Pitufa.at

Waiting for a weather window is always frustrating. We get new forecasts twice a day and then the strategic games begin: we try to “sail” the cursor in expected daily runs through the area of the grib file where arrows indicate the wind speed and direction, trying to avoid becalmed zones and galeforce winds. Of course the further into the future the prediction goes, the more the planning resembles crystal-ball watching…
Anyway, we’ve been waiting for wind to go to Rapa now for 3 weeks, which lies south of the trade wind belt, has depressions moving by on a regular basis and isn’t easy to reach. We went to get the very last veggies time after time, kept Pitufa in oceangoing shape and kept on hoping. For the last 3 days the grib looked really promising, so we deflated the dinghy and secured it on deck, baked bread for the passage this morning, drugged the cat with her anti-seasickness medicine and were about to lift the anchor, but then we decided to get a last-minute grib. The damn thing had changed completely since yesterday, a low had changed course, gone was the steady wind for the trip, instead we’d be becalmed for two days only to arrive with scary strong winds in the tricky anchorage of Rapa.
We’ve learned the hard way that heading out into an unstable weather situation guarantees an uncomfy trip, so we’ll stay a bit longer and we’ll keep on playing the weather game…

Until three days ago it was really hot and calm, but then southerly winds set in, sending up chilly air masses with best regards of the icebergs down there The weather forecast had predicted light westerly winds, so we were anchored off the western motu Tenoko when a procession of squalls approached, hiding Taravai and Mangareva behind a dark grey wall. When the squalls reached us, the wind shifted south (not so nice being suddenly with the stern towards the outer reef and fetch building up over the lagoon), so we decided to head to the shelter of the village anorage of Taravai. We motored there against 25 knots of wind and heavy rain, reached the channel into the anchorage just before dark and the helmswoman was surprised and relieved how smoothly the manoeuvre through the tricky corners of the entrance went, despite gusts on the beam and the barely visible landmarks. Good that we’ve practiced that narrow, shallow entrance so often in good conditions before…

The cool southeasterly’s still blowing and many boats that have spent the cyclone season here, use it for a downwind ride to the Tuamotus or straight to Tahiti. Pitufa and her crew are also ready to go, but as we’re still hoping to make it to Rapa in the Iles Australes (the southernmost island of French Polynesia) this weather window didn’t really work for us and we’ll wait for the next one.

Autumn’s gifting us with gorgeous weather here this year. Last year it was already cool and windy in April, but at the moment we’re enjoying perfectly calm, sunny and hot days. Just looking over the pastel shades of the lagoon in the early morning when the mountains are reflected in the sea like in a mirror with the corals gleaming through the crystal clear water, we feel almost obliged to seize the day. So we split the days between chores that need calm weather (cleaning the hull, climbing the mast to check the rigging, etc.) and fun like kayaking, snorkeling, hiking and hanging out ashore on Taravai. Taravai’s getting more and more attractions: an extended petting zoo and hiking trails! Additional to their two charming goaties, Pierre and Lolo now have two horses and Valerie and Herve have two kittens and two puppies It was always difficult to hike on Taravai, as we had to cut tunnels through the dense vegetation and make our own trails. If you try something like that yourself, always bring a machete with you and think of our memorising rhyme when planning the ascent: pine, your’re fine, reed, you bleed Now it’s much easier, because Pierre has made a huge effort and has cleared a path along the old, overgrown road all the way from the village to the southern bay of Taravai. We walked it yesterday, it takes about 1 hour each way and features lovely views.

We used to call anchorages comfy as long as the dishes didn’t slide off the table, but after spending so much time in protected lagoons we’ve raised our standards to ‘no boat movement at all’. Yesterday’s anchorage on the western side of Akamaru didn’t quite come up to those expectations, we complained a bit about the rolling during the night, but enjoyed our visit to the friendly village and a kayak tour along the west coast even more.

