Today we have a day we only have every 4 year. What a special day to be in a beautiful bay in the NW corner of Oa-Pou. Where will I be at the next 29. Feb? I should be somewhere on my way home, back to Europe.

The day before yesterday I asked a lady at the street for a possibility to get fruits and vegetables. The only local shop doesn’t sell such items and that’s very natural for this about 200 people village where everyone has fruit trees around the house.

The lady said she will have some for us and we should meet her here at 0800 in the morning when she brings her son to school or come to her house just around the corner.

Two comments in between.

The mother brings her son to school for a distance of about 200 m and this in a village where people run after you should you loose your wallet. Helicopter-mothers like in Germany, where such mother’s bring their kids to school, preferably in a big SUV, to ensure that kids arrive safe at school and save back home. Here it is not about “helicoptering” kids, but just an element of mother-child bond. A natural matter here on these islands where people have and take time for such matters.

“My house is just around the corner” – that was the only explanation we got. From our crowded city way of life an absolute unacceptable explanation. People here don’t need to describe another person where the house is because everyone knows where everyone lives. Thus, they are not used to give precise description on where we find her house. Later, I saw 2 men sitting in front of their house and wanted to ask them where the lady’s house is when she came out of the house. Accidentally we found her house. She gave us 2 pampelmouse, about 5 big bananas and a breadfruit. She asked for 500 XPF (5 USD). We were happy, she was happy.

But we were happier about the limes we got a bit earlier. We saw along the street several lime trees in a row and I went to asks the people of the house if we could get some limes. A young lady came and I asked with my, in the meantime 7 words of French, if we could have some limes. Very friendly she said yes. We took enough limes for about 2 weeks, which was a very small percentage of the limes on the tree and I thanked the lady.

After we got the other fruits for 5 USD, I still had a little Japanese present untouched in my backpack. Thus, I decided to go back and give it as small token of our gratitude to the lady who let us pick limes. It was a little “furin” , a wind bell. A little bell, which rings when there is just a little bit of wind. In Japan, when people hear that sound, they feel it’s cooler…. She was very happy with the furin and we were with the limes.

On the way back, just outside of the really tiny harbor, we saw a fisher man coming in in his outrigger canoe. We decided to ask him for fishes. He let us look into his box. Gosh, it was full of really big fishes. One, I don’t know what fish it was, was about 1 m long. We asked for small fishes and got a small tuna and a red snapper. He didn’t want to have anything in return, so I offered him 2 cans of beer. He followed us happily to MaRe, got 2 beers and headed home even happier.

I had the fun to scale the red snapper and to gut both fishes.

Later yesterday, I wanted to remove the torsion at the end of the anchor chain. Over the years quite torsion built up. To get this torsion out of the chain I needed to let the end of the chain, (the end opposite to the anchor end) out and pull it up again. As I underestimated the weight of the free hanging chain, it was quite a work to winch about 30 m of chain up. The rest was easy.
As soon as I get the chance to buy an anchor swivel I’ll put it between the anchor chain and the line securing the chain in the chain locker. With both ends of the chain being connected to a swivel, I expect to get the torsion out or reduce it at least to a large extend.

Today we had a really lazy day with reading and writing. In the afternoon, Ralf from SV Katinka came over for a coffee and chat. In the next days he will take off to sail single handed to Pape’ete. Gaby, his partner is already in Germany for a successful medical treatment.

Tomorrow, we will go ashore very early…