20 Years Ago Today -- May 6, 1996 -- Day 28

Sun. 96-05-05 - Day 28 - Hiva Oa, Marquesas, French Polynesia 9° 50' S  139° 02' W  Log: 2,688nm

I got up at ~1900Z, with Hiva Oa about 10 miles off. Mostly sunny tradewind weather, blowing 15 - 18 from ESE. Very cloudy over Hiva Oa, so not worth a landfall photo.

We had hooked another 30" wahoo in the night and dragged it for a long time on John's watch, so when I had landed it, the eyes were gone. I cleaned it after breakfast as we sailed up to Hiva Oa and we put the skinny little fillets in the fridge. We talked to Upshot (British) and Cat's Paw IV (Bluewater Cruising Association) on the way in, as both were ahead of us. It took a long time for us to sail along the south coast of the island, as it is high and steep-shored. The very west end was pretty dry, and had little vegetation on it, and reminded me of California's Channel Islands. We were still sailing with reefed main and staysail, which was perhaps a bit undercanvassed.

Isle Motane was clearly visible to our south, and Tahu Ata ahead, until we turned north into Baie Taaoa, and finally NE into Baie Taahuku, a mile or so east of the town of Atuona. The village appears to be quite high up, as there is little shore-level land. There did appear to be about a 3-story building on the beach below the town, though -- I didn't expect any multi-story structures.

The anchorage at Baie Taahuku is protected by a breakwater, but pretty rolly, and surgy from reflected and refracted waves from around the point. There were about 15 boats in harbour when we arrived, anchored bow and stern [pictured at left]. As room must be left for large vessels to dock at the "wharf", all anchoring must be behind a line marked with a transit on the south shore of the bay.

We arrived in the anchorage ~0100Z, anchoring near Celebration, with Marc Edge taking our stern hook in his dinghy. Both Marc from Markenurh and Ken from Celebration had come out in their dinghies despite a rain squall at the time. It seemed to rain about once every 15 minutes all afternoon. We were anchored at 15:20 local time (Z - 9.5h). Marc invited us for supper for ~17:30 and congratulated us on our passage. Ooh, baby, we made it!

We got settled and took the dinghy ashore. The bay has fresh water (galore), including a shower stall available free and a big place to wash clothes near the dingy landing. There's a concrete landing which is quite surgy and a stern anchor is required to keep the dingy from getting under the wharf. Another choice (which we used the first time) is a gravel launch ramp around the corner, with less surge, but you have to carry the dinghy out of the way.

We filled the water tanks and had showers (very welcome!) and chatted with a few cruisers. A bit wobbly walking, but not bad.

After a beer and fresh clothes aboard Vahevala, we headed over to Markenurh, bringing one of John's trusty bottles of Padre Kino red wine (Mexican). Besides Marc and Adrien and Sylvia, Ken and Hillary from Celebration, and Jim and Penny from Cat's Paw IV were there. [I had previously sailed for a few weeks between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo aboard Vancouver-based Markenurh with Marc, Adrien and Sylvia.]

We had a really nice time, with Marc serving his famous pizzas, salad and good company. Our 27-day [sic] passage compared well with most of the others, although Celebration did it in 17 days [Celebration is a Carpenter 37 from Aukland, NZ that did the Melbourne to Osaka race last year, and then crossed to Canada. I saw their boat in Victoria in July and in Nanaimo in August, then in San Diego in November, La Paz in Jan/Feb, and Puerto Vallarta in March, where I had finally spoken with them. Nice folks.] Cat's Paw IV is a Fast Passage 37.

It turns out that there were various rumours about Vahevala on the HAM/SSB nets, including that we were overdue and that we were headed for the Cook Islands (!?). Ah, rumours.

We turned in about 21:30 for the first full night's sleep in nearly a month. No CDs.

[Ed.: Well, that's the end of the big offshore passage. There were lots of great and memorable experiences (including this one, mentioned previously) in the Marquesas and further West, but I'll stop here with the log. This passage inspired me to write a song a couple of years ago, which I'll post here in the near future.

I would like to express thanks to my brother John and his wife Laura, who gave me this lovely leather-bound log book for recording my trip, and which is still in excellent shape 20 years later.

And of course finally a great thank-you to my skipper, John, who welcomed me aboard Vahevala and gave me this great opportunity.]

A Letter Home From The Marquesas

Related to my last post with the tsunami warning while sailing in the Marquesas, I came across the following letter at my mother's house on the weekend, which was written a couple of weeks before the tsunami story unfolded.  It is a mid-90's narrative of a short cruise through the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia aboard a 30' sailboat.  The dawn of the internet was happening at that point, but not yet really available to deep water sailors.  How times change...

