We were to early outside the Puamau Bay and had to turn around because the moon also was covered by clouds. Nothing to illuminate the sea. But we felt that the swell fully rolls into the bay. Therefore, the decision was made to go to the next bay.

A few modification on our planned route and were off to the Hanatekua Bay. This bay is pretty well protected against E and even ENE swells.

As the wind went down as well, we just motor the 6 NM “around the corner. By 0800 the hook should be in sand.

We want to visit the bays along the north coast of Hiva-Oa. Thus we planned already a few days ago to leave Omoa in the evening and sail through the night around the eastern corner of Hiva-Oa to arrive in the morning hours in the Puamau Bay.

Thus, at 1825 we lifted the anchor on Omoa and started sailing north.

As long as we where in the land coverage of Fatu-Hiva, the wind was instable in direction and speed. When a valley opened, we had wind speeds of 20 KN and MaRe accelerated in her night gown – main at reef 2 and genoa full – to more than 7 KN. But west of the high mountains north of Hanavave, the wind was gone. We used the engines to push a bit further north to get the trade wind undisturbed from mountains.

This worked out well As soon as we were close to the northern cape of Fatu-Hiva, the wind increased and started sailing again. In winds of mainly 5 Bft from 80 – 90 deg AWA on STB MaRe started running. STW ranges from 5 KN to almost 8 KN. In average of the last 3 h we made 6.9 KN. Because we are so fast, we will arrive at the eastern corner of Hiva-Oa already before 0300.

After passing the corner, I consider to get main down and sail only with a reduced genoa at an AWA of 150 deg. At sich am AWA, I can easily reduce the genoa to slow down enough that we arrive at the Puamau Bay only on full sunlight

This morning we got up by 0600.
OBM prepared breakfast and some sandwiches for on the way I did my normal departure preparations. Then we lifted the hook and motored along the steep coast line of Fatu-Hiva towards Omoa.

The coast line is nice and wild the same time. A typical volcanic coast line with green surfaces and black, rough volcanic stone walls in between

The distance to Omoa is about 5 NM thus we pretty soon arrived. Not considering a local motorboat, we were the only yacht in the bay, thus dropped the hook in the middle of the bay at 10 m. Excellent hold. The bay had quite some swell rolling in. But for a catamaran it was not too much.

Pretty soon after arrival we took the tender into the tiny harbor. The swell inside was also quite high but with a stern anchor we could keep the boat away from the concrete wall.

The village appeared very quite.

Right at the waterfront the people of the village have a huge open place for cultural Marquesasian /Polynesian events. I hope I get a chance to see once such an event.

We left the waterfront and walked into the central street of the Omoa. Almost nobody were to be seen. The few people we saw were very friendly as always on these islands.

At the left side we saw something across a football field, which looked like a restaurant. OBM was sure it is one, I had doubts. We wanted to look at it later. It turned out, OBM was right.

After we passed a few houses more we saw a still open for 25 min supermarket. We went in, to see what they have to offer and bought sugar and canned butter to be able to make cookies or a cake.

Slowly we kept on walking; had a look at the museum from outside because it was closed. In a sports hall next door, a group of young men played football. At the next building there was a poster explaining about endangered birds. Endangered mainly by a black rats, which were brought into the Marquesas by boats from outside.

While keeping walking we saw plenty of shaddocks trees and hoped to see someone we could ask if we could possibly get some. At one place there were so many shaddocks and a bunch of leached dogs that I went into one of the properties, hoping that the barking of the dogs will make someone to come out and I could ask for some shaddocks, but nobody came out. All the houses around were without visible humans.

In the meantime OBM was ahead of me and I saw here “talking” to a lady. Coming closer I understood she asked with her typical smile and hand signs and the French word “Pampelmouse”.
She was successful. From the neighbor house a young English speaking lady look out of the window and asked to come to the other side of the house. She and 2 young ladies from the house where OBM asked, picked shaddocks and gave us 5. How wonderful and kind of them.

Happily we started walking back towards the waterfront. Then suddenly the English speaking lady came from behind. We started talking. It turned out that she is an Italian biologist working on a project to increase the population of an endangered bird. A project is sponsored also by the European Union. French Polynesia is a part of France, thus a part of Europe.

The village, although it is with a population of 300 people, 50 % larger than Hanavave, it appears smaller.

Finally we arrived back at MaRe and let the rest of the afternoon passing by. OBM took a swim and took a nap because we want to sail during the night.

We wanted to go today to Omoa stay one night there and then sail to Hiva-Oa’s north coast.

