To the Marquesas Islands

We left this morning at 0715 for the Marquesas. Farne is 200 miles ahead with 10K of wind. We have 12 knots and are doing 7.5 knots over the ground with poled genoa, main, mizzen ballooner, and mizzen. I am sure we look pretty with 4 sails flying. We need someone to

Our position at 0715 on 3/12/2004 was S 02 deg 01.1' W 092 deg 41.7'. This position is 24 hours since we left Isabella and we covered 120 miles. At 2300 hours last night the wind died and so we motored for 3 hours. We had to recharge the batteries anyway. Yesterday was quiet. We read books, looked for whales - didn't see any, fished - didn't catch any, etc. The evening meal was one of the best I have had in weeks. Home cooking! We had steak with coconut rice. Annette says, "the sauce was nothing. Just reduced white wine with soy sauce and ... and ...." It was great! If it had been my task to prepare supper it would all have come out of a can.

This morning we deployed our main ballooner (spinnaker). It took three attempts and we dropped it into the ocean twice. The first time, I made a dumb mistake. The second attempt was also a failure but an experience issue. During this attempt, we broke the plastic hook that holds the ballooner up at the head. Fortunately I had a spare fitting and the third attempt was successful. We are now sailing under poled genoa and ballooner at 6 knots with 11 knots of following wind. Fine sailing as long as the wind holds.

We talked with "S/V Farne" this morning by SSB radio. They are 180 miles away but further south and looking for better wind. They haven't caught any fish either. They did see a large boat fishing with the aid of a helicopter and we will assume they were whaling.

0715 hours. Position was S 03 deg 08.4' W 094 deg 46.9'. This was 48 hours since we left Isabella: 240 miles by log and 260 miles by map position. We tried to talk to S/V "Farne" by radio this morning. I heard a faint "Doodlebug" but could not make out anything else. I think they are too close to us ( < 200 miles) for the frequency we are using. We will try them again tomorrow.

We had far more success at rigging the ballooner today and sailed for most of the morning in a SW direction. Then the wind died and we went back to engine. The weather forecasts indicate that we will lose the wind (we have) but better winds to south. This is why we are motoring to the SW in order to get to the optimum latitudes sooner. Obviously we don't carry enough fuel to do this indefinitely, so I am hoping for wind tomorrow. Right now the plan is to drop down to 4 degrees south and then switch course for the Marquesas.

Couple of rain showers, no fish, no whale sightings, no other vessels. Annette decided to make pita bread from scratch. We had a great lunch of fresh baked pita bread, cheese, pickled onions, and olives with cold beer. Sort of a Greek "ploughman's." Attila didn't get any and sulked.

0715 hours. Our position was S 04 deg 17.9' W 096 deg 42.6'. The log gave us 358 miles from Isabella but the chart shows we were in fact 398 miles away after 72 hours. We find ourselves performing these performance calculations frequently, in order to convince ourselves that we are indeed pecking away at the immensity of this distance. Yesterday we were just about exhausted with sail changes, trying to keep up with the wind shifts. Then the wind died, so we motored southwest, as per the forecast - which I don't trust. Right after dawn this morning, we went to close hauled under sail. The wind is blowing from the southwest and has been now, all day long. We are supposed to be heading southwest - so the wind is blowing directly at us. This is called the "trade winds run" where the trade winds always blow from the east or south east. We have been moving along at around 5 knots all day long at west or just north of west. If the winds EVER slide around to the direction they are supposed to blow, we will just turn down south with them. We still have several thousand miles to go so we are happy to be moving - any direction will do!

We talked to S/V "Farne" again this morning and if I got their position correct, they are about 100 miles ahead of us. Their fishing success has been about like ours - nada.

Annette found a 4 inch long squid on deck last night. Now how did it get there? Flying fish we understand but flying squid? He has been riding along behind us all day holding a hook - but it is evident, he knows as much about fishing as we do.

