After changing the batteries twice, the underwater camera was working just fine again, so Lauren and I jumped in and headed back to the cliffs to get some fish pictures while Wes and Tiff swam up to the beach. Taking underwater photographs when you’re still a novice free diver is a fun challenge. Unfortunately, the fish don’t understand the purpose of the endeavor and in general, the more bright and interesting-looking the fish, the more skiddish, and evasive. The problem here is that the camera needs to be much closer than a diver to “enjoy” the view. Out of 40 or so pictures, no more than half were in focus and not blurry, and there were only two that I thought were really good, although several others weren’t bad. We look forward to posting them soon.

Long-nosed square, yellow fish (yeah, I know you can see that)

Our favorite, but tough to photograph

Colorful even underwater

Probably the oddest looking fish we saw

A small school of larger fish as the water deepened a bit

Wes and Tiff made a scrumptious casserole for dinner incorporating leftover noodles from last night’s pasta, potatoes, corn, cream of mushroom, and cheese. It seemed like we were all in the mood for a quiet, early evening.

This morning Lauren and I rowed ashore to stock up on limes and coconuts before leaving Hanamoenoa Bay. The crew on Independence had told us they were having some Marquesans over for lunch today, so we stopped by on the way ashore to get the scoop. They were about to head over to Vaitahu (Resolution Bay) to pick them up, but we found out later that the daughter of the primary guest had cut her leg on some coral, the cut had become infected, and they’d had to take her to the hospital in Atuona, so the get-together on the beach would be only cruisers. (I think before I mentioned that the population of Atuona was 2,600, but it’s actually only 1,600 or so. Even at that size, it’s the second largest town in the Marquesas).

Hanamoenoa Bay is uninhabited, although there is a fenced-in area in the middle of the beach and a structure inside for drying copra. Copra is the dried meat of the coconut and is a primary cash crop here. In the morning, a boat with a few Marquesans came to the bay and started a fire in the copra-drying structure and left a few hours later. Anyway, after all that digression, Lauren and I ended up on the beach relatively early in the morning.

Ahh yes, one more digression. This morning during breakfast Lauren and I could see the spires of Ua Pou (65 miles away) on the clear horizon. We’ve seen a couple of pics and can’t wait to get there in a few days. Now to get back on track.

We walked along the beach and back into the woods a little bit. We picked up a few coconuts of the ground that made a sloshing sound when we shook them (still good water & meat inside) and picked 15 or 20 limes. Our stock of fresh fruit on the boat now includes a stalk of bananas hanging at the stern of the boat (bought from Alec), several pamplemousse (Alec), four coconuts (scavenged in Hanamoenoa), a pineapple (gift from the Swedes), and a bunch of limes (picked in Hanamoenoa). There’s something very satisfying about pulling a banana off the stalk anytime you want to. I tried climbing a tree for a young, green coconut with sweet milk inside. This is reported to be a really great drink and we saw one green coconut on the beach that looked like it had been cut open and emptied only the day before. Anyway, I picked out what I was sure would be an easy opportunity — a coconut tree with more than a dozen nuts hanging no more than 20 feet from the ground. This was also one of those trees that was growing at an angle instead of straight up, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad to climb. I made it about 6 or 8 feet before I gave up in exhaustion. I could blame it on the lack of exercise on the boat, but climbing a coconut tree is both hard work and quite a skill. I had to settle for getting one of the more mature nuts to fall after hitting it with a small coconut thrown from the ground. Speaking of getting the coconut to fall, in addition to the coconut trees (some of which are at least 60-80 feet tall), there are numerous other fruit and at least one nut tree here. It’s not at all unusual to be walking along and hear something crash to the ground after dropping from high overhead. I asked Alec if the tall coconut trees were dangerous. I think his answer was that a good headache from a falling coconut was a rare but possible occurrence but that no serious injuries resulted from falling fruits & nuts.

