Pitufa.at

The past days have been quite an emotional rollercoaster. Monday morning the bearing arrived at the shop (yippee), but then Christian and Adrian spent a frustrating day hanging head first in the engine compartment, trying to wiggle parts together. Imagine the scene: two sweating, swearing guys lying on the floor, each one stuck with head, one shoulder and one arm in the engine, barely able… Continue reading »

We’re still on the hard, waiting for a sparepart that was promised to arrived last wednesday, then friday, now postponed to next monday… Everything else is finished: new antifouling, we cut the dieseltank open and cleaned it (what a mess), made all kinds of small repairs and Pitufa’s basically ready to splash. Let’s hope the part arrives, because we can’t wait to get out of… Continue reading »

Sanding, painting, repairing, despairing when yet another complication comes up, running a marathon between chandleries–working in a boat yard’s takes us to our limits (and beyond), but we’re making progress.

Last night the cosy anchorage turned out to be an area where anchoring was prohibited, as a port sheriff informed us late at night. He insisted we had to move away, not considering our protests that we weren’t able to move without an engine. It took us half an hour of discussion and setting a stern anchor to move a few metres further away from… Continue reading »

A small accident forced us to sail to Tahiti earlier than planned. After doing repairs in a boatyard we’ll take the chance to explore the island a bit.

he last few days a wind has been blowing from the south bringing for the first time chilly air with it and a whiff of rough weather and icebergs far away down there. The sun is still burning hot, but autumn has reached the Gambier. We actually like the seasonal change that we experience here at the fringe of the tropics (compared to the neverchanging… Continue reading »

Now that we’ve basically finished the jobs on Pitufa we’ve got time again to enjoy ‘our’ little island. Recently tourist groups from the two pensions on Mangareva have started visiting Taravai and last week our neighbour Herve led some up to the peak behind the village. As there’s no paths into the mountains we asked him for directions yesterday and started hiking up the same… Continue reading »

Yesterday our neighbour Herve showed us the ruins of the old church and its cemetery in the forest behind his house. An overgrown stone road leads up the mountain to the site where only one wall of the first church and a huge cross of the cemetery remain. Those were built by the people soon after the arrival of the missionaries in 1860. A landslide… Continue reading »

At the beginning of this week we sailed to Rikitea in order to get some things done in the big city (post office, etc.). Our elderly outboard engine had been a nuisance for quite a while (first the choke rod ripped off, then the carburettor got clogged, then the drive pin broke, etc.) and on Monday the gear lever broke off (since the axis of… Continue reading »

By now we’ve established a daily routine: we spend the nights in the house, have an early breakfast (with fresh baguettes, because the only electric equipment the house offers is a gigantic freezer powered by solar panels, hurray!) and spend the mornings varnishing on Pitufa. At noon we come back ashore and do some gardening, cleaning, etc. around the house. Life ashore is taking its… Continue reading »

When we saw that the grib file predicted winds of up to 30 knots for the weekend we already expected quite a breeze, but the squalls that moved every two hours over Pitufa brought gusts of 50 knots. We could clearly see the gusts approaching as high banks of whipped up spray, as soon as they reached the boat she was whirled around and pushed… Continue reading »

We’ve sailed back to the little motu Tauna to enjoy some more swimming, snorkeling, diving and beach walking (the shells here are just irresistable ) Birgit’s mom’s enjoying her last few days here, the flight back’s going to be long and strenuous (Gambier-Tahiti-L.A.-Paris-Vienna…) Despite the warm weather a virus is going around bringing joint ache, fever, a sore throat and a runny nose to its… Continue reading »