0715 hours put us at S 04 29' W 098 deg 37.6'. We are 505 miles from Isabella. As I write this, it is noon here and we have 2,396 miles to go to the east end of the island of Hiva Oa. Yesterday was a fine day sailing at a "close reach," until the wind died down at around sunset. We motored last night but the wind came up again at dawn so we are back close reaching under sail. I did not expect this weather pattern. This is similar to what we experienced crossing the Gulf of Mexico last year - that is, the wind dies down at night. What I have read about Pacific crossings is that boats reduce sail at night, since it is safer (but slower) not to have to reef (reduce) sails on a pitching deck in the middle of the night. Tonight we will probably not motor but wallow around until dawn. Right now it is another pretty day. Mostly cloudy with scattered showers but enough sunshine to paint the most fantastic palette of sea and cloud colors. I have been reading on deck but I feel guilty that I may be missing out on the view.

We talked to "Farne" again this morning. It may be that they can hear us but we can't hear them properly. We propose to try communicating by SSB e-mail. I think they are about 125 miles ahead of us.

Last night Annette fixed "cous cous" with pork tenderloin. I am going to weigh 300 pounds at the end of this passage.

We have been buzzed by what looks like sea swallows. They flit within inches of the waves as though they are chasing mosquitoes. What are they and what are they feeding upon? There ain't no bugs out here and they don't look big enough to handle a fish.

0715 hours put us at S 04 deg 59.9' W 101 deg 22.5'. Yesterday the wind started blowing 16 knots from the S.E. at around 1300 hours and has stayed pretty constant since then. We covered 170 miles in the past 24 hours. We were concerned that conditions would change during the night so we went to reefed Genoa and mizzen, otherwise we have been beam reaching with all sail at 7 to 8 knots. This point of sail is fast but the boat is heeled and at right angles to the direction of the swells. Makes for an uncomfortable ride and it also demonstrates the foolishness of putting something down on a boat (like a glass of fruit juice) and expecting it to still be there two seconds later.

Today was almost complete cloud cover, so it was grey and forbidding rather than the wild display of colors we had yesterday. We passed the 5,000 mile mark on the log since we bought DoodleBug and noted that tomorrow is the anniversary of the boat purchase.

We finally got to talk to S/V "Farne" by radio and determined they are about 120 miles ahead of us. They are in contact with S/V "Chase the Wind" which is a couple of days ahead of them, so we hope that tomorrow, we get a sort of local radio net going. This "chain" of boats going to the Marquesas can pass weather information back down the line.

Attila is definitely bored with this. She doesn't mind the rocking but she does insist on "horizontal" occasionally.

Today is St. Patrick's Day - 3/17/2004 @ 0715 hours. Our position was S 05 deg 21.4' W 104 deg 35.4'. The 24 hour run from yesterday was 193.3 miles. For you non-sailors, that is a lot. Annette celebrated yesterday's record (for us) run by baking blueberry muffins for breakfast. Much appreciated by all. We reefed down during the night as the wind picked up a little. Annette was delighted to find 1 flying fish and 6 small squid on the deck that had come aboard during the night. Now she has bait! S/V "Farne" caught a Mahi

Mahi yesterday, so the competition is heating up. Just after noon today, there was a load "bang" and Attila came flying off the cockpit bench where she had been sleeping. A few minutes examination of the area revealed that Annette's new fishing rig had been ripped off and eaten by something. The bait worked! Attila is not too happy about the interruptions. Twice today water slopped over the side due to our sail angle and landed on her. She looks most offended but insists on laying at the "open" end of the cockpit because it is cooler.

As I write this we are 1,997 miles from Hiva Oa. One third of the way!

0715 hours completed our first week at sea. Our position was S 06 deg 09' W 107 deg 38.3'. We have traveled 1,046 miles from Isabella, Galapagos and I realized we had finally reached the longitude of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yesterday it rained like crazy and we finally washed off some of the dirt we had acquired in Panama from the burning cane fields. Unfortunately we lost our great wind that has been driving us but we picked up a favorable current of nearly 2 knots that S/V "Farne" had reported during our morning radio chat. This helped our day's run for yesterday to total 189 miles.

Annette had set her fishing lines with freshly donated bait as I reported yesterday. This was so successful that in the afternoon a second loud "bang" announced that she had lost the second rig. When I mentioned this to Farne, they said they had landed one fish and lost another four rigs. They have quit fishing since they are out of line.

I have seen no whales despite several serious watching sessions lasting well over 20 minutes each. I assume that we must be passing these pods during the night.

