross seas as usual in the channel between Tahiti and Moorea. After an hour a strong wind set in and we had a quick but… Continue reading »