On 230726 I stayed with my friend Shigeo already the first night in this wonderful bay. As the bay is open only on W direction, the currently strong ESE wind and swell doesn’t effect boats here. There is almost no swell in the bay.

To get out of the Hiva-Oa’s Tahauku Bay was a question of good timing. There were pretty strong rain showers coming down on us, but with breaks in between, being long enough to lift the hook, and get out of the bay. We got this nicely. OBM at the helm station steering MaRe and I lifted anchor.

As expected we got a 2 – 3 m swell rolling onto MaRe from about 50 deg PRT matching the AWA.

To be on the very safe side – OBM wasn’t on board for 8 month – I only set the main at reef 3. It was a bit slow. Reef 2 would have given us much more speed. But safety before speed.

When we entered the Canal du Bordelais we trimmed the sails for 120 deg AWA and with up to 8 KN we passed through the canal between Hiva-Oa and Tahuata islands. Getting around the NW corner of Tahuata the swell got down but we still got a very nice sailing wind. MaRe started really running despite the too small main sail.

Pretty soon after passing our WPT at the NW corner of Tahuata, we started the engines, furled the genoa, turned into the wind, and ran already into the bay. Thus, in the shortest time possible I got the main down and we approached a good anchor spot a bit behind the NZ Sun Odyssey and the catamaran “Kudeta”, which I know already.

Beside us there is only another cat in the bay.

The hook is down at 10 m and I gave almost 60 m of chain. Pulling back with 2000 RPM showed the anchor has a good hold. MaRe is safely anchored.

The wind in the bay varies from 12 KN – 25 KN. This could make our SuperWind 350 charging our batteries during the night.

Work after being secured at anchor, was done in portions. Whenever the rain stopped we did the next work. In between we had some board made sandwiches, tea, and fruits. For the dinner something with a risotto is on the unwritten menu.

The bay is, despite today’s rain nice. A pretty long sandy beach with palm trees in the front row invites us to take the tender and go on land tomorrow – provided that tomorrow the rain is gone.

Currently MaRe’s panorama window at the stern. offers a view to a dull grey rain front west of us, interrupted by very lively deep hanging cumulus nimbus clouds and bright sunny spots of sunlight where the clouds are having their holes.

The sunset unfortunately was not too be seen today. Clouds were just too “thick”to let the sunlight through.