Watch keeping at night demands a great deal of faith. With an overcast sky you see zip visually, just a huge heaving black void out there. We rely completely upon our radar and hope to be able to distinguish between floating objects and rainstorms. Typically we set a timer and check every 20 minutes with the radar set to a 12 mile range. The set has an automatic alarm setting but we have had so many false alarms due to squalls, we have been running with the alarm turned off. We also close off the forward part of the boat at night with it's watertight door.

During the day we tend not to be as vigilant since one assumes one would see the shipping. Annette was surprised today to see a large orange freighter slide by a couple of hundred yards away this morning. It had been disguising itself as a rain shower.

0715 hours found us at S 06 deg 45.1' W 110 deg 32.3'. Our 24 hour run was 176 miles but we don't expect to do as well over the next few days. The wind has rotated around to a "broad reach" and our helpful current has disappeared completely. We woke to towering swells in the 10 to 12 foot range from behind. To put this in perspective, the safety rail is about 6 foot above the water line when you are safely moored somewhere. A 6 foot swell approaches you to within a foot or so of the stern and you are expecting to get smacked in the face with a quantity of sea-water, when it slides quietly below the stern. With a 12 foot swell you are looking up at this wall of gray water as it sweeps towards you. The stern of the boat lifts and the boat seems to plunge forwards. Then there is a lurch as the stern is pushed to the side and the boat tries to broach (go sideways to wave - bad thing) followed by a sort of weaving, settling motion on the back of the wave as it goes by. This was fine until about 3 a.m. when things appeared to get worse. I found it hard to sleep as the rigging was slammed from side to side. At some point in the morning, I discovered that the auto-pilot reaction time was set to very slow (a number "2" speed setting) which was aggravating the motion described above. It appears that Annette wanted to turn up the display light on the auto-pilot display during her watch. She had seen me press the buttons to set a number "2" on the display screen, so she paged through the options until she found the screen with all the numbers and set it to "2." They should make these things more user friendly!

0715 found us at S 06 deg 36.4' W 113 deg 16.2'. We covered 163 miles in the 24 hour run. The swells were smaller than the day before (or are we just getting used to them?) so we were able to sail a direct course for the Marquesas on a broad reach. At 1715 (Houston time) we passed the half way point between Galapagos and Marquesas, after nine and a half days of sailing. The celebration is planned for tomorrow! In the afternoon we actually saw the sun. This added to a pleasant day of sailing. We flew our mizzen ballooner most of the day until the wind picked up in the late afternoon and we had to take it down. We got it back in its locker without getting it wet. I think this is the first time that has ever happened.

I had been planning on using the sextant I have on board, to compute a daily position. From the log, I see we have had almost continuous cloud cover since 3/12/2004. Eight days of dead reckoning?

A lot of cruisers depend upon solar panels for charging the batteries. The Amel depends upon a 7kW diesel generator which we run for 4 hours per day. The power consumption of three freezer / refrigerators plus the navigation instruments and autopilot, draw current at about 10 amperes. This is 240 ampere hours per day - all at 24 volt. The generator provides power to two battery chargers, a 50 ampere plus a 30 ampere, and it takes both at 4 hours per day to replace the power drawn. The good news is I found a tub of ice cream today that had been overlooked at the bottom of the freezer. Ice cream is what sailing is all about.

Attila was the first to spot a huge pod of 50 plus dolphins who visited us just before dusk. We were surrounded, engulfed etc. Really neat.

0715 found us at S 06 deg 57.3' W 155 deg 57.9' a 24 hour run of 162 miles. 1364 to go to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas!

0715 hours found us at S 7 deg 32.9' W 121 deg 25.1'. Yesterday's run was 155 miles. The winds were lightish all day and ranged from a beam reach through to a dead run. There were several rain cells that passed during the day and the wind would shift back and forth as they floated by. The day was partly sunny and pleasant sailing overall. We flew our mizzen ballooner (a kind of spinnaker that flies from the rear mast) most of the day with the Genoa poled out in front.

In the evening, I listened briefly to the BBC world news. It turns out that although they had news, none of it was new. This is the first "news" I have listened to in several months and I believe I will try again in another couple of months - just to see if anything has changed.

Attilla has been avidly dolphin watching this entire trip and she is much better at seeing them than we are. High pitched squeaks?? Anyway, last night on Annette's watch, Attilla noticed a large pod of dolphins. There is no moon and the sky has been overcast so the Pacific is very dark at night. Annette said she could see the dolphins even when they were swimming deep in the water by the tubes of phosphorescent light they left behind them.

