Position: 09.54 south, 139.06 west<\/p>\n
It is Wednesday, and we left beautiful Fatu Hiva this morning
\nfor the 48 mile sail to the island of Tahuata. It was a
\nbeautiful seven hour sail and now we are safely anchored in
\nfront of a white sand beach. There are 6 boats in the anchorage
\nand we know all of them. It is extremely pretty although not
\nas magnificent as Fatu Hiva. We hope we will get to an internet
\ncafe soon to post some pictures, but it is pretty clear that we
\nwon’t find one on this island. We wanted to go for a swim, but
\njust noticed that there are some jellyfish, so we are chickening
\nout. Hopefully tomorrow they will be gone.<\/p>\n
On Monday we were invited by our friends Karin and
\nJean-Francoise (on the catamaran Intiaq) to go by dinghy to the
\nneighboring town of Omoa. That is the “big town” on the island
\nof Fatu Hiva, where most of the island’s 640 inhabitants live.
\nTo get there you can walk for 5 hours up a steep volcanic
\nmountain and down the other side, or take half hour dinghy ride
\nalong the coastline. We opted for the dinghy ride. We each
\nrode in our own dinghy since the town is still 3 miles away by
\nsea, and it is safer to have two dinghies out together in case
\nsomeone’s engine fails. We followed the beautiful, steeply
\npitched shoreline, stopping to look at caves and little inlets
\nalong the way. It really is the most beautiful shoreline you
\ncan imagine. There were fishermen standing along the cliff
\nbeside the dinghy dock at the town of Omoa. Well, it was not
\nexactly a dinghy dock. Rather, they have a line stretched out
\nfrom the rocky cliffs with a mooring ball tied out to sea about
\n50 yards. You have to tie your dinghy to the line, and then
\nsomehow get up the steep sea-wall steps. Luckily for us, the
\nfishermen were extremely helpful, and they hopped first into
\nJean-Francoise’ dinghy, and then ours to assist us with the
\nvery tricky process. Our friends Karin and Jean-Francoise are
\nnative French speakers, and are just incredibly charming people.
\nAs we walked through the town they made conversation with
\npretty much everyone we met\u00a0 making it a point to stop and talk
\nto anyone with fruit trees. By the end of the walk we had been
\ngiven about 20 huge pamplemousse and had been invited to pick as
\nmany of the carambolla (starfruit) as we wanted from someone’s
\ntree. We had also been invited to come back the next day for
\nstalks of bananas if we wished. There was a very nicely
\nstocked store in town (relatively speaking), and we picked up
\nsandwich fixings, and then knocked on the door of another store,
\nwhich was closed for lunch, but which opened up to sell us a
\ncouple of baguettes. We walked up the beautiful road and found
\na nice place to sit and have a picnic lunch. After a few minutes
\nwe noticed a strange smell and then realized we were sitting
\njust about 15 feet from a pig pen. When we got back to the dock
\nlater in the afternoon we found that the fisherman had retied
\nthe dinghies so that it was very easy for us to get back into
\nthem and head for home. Very nice.
\nThat evening it poured torrentially , but when there was a small
\nbreak we headed over to Intiaq for dinner. Karin is a gourmet
\ncook and she had prepared a beautiful meal for us complete with
\nhuge servings of freshly made poisson cru, mango and grapefruit
\ncompote and several wines and liquors. The main course was odd,
\nbut very good. It was barbecued goat ribs. Almost every day
\nsomeone from the village comes by their boat to give them a
\ngift, and that day it was the goat. I am not sure if I should be
\nhappy or sad that no one comes to our boat.
\nYesterday was much lower key\u00a0. Mark and I just did boat work _he put together the big spare anchor while I mopped up one of
\nour storage lockers into which at least a half dozen cans of
\ncoke and another half dozen cans of Fresca had leaked during our
\ntrip. We hadn’t realized the extent of the mess until
\nyesterday, and it took a few hours to clean all the fermenting
\nsweet soda up. Not too much fun. We just made a quick trip into
\nthe town (Hanavave) to try the pay phone\u00a0 and called Hannah.
\nThe $20 phone card got chewed up in about 8 minutes, so I guess
\nwe will stick to the satellite phone, which isn’t any more
\nexpensive, until we get to another island with better phone
\nservice.
\nL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Position: 09.54 south, 139.06 west It is Wednesday, and we left beautiful Fatu Hiva this morning for the 48 mile sail to the island of Tahuata. It was a beautiful seven hour sail and now we are safely anchored in front of a white sand beach. There are 6 boats in the anchorage and we … <\/p>\n