President Elect J'Biden

 

OK, we knocked off another presidential race prediction. Running two for two for the last couple of elections. It's nice to see how graceful and cooperative the looser has been.  It is even nicer that he is no longer dominating the airwaves. Its a slow reduction of chaos.

I've noticed that a number of the conservative media hosts have had trouble pronoucing the first name of Vice President elect Harris. - Kamala. At the same time seems like all tbe talking heads are getting the pronunciation of President elect Biden correct - J'Biden.

I was planning on going into a deep analyses of how the country ended up voting roughing 80 million to 74 million, and how close 3/4 of the country didn't  vote with the left progressive side of the Democratic party. But if I did that then this wouldn't be a cruising blog and I'd risk loosing my reader. It's pretty easy to loose your single reader if you come down on both sides of an issue.

Back to actual cruising plans, we fly to Kuala Lumpur on 11/30. We'll spend 14 days locked up in hotel. Should be out of quarantine and back to Langkawi around Dec 16, if all goes well.  Our current plan is to launch Georgia and repair all the things that broke cause they didn't get used for the last 6 months. Then we'll  head across the Indian Ocean in late Jan. Hopefully with a stopover in Chagos and then on to the Seychelles. Might add the Maldives to the list. At least that is 2021 Plan A. Given that we had to go to the Greek letters for Plan id's in 2020 in a similar pattern as the Atlantic hurricane season naming did, I'm not holding out for much in Plan A to actually make it to execution.

We had a fleeting thought about changing plans when we heard all of tbe good news on vaccines. Maybe we should stay put and wait for a Covid vaccine. On second thought ---------- that would put us sitting out what looks to be the worst of the infections peaking over the next few months. We might as well spend that time in a place with a far lower infection rate.

Next up, a blog from our quarantine hotel.

A reminder for the holidays

A Zoom Thanksgiving

Is better than an ICU Christmas

Hey Mister Douane Man….

Just as we were picking up our anchor to leave Nuka Hiva for the 25 miles sail south to Ua Pau, the French Polynesian Customs, aka the Doune, decided to board us. We had seen them going around the anchorage the day before boarding boats. They came by our boat, took pictures and left us alone. One of the boats that they boarded was fined US$200 and a case of wine was seized for under-reporting the amount of alcohol they had onboard when they cleared in.
I was a little concerned about them boarding us because when we cleared-in in Hiva Oa in the section for alcohol on the declarations form I put “Ship’s Stores” and didn’t detail anything else. The Gendarme who took the form was happy with it. When the customs guys saw it, they knew what it meant. They sent Chris off to go below and count every bit of alcohol onboard. 15 minutes later she came up with a list. The customs guy said read it out. “161 cans of beer, 5 bottles of gin ……”. He was fine with it all and didn’t even bother to write it down, it just wasn’t enough to bother with. 25 minutes later we were on our way.
Here’s the Navy boat that carried the Customs folks coming around the corner, in the rain. Last year the customs had its own boat, but it was lost on a reef in the Tuamotos under curious circumstances. It’s no wonder they care about the alcohol onboard. The exact same bottle of Gordon’s Gin that we bought in Panama for $17 sells in the Marquesas for $55.
We sailed down to Ua Pau (Wah Pooh) for a few days after our circumnavigation of Nuka Hiva. This is the Austrian steel ketch Le Belle Epoque anchored next to us, enjoying some tropical sailing after completing an east to west transit of the Northwest Passage.
We did a land tour around the island with Juergen and Claudia from Le Belle Epoque.  I think Chris is pointing at goats from the mountain top.

That’s why I agreed to go on the tour – so I could go goat spotting. This billie demands respect.

Sometimes you spot the goats – other times the goat spots you.

This is what a goat sees when it is spotting from the mountain side.

More early Google Glass design prototypes.

 

Claudia using her ice-climbing skills to get some fresh coconuts.

 

Back in the harbor, the locals were out in their outriggers catching some short but serious waves.

The young boys, maybe 10 years old, were out practicing too.

We sailed back south, or should I say motored into it, to Tahuata to catch up with our friends on Cattiva, who had arrived from Panama after their 40-day Pacific passage. We love the anchorage in Baie Hanamoenoa, it’s where the mantas can frequently be spotted. We had a chance to get together again with friends on Tallulah Ruby and Endorphin, as well. We had a barbeque on the beach, hosted by the friendly local Marquesan, Stephen, who lives here tending the coconut grove.

Tomorrow we will go back over to Hiva Oa to do a little provisioning, then its off to the Tuamoto Islands, the next group in French Polynesia. It’s about a 3 day, or so, sail from here.

Paul

Cannibals – Don’t Go There

The Marquesians are well known for being cannibal tribes. There are about 9,500 people, primarily Polynesians, living in the Marquesas today. Its estimated that when the European ships first started stopping by the islands the population was 130,000. The tribes were fairly isolated from each other, living in valleys that had such steep mountains around them that direct connection between tribes was somewhat limited. On the island we are at now, Nuka Hiva, which is the largest in the Marquesas, the tribes were basically allied on a NW to SE line dividing the island into two teams. These teams were pretty much continuously at war. The explanation given to us was that they didn’t have anything else to do. When the wars tapered off between the groups, then each group had time to have some war bonding time with their closer by allies.
The results of being captured by your enemy were not pleasant. Likely a sacrifice for the chiefs and priests- to eat.
We got to view a Marquesain dance. There has been a concerted effort to recover the old ways and tribal history over the last few decades. These dancers put on a great show and clearly enjoyed what they were doing. And those are real tatoos.
It could have been a contrived cruise-ship moment – but it wasn’t. If you’ve ever seen the New Zealand All-Blacks do their pre-game Haka, it is pretty obviously derived from these Marquesian dances.