We have pretty much decided to put in at Fatu Hiva as a first landfall. It is not legal to stop there as a first landfall but the cruiser HF radio network reports that there has been no retaliation in the form of fines - at least for the last dozen or so boats putting in there. Fatu Hiva lies at the southeast end of the island chain, so if you legally check in somewhere else, it is then directly against the wind and current to get back there. As I write this, we are 988 miles away - two thirds of the way across this leg of the Pacific. We will probably arrive next Tuesday morning if we continue at the same rate of about 150 miles per day.

0715 hrs. and we are at S 07 deg 56.8' W 123 deg 58.4'. We ran 154 miles in the preceding 24 hours.

This morning had an exciting beginning. Last night Annette had noticed that the seam along the foot of the big Genoa was hanging loose. We inspected it and saw that the material was tearing and getting worse, so at dawn we attempted a repair. We had over 20 knots of wind and quite large waves but we furled the Genoa so that the damaged section was right next to the forestay. With harnesses clipped into safety lines, we stood out on the bow in these plunging seas. At one point I held Annette by her safety harness so she could apply both hands to the repair. We used a sail repair tape and so far, it seems to be holding well. This is the same sail that we repaired in Panama (and had inspected!). I think the problem with it, is that since the boat was a demonstrator, the dealer never covered the furled Genoa with its custom sock to protect it from ultra violet radiation damage - probably because it was too much trouble to remove and reinstall when showing the boat to prospective customers. We have already repaired the leech seam and this is now the other exposed seam that is giving us problems. I think our temporary repair will hold until Papeete, where we will try and get a more permanent fix.

S/V "Farne" had made an additional fishing lure and deployed it yesterday on a 150 pound line. This was promptly ripped off by a large something. We have deployed our 85 pound fishing line but have had no bites today, although it has created a lot of interest for the sea-birds. I have read survival books, books about Polynesian navigators etc. and all authors concur that sea birds are not found more than 100 miles from land. Well......someone forgot to tell the birds out here. I counted 22 birds circling in one area and there have never been less than a dozen or so flying around at any particular time during the passage. They even fly around the boat at night making little whistling sounds. We are currently a thousand miles from the nearest land. We still expect a landfall Tuesday morning.

3/25/2004 @ 0715 located us at S 08 deg 25.1' W 126 deg 40.2'. We ran 162 miles for the 24 hours.

We had purchased two greenish looking coconuts in Isabella before we left and decided that today was the day. Annette had been nagging me to buy her a machete for the past several years and so in a moment of weakness, I allowed her to buy one in Kemah, TX from Home Depot. Typically we would lay out the sutures, morphine etc. before letting her loose with such a device but as it was, she held the camera and I attempted to open the gosh, darned thing. I might add that we protected the boat with a scrap of 2 by 6 lumber. The boat was rolling with the swell and I had a bit of a moving target, so to lower the probability of major dismemberment, I jammed a large screwdriver into the coconut, instead of holding it with my hand. A mighty whack with the machete produced a crease about one thirty second of an inch deep. Either the liquid inside the coconut gurgled at that moment or it was chortling. After a couple more machete whacks and without visible damage, Annette suggested I use her butcher's cleaver. This did more damage but the coconut kept dodging the rain of blows and Annette kept clicking away with camera. After about five minutes I was sitting in a circle of coconut fragments ready to pitch the camera overboard but the coconut was open! Surprisingly it was good too, so we added rum to it's contents and got two straws. I still have another undamaged coconut.

Light winds and rolly seas all day. We sailed with the Genoa poled out, mizzen ballooner and mizzen. The main just got in the way so we took it down.

3/27/2004 @ 0715 hours. We were at S 09 deg 04.1' W 130 deg 59.3'. Yesterday's run was 123 miles. As I write this we have about 450 miles to go. The wind died last night and we motored for three hours until it picked up again at 0400 hours. We currently have around 10 knots of wind and are sailing at about 5.5 knots.

The two highlights of yesterday were breakfast - Annette baked "from scratch" tortillas which were combined with peach jelly (jam for UK readers) and for lunch she baked a saffron noodle cake. All you have to do is slow the boat down a knot or two and she has cook-books everywhere!

