Tracking Paul Gauguin

When we were on Isla Taboga, Panama we saw the sanitarium where Gauguin was confined after he got sick (yellow fever) while working on the Canal. The Marquesan isle of Hiva Oa, in the cemetery for the town of Autona, is where he is buried. We went to pay our respects.

A close-up of the head board on his grave

We stopped at the museum dedicated to Gauguin in town. Clearly better than reading old National Geographic magazines.

  As we were driving into town to clear customs with the Gerndarmes, we past these guys with this giant sword fish hanging clear out the back of their pickup bed. It must have put a pretty good fight.

We celebrated my birthday on the island of Tahuata with these delicious, house specialty, blueberry-banana muffins. 

Less of a house specialty was this fresh octopus that one of the locals gave us. Besides being so cool to watch in the water – they are really rubbery when cooked.
We left Tahuata and sailed to the north end of Hiva Oa. We wanted to make our way to an anchorage on the NE end of the island where there are some old tikis. With great strategy we thought we’d make the NE corner, stay the night a little cove and get to the east end in the morning when the winds were light. As we turned the corner of the island the winds were barreling out of the NE and so were the seas. This made the anchorage in the NW corner look pretty un-inviting. So we put our tails between our legs and sailed back Tahuata. We anchored just north of a little village Hapatonia in the Baie Hanatefu, which has this pretty church with an active bell tower.

  There is an ancient, palm-lined ‘royal’ road, built on the order of Queen Vaekehu, that is supported on both sides by rock walls in the town.

It travels right along the bay and is a great walk

And past the town power plant, a diesel generator

There are a lot of in-use out-rigger canoes that seem to be carefully taken care of.

They are all stylishly painted

Some even sport 15hp outboards

The town people make their money as carvers and as copra (coconut) farmers. Here’s bags of dried copra waiting to be exported to Tahiti for processing into oil. The green tags on each bag indicate where it is from and the grade of the coconut meat.

  I’m thinking about having this fungus-on-a-rock design tattooed on my butt. What do you think? It seems everyone here has a tattoo or ten. It’s a cultural thing.

Paul

Meeting Marvelous Mantas

After checking-in to French Polynesia on Hiva Oa, we sailed to the island directly south, Tahuata, and anchored in first bay, Baie Hanamoenoa. In the middle of the bay in about 40 feet of water there were 5 manta rays cruising back and forth feeding. These were not near as big as the ones we saw in the Galapagos, but they weren’t small either. That’s Chris with her GoPro.

These guys are filter feeders, taking gallons of water through their large mouth and filtering out the tasty parts.

They didn’t seem to care much that we were swimming around in their breakfast.

Chris working the close up as the school of reef fish scatter and a  manta cruises by.

A view from the surface

Paul

Marquesas Passage Notes

Sailing downwind in the SE trades at sunset

Clouds and rain a thousand miles offshore.

Morning rain squalls on the radar around the boat.

We are all checked-in and back within our insurance coverage area (April 1st for French Polynesia, outside the cyclone season). I titled this the Marquesas Passage notes, even though we were originally heading 1,900 miles away- to Easter Island. More on the decision to turn right at the end of this blog.

Our actual track (click on the image to biggerate).

According to our log (distance through the water) we travelled 3,452miles. We sailed approximately 530 miles due south of the Galapagos (on the right), then went 2,725 miles west to Fatu Hiva (on the left). The trip was 4 days south and 19 days west.
Our best noon-to-noon run was 191 miles and our worst day was 76 miles. We basically had good winds for the first 2,000 miles toward the Marquesas, then very light, and trying, winds at the end.
We ran the engine for a total of 39 hours, most of them on the first 2 days leaving trying to get out of the wind hole around the Galapagos, plus the last 50 miles toward Fatu Hiva we motor sailed to get some extra speed so we could get in the anchorage before dark.
We put about 31 hours on the genset re-charging batteries.
We used about 140 gallons of water. This included liberal daily showers for the Admiral and every other day for the lowly mechanic/captain.
The boat did well, with fairly minor breakage. The rudder bolt – she broken man. Lost a dorade vent over while beating toward Easter. A broken shackle on the boom vang and a lost shackle on a running back.

Broken rudder bolt.

Boom vang shackle metal fatigue.

We started this passage heading toward Easter Island. The plan was to get to Easter toward the end of their summer before the fall weather started to arrive. Easter has no good anchorages and you can be forced to move around the island on very short notice due to changing weather and wind. In addition, you may not be able to get to shore for days at a time because of the swells. Not an optimum cruising destination. Then we were planning to sail to Gambier in French Polynesia. After that the plan was to close reach (or perhaps beat) the 750 miles to the Marquesas.

I watched the weather on the route to Easter for the 6 weeks before we left. The plan was to motor south out of the wind hole around the Galapagos, then stay close hauled and point southerly through the light S-SE winds for another 6 or 700 miles. Then as wind picked up a bit, crack off toward the west to make it more comfortable and eventually end up with the wind behind the beam when it picked up to the stronger SE trades in the 25 kt range.
Well, the wind went from nothing in the Galapagos to 25kts on the nose the second day out. So we were close hauled right at the start. My back was hurting from too many forced tourist walks in the Galapagos and cleaning the boat bottom. It was one of those ‘it hurts just to step’ and I was loading up on green Ibuprofen gel caps. We were both up early in the morning after 2 days of bashing into it and decided to discuss our options. We could continue on for another 12 or 14 days to Easter, arrive and possibly not have a decent anchorage, plus then have to do the haul up from Gambier later to get to the Marquesas. That meant continuing on my green gel cap routine OR  hang a right, head downwind, sail fast and smooth. Well you know which one won out.
Unfortunately, this change of plans put us into the Marquesas just before the end of cyclone season. The Marquesas rarely get any tropical storms, but they do come through the Tuamotos on bad years. Our plan was to head north toward the equator (anywhere above 5*S) on the first sign of a storm. That would get us out of known cyclone areas and was reachable by sail or motoring within two days. But we passed the end of the main cyclone season without incident and are now safely enjoying the Marquesas.
All and all it was a pretty easy passage – perhaps a little boring at times, but not as much work as you’d expect for an ocean as large as the South Pacific.
Paul