  Vessels hanging in Taeohe harbor, Nuka Hiva. The biggest sailboat you see in the center of the harbor is the 203 foot Athos. (Georgia is one of the specks on the left.)

We took a tour of the island with some other cruisers. Both Chris and I have been reading Herman Melville's book ‘Typee’. This covers his time when he jumped from a whaling ship in Nuka Hiva and worked his way to the Taipivai valley and lived with the Taipi (or Typee) tribe. We visited some of the religious/ceremonial sites he talks about in his book. Above are the deep holes in a stone platform, called a meae, up the valley from Taipivai. The back one is the larger. It held drugged prisoners captured while warring. The forward one is smaller. It held the next sacrifice to be on deck.

That’s Chris and I sitting in front of the prisoner holes. The ceremonial platforms were built around sacred banyan trees, like the ancient one behind us.

This was tool actually used – and witnessed by a missionary – in a sacrifice.

The curved stone here has broken off from its platform. In its day, it would have been upright. This is a cruisers re-enactment of a sacrifice. Apparently the sacrificee was face down and a large stick with a stone on the end was smashed down on his head. Then the delicious eyes, heart and liver were shared among the upper class.

Some ancient petroglyphs.

Today there are many Catholic churches on the island, this one with a tiki in the front.

The iconography in the church includes the classic baby Jesus holding a breadfruit, sacred food of the Marquesians.

 

The Marquesians are master carvers, as demonstrated by this beautifully carved pulpit in one of the churches we visited.

A larger look at the breadfruit carrier.

Rose (center) is famous among Pacific cruisers. She has had a restaurant, pension, gift shop for decades, having arrived with her husband in the 1970’s in Nuka Hiva. Here she is showing us her small but impressive collection of very old Marquesian artifacts. She is looking for a museum to take over and preserve the collection.

Rose keeps guest books signed by the cruisers who have stopped by her establishment over the years. The older ones are really interesting. Some of them have red notes written in the margins such as: sunk on reef in the Tuamotos, lost in Cyclone…. The page above is from our friend Karl from the Edmonds sailing club (Edmonds CYC) when he passed through on his boat Arkenstone in 1990.
Paul

Washing and Cleaning the Outboard

Every few decades I’m told you are supposed to wash your dinghy’s outboard engine in saltwater. The last time I dropped an outboard overboard was over 30 years ago. And that time it was someone else's.  So I guess it was my time. We were getting ready to leave Atunoa, on Hiva Oa, and I was in the dinghy connecting the hoist clip to the harness on the outboard. The harness had slipped over to the side and I blindly connected the clip to a side strap instead of the top lifting strap – that was now on the side. The strap held nicely until the old Tohatsu was about 6 feet in the air. Then it took flight, splashed the water and gently bubbled its way to the bottom, with Chris and I looking at each with certain dismay.
Recovery operations began immediately. Out came the hooka and the assigned salvage diver got into his gear. The water in this bay is pretty murky. I found the outboard lying comfortably on its side in a soft bed of mud in about 22 feet of water. The picture above is just as she was breaking the surface coming back up and gasping her first gulp of fresh air in 20 minutes.
Fortunately there was a water faucet on the dock fairly near by. So got a tow into the dock from Chuck on Free Spirit. After a good wash down, an emptying of her bowels and oiling she coughed back to life. I’m not sure if there was any permanent brain damage done – we’ll see over the next few weeks. One really odd thing about the cleaning was the change in the turning shaft. These old 2-cycle Tohatsu outboards have a steel shaft that is the axis for turning the engine. The exposed part rusts pretty well. There are grease fitting for greasing the bearing portion of the shaft. Our outboard has been really hard to turn the last few years. No amount of greasing the grease nipples – or even taking them out and letting grease out – has helped. Turns out dunking in saltwater cleans this shaft out nicely. It now turns better than before – at least for awhile.

The definition of cruising: fixing your boat in exotic ports.

Paul

Almost Easter Island Tikis

Now doesn’t this look like a giant Easter Island tiki to you? It helps that I am actually on my knees for dramatic height effect.

We took a land tour with 3 other boats (Nicha, Free Spirit and Felicta.  US$37 a head) to see the tiki sites on Hiva Oa. These were the ancient ceremonial sites where small time ceremonies, like getting ready to go and fish were done, as well as the bigger time ceremony of eating your neighbor from the next valley or the unsuspecting European who happened to stop by.

This guy is known as the Smiling Tiki.

If you look closely you can see that he is wearing an early version of Google Glasses.

This was Chris favorite’, a tiki in the birthing position.

This was the ankle tattooing spot. The little dark circle to the left of Chris’ foot is the ink well for the artist.

John, our guide, stopped to get us some fresh off the tree bananas on our way back to the anchorage.

This is just a small part of our fruit haul. Every boat got a large stalk of green bananas, pamplimouse (grapefruit) and guave, courtesy of our great tour guide (Mary Jo tours).

Paul

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