Pitufa.at

The weather report keeps promising warmer weather, but it never seems to actually arrive here. Winter’s coming here in the southern hemisphere and it feels like it. Yesterday I caught myself whistling ‘jingle bells’… When the sun’s out it’s hot, but the wind blowing from the south’s just icy cold. During the weekend we had constant wind around 25 knots, gusts up to 35 (that’s… Continue reading »

We heard and read about the Polynesian hospitality before we came to the Gambier Islands and were curious, whether people would still be friendly and generous to strangers, or whether they were already fed up with too many tourists taking advantage of them. We were positively surprised how alive the Polynesian hospitality still is. Everybody passing on the street greets with a friendly smile, people… Continue reading »

At the moment a low is passing by south of the Gambier islands sending freezing cold air up here. We’re shivering in temperatures in their low 20s–we’re just no longer used to temperate climates and have dragged the long trousers and hooded sweaters out of their hiding places in the back of the cupboard. Here it’s autumn and we just hope that the winter won’t… Continue reading »

During the last week we’ve been trying to catch up with boat projects that have piled up over the past few weeks. We’ve been busy cleaning the waterline (incredible how much grows on a passage and how hard it is to get off), sewing the zipper of the lazy bag, washing and storing sails after the passage, doing the laundry (fortunately there’s a friendly German… Continue reading »

The approach to the harbour of Rikitea on the main island of the Gambier archipelago was a bit more exciting than we’d have hoped for being exhausted after 24 days at sea. The wind gusted up to 30 knots when we approached the pass through the outer reef (the archipelago is surrounded by a huge diamond-shaped reef, 20 miles diameter). We had to motor right… Continue reading »

We’re still having a good time on Isabela. Yesterday we joined a hiking group and spent 5 hours walking past the gigantic 10 km wide crater of the volcano Sierra Negra and through the caldera of Volcano Chico with impressive lava tunnels and flows of different ages and colours giving evidence of the stages in which plants manage to settle on the craggy inhospitable volcanic… Continue reading »

We’ve had quite an eventful week with my Dad, visited the old town centre, sailed over to Taboga and back, took a “Diablo Rojo” (a local bus, crammed full with people loud music hammering down) to the 16th century ruins of Panama viejo as an adventure trip, visited the Miraflores locks and took a walk in the Parque natural metropolitano. Today my Dad flies back… Continue reading »

We finished all our electronics projects in time before my father arrived last Tuesday. Since then we’ve been doing touristy things (sightseeing in the casco viejo, strolling through town)–nice after two weeks of constant work. Unfortunately the sea is very murky at the moment, lots of tiny creatures are around, sometimes bright red clouds drift through, at night they fluoresce spectacularly like bright turquoise fireworks… Continue reading »

Unfortunately our time in the Perlas is coming to an end, we really liked this archipelago. We’ve returned to the northern island of Contadora to clean the barnacles off the hull and to wait for favourable winds to sail back to Panama City.