I was in Vaitahu Bay in December 2023 when I sailed single handed in the Marquesas. That time, the bay was empty. Including MaRe 3 boats for one night and only 2 for the next days.

That time I already saw the wind is coming down the valley pretty strong and stable in strength and direction. I remember I estimate the wind angle fluctuating between approximately +- 15 deg.

Because of the village and the pot of dolphins, which came into the bay every morning for hunting, I felt in love with this bay and I wanted to visit it again.

Now I’m back in the bay. I enjoyed the village, and the people I met and could talk to with my 9 words of French.

A surprise where the dolphins. They came only in the bay this time when almost all boats were gone. So I hoped they will come next day again, but they didn’t. Maybe dolphins understand me, but I don’t understand them.

But what came was wind! A very gusty one. From 2 – 3 Bft normal wind speed in the gusts the speed went up to solid 6 Bft. Additionally the wind directions changed about +- 90 deg. Stimulated by these gusts, MaRe danced rock ‘n roll on her long, almost 80 m of chain.

During the last days, when I cleaned her hulls under water, she teased me. When I started to brush parts of her hulls, she asked the wind to quickly change directions because she felt tickled by me and my brush. As she and the wind are good friends, the wind came with very strong gust from a different direction and moved her away from me. Needles to say that this made cleaning her hulls difficult because I had to follow her. However, she’s a good girl and has now her hulls cleaned.

Today we didn’t only have gusty wind but also quite a lot of rain. Still I love Vaitahu, the windy bay and I love to look out over the Pacific Ocean expanding from the bay until the horizon with million shades of blue and grey and incredible sunsets.

Tomorrow, we will move on to the next bay south of Vaitahu. I’m curious what we will experience there. Vaitahu will stay, not only in my memory, but also in my heart.

Maybe half a day to a day after our arrival in the Vaitahu Bay there were about 14 boats in the bay. Now, Sunday afternoon, 2 days after our arrival, we are only 4 boats left.

A while ago, a boat came in, the skipper and I greeted each other but he immediately left the bay again. He had his reasons.

This gives us hope that the fishes, and with the fishes the dolphins are coming back into the bay. When I was here in December, every morning a pot of dolphins came into the bay for hunting. They stayed for hours in the bay.

With no boat behind us we had a nice sunset dinner with a glowing sky. Here we had sunset and in about UTC+3 Eastern Europe they had sunrise. All on the same globe.

Yesterday was an action packed day.

I got up the first time around 0630 because I suddenly remembered that I forgot to start the autolyze phase of my bread dough. This took about 15 – 20 min during which Inge came out of her cabin. Using, as everyday, a bialetti she made coffee for herself and a pot of tea for me.

We decided to have a small breakfast and then take off to go ashore.

After breakfast we prepared all for departure. I had to inflate my old tender. Inflating needs to be done daily. I just hope it stays like this for the next 2 weeks until we are back in the Tahauku Bay, and Hiva-Oa. The new tender is scheduled to leave Pape’ete on the 16th and to arrive in Atuona, Hiva-Oa, by the supply ship Aranui 5, on the 21st. (I’ll write more about my new tender when I got it.)

When we arrived at the tiny pier, I saw, as expected, a stern anchor was needed. With a good throw of my grapnel anchor, I got the tender into the right position that it didn’t bang against the wall.

We walked into the village. On the way to the supermarket a car stopped. “Voulez des fruits?”, “Want fruits” we were asked by the driver, a man with very friendly smile. “Quelles fruits?”, I asked with my 9 words of French to learn what he has to offer. “Pampelmouses, oranges, …” we understood. Ok.

He asked us to get in his car, and drove a bit up the hill where he asked someone something about pampelmouses and got the permission to take from trees around another house. There we got around a dozen pampelmouses. Then driving to his place we got 2 bunches about 40 green bananas at each bunch. Plus about 10 already yellow bananas; also limes, mandarins, and 2 breadfruits. BTW I learned that they are called “uru” in Tahitian, and “mei” in Marquesian.

We left all at his place and he took us with his son further up the hill. There he and his son plugged oranges from a tree.

Returning to his house, his son remained there, but his wife joined us. She was also a very friendly. Together they brought us to the tiny pier because it was just too much of fruits to be carried by the two of us. A breadfruit weighs about 3 – 4 kg, a pampelmouse a kilogram….

We also saw some health issues today. Not all is paradise in paradise. He stepped, a while ago into a nail and was treated in Nuku-Hiva because of gut infected. Still his foot was swollen and the hole in his foot didn’t look good to me. His wife had only a single tooth in her front rows. But they were very friendly and happy. When I’m thinking about healthy people being very unhappy and unfriendly in a rich country which is not paradise it makes me thinking.