Today we sailed down to the three small, high islands in the very south of the archipelago for the first time. It was an astonishingly pleasant sail, almost calmer than the time in the anchorage before–Leeloo even went sunbathing out on deck. We passed the ragged islets Manui and Makaroa and when we arrived at our destination Kamaka, the American owner of the island (the only private island around here) hailed us on the radio, sounding quite glad to have visitors and explained where we could anchor. We were really tempted to stay, but watching the westerly swell wandering by, we chickened out despite the assurances of the owner that we’d picked an unusally calm day for visiting his island We had considered sailing over to Pitcairn recently (about 300 nm away), but now we know that we’re just too spoiled to brave anchoring basically on the open sea, next to that ragged rock, where the full force of the southern ocean slams into Bounty Bay…

The Gambier have a new attraction: a petting zoo! Pierre and Lolo (the cruisers who live on Taravai) have taken their two tame goats Fuego and Cacao (we’ve known them since they were babies) over to the tiny island Motu-o-ari off the village for holidays where they greet visitors bleeting happily. They marched all around the island with us and looked so sad when we left by dinghy, that we immideately had to return with a bunch of bananas for them

You may have wondered why we haven’t posted in a while–we were just too busy to spend time on the computer. Right now we have visitors from Austria (Birgit’s dad and his girlfriend stay with us for 2 weeks) and with the gorgeous summer weather we can be really active: anchorages around the motus, Mangareva and Taravai, long walks along the coast and on the islands, a visit to the pearl engraving class in Rikitea, an excursion to a pearl farm, bicycle tours, exotic fruits/veggies and tasting of our homebrewn etc. – it’s the ‘All-inclusive Gambier-visitor program deluxe’

The summer weather is continuing, we’re having a good time anchored off Tauna doing some small jobs on the boat and excursions (snorkeling, kayaking, etc.) in between. Today there was less wind than the days before so we ventured out towards Motu Gaioio in the NE corner of the archipelago. It didn’t look that far on the chart, about 2nm (almost 4 km) away, but fighting with our elderly inflatable kayak that stubbornly tries to head into the wind or to align with the waves (there was quite some chop coming over the outer reef) it felt considerably further… We then walked around the island, had a picnic and finally started paddling back towards our tiny motu (Tauna) and the barely visible white dot next to it (Pitufa). As you can see from the fact that I’m now sitting here writing a blog, we’ve made it back. We’ll definitely sleep well this night, but getting up tomorrow might be a different story

Out here in the Pacific geology isn’t something theoretical that happened in ancient times, but even to the untrained eye an obviously ongoing event. Continental plates are moving, the sea bottom rises and from a depth of about 3000 m a new, actively vulcanic island rises (like Fernandina at the western end of the Galapagos archipelago). The ragged cliffs rise higher and higher, developing a lush vegetation on the fertile soil, while the ocean crashes unhindered against the shores (like in the Marquesas). In tropical seas corals start to grow around the island at some point, forming a protective fringe reef with a calm lagoon inside (like in the Society Islands). After some time the high islands start sinking down into the sea again, leaving only the peaks of the mountains as islands, while the fringe reef becomes an outlying barrier with motus on top (like here in the Gambier). At some point the mountains disappear entirely, leaving only a coral ring with some motus behind ( like in the Tuamotus). Sometimes the bottom rises under an atoll, lifting the coral shelf high up (like Henderson Island in the Pitcairn group). The fringing reef of the Gambier is sinking slowly back into the sea, in the east and south it’s completely submerged already, only in the north it’s still a continous motu barrier. The stormy Pacific batters these small oases in the vast ocean continously. We were very surprised when we returned to Tauna this summer (our first and still one of our favourite motus) to find the sandbank gone (it had previously stretched out a few hundred metres from the island) and the motu itself ragged and considerably smaller. A severe storm has caused that damage in spring. Remember the eulogy blog for our dinghy that was murdered by a freighter in Tahiti and the adjoining picture of it sitting on a sandbank? Well, that’s exactly this sandbank and it must have left the surface of the sea at approximately the same time as our dingsi did… We asked our friend Herve, who grew up in the Gambier and he remembers more motus that have disappeared since his childhood, so geology really happens within a short time here (about 30 years ago). We’re now back in Tauna, enjoying the shrunken, but still gorgeous motu with its colonies of white terns, noddies, greater crested terns, some red-footed boobies, and frigate birds.