Gettin' a little itchy

8º 55.025s 140º 06.055w

Sun May 26 2019

Well, we arrived at Nuku Hiva the morning of May 7th, and we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.

· Cleared in

· Dispatched Thad

· Got our duty free diesel fuel certificate

· Got Mark’s carte de sejour (1-year long stay visa) in process

· Topped up on diesel and gasoline for the dinghy

· Made minor repairs, conducted routine maintenance and a couple of improvements related to the passage

· Circumnavigated the island with stays in Anaho Bay and Daniel’s Bay

· Eaten some great food

· Re-provisioned with some wonderful meat, fruit and vegetables

· Spent some time with different Marquesans, learned a couple words, and been delighted at how friendly and open they are

· Made some new cruising friends!

By no means have we seen or done all the worthwhile things available on Nuku Hiva, but we’re planning to be back here for part of cyclone (hurricane for Northern hemisphere folks) season, so our 16-day whistle stop tour will do for now. When we return we’ll do more hiking and touring of the interior, including visiting the area where Herman Melville lived briefly and wrote the book “Typee”. It’s not a bad read!

The weather window for a nice easy passage down to the Tuamotus is looking good this week, even a little light at the South end. As this will be our first foray into the atolls, we’re OK with easy as we begin getting experience navigating through reef openings and around the coral heads in the bays. Hey – I started learning to ride a bike using training wheels, and I had a flight instructor in the cockpit for the first few hours, so there’s no reason to get nutty just yet – we’ll take it easy if we can get it that way.

We’ve picked an easy one for our first try, subject to change as always if local conditions or other events dictate. Kauehi reads well and is about 500 nautical miles to the Southwest, so that’s our plan. Big easy channel through the reef, etc. We’ve seen enough of Taiohae Bay here at Nuku Hiva, so today we’ll find our way down to Ua Po (Ua Poa in some books and charts) to explore Hakahau Bay and perhaps go ashore. Mike and Doreen are still pissed at me for misspelling Nuku Hiva (I kept writing Nuka) but this time I’ve got an excuse for different spellings.

If conditions allow, we’ll go ashore and explore the local town with the hopes of finding some fresh leafy lettuce, one thing Isabel didn’t score at the local market yesterday. Marquesans do like their veggies! Saturday mornings the local farmers market opens before dawn. Yesterday the lettuce was gone by the time we arrived before 0600. Shucks! The supply ship has just been and gone over at Ua Puo, so maybe we’ll get lucky, or perhaps they’ll have some locally grown stuff. Isabel did score 5 dozen eggs yesterday, but she had to make a reservation so the local shops would hold them for her. When she did pop in yesterday the shop folks were delighted to see her and called her by name. Friendly people here, with big smiles and bigger hearts.

During high tide yesterday we dinghied over to the fuel dock and I hand carried a 22 liter diesel jug and a 20 liter gasoline jug over to the fuel station. Turns out the duty free certificate only applies to diesel. All said and done the diesel cost 80 CFP per liter, the gasoline 140 CFP per liter. The exchange rate is around 106 CFP per US dollar. You do the math. Anybody that whines about the price of fuel here after coming from Mexico is an idiot.

Isabel bought a package of New Zealand lamb chops, eggs, a tin of New Zealand Anchor butter, French pate, various French sausages, and lots of fruit and vegetables. Nothing raised her eyebrows in terms of cost, and just about anything we could want is available. So all in all, the cost of living here is comparable to a blend of the US and Mexico, and perhaps a bit cheaper than Europe, Australia or New Zealand. There’s just no reason to complain about any of that. Beer, wine and spirits are a bit pricey, but nobody is making you drink that stuff.

As I’ve noted, importing boat parts and other bits is a completely different matter, so come here with everything in excellent condition to reduce the risk of punishment. As my old long haul truck driver pal used to say to me, “high quality tires are the cheapest insurance a trucker can buy”. Preventative maintenance costs less in the long run unless you get really lucky, just accept it and do your best to budget for it.

For those who haven’t done it, the crossing from the Americas to French Polynesia might seem exotic or dangerous, but cruisers refer to it as a “milk run” for a reason. It’s not easy, but it doesn’t have to be scary or dangerous; contemporary communications systems and weather forecasting and the availability of experienced weather routers reduce the risk even further. Thank you Jamie and Behan!

At my old helicopter company, air crew members in the experimental flight test group were assigned flight pay based on the perceived risk of the mission to be performed. As my old test pilot pal Bert Rhine used to say, “there was really nothing to exciting about it, but for the purposes of the flight bonus, it was absolutely terrifying!”.

Our passage so far has for the most part been very routine, with about 2 ½ days of “sucks to be us” on our trip here. Looks like the next few days down to the Tuamotus will likely be a similar experience, and we’ll hope to make it look easy. We’re “slacker adventurers”, doncha know?