At the pier, when all was unloaded, he asked me for 2000 XPF, 20 USD. It was a very fair price and I paid it happily.

Inge walked back to the supermarket to see what’s available. I had the task to get the fruits already too MaRe. But, there is always a but. Another tender arrived and I gave them a hand with the line etc.

It turned out they are Germans and anchored this morning just south of us.

Then I watched a local fisher. A nice already dead bonito felt into the water when they transfered their nice catch from boat to land. The fisherman jumped into the water with mask, snorkel, and fins and did not only get the fish but also a pair of fashionable, pretty new sunglasses which someone lost only recently. However, there was another surprise. The partner of the local fisherman spoke fluent German. To make it short: German mother, grew up in France, and came somehow to the Marquesas.

With the help of another sailor I got the many fruits into the tender. A task not so easy in swell of almost a meter.

On the way to MaRe I stopped by the boat of Sabrena & Alex and asked if they want fruits. They were happy with a bunch of banana. I also took the chance to asked Alex, who has a strong sewing machine on board for smaller canvas work, if he has canvas on board to make to sun covers for the oars of my new tender when we meet in Hiva-Oa again. Seems he can make it.

When finally heading to MaRe, I saw Inge already waiting at the pier. Thus, I turned around and picked her up. 2 Dutch sailors helped her into MaRe’s tender because of the high swell.

On the way back I wanted to say “hello” to Gerome, a French sailors I met in the Gambiers. He happened to arrive here yesterday early morning, single handed, but he was busy buying fish from local fishermen. We know them and always negotiate their too high prices down. So we didn’t want to disturb.

Arriving at MaRe, all things had to be taken out. The heap of fruits were only placed at stern for being washed on sea water to avoid bringing insects on board. After having the tender up. I cleaned the fruits and stored them in 2 nets and a bilge. Inge took care of the limes.

Then it was time for a small lunch. Inge, who normally doesn’t eat something for lunch, fixed me a soup made from the leftover of the fish curry we had and rice leftover inside. Tasted really great.

While I read and wrote some emails, I heard the water pressure pump of the freshwater system switching on for a short moment. I suspected that the shower head outside at PRT side leaks a bit and needs to be maintained; I saw last night that the valve at the shower head didn’t close as fast as before. When I opened it I found quite some precipitations inside. Cleaning and reassembling and ask was fine again.

Before I worked on the shower head, I had to work on my bread dough again. Aftet adding sourdough, yeast and salt I had to kneed it for half hour before proofing it for 2 hours.

I don’t recall what I did after fixing the shower head. Later I continued on the dough for the bread. Forming and proofing again. Forming was a bit special today as I wanted to make 2 l’epi for our sun set apéro.

While the bread was in the oven we watched the Aranui 5 bringing tourist and goods for the people of Vaitahu village. Among the goods, there was a caar. As there is only a small pier all needed to be shuffled by transfer ships.

It was time for the apéro after the bread came out of the oven. Freshly baked, still warm bread in the shape of l’epi, olive oil with freshly ground pepper, olives. Just the small glass of wine was missing. We ran out of wine the day before…

A bit later we had fried uru for dinner.

After dinner, Inge did the kitchen, I started the genset to charge the service batteries, and do some laundry the same time to be very energy efficient.

At the end of the day, I wrote the end of this narration and hope not to fall while sitting in the cockpit …

However, I was too tired thus publication of this narration is only today.

This morning we decided to not wait longer for mantas in the Hanamoenoa Bay but move on into the Vaitahu Bay, which is located a bit more than a nautical mile S of Hanamoenoa Bay. Although we pulled out the genoa a bit, we basically transfered using the engines.

There where already 7 boats in the bay, thus we needed to carefully search for a good anchoring spot we found one and the hook is down at around 17 m with almost 80 m of chain. At such a chain length the normal 1 : 5 ratio is not needed anymore. The weight of the chain at the sandy sea bottom is pretty good.
Testing the anchor showed it holds. Additionally I supervise MaRe’s position with the anchor watch pro app.

The swell in the bay is almost zero. MaRe lies quietly at anchor.
Once in a while a gust comes down the valley at the end of the bay. But this mainly charges the batteries a bit. l prefer a wind of constantly 4 – 5 Bft. This would charge the batteries only with wind.

Later, in the late afternoon I’m thinking about going ashore to explore the village a bit more. I was here already single handed in Dec and had a very short walk through the village.

What will I find today?

Since we arrived in the Hanamoenoa Bay of Tauhata, life on board slowed down.

Reading, writing, snorkeling, learning more French, and small boat jobs dominate the day.

Snorkeling has the intention to see mantas from beneath the water surface. So far we haven’t been lucky. Our neighbor, Canadian, was better off. The first morning we were in the bay he followed a manta around MaRe. This morning, we had to give up because overnight, a significant amount of sand turned into suspended sediment, reducing visibility.