Monday, May 27, 1996
Baie d'Hakahau, Ua Pou
Isles Marquises, Polynesie Française

Dear Mom & Jim,

Hopefully you received a postcard from me sent from Atuona shortly after our brief phone call. I promised to write you a real letter, so this will be it. The ridiculous cost of phone calls from here, plus the irritating satellite delays, makes writing a more effective means of communication (from me to you, at least).

We've now been in the Marquesas islands for 3 weeks, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the islands and their people, as well as meeting other cruisers from Canada, U.S., England, Wales, Scotland, France, Germany, Sweden, Cayman Islands, Saint Martin, Australia and New Zealand [more than half the boats here came across from Panama via the Galapagos Islands, whereas Mexico had almost entirely Canadian and U.S. boats]. The weather has usually been pretty dry, except at Atuona, Hiva Oa, but last night & this morning were pretty wet. It's warm, occasionally hot, but usually nice at night, with daytime cabin temperature usually about 90ºF. The islands themselves are tall & breathtaking, volcanic in origin, with lush vegetation covering them. The peaks, often vertical for 1000-2000', rising to 4-5000' elevations, are magnificent, but often shrouded in clouds.

From Atuona, on Hiva Oa, where I spoke to you, we sailed south to Fatu Hiva [about which Thor Heyerdahl wrote a book of the same name]. The village there has about 100 people, many of whom are wood carvers or make tapa cloth. There were many children, who swarmed around us at times  so insistently as to be irritating. For the most part, I enjoyed the kids, but John (skipper) found them a pain in the butt -- one day while rowing the dinghy ashore, about 5 older boys swam out & clung to the dinghy, making progress virtually impossible for about 10 minutes. The village is at the foot of a valley with imposing rocks rising 1000' on either side of the entrance, then opening into a lovely valley a mile wide and a few miles long, surrounded by jagged, vertical peaks -- perhaps a volcanic crater at one time. We hiked an hour up the valley one day with a couple of 10-year-old local boys as guides, to visit a spectacular waterfall, dropping hundreds of meters down the valley side. The water was amazingly cold, considering the tropical climate.

At Fatu Hiva, some of the cruisers arranged for one of the woodcarvers' families to put on a traditional Marquesan feast, which over 25 of us attended for US$10 apiece, seated around a big table in his showroom/workshop. From my logbook: "They put on a magnificent meal, with goat (very good), green papaya coleslaw, banana paw, paw paw (the consistency of paste, but somewhat tart), chicken, poisso cru (raw fish -- skipped that), sashimi (skipped), rice with coconut milk (very nice), pamplemousse & bananas, and jus de pamplemousse to drink (excellent)." I should note that "pamplemousse" is not normal grapefruit, but a giant, coarse, sweeter variety than what we get at home. The rind is often an inch or more thick, and the fruit is absolutely delicious.

Before leaving Fatu Hiva, I bought a few small wood carvings from Henri, the fellow who put on the feast. We looked at tapa cloth (made from the bark of some tree & painted in black ink with traditional or modern Marquesan tattoos & tikis & other patterns (gecko, sea turtle). The quality of the tapa varied greatly from one artist to the next, and I didn't find anything I liked in a size small enough to safely carry home. Most of the carvings & tapa made in the Marquesas are sold in Tahiti.

From Fatu Hiva, we sailed north again, to the west side of Tahuata island & settled for a few days in an open anchorage under a very steep hill/cliff, rising a few thousand feet above. The water was pretty clear & I got in some good snorkelling, even swimming (very briefly) in sight of some dolphins (who wanted nothing to do with me). We visited tiny Hapatoni village in the next bay, with only 40 villagers, and I bought an ornate wooden dagger & a small tiki statue. The main "road" of the village was stone-filled & level and has been there longer than memory. Signs of stone house platforms were also visible on the hillside above, attesting to the much larger population before the arrival of europeans (the Marquesas have ~7000 people now, compared to over 60,000 150 years ago).

Farther north along the coast of Tahuata, we spent a few more days in our first anchorage with a white sand beach (previous bays had stone or dark [lava] sand, rather than white [coral] sand). Hana Moe Noe was definitely a pretty bay, and also had pretty good snorkelling (no, I haven't yet seen any sharks).