Then it became pretty windy and rainy and knowing that the bay in Omoa is rolly we stayed in the Bay of Penises/Virgins.

Aga from SV Mojita came over swimming. A cup of coffee and a talk. At the end we know will go tomorrow to Omoa, spent the day there and leave in the evening from there directly to Hiva-Oa’s north coast via the eastern corner.

We did a few boat jobs, prepared dough for cookies, check details about the bays on Hiva-Oa’s north coast.

Tomorrow morning we’ll leave early. I’m curious what this will mean.

We wanted to up the long and winding road to the top of mountain at our starboard side.

But before, I prepared a business card for the French family of the SV Mojita at our starboard side. But before I could deliver it by our tender, they lifted the hook to go to Omoa just 5 NM south from here. I signaled them to come close to MaRe. Then I took an oar from our tender, and attached the business card on at the end of the oar. With such a long arm they could come close enough to take it. For me, being used to the Japanese etiquette of passing business card on with two hands, it was a kind of a funny way to give them our business card.

A while later we took the tender to the tiny harbor and started out long walk. I knew from my hike with Shigeo to the waterfall that at the very end of the village the road ascents steeply. Thus is necessary because there is not much space to built a less steep road.

We slowly but steadily walk up on the concrete built steep road. Although we were always in the same caldera the scenery changed with every meter we moved up. There are the mountains with trees on them and there are ones with no trees at all. This must have been caused be different volcanic eruptions in ancient days when the island were born as volcanos which blew their “heads” and only calderas remained.

The highest parts of the mountain walls are more or less vertical for several hundred meters. Their top is almost always covered in clouds. Thus, there should be cloud forest vegetation up there. Unfortunately there are no hiking trails up there. It looks even to be very difficult for experienced mountain climbers to reach the ridge of the highest caldera walls.

While walking we talked about the terms we should use for these remains of volcano. Can a part of caldera be called a “mountain”? We have no idea and thus just use the term “mountain” to refer to the remaining big and high “junks” of the caldera.

(Should you know how to call these “things”, please send a mail to skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net)

Over all these scenery we could see the additional element of fast scurrying patches of sunlight, creating fast changing emphasis on the various elements, the tree covered areas, the meadow like looking parts of the landscape, the ridges of the caldera remnants, the houses down in the village, the sea.

Apropos houses, from high up I started estimating the number of houses of the village and ended up by about 100. As there are few, which I know but could not see, I would say the number of houses it’s between 100 – 150.

Then we came around a curve and there was a bull standing on our right side of the road and being tied to a tree on the left side of the road. Thus, the bull had full control of all places were we possibly could pass. Is the bull friendly and just staring at us foreigners, or does he wants to have some fun with getting foreigners on the horns and throw them somewhere, or is it preferred to stamp on us strange people? We approached him carefully and he simply watched me and ignored OBM stepping over his line on the other side of the street. When she was save I wanted to go to left street side as well. Then the bull suddenly put his head down to attack! But got immediately, too tired for action, and just trotted slowly to the other side of the street giving me the full right side.

When we got the first view down into bay, it was an incredible view on the flat sea with a very low swell but with wind patterns created by the gusts. Then there were also patches with sunlight interchanging with clouds shaded areas. A never ending story of changes.

Finally we reached a man made plateau were a even a caterpillar used to built the road was getting more rust every day. Sitting at it’s edge towards the bay, we saw our MaRe down there. She looked so tiny with lots of water around her. Close to her there was the even smaller Anixi swinging on her anchor. In the West there was the endless Pacific Ocean.

Looking at the high mountains from even a higher place let them appear so small. Only the real top ridges on the other side were, still higher and have their heads inside the clouds.

We rested their for a while and then started our descent. I was a bit afraid because I had still a not fully recovered knee and a huge hematoma in my right bum. After we walked for less than a kilometer, a car came from direction of Omoa, which means it’s goes to Hanavave. We got a ride down into the village on the cargo area of the pick up car. In less than 10 min we were down in the village…

In Hanavave there is no restaurant or food take out like in Rikitea, Gambiers, still we had nice dinner at land. It was possible because there are a few people in Hanavave who take private initiatives. We know of three houses who prepare dinners for guests. Two we learned from Nora an Hacko an one we found ourselves.

Christian, the one we found ourselves, actually found us. Already when I was here the first time with Shigeo he approached us and asked if we want to have dinner. That time we rejected for whatever the reason was. This time we took the offer.

As I had to complete my bread baking before we could go on land, I called him to say that we are 30 mins late.

When we then arrived, there was also a French family waiting. They anchor on our STB side in the bay as well.

