A yacht in port is safe, but that's not what yachts are built for

Finally at the Marquesas Islands after 3½ weeks at sea and here’s a catch-up to let you know what we have been up to. We are anchored behind the breakwater at Atuona on the south side of Hiva Oa Island. When we arrived we signed up for wireless internet that is available in the port, but only got access for a few hours and it hasn’t worked since, which will explain our silence on email. So we’ve gone back to daily radio contacts.  Andrew also had a long chat yesterday on the radio with an old friend of his dad, Jack ZL1UA in Tauranga, New Zealand.

We were interested of course in the NBA outcome, which has pleased Andrew but didn’t please Lisa. This island is quite mountainous and very beautiful but it has rained quite a lot since arriving and there are not a lot of facilities. There are a couple of supermarkets and a couple of hardware stores but no-one takes credit cards. There is lots of bread available and we get a daily French baguette for about US70c. The croissants are good too. There is good fresh meat, mainly goat, and good local sausages as well, all the rest of the meat is imported from Australia and New Zealand and is much more expensive than what we could get in Mexico, but not unreasonable. Alcohol is really expensive but that’s not an issue as we did stock up on cheap Mexican beer before the trip. There is very little available in the way of vegetables and fruit. Fruit appears quite abundant on trees on private property but no-one seems to sell it.

We are all fit and well. We had no problem walking on land when we arrived as our last 5 days at sea were quite rough, but our leg muscles do hurt somewhat when walking. We have all lost some weight on the trip but with Lisa’s good cooking are putting some back on again, we hope (as there is nothing to weigh ourselves on). We have been pretty lazy for the past 3 days, recuperating and catching up on sleep. The Police checks this morning were quite minimal, we just had to turn up, and there was no inspection of the yacht. We have paid someone to arrange all this for us as it only costs about $300 to do so, whereas if we had arrived unannounced it would cost over US$1200 each in a bond (this is returned when you leave, but you do have to front up with the cash initially). We are not very sure what the situation is with Raleigh at this point, though.

We do have some maintenance to do on the yacht, not a lot but we do have some leaks into the cabin in heavy rain. Some of it is coming down the mast, and we think we’ve solved that one, but the 2 port lights (windows) leak and we need to work out how to seal them somehow. There is also a good crop of mussels on the hull too which we need to clear sometime but probably not in the current harbour as the water is not very clean here.

Our current plan is to probably leave on Friday and go down to the island south of here (Fatu Hiva) for a couple of days and then spend a couple of weeks island hopping north to the largest island, Nuka Hiva. We do have to move the yacht this Thursday though as the large weekly freighter comes in and it needs a lot of room. There are about 11 to 14 yachts currently in harbour all trying to shelter behind the breakwater.

Till next time