View from Hanamoenoa Beach

So close, but yet so very very far

Anyway, back on the boat I of course had to de-husk the coconut immediately to learn whether we scavenged something worth eating or just some rotten coconuts. Actually, immediately is a bit of an overstatement. About 15 or 20 minutes later, after Lauren read some tips from a book and I’d been after the thing for a while with a machete, screwdriver, and hammer, we finally had a glass of coconut water and a bowl full of coconut meat. The water was slightly sweet — drinkable but not delicious, just what you’d expect from an older nut. Of course, having just returned from an uninhabited tropical beach with fresh-picked limes and coconuts, I had no choice but to “put the lime in the coconut, put them all together, put the lime in the coconut and then you feel better, put the lime in the coconut and drink ’em both down” (paraphrasing). Strange as it may sound, coconut water and fresh-squeezed lime juice does actually taste like something that would make you feel better if you had an upset stomach.

We hadn’t yet learned about Felix’s daughter having to go to the hospital, so we killed some time by rigging the spinnaker halyard as a rope swing. Actually, we just cleated it off so that one end was about 5 feet off the deck and then ran off of the coach roof holding onto it and swinging out over the clear turquoise water before letting go and falling in. Good fun.

In the early afternoon, we hoisted the anchor and headed south for Hapatoni Bay, where local artisans carve wood and bone. We still aren’t tired of the stunning view of the green mountainsides descending into black cliffs that disappear into the Pacific. Along the way we motorsailed by Vaitahu Bay (Resolution Bay, also Prostitution Bay). The name Resolution Bay was given by Captain Cook, and it is pretty cool to seen a place that Cook sailed to, especially one that above an elevation of a few hundred feet looks much the same as he and his crew first saw it. The Marquesas had a population of roughly 100,000 when the first Europeans arrived, but shrank to a low of 2,000 as a result. The name Prostitution Bay came out of an incident between the French and Marquesans early in the colonial period. The Marquesans were busy building a fort for the French (I know, it’s priceless) when a French soldier raped a Marquesan girl, and a Marquesan warrior killed several French soldiers in an act of revenge. The French insisted on having the murderer turned over, but the chief refused and pulled all of the workers into the mountains, halting construction. When the chief’s life was threatened, his daughter offered herself for his life and an end to the conflict. Ultimately, the warrior surrendered. Understandably, the memorial that commemorates the death of the French soldiers in Vaitahu is very subdued.

After a couple of hours we made it to Hapatoni and anchored in a pretty scary anchorage in the sister bay to the north. All the books say to anchor here and that it is better than Hapatoni, but we seem pretty close to the rocks because the water depth increases so qukcly away from the shore that we have to be very close to be in water shallow enough to anchor. The dinghy engine, which hadn’t been used since Key West, started better than ever and ran great, but not without some adventure. Yours truly hadn’t started the engine in a while and I forgot one key part of the sequence: make sure the engine is in neutral. When the engine started on the second pull, it was in reverse and at full throttle. I shot back and banged into the boat. I tried to shift into neutral and overshot into forward, lurching away from the boat and straining the line holding the dinghy, so I pulled the “key” that kills the engine and the short but frightening ride was over.

The village of Hapatoni itself is a quiet one nestled here at the southwest tip of Tahuata. The entire population of the island is 600, with most at Vaitahu. There seem to be 50-100 people living here. An ancient stone road/seawall that runs along the long beach makes for a beautiful walk. A few people were at the wharf returning in small boats or swimming. A couple young men were sitting on a grassy area overlooking the ocean with a boombox between them and a fresh octopus laying on the ground beside them. A few men were sitting and talking in the woodcarver’s shed, an open-air shed right on the beach with a stone floor and tin roof with solid, beautifully carved wood pillars. There were a number of people, mostly women, in what seemed to be a public, mostly open-air building playing BINGO. Next to this building was a large and well-preserved ancient site. There were numerous levels working higher as it receded from the beach. We saw a “workbench” rock that Alec had shown us was used to make stone tools, several “tattoo parlor” rocks with their two cups ground into a large boulder, and a 4′ x 4′ flat-faced boulder with a face carved into it.

