Pitufa.at

After a boisterous trip, we arrived in Rapa Iti with the last light–fortunately the days are longer down at this latitude or we wouldn’t have made it. The island looks spectacular, despite the fact that it’s covered in thick clouds. The forecast shows a front arriving tonight so we’ll get some rain to wash off the salt and then hopefully some sunny weather to explore the island in the next few days.

We set out from Raivavae yesterday at noon into high winds and waves. We caught a yellow fin tuna just after leaving and cutting and storing that guy took some seasickness medicine… We’re going fast though, so we’re not comfy, but happy to get to Rapa quickly! 177 nm to go (out of 300)

We arrived at noon and are now anchored off Rairua, the main village of Raivavae. The island’s mountains are hidden behind thick clouds, the sky is grey and it’s surprisingly cool. Last week when we suffered in the humid heat of Tahiti we were joking that soon we’d be complaining about the cold in the Austral Islands

What looked like a swift ride on the weather forecast has turned into an annoying passage. Since last night we’ve been motoring without any wind, managing only to sail for a few hours in a breeze first from the east and then the west which quickly disappeared again. Now we have 8 knots on the nose–fortunately we only have 20 more miles to go. We haven’t caught a fish yet, but something seriously big must have bitten yesterday: we only heard the bungee cord zipping back and the whole gear including our favourite lure, 1 m of metal leader 100 m of strong line and the yoyo disappeared…

We were planning on riding the tail of a low that moved down Southeast and the forecast predicted a stiff breeze. Unfortunately the wind’s been much lighter and now it looks like we might run out of wind on the last day of the passage… 120nm to go

After a decent sailing day the wind died down last night to almost nothing. Unfortunately the waves didn’t, so we were hobbling along with banging sails and everything on the boat clanging along. 220 nm to go

Light winds, sunny skies–so far this is an easy passage! 320 nm to go

We haven’t had such an easy passage in a long time. The wind was strong (surprisingly just as predicted and also from the direction the forecast had promised), not so strong to build up huge waves (2 m were not even enough to make the cat seasick), but just enough to push heavy Pitufa along swiftly. Averaging 6 knots we needed less than 2 days for the 240 nm and to make things perfect, we caught a huge mahi-mahi last evening (1.5 m).

We usually hope for smaller fish that are easier to handle, kill and process and therefore we use a small lure, but that big guy still bit and of course we didn’t refuse to pull him aboard. Slaughtering the big creature on the rolling aft-deck while it was getting dark wasn’t much fun and today it took me another 3 hours to cut and prepare the meat for storage. Anyway, now it’s done and we have enough fish for a week (and more to give away…).

We left Fakarava yesterday, but instead of sailing straight to the Australes as initially planned, we have to go to Tahiti first to do some repairs. We’re sailing swiftly along with 15 to 20 knots behind us and will reach Tahiti tomorrow. 120 nm to go!