Pitufa.at

With 2700 cases/100.000 inhabitants, swamped hospitals and full ICU units the government has finally announced a new lockdown for 2 weeks. It’s a bit vague though: people are still allowed to go to work or shopping (necessary things), the international borders remain open, inter-island travel is limited to people with “important reasons” (which is a broad term as any business reason or family reason counts). Tourists are not encouraged to leave the country and still allowed to fly in, but will have to remain in their rooms or their cabins on cruise ships?!
No special restrictions for yachts are mentioned (yet). We hope that fellow cruisers will keep a low profile, respect the restrictions and don’t draw attention to the cruising community here. Otherwise there might be restrictions like during the last lockdown when swimming was forbidden, only one person per boat was allowed briefly ashore to go shopping, etc. Such measures don’t seem to focus on containing the virus, but more on making life miserable. The same goes for the locals of course: going fishing or paddling in a va’a is unlikely to do harm, but still forbidden. Looking out at the usually busy coastal road it seems there’s a little bit less traffic, but still lots of cars on the road…
Cases have been rising explosively over the past few weeks, the lockdown comes very late. We’ll see how things develop.

We are anchored on a sandy shelf in a protected part of the lagoon of southern Tahiti. In front of us 4 m swell thunders against the outer reef in crazy avalanche-like looking barrels and behind us the deeper lagoon looks like a fast-flowing mountain river with eddies, whirlpools and standing waves… Pitufa gets swirled around by 3 knots of current, but we’re bouncing only a little bit. We heard from a friend that up in the anchorage off Marina Taina (where the reef offers very little protection) dinghies are getting flipped, boats inside the marina are pushed against the dock and at least one has broken its mooring…
It’s normal to have high swell coming up from the SW in winter, but 4 m is quite extreme.

489 new cases in the last 24 hours (with a population of only 270.000, 406 cases/100.000 in the last week), 1837 active cases and the ICU unit of the hospital in Papeete is full!

During the first wave last year the numbers were low, then French Polynesia closed its borders and remained almost Covid-free for a long town. Now borders have been open again for flight tourists for two months and even though the safety measures at the airport seemed quite strict, the delta variant has arrived and is spreading quickly.

Unfortunately only about a third of the population is vaccinated so far–after an enthusiastic start people lost interest and only now with the fear of the delta variant spreading vaccination numbers are rising again.

We are the only boat anchored in a quiet corner of Southern Tahiti, but had to go up to Papeete (30 km) yesterday for an appointment. We keep up the same precautions we’ve always used (masks, desinfectant), but still decided to travel by thumb. Motoring up with Pitufa in no wind takes ages, the air condition on the public buses makes sure that you catch at least a severe cold (if not Covid from one of the numerous passengers). Astoundingly enough, hitching rides remains easy and chatting with the drivers we got the impression that people are at least taking the virus more seriously again.

Usually we have a jungle under the sprayhood, but when we left the boat alone, we had to get rid of the plants. Now I’m replanting and soon we’ll harvest arugula, spring onions, mint, basil and cilantro again! The chilis and bellpeppers will need a few more months though

This one’s in a small, regional newspaper, but they got all the facts right
Thanks a lot to the Bezirksrundschau

Another article about us was published in an Austrian newspaper today. The “Krone” is Austria’s most read newspaper, but has a reputation for bad research. The numerous errors in the article are not due to faulty answers in the interview from our side
E.g. our dear princess Leeloo was not a tomcat, but very much of a girly cat.

They advertise our books, but wrongly claim that they are available in bookshops. Sorry, this is not true, they are only available on Amazon
and

https://www.amazon.de/dp/B097KYNMYP/

Wherever the reefs have died around here, the rocks are covered in coarse turbinaria algae. A depressing sight. In such areas large, floating patches of those ugly plants cover the sea. They are a constant nuisance when the outboard sucks them in.

Today they brought Pitufa close to a major catastrophe: We were motoring to a new anchorage inside the lagoon, when Christian noticed that the exhaust quit spitting water–the water-cooled engine was overheating! I checked–the temperature was rising, but still below 90°C, the alarm had not gone off. A quick glance at the depthsounder, 20 m, shallow enough to anchor. Another panicky look at the reef–far enough away. We dropped the anchor immediately and turned off the Yanmar.

As a first step to find the problem we opened the sea strainer–full of leaves. Quickly cleaned. Then we filled a bucket with seawater, put a hose into it, so the engine could either suck from the sea strainer, or if that was still blocked, from the bucket without running dry. We started the engine–some spitting from the exhaust, but not enough and the bucket was empty. Turned off again. Plucked more algae from the strainer, tried the same game again–and this time the engine could suck enough sea water through the strainer. Problem solved. Phew.

The situation could have easily ended in a ruined engine and/or Pitufa on the reef. We got lucky thrice: Christian happened to be sitting on the stern (or he wouldn’t have noticed the smoke and lack of splashing), the lagoon was shallow and we manoeuvred far enough from the reef.

What’s to be learned? We already have a basket-like strainer glued on the hull to keep the watermaker from sucking up stuff (algae, plastic bags, jellyfish, etc.)–next time on the hard we’ll put one over the engine thru hull. Next: keep a safe distance from obstacles while motoring, keep an eye on the engine temperature and be ready to react quickly…

By 8 o’clock the laundry’s on the line…

We’ve done some stretching and exercises…

…had a morning swim…

…with a few stingrays for company!

In the meantime the bread is out of the pan and we can have breakfast.

A perfect way to start the day! (We’ll spend most of it in front of our laptops, but that’s another story )

When you sleep in passage mode on the floor and the coffee pot needs to be clasped to the stove, you know it’s time to get out of the Marina Taina anchorage… The reef is not wide and high enough to protect the lagoon from high swell, so whenever the swell gets higher than 1.5 m (yesterday it was 2.5…) it gets seriously bouncy in the anchorage… Fortunately the anchorage next to the airport is much better protected, so we moved there–and the world stands still

We’ve been in French Polynesia now for 8 years. It’s an amazing cruising area, but this year we felt ready to start a new chapter–a post-ship’s cat chapter with more sailing, more exploring, rougher anchorages, hotter summers (all things we didn’t want our elderly cat to suffer). Due to the Covid pandemic most countries in the Pacific remain closed, but Fiji is open for yachts under a strict quarantine and entry scheme, so we planned to sail there.

While we were in Austria, the first Covid cases popped up in Fiji (the Delta variant…), some areas went into lockdown and despite the fact that inter-island traffic for boats is now allowed again, we hear that locals lack information, are suspicious against strangers and some chiefs deny access to their lands (understandably so). We are uncertain how the situation will develop and in the past few weeks we’ve been torn between the urge to move on and the risk of leaving our ‘home base’, where vaccinations are well underway and the situation seems under control.

Yesterday we decided that leaving the safety and freedom of French Polynesia would be too risky right now. French Poly with the growing animosity against sailboats in some areas isn’t perfect, but at least here we know our way around, know where we are welcome and where not. So it looks like we’ll get another chance to explore a few islands that are still on our to-do list and to revisit some places we love!

We have just published another book on Amazon: an adventure novel with fantasy elements about a sailing family. For now it’s only in German though…
Available at Amazon