Ancient road by the sea in Hapatoni village

At anchor in Hana Tefau Bay

As a side note, I do have to say that at in these more remote reaches of the planet, clothing on children, especially boys, is considered very much optional among company and in public to a much older age than in the states. Just another one of those funny differences. In the US, designer clothes for infants on up aren’t at all difficult to find, and a young child’s dress is often taken as a reflection on the mother. Here, it’s not at all unusual to see a naked three year old playing in the ocean, running on the beach, or wandering around the deck of a boat. I don’t know at what age children in clothing-not-optional societies begin to understand the impropriety of their natural state, but it’s well after they can carry on a simple conversation. Today in Hapatoni we had a really cute, naked local boy who was swimming in the ocean at the wharf with friends and family follow us to our dinghy which was tied up there. We were preparing to head back to the boat and he was querying me about the boat and where we were going. He was fairly serious about figuring it all out, but my French wasn’t quite up to explaining it well enough, and our boat wasn’t visible from the wharf. Oh well.

A serious discussion on the wharf

For those of you who made it to the end, happy Monday. I noticed the other day that the blog site gets 1 1/3 to 2x as many requests Monday-Friday as it does on the weekend. We’re glad to provide a diversion. Hope the blog wasn’t so long as to make you late to a conference room meeting. You can always load the site on your Blackberry and read it during the meeting…

Hanamoenoa Beach

About noon today, preparations were finally complete, the stern and bow anchors had been hoisted, and we left Hiva Oa and Taahuku Bay. We motorsailed west through Bordelais Channel and then headed south to sail along the west coast of Tahuata. We didn’t know precisely where we were headed, but we decided on the way to have a look at the bays on the northwest portion of the island, to stay if we liked them, and to head to the bays farther south if we didn’t. We lost our cruising guide to French Polynesia somewhere between Panama and the Galapagos, but Paul on Disa (the Swedish boat) had the same book as well as a cruising guide just for the Marquesas. We borrowed them for a couple of days, took some notes, and then photographed every page of interest. Cruisers are generally short on cash and even less able to take advantage of cheap and timely mail services, so things like charts, CDs, DVDs, and books are copied and shared freely (we just loaded up Paul’s 500 GB hard drive with movies yesterday). This all resulted in Lauren holding the Nikon and using its picture-viewing screen to zoom in and read photographed cruising guides out loud as we sailed by the bays she was describing.

We really wanted to enjoy a clear bay and we’d heard Hanamoenoa recommended by a couple of people. When we saw the water color lighten to a light turqoise and then break onto a sandy beach backed by coconut and lime trees we decided to turn in. We furled the jib and headed in. We knew there were some coral heads, so I walked to the bow to prepare the anchor to watch the water and point the way to Wes, who was at the helm. As I started walking forward I noticed I could already see the bottom very well and asked Wes what the depth was. “40 feet,” he answered. I hollered back that I could already see the bottom and everyone was excited. This was Bahamas water! Wes pulled out the snorkel gear and I changed into a swimsuit and headed for the bow. There’s only one thing to to on a warm afternoon when you’re anchored in clear water for the first time in forever — dive in.

Diving in

Tiff and Lauren followed me and soon we were all in the water with snorkeling gear. The bottom wasn’t near as bad as I thought, which is good news (but not as good as Wes volunteering to clean it tomorrow). The rudder damage from the fishing line caught on the prop during our last passage looks worse than I remember and the underwater camera is only taking pictures above water, but c’est la vie. On our way to check the anchor we swam over a 4-5 foot stingray just resting on the bottom and soon after that we found two about the same size laying on the bottom right next to each other. We saw several fish, but the water was still a little deep for us and didn’t have many heads so we started swimming toward the cliffs on the south side of the bay. Both the north and south side of the anchorage are lined with small volcanic cliffs. You can see the lava folds in many places and in a few others you can see the red rocks characteristic of oxidized iron. On the way, Wes spotted a small octopus that quickly disappeared in to a hole the rocks. I’ve only seen one octopus underwater. An octopus moving through the water around a coral head is a really weird sight, much stranger to me than seeing an eel, and they seem to be pretty shy.

