Nuka Hiva is one of two options to enter
the Marquesas group of Islands, the other is Hiva Oa but we chose Nuka Hiva as
it has slightly better anchoring and supposedly fewer boats go there. As it was
there were quite a few and one of them were Don and Sally who were delivering
‘Pantherra’ back to NZ. They had just arrived as well having come directly from
Panama. It was good to catch up with them and have some celebratory drinks
together.
Together with Don and Sally, we hired a
four wheel drive for the day and explored the Island going right around it.
Some of the roading was pretty challenging and over the back of the Island it
starting raining and even with the Hilux in four wheel drive, we only just made
it through.
We visited old Villages that used to be
home to over 100,000 people before disease killed a lot of the population off
years ago. The bush is extremely lush due to the warm climate and rainfall.
There local currency takes a bit of getting used to...
Amazon Woman
The local Brew
Typical Marquesas food, lots of fish!
Four Wheel Driving around the Island-pretty hairy at times!
Stunning scenery
Don and Sally at Happy Hour-note the bananas hanging on the back of the boat
The locals are very friendly and unlike the
Galapagos Islands, there are half decent supermarkets and fresh produce to be
had here. It took a few days to wait till the swell was calm but we finally got
the Gennaker Halyard up the mast and rerun and after filling gas bottles we
were ready to make for the Tuamotus.
Tuamotus
We had to navigate visually again to get
into the entrance to Takaroa reef as it didn’t have Channel markers and there
were sandbanks and reefs everywhere.
navigating visually
Stunning clear Water
Once inside the water was ultra clear which
was great as there were a lot of things under the surface of the water to
contend with being Coral Heads and many old sunken Buoys and lines.
We anchored in 15 meters and Barry and I
went ashore to explore as Shelly was happy staying on board and read her book
that she was hooked on. We walked for miles in the hot sun and were pretty
pleased to find a little shop that sold cold drinks and Icecream! Needless to
say the first can did not touch the sides.
We came down to the local wharf there and
met a crazy Italian named ‘Franscisco’.
He is sailing around the world on his own
in a Jeanneau 42 ft boat. He invited Barry and I on board to share a bottle of
wine. By the time Barry and I had finished our small glass each, Franscisco had
drank the rest of the bottle. Along with our new Italian friend, we wandered
down to the local church and met the local Minister. I don’t think he was too
amused by Franscisco seeing if the Minister could ‘broker’ a deal with a local
girl to accompany him on his boat, another of Life’s characters.
We left Franscisco there using the Church’s
free Wifi and carried on walking and the Minister picked us up, we jumped on
the back of his Ute and he drove us back
to where our Tender was.
The next reef was Apataki, which was huge, and
once inside, you couldn’t see the other end. Once again, it was a challenge to
find a decent anchorage due to the Coral Heads everywhere and we had to anchor
in 16 meters of water to stay clear of them.
Stunning Deserted Beaches
We had various swims here and encountered a
few ‘close encounters’ with a local reef Shark that was large enough to pay him
some respect. I was cleaning the bottom of the boat and he was circling
underneath me the whole time, needless to say the whole bottom of the boat
didn’t get cleaned.
Whilst at anchor here, we struck a problem
with the helm. The Helm was locked as usual to stop the rudder banging from
side to side. But I awoke to the banging of the Rudder. On closer inspection,
the Cable had snapped. We had no Helm and no way to fix it in such a remote
area. I rigged up an emergency Tiller and we came out of the Attol exit and
sailed the 230 miles to Tahiti using ‘Wally’ our auto helm.
mmm...
Emergency tiller at work
We are at present sitting here in the
Marina Taina waiting for a new cable to be made up. I elected to go for a
larger cable as the original 5mm one is vastly under engineered. Hanse do some
great things on their Yachts but they compromise this by doing some petty penny
pinching in other areas. The design of the Helm set up is not great either as
we had to pull the whole back of the boat to bits to get access to the cable.
As I said, they do some really good stuff and they do some really dumb stuff
which is a bit disappointing. Having said that it could be a lot worse.
