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 around 60 km/h), now it’s getting a bit calmer. Showering has become a matter of timing: wait for a slightly calmer period and sunny spell, hop into the water (also down to 23 degrees now), shampoo, hop back into the water, rinse off, quickly put on some cozy warm clothes and grab a mug of steaming tea to defrost again Pitufa’s a warm-weather boat: we have an open cockpit, no heater, so we hope for some mild autumn days soon. Tomorrow we’re planning to move to another island within the atoll, mostly to find an anchorage with better protection from the wind. Leeloo hates wind and hasn’t been out on deck for days. She’s getting grumpy and bored, she’s also no longer used to temperatures around 20 degrees and is working hard to quickly grow (even) thicker fur

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 wave out of cars and when we went hiking last week we had an especially nice encounter: a woman actually came running after us, invited us to her terrace, got out a table and chairs for us, cut up fruit, introduced us to all her children and insisted on packing bananas and grapefruits in bags for us to carry back home. Isn’t that amazing? Imagine what a nice the place the world could be, if more people acted like that…
Today a young man invited us into his garden, offered us papayas and a whole banana plant for free and before we could stop him he uprooted two trees(!) to give the roots (manioc) to us–all with a smile and without accepting any payment. In the beginning we didn’t know how to deal with such generosity, but now we try to always have small presents with us to hand out, so that we don’t feel bad about taking advantage of people

Maybe we were lucky in our choice of island, because the Gambier still have very few visitors (especially compared to crowded places like Tahiti and Bora Bora). Tourism here is limited to the few cruisers on the sailboats and occasional visitors arriving on the weekly plane.

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 be coming anytime soon.

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 ashore who’s lived here for 30 years and provides the cruisers with all kinds of services), cleaning off mould, scrubbing the deck, etc., etc. and these are just the most urgent jobs
Additionally we’ve also brought all kinds of materials from Panama to do bigger projects as soon as we find time to work in a quiet place: cloth to upholster the sofa, material for a new rainwater collection/sun awning on the aft deck, a new tap for the kitchen, new electric sockets and plugs, etc., but these jobs will have to wait a bit, because Mangareva (the main island of the Gambier where we’re anchored now) is too pretty to be ignored.

We’ve walked over the hills to the southern side through lush tropical vegetation on the coast and pine trees further up and found a few farmers willing to sell good quality, but very pricy veggies. In general prices are very high here, as most things have to be shipped or flown in. On the other hand there’s so many fruit trees in all gardens that the locals call out to cruisers who walk by and offer them grapefruits, papayas and sometimes even bananas for free–the famous polynesian hospitality’s still a part of the culture here.

The next day we walked up to the Belvedere outlook providing a spectacular view over the turquoise bay that’s dotted with coral heads and bigger reefs, the smaller islands, the outer reef and the endless, darkblue Pacific Ocean beyond. Some of the boats who arrived in the same week as we did are already making plans for the next passage, but we’re just happy to be here and not thinking of moving on for quite a while

Finally we are where we long dreamed to be. We’ll spend the rest of the year exploring the Isles Gambier, maybe some atolls of the Tuamotus, and the Marquesas.

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 against the wind and Pitufa got soaked in salt water again. The main harbour of Rikitea is protected by another set of reefs. The French charts are excellent and green and red buoys mark the channel: a system that looks wonderfully simple on the chart, but like a chaotic maze when you get there. Christian was sitting downstairs with the Laptop shouting up commands and I took Pitufa in short legs (right, quickly left, right, right!!!…) through the maze into the calm, protected harbour. It’s a wide area with about 15 boats anchored: a typical cruisers bay with a strong sense of community. We hadn’t quite finished dropping th e anchor when the first dinghies approached welcoming us to the Gambier. New faces, faces to voices that we only knew from the SSB-radio net and old acquaintances. It seems on each boat something broke on the long passage(except on Pitufa ), so people are busy stitching sails, working on transmissions and helping out each other. We haven’t seen much of Rikitea itself yet, but we like what we’ve encountered so far: a prosperous community (about 1000 people, most live off black pearls), neat and tidy houses, lush gardens, fat dogs and friendly people (the only problem is to keep up with all the smiles and ‘bon jour!’s you have to reply to). The only downside of the prosperity is that people have stopped growing vegetables (too much effort?) and now everybody relies on the occasional supply boat… The climate is very pleasant with warm sunshine, relatively cool air (no wonder, we’re at 23 degrees south now and further away from the equator than ever during the last 1.5 years…) and regular, short rainshowers–most days we see several rainbows over the bay. Our French is still basic, but was enough to deal with the clearance at the gendarmerie, explaining the cat, etc. Leeloo had developed a ‘pimple’ on her cheek during the passage that refused to heal so we were eager to find a veterinarian and quite disappointed when told that there is none. We decided to ask around the anchorage and voila: the third boat we asked had a vet on board! He came over and declared the pimple a harmless cyst–we were quite relieved. Up till now we’ve been busy getting the boat back into shape, catching up with sleep and visiting other cruisers, but tomorrow we’ll start exploring. Many cruisers can stay only 3 months in French Polynesia, but as members of the EU we’re in a lucky position and can stay 18 months

It seems our post-by-email feature stopped working. of course exactly then when we’re in the middle of the pacific ocean… all is well onboard.