The coral near the cliffs didn’t seem to healthy, but there was no shortage of it and we saw a lot of interesting and colorful small to medium-sized fish. We’re pretty familiar with most of the fish of Florida and the Bahamas, but we all saw some new fish today. The underwater camera wasn’t working, so as inadequate as my descriptions are, I’ll mention a few. There was a small fish about 4 inches long that was an extremely bright, vivid orange with flourescent blue rings around it’s eyes, and lines of the same color along it’s gills and tail. Wes and Tiff spotted a rainbow-colored fish with stripes including green, yellow and purple among other colors. There was a thin, round fish about 10 inches long with an alternating black and yellow stripe pattern in a large circle around the edge of it’s body; its sides were a pale color witih diagonal burnt orange stripes. We saw a very long thin fish that looks like the trumpet fish we’re familiar with, but instead of being fairly boring in marking, it was very dark with a black and yellow tail that also had spots arrayed across it. There was also something that looked was shaped a lot like an angelfish but had an orange body, a black head area, and a very long nose (roughly 14 inches overall with 3 inches of nose not more than a centimeter wide). Lauren’s snorkel broke and she also lost a fin when a wave swept her off while trying to climb a cliff, but other than that it was good times.

We swam to the boat in time to relax for a while before sunset and watch the four young children from the three other boats anchored here playing in the surf on the beah while the adults walked the beach and hung out in the shade. The bay is open to the west, so we saw our first sunset into the ocean in a week or so. It was a good one. There was a low layer of clouds that kept us from seeing the sun slip into the water, but the sky above them was a soft orange that faded into light peach, followed by broad area of pink, and then finally the twilight blue of the larger sky. Right as the sun was setting, people from the two boats here that we hadn’t met before came by in their dinghy to say hi and welcome us to “the most beautiful bay in the Marquesas.” They’re both Americans (the first we’ve seen in a while). The large, beautiful mono Uliad is from Minnnesota and the catamaran Independence is from New York.

There’s really no excuse not to give the girls a break from cooking when we’re at anchor and there’s a nice breeze blowing. The wind blows down pretty forcefully off of the small mountains behind the beach which is a really nice change — the boat is cool, the wind generator is keeping the batteries topped off, and we’re riding nicely to our anchor, especially with the swell being blocked by the island. I volunteered for galley duty tonight and made pasta with a caramelized onion and mushroom alfredo and cheezy garlic bread. We’ve been away from cheap supermarkets for about 6 weeks now and although we have plenty of food, we’re staring to be a little more dependant on what’s available locally. For lunch we had veggie burgers on baguettes with a salad of local Chinese cabbage, tomato, and onion. Instead of croutons we had some French’s fried onions (the ones that are used on green bean casserole) that are part of the food still left from the US.

Chillin at sunset

With plenty of power from the wind generator we were able to listen to some great music while eating dinner. The only ambient light in the bay was from 3 anchor lights (for some reason, in the last two anchorages only the the American boats have used anchor lights) and with no clouds the sky was full of stars.

When I saw the relatively small size of this bay, I was surprised that when I asked him abot the Marquesas, Jeff on S/V Stravaig had been able to remember the location and the name Hanamoenoe off of the top of his head years after last sailing the Pacific. After less than a day here I now understand why.