Howdy, howdy, 3/28/2004 @0715 hours put us at S 09 deg 26.5' W 134 deg 42.2'. We went to engine around 1500 hours on 3/27 when the wind died away. This was not entirely unexpected, as one of the boats that was two days ahead of us, S/V "Chase the Wind," had reported near calm conditions and had switched to engine. S/V "Farne" was only half a day ahead of us and had indicated they would likely try to sail and just wait for the wind to pick up. We therefore anticipated passing them but we never did. At the scheduled radio check in, they admitted they had also switched to motor. The day was therefore hot with a long period roll. This is like looking out over the Salisbury plain or the Texas hill country - except that the rolling hills are moving up and down and taking you with them.

Today, we saw the second ship of the entire passage. It's appearance (I was actually looking for "Farne"), confirmed our suspicion that our radar was no longer working. I will try a master reset on the system after we get to anchor, since this procedure will also wipe out all of the stored navigation I am using.

The further we get from the rest of the world, the more difficult it is to communicate by radio. The radio signals have to "bounce" from the upper ionosphere and are thus dependant upon the bearing between the transmitter and receiver, the time of day as to whether the solar wind has "pushed in" the ionosphere and the frequency of the radio signals. We have been using higher and higher frequencies as we have moved further from land. I noticed that the use of 13 megahertz transmissions shuts down the B & G brand, sailing instruments. Fortunately, I have just had to cycle the power switch and they have come back on line each time. Maybe we have similarly affected the radar. It will be much less hassle if it will come back on line with a "system reset", rather than us having fried something.

So for now, no radar. We must substitute "eyeballs" to look for lights at night.

We dropped anchor in Baie de Vierges, Fatu Hiva at 10.00 a.m. this morning - Tuesday, March 30th. after a passage of 19 days 6 hours from Isabella, Galapagos. We are tucked in this incredible bay between volcanic cliffs so communication by HF radio is impossible. We are down to 25 minutes left on the sat phone for e-mail, so unless Atlantic Radiotelephone gets off their ass, we will be out of communication for a week or so.

We are tired, so will e-mail later about the gendarme, the "Echange," the chicken legs, stream crossings etc.

We are back on the e-mail air! We sailed into Baie de Vierges, Fatu Hiva at 10.00 a.m. March 30th after a passage of 19 days 6 hours from Isabella, Galapagos. Our emotions were extremely confused. The island rises out of the sea as sheer basalt cliffs that are liberally sprinkled with a Hollywood jungle. It just doesn't look real. The coconut palms are everywhere, along with bananas, papayas, lemons, mangoes, breadfruit, guavas etc. The clouds were brooding and hiding the peaks. We hadn't seen land in nearly twenty days so we were part excited and part exhausted. You never sleep properly on the last day.

We had heard from S/V "Chase the Wind" that the gendarme (policeman) here was not very polite or cooperative and had told them to leave the following morning - immediately! As, I mentioned beforeee, this is not a legal landfall - it just happens to be a convenient landfall.

We anchored the boat and went ashore. We were immediately approached by a lady who wanted to do "Echange," that is to barter for anything we had to trade. We told her we would like to trade but first we had to see the gendarme. She introduced us to a gentleman nearby who was lounging against the wall wearing a grubby tee-shirt. I launched into my prepared speech (in French of course) that my wife and I are Americans. We have just arrived from Galapagos by boat. We have a visa but this is the first island that we have landed at. If it is not forbidden, we would like to spend two or three days here. He said immediately, "Vous etes Anglais!" (You are English!). I hadn't said a word in English to this point. Anyway, he said we had to leave in the morning. I said to the effect, we have a small hydraulic problem with the engine - two or three hours to fix at most and we also burned out a navigation light. I had to climb the mast to replace it (I knew climb in French but not mast - with miming, he got it). Two to three hours to fix. 6 hours in total; was there any way he could give us an extra day? "Oh you have a problem with the motor? That is different. Thursday, Friday, whatever you need!"

