.. in the Bay of Virgins at the NW area of Fatu-Hiva. It’s down at 15 m and I have 75 m of chain out. A pulling test with 2000 RPM showed the anchor holds.

The very steep mountains framing the bay to the N and S are impressive. Full of green.

On one corner we saw a herd of wilde goats feeding on a steep slope.

We also understand now why this bay, before the Christian missionaries with their better view of the world, renamed the bay form Bay of Penises into Bay of Virgins. A rock formation with high, kind of cylindrically shaped elements symbolized first penises and now virgins.

During the night I wanted to write a narration but the Offshore App I need to use for that is simply too bugy and my phone was blocked until about an hour ago.

The night was boring. As long as we had sunlight the wind was too weak and too much on the nose. We would have needed to tack several times and with the weak winds we would not have made it time. However, with hindsight we should have tried to sail and leave a few hours earlier.

Now, after breakfast, I’m writing these lines. Once they are uploaded we will have a first look at land.

Just now I could solve a problem in the Offshore App, which I’m using to upload these narrations.
I tried for more then an hour to upload a narration. Despite a strong and stable satellite connection the Offshore App ended plenty of times with the message of a fatal error. I finally could solve the problem by deleting the saved narration. Deleting as such is also very tricky because the delete and delete confirmation button is only a 1 mm (not cm!) broad strip at the bottom of the screen. It took about half an hour to delete the narration.

Now I hope that I can upload this narration.

Because of the bugy Offshore App, please do NOT worry if suddenly you don’t see any new narrations anymore. We are alive just the Offshore App is pretty sick.

This morning we decided to first go to Fatu-Hiva. Considering the weak wings we have today along the route, this will be an about 12 h sail. Thus we will wait at our anchorage until about 1600 – 1700 before we’ll lift the hook.
This gives us enough day light for trolling and catching a nice yellow fun tuna, which is our dream; will it become reality?

This morning, pretty early, and in a very light wind I hoisted the mainsail to see if all is correct. There was number 1 reef-line which was not attached optimally to the boom end, thus I corrected it. At end we put the sail down that it folds the way I want it to get the lazy bag filled in a balanced way.

Finally I optimized again the lazy stays. It’s better again. I sometimes wonder how long I’ll play around with the optimization of the lazy stays.

After breakfast we went at land to do the last shopping.

And now we are hanging around on board and are just lazy. No boat job will be done. Writing this narration and maybe one of the other email.

For you, a lazy day service
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatu-Hiva
This article gives a good overview over Fatu-Hiva with links to other islands of the Marquesas.

Towards noon, we were back on MaRe with the repaired mainsail and the sail bag, or I better call it lazy bag.

We started immediately with the mounting of the lazy bag.

Then came the first physical challenge. Laying the big mainsail on one side of the boom.

After that we started with the mounting. A shackle for the tack of the sail and a velcro ribbon for the clew. Followed by rubber strip for the first intermediate mast car. This was followed by attaching the out-holer for the full sail. Then the first, very long, about 5.5 m, batten was inserted and locked in the batten holder. This one needs to be mounted with a screw in the mast car for the batten holder. Each step has it’s own challenging points.

The mainsail has 5 battens and between and after the last batten there is always one intermediate connection.

The last item to be mounted was the head of the sail into a double car especially for the sail head.

Then the lazy bag was attached to the lazy stays, lines guiding the sail to fall into the lazy bag.

Next I had my greatest fun of the day. Walking up on the mast about 3 m above the spreaders. There I needed to adjust the length of the top part of the lazy stays. With always a swell rolling into the bay the mast “nicely” swings from on side to the other and at a height of about 15 m above waterline, this is some 30 cm. At the end I got the lazy stay top parts adjusted.

The new lazy stay configuration so far looks good. I’m curious how it will performed during normal sailing routine.

Clearing up the tools etc. a 6 h effort was done and I’m looking forward to pull the mainsail up again tomorrow when we leave the bay.

For today I was exhausted and enjoyed the spaghetti Shigeo prepared in the meantime. After a shorter than normal after-dinner conversation I took a shower and went to bed.

Needless to say that I felt asleep before the blanket reached my body…

Sail repair is in full swing!

There will also be some small, but important modifications done on the sail bag. Most important is the replacement of the last zipper with metal parts. I should never have accepted zippers with metal parts. I learned it the hard (expensive) way.

Tino of Maintenance Marquises Service ist doing an excellent job.

I expect it will get ready today. Thus, tomorrow I can mount it.

Then we will leave on Saturday hopefully early morning with an ideal wind of 20 KN from any direction N of E. Such a wind will blow us directly to Fatu-Hiva, where we will drop the hook in the Bay of Virgins (before the missionaries arrived, it was called the Bay of Penises).