Today’s news is pretty mundane compared to the last blog.  It rained off and on until the early afternoon, but we still managed to get a few things done.  The girls went to town in the morning to get some groceries, and I replaced a section of wire for the red port running/navigation light that had gotten too dim to see during our passage.  The original wiring from 1989/1990 used non-tinned copper wire and some of the more exposed sections have had to be replaced.  The individual copper strands in the wire become covered in black with what I’m assuming is galvanic corrosion.  Many of the more exposed wires that are working fine need to be “shined” with sandpaper before the solder will stick to them.  Wes was also able to get the water pump working properly today.  For the last week or so, it hasn’t shut off on its own, so we’ve had to only turn it on when we need to use a faucet.  The pump is responsible for pumping fresh water from our tanks and keeping the water pressure similar to a typical house in the US.  When all the faucets are off, it should turn off within a minute or so, after increasing the pressure in the water lines to a preset amount.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been shutting off, and Wes had already tried replacing the pump with one of the used spares that was aboard the boat when we bought it.  After a fair amount of work over the last couple days, he was able to isolate the problem to an intake hose and things are working fine now.

This afternoon Tiff & Wes made their first attempt at doing laundry ourselves sans washing machine or drier.  The Swiss woman here in the anchorage told us her favorite method was to use her feet, standing in a cooler or bucket of clothes and water/detergent then stomping around a bit — like a washing machine she said, with the added bonus of very clean feet when you’re done.  Tiff tried a similar method and in half an hour or so, she and Wes had their laundry hanging up on the lifelines around the boat.  The sun and wind didn’t cooperate and dry them quickly, but they seemed to do pretty well for the first attempt. Lauren and I will be in for our first attempt sometime in the next few days.

Clean clothes and clean feet. Check out our stalk of bananas in the background.

Lauren and I had a shower tonight (still getting used to having an unlimited running water shower nearby), which is generally not an extremely noteworthy event, but if you remember the shower here, it’s just a concrete box in the shape of the number 9 with a clothes-washing shelf as part of the same structure.  The French couple with the child that’s almost two came up and were washing some clothes while waiting for a shower.  They’re really nice, speak a little bit of English, and just left from France last December.  The funny part is that I’m having this conversation with them while Lauren is in the “shower”: about 2 feet away.  Then it’s my turn for a shower, and I listen to and watch the nice conversation Lauren is having while I’m enjoying the cold water from the pipe in the dim glow from a parking lot lamp nearby.  Just another one of those random things that would be so out of place in the states but is as normal as can be out here.

Because it’s fairly easy here, we’ve stocked up on water even though people are saying the quality isn’t very good.  We’ve had no problems yet.  Wes pours the water into the tanks through a sediment filter that traps any big stuff (you’d be surprised) and then treats the water with chlorine to kill the nasties.  An in-line charcoal filter then does a pretty good job of taking out the rest of the junk and the chlorine taste.  Such is life these days.  I remember when all I had to do was put the glass under the faucet and turn the knob.  Cruisers talk about some funny things, and water is actually one of the interesting ones here in the Marquesas.  It’s plentiful because the high islands induce a lot of rainfall, and in some of the bays you can walk to waterfalls or pristine streams in now-uninhabited valleys that provide what we’ve heard is some of the best tasting water in the world.  With such interesting and pure water sources available, people are always discussing whether to use the tap water here or there or to hold out until they’re in such and such bay and then lug their water jugs to the “good water”.  Between here and the Galapagos, we’ve carried the 50-pound water jugs enough already to prefer the short walk with a dose of chlorine.

One of the things here that the cameras don’t seem to do a good job with is the clouds around the mountain peaks.  It’s hard to describe, but almost mesmerizing to watch sometimes.  My favorite is when the bottom of the clouds is near the top of the mountain and there a good wind blowing.  The thin clouds sweep and churn around the jagged peaks like some sort of fluid dynamics experiment.  Clouds usually look pretty boring, but when you see them interact with something as large a mountain top, they really become more dynamic and their varying character over the day become much more noticeable.  The larger mountains are to the west of us and the last couple of nights at sunset, the clouds have dropped lower down the mountainsides and the sun turns them a dusky orange in places.  It really looks like half the island is on fire  The only similar thing I’ve seen is wildfires in California.  On a final cloud note, on the drive to Taaoa yesterday, we saw the beginnings of a waterspout coming down from a thick heavy cloud that was hovering over the south coast of Hiva Oa.  Waterspouts are the marine version of a tornado, but they’re not nearly as dangerous.  They’re generally much weaker and short lived and often never touch down, but they are interesting to see.