From Hana Moe Noe, we sailed north around the west end of Hiva Oa, and spent one night in Baie Hanamenu, at the NW corner of Hiva Oa. We hadn't even planned on going ashore, but heard that a wild boar (as opposed to a wild bore like me) had been killed the night before, and a pot-luck dinner was planned at the home of a frenchman living there (only a few inhabitants in this isolated valley). We took a cake & wine and enjoyed a nice evening. We watched them split & grate a coconut & make coconut milk from the grated meat, in which they cooked a pot of crabs. We also watched the opening of the earth oven in which the boar meat was cooked -- a hole in the beach in which a fire had been built, and stones placed inside until they were hot, then the meat on top of stones, covered with banana leaves, and sealed over with sand. With coconut-milk rice, pear & some raw fish (which I skipped), it made a great feast. Boats in Baie d'Hakahau, Ua Pou (courtesy Wikipedia)At 0300 that morning (still that night), we set out for the island of Ua Pou, which we reached in late afternoon (~60 miles).

After getting settled at Baie d'Hakahau, we were told that there was a big party in town that evening so we went in & bought tickets. It was some sort of fund raiser, and many of the other cruisers were there as well. The dinner included breadfuit & yams (yuck), coconut-milk rice, pork in a mushroom sauce, poisson cru (I finally tried the raw fish -- not too bad), somehitng like Chinese spring rolls (quite good), french bread, and cake for dessert. The entertainment included Marquesan dancers of a number of age groups & was quite interesting -- I thought the young 8-year-old girls the best, swinging their little hips at full speed. Later, the party turned into a dance, and was obviously the only entertainment in town -- everybody was there. We left ~22:00, as we didn't sleep much the previous night. The town of Hakahau is pretty, quite modern, with magnificent spires rising above the town to the south: God was clearly having fun when he built this place.

From here we expect to visit the leeward side of Ua Pou, then head for nearby Nuku Hiva & visit a few of the anchorages on its coast. Then, off to the Tuamoto archipelago (about 5 days' sail from here), where we may stop at Ahe and Rangiroa before continuing on to Tahiti (roughly a month from now).  From there, I expect to fly home to Vancouver & start to put my life back in order. I'll call you guys when I get to Vancouver, or if I change plans significantly  Take care. Hi to Anne's family & Jim's kids.

Love
        Dave 

Waiting for the Tsunami

I found the large earthquake last week in Chile and subsequent tsunami warning in the Pacific to be a very stressful event.  It surprised me, as I don't recall having similar stress in past events.  I guess it must be a result of having watched in horror when the Japanese event caused such horrendous devastation.  The previous major tsunami events in Thailand and Indonesia had been horrific, but unfolded mostly after the fact in the news.

I'm currently sitting in Montreal, and was certainly not directly threatened by the Chile event, though I do have a boat in the Vancouver area, and family too.  The risk there was virtually nil from this event though.

But the fact that the tsunami warning was in place in the Pacific region for many many hours really drained me. I worried for those potentially in its path.  This is not typical of me... I'm not overly empathetic by nature.

What this waiting did for me, though, was recalled an event years back when I was directly affected by a tsunami warning.  I figured I'd recout it here, since I found the situation interesting and quite surprising at the time.

This was close to the middle of 1996, and I was on a sea voyage, travelling in French Polynesia.  The 30' boat I was on was anchored in a bay on the north shore of Nuku Hiva, the most populous of the Marquesas Islands, and located about 1000 miles northeast of Tahiti.  It was a beautiful anchorage off a small village in a lovely valley, with a sand beach, good holding for the anchor, and protection from the open sea.

About the second night we were anchored there, we were awoken about 1am by someone knocking on the boat's hull.  When we scrambled up on deck, another cruiser was alongside, and stayed just long enough to pass an urgent message, before moving on to the next boat in the anchorage.

The message had been relayed from a villager, who had been kind enough to come out in a boat and wake the anchored yachts.  There was a tsunami warning in effect, and the village was to be evacuated to higher ground. All boats needed to leave the harbour within the hour, in order to ensure they were in deep water at the time the tsunami would arrive, as we would all be crushed on the beach if we stayed in the anchorage.

Thankfully we were in an anchorage with a straight forward exit which could be navigated in the dark.  I feel for those who might have been anchored behind a reef and unable to flee until daylight.  As it was, we got into deep water in less than an hour, and spent the rest of the night sailing 5 miles off the north shore of the island, landing in a new harbour the next morning.  Other than having left that paradise anchorage a day or two earlier than planned, we were none the worse off.

The unbelievable thing to me at the time was that this tsunami warning had been caused by a 7.9 earthquake in Alaska.  We were in the southern hemisphere, and I couldn't believe a wave could possibly reach us.  These days, we know more about the destructive power of these waves, and I'm thankful that this remote village had a good tsunami warning system in place way back then.

Thankfully, the Chile earthquake this week does not seem to have caused any widespread damage from waves. The lifting of the tsunami warning lifted my spirits, but got me thinking more about my trip to paradise.