It turned out that we were already in Hiva-Oa in the same bay but with a distance too large to get in touch. The same situation we had in the Hanamoenoa Bay of Tahuata. Here we finally met. Their two adult sons joined the sailing couple during their university vacations.

The seating was in the big living-dining-kitchen around the only table just for the 6 people we were. Christian and his wife sat a few meters aways. Read something and Christian, in between went into another room to watch TV for a while.

Christian & his wife prepared an excellent meal. There was first poisson cru, the Marquesasian raw fish with rice. Then there was grilled chicken, must have been grilled over an open fire. It came with a delicious locally made sauce and deep fried breadfruit pieces. And the third dish was pork, sauteed and boiled with breadfruit pieces. It was a feast for all of us.

The interesting conversations of the evening was mainly about our boats, sailing experiences, sailing from where to where, where we come from, etc. Sailor’s talk with deviations to all kind of topics open minded people can think of.

Being happy, we all went back to the tiny harbor where our tenders were docked and drove back to our boats.

It was a nice evening,

Yesterday was a day of lots of boat jobs. There are always some small things to be done and while doing a boat job, new ones are discovered.

Some might say we should have bought a newer boat, but new boats are so full of problems that’s sometimes painful to listen to the stories of problems on new boats, boats which have/had a reputation of being good. But, it seems that since many years, designer don’t look enough at quality, stability, reliability, strength, etc of boats, but look only on how boats look like.

Beside the boat jobs, I had to bake again bread. So far everyone likes our freshly baked bread with whole grain flour made in my Salzburger Grain Mills. This mill is built for being used at home but it performs excellent on board of MaRe since 2018. The chief technician of Salzburger Grain Mills recommended me the model I have because of the salty air environment on board of a boat sailing the seas. Thanks for that recommendation.

And there is another device on board, a SuperWind 350 wind converter. Since yesterday we have a bit more of wind and I see the effect of the SuperWind when I look at the charge level of my service batteries. It was also yesterday, that Nora & Hacko of S/V Anixi came over for a cup of coffee. Hacko, although he has a good wind converter, mentioned that he would like to have a SuperWind 350.

As I’m just writing about devices on board, we used 3 more yesterday. There is first our power station, the Onan 4 kW Generator with it’s 2 cylinder Kubota Diesel.

Then there is the 230 V Dessalator water maker, which makes us 180 l of excellent fresh water per hour.

Finally OBM used yesterday our Soba Babynova 1150 Rapid 3 kg washing machine built in Czech Republic. This machine makes life on board much easier. I remember still the times when I, loaded with laundry in 2 big bags, walked into a town and searched for a coin laundry or simply did hand wash all on board. Now we can do other things while laundry gets done.

So far a few lines about the boat jobs, new boats and devices on board for daily life.

This narration is not a normal one. The lasted posting is always an updated version of the previous “Glossary of terms”.

I’m using in my narrations a lot of abbreviations and special terms, which are understood by sailors. As I know that there are many people without sailing knowledge reading these narrations, I decided to add a glossary of terms. Here you can find always explanations on the terms and especially the abbreviations I’m using.

TWS True Wind Speed – the speed measured any position at land or sea where the position may not move. On board of a boat this wind speed is calculated using satellite data.

TWA True Wind Angle – the angle equivalent to TWS.

AWS Apparent Wind Speed – the wind someone standing on a boat feels. This is the wind the sails feels, thus the wind, which drives the boat forward. It is measured on the top of the mast.

AWA Apparent Wind Angle – the angle equivalent to AWS. It is also measured on the top of the mast

STW Speed Through Water – the speed a boat makes through the water. It is measured just outside of the hull. This is used to calculate the TWS from the measured AWS.

SOG Speed Over Ground – the speed with which the boat moves over the ground of the globe. It is calculated from satellite data.

COG Course Over Ground – the course (direction) in which the boat moves over the ground of the globe. It is calculated from satellite data.

WPT Waypoint – point along the route a boat sails. Each WPT had a pair of coordinates that determines its position on the globe or on the sea chart (digital or paper)

BTW Bearing To Waypoint – the direction under which the WPT is located; being seen from the boat.

DTW Distance Too Waypoint – the distance of the waypoint from the boat.

PRT – Port or Port side – the left side of a boat when looking from stern to bow… Color is red.(The red heart is at the left side of a human body.)

STB – Starboard or Starboard side – the right side of a boat when looking from stern to bow. Color is green.

NM Nautical Miles – distance unit for navigation. 1 NM is the equivalent distance of 1 angular minute of a longitudinal circle around the globe (these circles go through the North and South pole).