Orange clouds at sunset

Rain storm and waterspout starting down from a cloud off the south coast of Hiva Oa

Tomorrow we’re planning to leave Taahuku Bay and head for Tahuata, which is the island just south of Hiva Oa.  We’ve heard about a clear bay that would be good for diving or snorkeling, there are artisans on the island who carve wood and bone that is usually sold in Tahiti, and there is a bay with an interesting history related to Captain Cook stopping there and the French choosing to declare possession of the Marquesas there as well.  After that, we’re probably going to stop in one of the uninhabited bays on the north side of Hiva Oa before heading to the island of Ua Pou.  I’m not sure what the internet situation is going to be like there, but it probably won’t be great, so we may be back to sat phone blogs and no pics for a while.

We took a walk down to the beach and found many young people who were also drinking beer. Befriending them was pretty effortless at this point, probably thanks to the beer. Also, only a handful of Americans sail here each year, and very few of them of are as young as we are. The language barrier was a little prohibitive, but we did pretty well. Each day I find myself recalling more French vocabulary that I learned in college, which is fortunate, as there are very few Marquesans that speak English at all. In fact, one of the more intoxicated fellows kept referring to Dallas as his “boyfriend” until we explained to him what that means.

Patrick & Dallas

From the beach we walked up the hill to the hotel nearby and had some pizza that was only fair. I have been eying the poisson cru on the menus but have been too cheap to try it. However, we found out today that Tim is treating us to yet another meal, so next time I’ll be having the tuna poached in coconut milk!

This morning we awoke to find that Alec was waiting for us with his truck on the quay. We had not made any particular arrangements with him, except to tell him that we had decided to take him up on his offer to give us a tour of the ancient ruins, so there he was. We hopped in his pick-up and rode up the volcano to nearby Taaoa. He told us that he was taking us to see the marae, the place where the ancient (pre-1800) Marquesans used to congregate to perform rituals to please the gods. I was expecting there to be a few rocks arranged deliberately with a tiki carving thrown in, but instead, we were able to see a completely intact tahoa, the area where they danced for the gods. We sat in the very place where the chief used to sit in his recliner made of rock. It was simultaneously eery and awesome (in a historical sense) to be in the very place where they used to perform human sacrifices, believed to be the most generous gifts they could give to the gods. Alec showed us the one-person prison of rock where they kept the unfortunate man or woman who was to be the gods’ gift, and subsequently, the gourmet dinner for the evening. Can you imagine? Alec seemed to think this part of his heritage was really funny!

The Tahua

In addition to the archeological significance of the site, there were trees of all sorts. Alec pointed out various fruit trees such as papaya and breadfruit as well as coffee bean and a nut tree with a name I can’t recall. He climbed a tall curasel (sp?) tree in less than a minute to retrieve for us a soft, green fruit with a strange flavor kind of like a pear. Other trees that he pointed out are used for medicinal purposes, clothing, or decoration. It seems that every tree has some practical value for the Marquesans.

Alec climbing for fruit

 
Alec also took us to a couple of ancient cemetaries, one of which contains the grave of Paul Gauguin, the French impressionist painter who is now famous for his depictions of Tahitians and Marquesans. We went to the Gauguin museum after our tour with Alec and saw some of these pieces. The story of his life is said to be ironic in that he was not very well liked in either France or the Marquesas but became renowned all over the world after his death. In fact, when an American came here looking for his grave, the Marquesans were surprised to learn he was famous. They wished that they hadn’t leveled his house and lost his remains! Apparently they found where he was buried, moved him to the big gravesite overlooking the bay, and have built progressively more decorative tombs for him over the last 100 years.