I used the days also to clean the hulls at waterline and about 20 cm above. The brush I tried turned out to be good. Not all will be removed in one shot but maybe 1 – 2 times a week will get this area clean. At the end of the year, when I’m in NZ on the hard, I’ll get the top line of coppercoat about 10 cm higher. This will make cleaning easier. Cleaning the hulls is 3 – 4 times a full workout.

What we are enjoying a lot are the sunsets we can watch in the bay. The bay is fully open to the west. So we see the sun falling into the sea at the horizon. However, more spectacular are the skies half an hour to an hour later. Clouds reflects all kinds of orange and red lights. One evening, the clouds, in stripes distributed over the sky just looked great. Looked like someone used very large canvas and a big brush to paint red, orange and grey stripes horizontally. Today, just now, the biggest part of the sky is covered with dark grey clouds, but in the very far west, there are bigger holes in the sky allowing lots of orange, red and little bit of light blue to appear. Every day, plenty of pictures could be taken, but I let the impressions burn into my memory.

Tomorrow morning we’ll have again a look for mantas. Will we be lucky?

At 0600 the wind increased in speed and stabilized in ESE direction showing some tendency to turn E.

We set sails. As it is daylight and no squalls hanging around, main is up to reef 1 which gives us quite more speed than reef 2.

Wind indeed turned and Mr Wind-ow shuffles now from ENE. It also seems that the monkey with the tin tool is tired from all his work to treat us as bad as possible during the night.

So far it looks as if – with a few tacks – we can make it into the Hanamoenoa Bay at the NW corner of Tauhata.

… It could have been with the SE trade wind really blowing as it was forecasted.

About an hour ago I had enough of the instable and weak wind. I took all sails down and started the engines. Not really the way I like to sail but the only reasonable way to deal with the wind on a short term. If I would be on longer sail I made a heave to and wait for better wind. Not with about 30 NM remaining to the destination bay, I use the engine and recharge the same time the service batteries.

The sea is pretty bumpy. In German I call it a “Kartoffelacker”. (A while back I explained this term.)

Should there be something interesting coming up, I’ll write another narration,

Later in the afternoon sailing was a disaster. All the bad things, which can happen around weak winds happened. I’m really satisfied with what I got this afternoon. You monkey with the tin tool and thanks Mr Wind-ow. You made me really happy this afternoon.

At the end, I was simply ready to take all sails down and now wir are running under engines.

As for the wind I expect a high 5 Bft wind from NE to allow us sailing straight into our destination bay. This will start when it became really dark. Sun far below the horizon and huge and thick bank of clouds are on front of the moon…

Do I sound frustrated?

If you say No, you are wrong!

But that’s sailing as well!

The monkey with the tin tool plays its bad jokes with us. First he stole almost all the wind from us, then he deflected the wind that it came from about 100 – 110 deg and made me thinking and calculating about changing the tack. But now Mr Wind-ow shuffles a bit more in the right direction again. Thus, we are creeping slowly at a STW of 1 – 2 KN at a COG of 145, 150, 160 , 140, … deg.

Need to do something to deviate my thoughts. Some meditation?

This morning at 0700 we lifted the hook in the peaceful bay of Hahaotu. My memories will almost certain stay in this bay for ever. I wish my whole family could have been with me yesterday.

After motoring out for a few miles, we got away from the lee shore. When the wind was around 7 – 9 KN TWS, we set the sails. Today we also set the small jib at MaRe’s inner stay because until destination we sail a closed haul course and we will need to tack at least twice most likely more.

As long as the wind comes from directions N of E, we will sail on the PRT tack when the wind goes to ESE, I’ll go on the STB tack to make as much way towards the destination as possible. However, even with constant winds from E to ENE we will need tack today.

The need for tacking can be seen from the following angular values.

The needed COG is about 110 deg the actual COG varies between 140 deg and now even 160 deg; typically at around 145 deg. The autopilot steers MaRe with a wind vane angle of 40 deg PRT. So later on we have to tack to make it towards destination. The tricky thing is to hit the right point to change over to the other tack.

For the last about a quarter of an hour, we had our second encounter with dolphins today. About 50 – 100 animals of “white-lipped” dolphins swam around MaRe. These risso’s dolphin (grampus griseus) are very common in warm tropical waters as we have them here in the Marquesas.

Just now Inge made a kind of a bit dog from an industrial baguette, roasted to make it eatable again.

Dear stomach,
you got something in; please shut up.
Sincerely yours,
The brain

Mr Wind-ow, the person in charge of shuffling wind to where we need it, could do a bit more. He could shuffle more and he could hit the wind stealing monkey with the tin tool a bit harder with his shuffle so we could sail at least 5 KN STW. Currently we are a bit too slow.

What will come up?