Pitufa.at

We’re still in the little bay Onemea, waiting for the packet from Tahiti to arrive. During the strong easterly wind last week it was quite busy here, as 4 other boats huddled in to seek shelter in our protected bay. There was quite some socialising going on with dinner invitations and even a small beach party, just what we needed to take our minds off the engine worries. Now the wind has calmed down and we have our bay all to ourselves again. If we’d had a choice where to get stuck without engine, we’d certainly have chosen this pretty place: the sea’s calm like a lake in here, the forested slopes are mirrored in the water and after rains and in the morning dew the island smells like cough drops We’ve settled into our remote-bay-routine. The morning starts with doing some laundry and baking bread so that we have warm bread for breakfast. Leeloo’s perfectly happy without wind and neighbours and spends the days rolling around on deck and sunbathing. The calm conditions are also ideal to prepare Pitufa for the passage (scraping algae and barnacles off the hull, checking the rigging, etc.) and to do maintenance jobs (e.g. today the bimini got new zippers and some repairs–a job for our sturdy Pfaff sowing machine).

During the year we’ve spent here, we saw lots of boats coming in with damages after the passage, had friends waiting here for ages for spare parts, got news from leaving boats who had to limp to Tahiti with broken rudders/masts/etc. We always counted ourselves lucky as Pitufa seemed immune to such mishaps, but now we’ve had bad luck ourselves: on the way to our favourite bay we caught a line in the propeller and did some damage to our shaft bearing. That means we should no longer use the engine to avoid doing more damage and instead of sailing off to the remote and unspoiled islands of the Tuamotus we’ll have to sail directly to Tahiti to haul out and do repairs. Ironically we still have to wait for a packet that will arrive from Tahiti with the supply ship next week, so we have wasted quite some money for the freight, only to transport the packet back to where it came from… Fortunately we know people in Tahiti who are already helping with organising things and helpful crui ser neighbours will assist us getting out of the bay (not quite simple because of the many reefs) without engine. An outhaul was due anyway, it’ll just happen earlier than expected, and the Tuamotus will still be there when we’ve finished the repairs, so the accident means a change of plans, but not the end of the world.

We are enjoying our remote anchorage at the Motu Kouaku even though a weak front passed over us yesterday. There was not much wind nor rain, but the wind direction clocked around, as predicted, a full turn during 24 hours. As our anchorage provides protection only from the South and East, we’ve got quite some chop from the North and then from the West. It was pretty bouncy and uncomfortable, but never dangerous. We turned our stern anchor into a Bahamian mooring and after the front had passed back into a stern anchor again. There is still high swell coming in and mighty breakers all around us mark the spots of reefs and sand banks. The inconveniences were compensated by an incredibly colourful and long-lasting sunset as the end of the front moved by exactly at the right time.

It seems to us we’ve been totaly spoiled by the normally calm and well-protected anchorages of the Gambier islands. We have to get used to trickier anchoring games again before arriving at the Tuamotus.

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 heat nearer the equator), especially in the knowledge that we’ll sod off this year before the really nasty cold weather sets in Until then we’ll enjoy autumn here

Yesterday we took our last things back from the house, harvested more bananas and lemons and invited our neighbours over for a ‘housecooling-party’. We cooked a typically Austrian meal so for the probably first time ever a Styrian Kaeferbohnen-Salat (salad of big red beans) with pumpkinseed oil and Semmelknoedel (bread dumplings) were served on Taravai. We were a bit worried whether our polynesian friends would like that kind of exotic food, but even the kids dug in

After finishing all our planned boat projects (varnishing inside, painting the cockpit, etc.) we’ve moved back to the boat. Running water, a toilet in the bathroom, no bugs in the living room, no rats on the roof – boat life’s pure luxury We’ll miss our little house and the garden though, especially our goatie. We spoiled her quite a bit, feeding her carrots and bananas and tying her to a different tree whenever she got bored.
We’re now enjoying some holidays, go snorkeling on the reefs and are looking forward to exploring the few corners of the Gambier that we still haven’t seen.

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 mountain. Of course we lost the track he’d made soon, but the basic direction (up!) was clear and we found a crisscross of little paths–as these are made by and for goats they were helpful, but sometimes not quite high enough for human hikers. After an hour of crawling under branches, climbing over rocks and making tunnels through the reed we reached the ridge of the mountain and were rewarded with a wonderful view all over the island and most of the archipelago. When we sat down for a picknick of bananas some curious goats came along, apparently we were sitting right on their highway

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 has destroyed the church and covered the cemetery and Herve wasn’t sure about the date when this site was abandoned and a new church built on the shore, but he knows that his great-grandfather lies buried there.
He told us that in the 19th century 2000 people lived on little Taravai. Roads led over the ridge and there were villages in the bays of Onemea and Anganui on the western side. At this time the island was completely deforested, only in the last few decades trees were planted. The pines, acacias and other introduced species thrived in the fertile soil and today Taravai is covered by dense forest again. Unlike the trees the people didn’t return. Nowadays only 10 people live on the island–soon the population will decrease to 8 again, because we’ve almost finished our boat projects and will shortly move back on Pifufa.

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 the lever had got stuck in the corroded housing): rien ne va plus. As we rely heavily on our main means of local transport (rowing the bulky dinghy’s not very efficient) we were desperate–the repair exceeded our resources on board as well as the know-how of our board technician. Fortunately the neighbouring cruiser in the anchorage turned our to be a professional mechanic. He agreed to take on our problem despite of a full schedule (it seems there’s no mechanic in the Gambier so rows of broken cars and mopeds are queuing). Christian was able to look over his shoulder thus getting a much deeper understanding of the needs of our little 3.5-hp 4-stroke Mariner.

As the Mariner’s already quite old and nobody can predict what’s going to fall off next (it seems to us, 6 years are the design life expectancy), we used the chance to buy a barely-used outboard that cruiser friends had for sale. Of course we then needed another mounting on the railing for the 9,8 hp 2-stroke Tohatsu, which meant another day of work with basically all our power tools and required all the gear that lived already on the railing to swap places.

This morning we got back to Taravai and enjoyed a lazy day, just snorkelling and reading. Tomorrow we’ll get rested and energetically back to work between boat and house.