A Gaugin reproduction

 
After a very interesting day, we walked back to the anchorage in time to meet Alec’s wife who brought some fruit that we requested. We have been envious of our neighbors’ stalks of bananas hanging in their cockpits but now have one of our own. We also have some pampelmousse, which is very similar to but less tart than grapefruit.

In addition to these amazing experiences, we have seen some truly awesome landscapes. Today was really clear with the exception of a very brief rainstorm the came through (that Alec heard coming long before it arrived). You have to see the pictures to really get a sense of the Marquesas, and fortunately, Wes has been able to upload all the photos we’ve taken so far. We took over 400 photos today, but he has pared them down and organized them for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy! ;-)

The view acrosss the bay towards Taaoa. Motu Hanakee is in the foreground.

Next, we stopped at the tourism office (first time we’ve seen it open) and found several leaflets in English about the culture of French Polynesia and met a nice guy who explained several of the archaeological sites around the island to us in Frenglish (mostly French, but with some English nouns and the verb “is”, which in Frenglish is pronounced “eez”).  Armed with his information on sites, trails, and bays, we hope to be more productive in our sightseeing than Lauren and I were the other day.

We made a couple of stops in stores while waiting to drop off some laundry (about $4.00 to wash and dry a kilo!) and checked out local prices.  $6.00 for one roll of paper towels was our favorite overpriced item, while $9.45 for 12 hamburger patties seemed pretty reasonable.  After searching the store, we found a few cheap items that we bought to sample, including a nice package of crackers and a small block of no-refrigeration cheddar cheese for less than $2!  The cheese turned out to be good, so we’ll definitely be back for more.

When we returned to the anchorage, it was shower time!  While we were waiting for our turn in the shower, we struck up a conversation with some other cruisers there on the quay.  The couple from the Brazilian boat, Matajusi, was very friendly and the man had lived in Houston for 4 years and Boston for 15 years.  The couple from the unmarked boat also came ashore and turned out to be a nice French couple with a small girl.  They speak some English and both boats had just come from Fatu Hiva.  They called Atuona, with its population of 2,600 or so “big” and had some great stories about trading for fruit in less populated bays of Fatu Hiva.

Ahhhh. All the mountain rain water you want. Check out the high-tech shower head.

The locals keep racing outrigger canoes here by the anchorage and use the small bay as a practice area.  They come out in the evenings and practice in either a one-person outrigger or one of the larger 5-6 person outriggers.  We were launching our dinghy to go back to the boat right as a group in a 6-person canoe was coming it.  Their paddle handles are short with a wide paddle area that is swept back 10-15 degrees or so from the handle to provide a better angle with the water.  It’s fun to watch them accelerate quickly across the bay and to see teams of canoers paddle in unison.  It’s very similar to the style of the Hawaiians that we got to see a couple of years ago.

Just starting off from the canoe ramp.

On our way back to the boat in the dinghy we stopped and invited the Swedish couple Paul and Eng-a-lee over for dinner.  We had hamburger patties and they had baguettes, so it was a perfect match. It also turns out that Paul is a vegetarian as well, so we had two sets of veggie patties.  We swapped stories of our passages and boat repairs.  They’re short of good books, which is a very painful thing at sea, so we dug through or library and gave them some classics that we’d already read.  Despite the humorous sight of a nice hamburger patty sitting between two small slices of baguette, the food was delicious and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Today is a big holiday in town — Bastille Day.  The locals don’t care too much about the details of French history, but like everyone, they do love a good excuse for a celebration.  Although the larger festivities are in Nuku Hiva, there are going to be traditional drummers and dances that we’re anxious to see.  We pass by their practice area on the walk into town and got a couple pictures of them decorating a truck with coconut tree leaves.  Their traditional drums, pahu, were standing nearby.  The drums are made form a single piece of wood, with sides featuring a variety of carvings and the bottom portion formed into a base.

Weaving coconut leaves over the truck.

Pahu