KN Knot – a speed unit for which means the NM per hour.

As Nautical Mile and Knot are not an ISO units, they don’t have an internationally fixed abbreviation. Thus one can find other abbreviations as well. I’m using the ones here in capital characters because they are not in conflict with any ISO units.

Sails
Every sailboat can have different sails but almost always have a main sail and one head sail.

The main sail – or short the”main” is the big 3-angular sail behind the mast.

The head sails – are always before the mast. Head sails can have different sizes and thus have different names. MaRe has 3 different head sails.

The genoa – biggest and most often used has 49 m2.

The jib sails – Only a few catamarans can fly jib sails. MaRe has two. A jib with 20 m2 and a storm jib with only 8 m. Depending on wind and direction conditions one jib can be used in combination or instead of the genoa.

Gennaker – this is huge, approx. 120 m2, very colorful sail made out of material also used for parachutes. It is a light wind sail, which I can use for AWA from 70 – 180 deg. (For sailors: I can even fly to 150 deg on the other side with a tack height of 2 m). It is flown in the very front of the boat but can be pulled to the side as well; this depends on the AWA.

Reefing a sail – or – put a reef in sail – making a sail smaller because their it’s too much wind or there is more wind to expected.
The main sail has 3 reefs plus what I call reef 0. Reef 0 is the unreefed sail. When the reef number increases, the sail is getting smaller.

For the genoa there are “bars”, marks at the foot (lower edge) of the sail. The more number of bars are to be seen, the bigger the sail is. 3.5 bars means the full sized genoa. 0.5 bars means the genoa is reduced to the size of a “handkerchief”. The finally stage is furling (rolling up) the genoa fully. The number of bars is also in table from the designer.
Now, you might read “we furled the genoa” – furling a genoa is a work done very often on a boat and has not necessarily something to do with strong winds. Most often it just means getting the genoa out of are way because we need to work at mast on the main sail.

The gennaker can not be reefed. For that reason I can it a “binary” sail; it’s up or down. Like “1” or “0” in a computer.

Jib sails will not be reefed but exchanged.

Halyards – each sail has its halyard , which is a line to pull the sail up.

Sheets – Each head sail has 2 sheets. Sheets are lines with which a head sail must be adjusted to the AWA.

The main sail has only 1 sheet to adjust the sail to AWA.

Barber Hauler – a special line, which allows to open a head sail more than what is possible using a normal sheet. I use this typically when I only the genoa and have winds between about 150 – 180 deg AWA.

Autopilot – it is a computer, which can steer the boat depending an information it is given and the steering mode being selected

Steering modes are:
STBY – stand-by – the autopilot returns the steering to the person at the helm and does nothing else.
AUTO – the autopilot steers the boat into a direction entered, ignoring wind and current drifts.
WIND VANE – the autopilot steers the boat in a way that the entered AWA determines the direction the boat is going. Thus, when the wind changes direction, the boat follows the new direction.
TRACK – the autopilot steers the boat to a given WPT correcting drifts by currents and wind. This mode can only be used with very stable wind directions or when the boat is running by its engines.

Directions in hours
If one stands somewhere at the boat and wants to tell another person where there is something to be seen, the hours of clock are used. 12:00 is fixed to the bow and 0600 is fixed to the stern. The other hours are distributed around the clock.
E.g. 0300 is on STB at a 90 deg angle from the boat. 0900 is the equivalent on PRT. The others are in between on a logical order.

Compass directions
N north (0 or 360 deg)
NNE north-north-east (22.5 deg)
NE north-east (45 deg)
ENE east-north-east (67.5 deg)
E east (90 deg)
S south (180 deg)
W west (270 deg)
Between each main direction the sub directions equivalent to the ones between N and E exist.

Waves
There are wind induced waves and the swell. Wind induced waves are on top of a swell and are cause by wind closer to the boat. Whereas swell is created in constant winds far away and these waves roll long distances.
(If I’m not wrong there is a good article in Wikipedia: “Douglas Scale” is a pretty good search term. )

I hope that the terms are understood even by non-sailor. At least this was the objective for writing this glossary of terms. Feel free to ask for additional information to skipper-cat-mare@myiridium.net

It is my second visit to Hanavave on Fatu-Hiva and it was a accompanied with a nice surprise.

Already while approaching the Bay of Penises/Virgins I saw a very familiar boat name on the AIS screen. “Anixi”. I follow them on IG since about 2018 when they sailed from Spain to Sardegna and like their special routing and way of traveling. And now after 6 years, we finally met face-to-face in one of the most beautiful bays in French Polynesia. We had a long talk yesterday…

Today OBM and I went on land. She wanted to see the village and meet people.

