With its cool night air and nice breeze, Haaga Haa Bay (Tai Pi Valley) enticed us to stay another night, the last of July.  We now have three months until we set sail for New Zealand at the beginning of November to avoid the summer cyclone (hurricane) season in the western South Pacific.  We’ve met one single-hander in Ua Pou who was half-heartedly trying to make Australia and the Torres Strait by October, but everyone else we’ve talked to since Panama is either staying in the South Pacific or headed to New Zealand for the season, with the majority choosing New Zealand.

Our Plan A was to make Australia by October after crossing the Pacific and then to proceed on across the Indian Ocean, but repair delays led us to choose to spend the season in New Zealand instead so that we could enjoy the South Pacific at a slower pace.  Our current plan is to leave the Marquesas in the next few days and stop in the Tuamotus on the way to Tahiti, which is about 750 miles from here.  From Tahiti, there are several more of the Society Islands (Bora-Bora being the most well-known) to visit before finally leaving French Polynesia.  West of French Polynesia are the Cook Islands, followed by the small, one-island nation of Niue and the the northern Tonga islands.  If we make it past Tonga before heading to New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, and the islands of Wallis and Futuna are all options.

The motorsail from Haaga Haa Bay to Taiohae Bay only took a couple of hours and included the beautiful views typical of the Marquesas.  The cluster of three bays we had been anchored in was especially steep-walled and picturesque in its ruggedness.

Taiohae Bay is the capital of the Marquesas and its largest “city” at about 1800 or so.  That’s small by American standards, but it does have a bit of a big city feel to us at this point.  There are actually several tourist and boat-related businesses on the dock.  Although there is no marina here, there are 20 or so boats anchored around the bay, including some pretty large sailboats.  The main road along the beach is busy enough that people walk on a path beside the road instead of on the road itself for a change.  The bay itself is very large, U-shaped, and open to the south.  Like most of the bays here, it was once the crater of a volcano.  We generally don’t set a stern anchor unless the anchorage is tightly packed, so we’re anchored away from the side of the bay where the dock is and closer to the middle of the bay, across from the east edge of the mouth.  In addition to having room to swing without being near other boats, I was hoping we’d be more exposed to the breeze here.  Unfortunately, although there typically is a breeze, it’s often blowing across the beam of the boat, which is being oriented by the tidal current as much as the wind, and doesn’t cool things as well down below.

We spent most of yesterday afternoon and today enjoying our first reliable, high-speed internet connection since the Galapagos.  We had a chance to Skype with friends and family, and it was good to hear their voices for the first time in 6 weeks or so.  We definitely enjoy taking advantage of the advances of just the last 10-15 years that allow a video conference between the US and our boat anchored here in a bay on Nuku Hiva.  While we were talking, we could hear a Sunday sing-along type of event that sounded like a larger version of the one we found in Hakahetau last Sunday.  The harmonizing voices, quickly-strummed ukuleles, and rhythmic pahus carried out over the bay from a public building on the hillside for several hours.  We read in a cruising guide that the people of the South Pacific love to sing, and it’s true.  They also love the guitar and ukulele, and we often see them passing one around and teaching each other a chord or song.  Although bands for more formal entertainment may feature a keyboard and electric guitars, the more informal and traditional singing that we’ve seen has all been done with just the ukulele, guitar, and pahu.  It’s common for anyone sitting nearby to suggest or start a song and for instruments to change hands occasionally when someone is inspired or gets up for a break.

I also downloaded the weather forecast today and found that our days of beautiful, consistent tradewind sailing are numbered.  Jimmy Cornell’s book says as much, but seeing the GRIB data overlaid on a chart brought things home.  On the way to Tahiti we’ll enter a region that is far enough south to be impacted by fronts south of the trades.  We’ll also be entering the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), which I’m not extremely conversant with, but is basically a region that allows non-tradewind weather like winds from the west, low pressure regions, etc.  It looks like we’ll be back to watching the weather.

The boat has been doing pretty well lately, so we shouldn’t have much to do to get ready for the passage to the Tuamotus, although we definitely need to get some fresh gasoline.  We hadn’t had the need to fill the dinghy’s outboard engine since Key West and found out two days ago that the gas in our jerry jug is bad.  It’s making the outboard smoke, dumping fuel with the exhaust, and will only run with the choke open, so we’re going to pick some fresh stuff up tomorrow. 

Even with all of the motoring and motorsailing we’ve been doing between bays here, we’ve only put 40 hours or so on the two diesel engines combined since we left the Galapagos.  Anchorage-to-anchorage, our 3000 mile passage to Hiva Oa only used about 3 gallons of diesel, which is probably the best “mileage” I’m ever going to get.