During the last days I was busy with cleaning hulls. After having been in Hiva-Oa’s Tahauku Bay for a bit more than 3 month some stuff grew at the underwater hulls. This, I wanted to clean off in the clear water of the Vaitahu Bay of Tahuata island.

Further I wanted to make water, and do some laundry. I also wanted to get some fresh fruits I hope to find someone who gives out sells me fresh fruits.

The nice thing in this bay is the rather constant and strong wind coming down the mountains. MaRe swung only +- 10 deg. The rather good windspeed kept my SuperWind 350 pretty busy. During the night it almost produced as much was was needed for lights and especially for the two fridges.

During the day I could see always a pod of a smaller kind of dolphins. For hours they swam in the bay being obviously busy with hunting fishes.

Yesterday, after finishing the work at the hulls, I lowered the tender into the water and dinghied to land. As expected, a stern anchor was needed due to the swell and wind.

I walked into the village. Many houses were built to be covered with trees. Just as it looks from MaRe in the bay. As I practice French since a while, asking a man I met on the street allowed me to have a simple conversation and asked for fruits. Here in Vaitahu one can really get fresh fruits; in the supermarket of Atuona, fruits are old already when they arrive in the shelf.
I was lucky, the first man in asked told me to follow him and I got pampelmouse (shaddocks), oranges, and limes. He also wanted to give me a breadfruit but the tool to plug them from the tree was too weak or the fruit was hanging too high… Happy with what I got, I went back to MaRe’s tender.

Before going to MaRe, I decided to go the neighboring boat to say hello and good bye because I wanted to leave shortly after midnight. They were only a bit more then 100 m away from MaRe and we could we only good greet each other by waving our hands when I arrived. They are a very friendly couple sailing very relaxed, staying in this bay already for a week doing lots of hiking to explore the area around the bay including the village. In a few weeks I hope to return there with 2 sailing partners, Sam(antha) and Inge. It’s really a nice place.

At the end Jo & Gerry came with me to MaRe to get some mother-yoghurt. Thanks to our friends Nora & Hacko of SY Anixu, I can make now very good yoghurt from powered milk.