She likes it here The steep mountainside allover the island covered with green and interrupted with mainly black stripes of volcanic rocks. I’m between the mountain does there are very low hanging clouds. OBM also was surprised about the moving white dots on the steepest area of the steep slopes. White wild goats enjoying the grasses and plants growing there.

We finally started walking through the main street of the village, which only has 2 streets. One of them leads up into the mountains and continues to Omoa, the second and much bigger settlement on Fatu-Hiva about 10 NM by boat or 15 km to walk further south.

We bumped pretty soon into Christian, a local guy who invited already Shigeo and me for a dinner. That time we needed to reject it. Today will go for it.

We walked on, and OBM got the chance to see the local super market, and hardware store. All in room of 5 m x 3m. The lady in the shop welcome Iraq us friendly and recognized me. Simply a nice atmosphere for buying some cookies and a piece of soap made in Polynesia. A piece of soap, without any wrapping around. No need for paper and or plastic.

At the end of main part of the village we crossed the about 5 m wide stream on stones until I saw that there is even a better way by simply wading through the water, which reached a the deepest spot just my knees.

We ended up on the 2nd street of the village and walked down towards the harbor. A friendly elderly lady came out of one of the houses and started talking to us. I needed all my remaining French to follow and reply. She appreciated my efforts.

Thereafter 2 kids came towards us and asked if we want to have some shaddocks. I wondered a bit but then we followed them. It turned out that their mother or aunt make tapas. Makiko bought one. Then we were told that their mother makes dried bananas and we got some to taste. It looked and tasted completely different to what I knew as dried bananas. Simply am excellent taste. We but bought dried bananas, which is wrapped and looks like an European sausage.

When we left, the rain started and caught us fully. Also we sat for a while under the roof covered bench at the harbor, It didn’t want to stop. Finally we just jumped out tender and drove back to MaRe. We could get more then we were.

At 2200 we wanted to lift the hook and then a short rain shower came and we waited 10 min. Now we are already in the the N-S middle of Tahuata. Wind is a bit too weak to set sail. But I expect more wind once we pass Cap Tehoepeoteko , the most southern point of Tahuata.

We spent 3 days in the quiet Hanamoenoa Bay.

And attempt to go at land turned out to be very tricky. I have to say that I underestimated the swell. We had some problems to get the tender on the beach and later back into the water. The problem was that about the 5 – 10 swells rolled nicely on to the beach. However then there were 2 – 3 pretty high swells. Thus our plan to go at land was trying to get the tender out of the water and back in. Lesson learned.

The next day we just spent on board relaxed and I did a few smaller boat jobs. In the late afternoon a lady from another boat came by tender and brought us a big chunk of big tuna. We have fish for the next 4 meals. And we also had a sashimi on the first evening. Simply excellent how OBM prepares it.

Today, we took the tender and went around the corner into the next 2 bays. But there was the same situation with the swell.

After we were back into our bay and had a talk with the skipper of S/C Kudeta. A nice guy. We informed him that we will leave tonight. We have met the first time in Linton Bay marina last year Nov/Dec. In Hiva-Oa we met again and now also

Back to our night sail. We started at night to arrive at daylight at Fatu-Hiva, which is 50 NM away. I want to enter the bay at daylight to have a good overview of the situation to drop the anchor at the best place possible.

Just before we reached Cap Tehoepeoteko, the wind increased and we hoisted the sails. As always we put MaRe in her “pyjama”, main at reef 2 and the genoa fully out. If needed, we can sail in this configuration far beyond 20 KN TWS by only reefing the genoa.

Wind varies strongly in speed and direction. From 8 KN to 21 KN in gusts. For a while the average AWS was 12 – 13 KN now it’s about 16 – 18 KN with gusts to 21 KN.

As we are sailing in the wind vane mode (wind vane angle 45 deg PRT) wind shifts result in changes of COG. BTW is 130 deg. COG is right now 158 deg but a while back it was 200 deg.b the most challenging task is too watch the AWA the it doesn’t go to 30 deg. If the AWA approaches the 30 deg we quickly need to increases the AWA before MaRe goes into the “dead in the iron” AWA range. So far she did go upwind in the “dead in the iron” range she is a good girl!

Taking wind speed and wind direction the forecast of the ECMWF, for short “the European” weather model is pretty good.

STW varies a lot as well. From 1 KN to more than 5 KN. In average we should make 3 – 4 KN.

The sky is a too cloudy

Forecast – if the wind doesn’t change to ENE, we will have to tack once but first let’s see where we we end up when we get daylightm