North of Fatu-Hiva our course changes for quite a long distance into pure E before it returns to the course we really sailed. I observed the error only today, thus I can conclude that it had nothing to do with the position data the IridiumGO device sends automatically every hour.

Please just neglect the PW error and consider our course a straight one. The track as it is logged in the Axiom chart plotter also shows a straight line.

Before writing about today a quick recap of yesterday evening.

We invited our neighbors for drink on board of MaRe. From The MID in their MMSI we thought they are from the UK but it turned out they are from the Netherlands and just have a UK registered boat.

We shared our various different and common sailing experiences.

On the way from Panama to the Marquesas they were pretty unlucky because in only one night they ran into 6 drift nets and need to cut the their boat free. To the best of my knowledge drift nets are illegal method for fishing.

But they made it safely to the Marquesas.

It was also interesting to learn about their financial approach to their sail around the world.
They simply put all their savings together, bought a boat, and sail around the world. With this approach they get the experience already in the young years and can use it for the longest part of their life. I keep fingers crossed that they safely complete their sail around the world.

This morning we went to the village to see what’s available there. It’s a 2 1/2 km walk.

The walk started with tide safe mooring of the tender. The tide was almost rising again when we reached land. Then we walked.

Coming into the village was nice. Very well maintained. The post office and supermarket is just across the street of each other.

For sure I checked immediately for a SIM card and bought even 2. The first one for calling 27 min and having 1 GB for data; the other for 5 GB data but no calling time. I’m curious how good my idea turns out and especially what is the network on the other islands we want to visit as soon as the sail is repaired and mounted again.

The supermarket is very well stuffed. I could identify all the things we need for the next weeks.

We visited the Paul Gauguin Museum with a nice collection of reprints of his work. The originals are scattered in famous art galleries around the world.
Paul Gauguin, as an artist stood away from the art circles in Paris and other big cities but fought for the everybody’s ” THE RIGHT TO DARE ANYTHING”. We also walked up the hill to the cemetery to visit his grave. A very simple grave with a flat kind of round stone displaying “Paul Gauguin 1903”. A stone on his grave, rounded by many years in the sea, carried the text “Thanks for your art… and a few names”.

On the same cemetery, less then 50 m away, is the grave of Jaques Brel. The famous singer, writer of most, maybe even all of his lyrics, and composer of many of his songs, who passed away at the age of 49. Pretty young. Will see what I can find about him the internet.

On the long walk home, a car passed us, stopped in front and gave us a ride back to the port. 2 km of walking saved. Very friendly people!

An interesting day!

… so good to me….
What a wonderful song of the Mamas & Papas. Only people of about my age will know the song. Sorry youngsters, ask your grandparents who might still have one of these old black records…

It was a good morning for me and MaRe. Vincent of “Chantier Naval des Îles Marquesis” (Maintenance Marquises Service www.maintenancemarqises.com, short: MMS) responded first thing in the morning to my mail that we arrived.
About an hour later Tino the sail maker came with me on board to have look.

Mainsail can be fixed. He also will use stronger stronger ribbons than the original ribbons from Doyle Raudaschl. I also will have the ribbons through the reef holes of the mainsail be replaced by stronger ones. 2 of the them broke already and I had to stich them up.

My gennaker can’t be repaired any more. Tino recommended I get a new one from New Zealand.
I can follow his argument and will get new one.
If someone reads this lines and knows a good sail maker in New Zealand, please send me name and email address ASAP to skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net.

After I brought Tino back on land, I unmounted the mainsail. It’s always a challenge. Finally we could get into a package an bring it to Tino who will start working on the sail first thing on Thursday morning.

Tomorrow we will go into the village and see what’s there.

I don’t recall when exactly, but we dropped the hook on the Baie Tahahuku. It was somewhat between 1100 1200.

The bay it’s pretty narrow and shallow. The anchor is down at 3 m and I’m using 25 m of chain. A 2000 RPM test showed the anchor holds.

Relaxing and a nap is on the program. Later a first walk on land.

0615 the Islands Tahuata, Mohotani, and Hiva-Oa are cleary to be seen. Especially Mohotani is wonderfully illuminates with the red of the morning sun still behind the horizon. But coming out in about 10 min.

Even after passing Fatu-Hiva, the wind was not good. It came and still comes from ENE and was too weak to use it. Thus we made the last hours using the engines just at 1100 RPM and a bit of wind in the genoa to make it in time.

ETA for the WPT at the outer edge of Baie Taaoa is now 1030 which is perfectly fine.

From there to the anchorage in Baie Tahahuku it’s only a 3/4 NM.

Landfall after 8 days at sea.

What will be the situation in the anchorage?