We visited the lady who met us at the dock and Annette traded a Wal-Mart backpack for some chicken and a stack of fruit. They picked the fruit right off the trees in front of us! At another household, we traded a waterproof bag left over from a kayaking trip, plus a shopping bag, for a really nice rosewood carving of a kava dish (local narcotic drink). The negotiation process was sort of fun. The "other party" consisted of about four adults and they switched to talking Polynesian instead of French, so we wouldn't follow their side of the deal. Annette had a worried look on her face and was feeling pressured in the deal, so I said something like "Shwayuh." This
is Arabic meaning "go slowly." I could tell that Annette knew exactly what I meant but the "other" part all stopped jabbering away in Polynesian and stared at us.

We sealed the deal and walked back through the village. There is a single road and two cars. The road doesn't seem to go anywhere, however. We did see one of the cars motoring slowly the following day. We headed back to DoodleBug and opened a bottle of champagne to drink with our "Echange" fruit and celebrate our arrival. The following morning, Brian of S/V "Farne" said that he came by the boat that afternoon to invite us to a celebration but although he shouted and knocked on the hull, he couldn't raise anyone. He must not have shouted loud enough.

On 3/31/2004 we staggered out of bed and made our "repairs." This consisted of tightening a hydraulic hose that took two minutes and then climbing the mast to change out the bulb in the "steaming light." This was more exciting with the roll in the anchorage. We then gathered our "hiking gear" and set off for a walk to a 200 foot waterfall near the village. We had a cruddy hand written map that was graciously provided by S/V Farne and we thought that if we got lost, we would just go downhill. The hike started on a gravel road, which

deteriorated to a track and this then deteriorated further to a sort of trail marked by ancient petroglyphs and cairns. The trail was steep and climbed up, between and over rocks, tree limbs etc. There was enough challenge to make it a real adventure and yet not too much that Annette, who was wearing a sun dress, couldn't manage. The waterfall tumbled down basalt cliffs into a jungle glade. We had brought a picnic of "Echange" fried chicken but there was no dry place on the island to sit, so we picnicked just standing watching the falls.

@ 0710 hours we raised anchor and set sail for Hiva Oa, an island about 47 miles away and a "legal" landfall. There were rain squalls and the wind was up to 30 knots and such that we were close hauled all the way. This is supposed to be a "downhill" sail with the wind from behind! We dropped anchor at 1500 hours at S 09 deg 48.2' W 139 deg 01.9'. in Atuona Bay. S/V Farne had followed us out of Fatu Hiva and we met at the dingy dock and walked to town together. We found the local gendarme (in uniform) closing his office, so he

told us to come back tomorrow. We found a restaurant and asked if they were open. They said yes but it would take about 30 minutes to get the chef. I asked if they had beer. An affirmative response had us all in armchairs with Heineken and peanuts waiting for supper. I had steak something and Annette had duck in honey wine sauce with the freshest string beans she has ever tasted. The restaurateur drove us back to the dock after the meal.

We rowed to the dock around 0800 hours and shortly after beginning to walk to town, a young French lady stopped and gave us a lift. We checked in with the gendarme and were delighted to find that since we had a visa from Panama, we did not need to post a cash bond of $1,700 that is normally required of US citizens. I remembered the conversation I had had with the French consular official in Panama. He asked me for proof of financial capability. I told him that he already had the papers showing ownership of a 2001 Amel. I told him the boat was built at La Rochelle in France and said, "Have you any idea how much they cost?" Apparently that did the trick.
We then hit the bank and post office. The ONLY Internet connection on the island is at the post office. It was broken.

4/3/2004: We had walked from town to the port yesterday wearing flip-flops and Tevas respectively, so we both had blisters on our feet and weren't in a mood to repeat the process, particularly since it was raining bucket loads, so to speak. Saturday and Sunday were therefore "boat days." We serviced the engine and transmission, swapped the Genoa sheets end for end, to equalize the wear, drank beer, watched movies etc.

Supposedly the town was open again today so we hitch-hiked into town to the post office. We mailed our request for a visa extension and confirmed that the Internet connection was still broken. (We later found out that it has been broken for over 3 months). We hiked up to the High school / Junior college and asked to use their Internet connection. The financial director chewed us out (entirely in French) but finally let us into the library to use their computers. She charged us $10 per hour. My earthlink account had hundreds of e-mails - usual stuff, penile enlargement and Viagra ads, plus warnings from Earthlink that my mailbox is "full." I spent some period of time deleting files but the connection was very slow.

