Taiohae Bay is where you can get “stuff”. Excellent provisions, a meal out, high bandwidth cell data rather than useless 2G. Kevin and Annabelle at Yacht Services Nuku Hiva will do your laundry, assist with arrival and departure clearances, interpreting services for French or the Marquesan dialect, y mas! There is a haute commissaire representative to support application for carte de sejours (i.e. long stay visas), and the local Gendarmarie processes arrival and departure paperwork, but if helps to speak French.
This time of year there’s one thing that sucks about the bay. A Southern swell is pretty common right now, and it makes for a pretty uncomfortable anchorage. From the standpoint of vessel security and anchoring it’s fine, but often the wind and swell and current are all at angles to one another, so the monohulls roll madly, and the catamarans do that herky jerky high frequency thing that’ll just about knock you off your feet at times. It’s actually worse than being underway with a beam sea!
Our checklist for departure before a long ocean passage includes a full standing and running rigging inspection, removal and stowage of our dinghy outboard in our large forward locker, fresh cleaning of the hull bottom and props, and prepping our aft berth for sleeping at sea rather than the standard “garage” use. On a boat this size at least one of the guest bunks always has gear stowed on it, and we usually keep our kiting gear and other bits and pieces on the aft bunk. It turns out that aft berth is the best place to sleep in lumpy sailing conditions, especially when the seas are at or forward of the beam.
Going up the mast in a rough anchorage is just asking to get hurt. Removing the dinghy outboard, hoisting it with the spinnaker halyard over the side midships and securing it in the deep locker just forward of the mast is a great way to do serious damage to the gel coat or to get hurt. Even trying to clean the bottom in a rough anchorage is a good way to get banged on the head. Yesterday we were ready to go, fully provisioned with our departure clearance, so we abandoned Taiohae Bay and motored around to the Eastern most finger of Controller’s Bay. There we tucked into a lovely little bay, anchoring with about 3 meters of water under the keel, and about 150 meters to the shorelines around us. A tiny bit of swell was sneaking in, but it was safe enough so we finished the mast inspection and the dinghy outboard is now stowed.
We celebrated our success with a bit of rum and mango juice, grilled up some nice steaks, and watched a little Netflix before crashing around 2100. Our tasks this morning will be to clean the hull and props, complete stowage of all gear, secure our life raft (it’s in a valise) and ditch bag under the saloon table, and get a fresh look at the next 3 days of weather. With the outboard removed I’ll also modify the dinghy slings to lift it even higher and at an amplified angle to provide poop protection and so it can’t collect water and get heavy.
Good lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we’ll be underway for Hawaii this afternoon! We’ve heard back from customs and immigration there – they’ve received our USCG documentation and French Polynesia departure clearance, so upon arrival at Hilo we’ll meet them ashore with our passports and badda boom badda bing, we’ll be back in the USA!
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