We made the pilgrimage to the local cemetery to visit the grave of Paul Gauguin (painter) and Jaques Brel (singer / poet). Jacques Brel is obviously not as important as Gauguin because although he sang and poeted in French, he was actually a Belgian. The local hardware store sharpened Annette's machete for her (coconuts beware!) and we visited the Gauguin museum. Since we are from Santa Fe, this makes us expert art critics, so we pretty much trashed Gauguin and moved on. We purchased two cases of beer and pretended to be serious about carrying it the two miles or so, back to the port in the pouring rain. After some minutes we caught a ride with the egg delivery guy. I ran into him later at the Mobil station at the port. They have a convenience store attached to the gas station, selling... well, eggs of course, plus sundry food items but NO BEER! What do boats run on? Diesel and beer - come on!!!!

@ 1130 hours we raised anchor and set out for another anchorage on Hiva Oa. As we passed the island of Tahuata, we received a radio call from a boat called "Kahala." The last time we had connected with them had been Panama. They recognized our boat in the distance, since it is a ketch (two masts) and called to say "Hello." We were intending to travel to the Tahuata the following day and

since it was raining again, we decided to change direction and visit friends. We dropped anchor in Hanamoenoa bay on Tahuata at 1430 hours at S 09 deg 54.5' W 139 deg 06.3'. The bay is uninhabited, white sand beach fringed with coconut palms. The water is crystal and diving is supposed to be good here. Our Australian friend on Kahala assures us that although the sharks here are bigger than the Australian sharks, they avoid light areas - so just stay over the white sand areas and you will be fine. Oh...

We woke this morning in a beautiful bay that we were sharing with one other boat - Kahala. The white sand beach was completely deserted. Right after breakfast, Attila started barking and a small skiff came around the headland, anchored near the shore and discharged a single young man, who then headed resolutely for the beach. We got out our dinghy and paddled ashore, landing through the surf onto the sand beach. The young man came out of the undergrowth and helped us haul the dinghy clear of the waves. His name sounds like "Mo Iz" and he is from Fatu Hiva but is staying with a family in the village a couple of miles away around the island. His job is to clear the brush near the beach around the coconut palms. He was completely covered in clothing, with just his face showing and it was obvious why, within a couple of minutes. The beach was swarming with biting insects called no - no's ("les betes" in French). The village collects the coconuts from the plantation behind the beach to make copra (dried coconut). He asked us if we wanted lemons and

began picking them off the tree for us. He also used a long pole to knock down two coconuts that he gave us. I asked him if the reason the beach was uninhabited was because of "let betes," to which he concurred. He said the next bay was infested but not the village or the rest of the island. We were covered liberally in insect repellant including "jungle" nets over our hats and faces, so we walked the beach. It is our opinion that Pandora really messed up. After a while, we hadn't located buried treasure or anything, so we headed back to "DoodleBug," where I tried to read and Annette tried to fish. The fish were ripping lumps off Annette's lures but she couldn't catch anything. DoodleBug was anchored in 30 feet of water, so I modified her cast net for "deep operations" - with the addition of about another 20 feet of line. Within a few minutes the whole island knew she had caught a fish. It was so pretty though and it made little "kissing" noises at us, that we had to put it back. We entertained Kahala and dinner was peanut risotto and steak with Dijon mustard sauce with an Australian Penfolds Merlot.

Annette really got fired up this morning with hand fishing lines. Within half an hour she had caught three fish, one of which was over two feet long. We yelled at Kahala for fish identification and Rob came over to inspect our catch. He was amazed to see what she had

caught and was amused to find out that Annette was using pieces of left over steak as bait. Fishing on DoodleBug is a challenge, since Attila was trying to steal the fish as we were trying to land them and of course was becoming entangled in the fishing line. "Mo Iz" came by in his skiff and told us that the small red fish Annette had caught were good to eat (they were lunch) but that we should not eat the large grouper looking thing (probably because of the risk of ciguatera poisoning).

After lunch we saw several huge Manta rays swimming around the boat. They must have been several yards across. We went snorkeling along the rocky part of the shore later that afternoon but although the Mantas would have been really neat to see up close, I am just as glad we did not encounter large marine fauna while we were mixing it up with them, so to speak.

Last night we had debated the identification of a bright celestial object in the Western sky. It had been suggested it was the new space station with the solar panels extended. Tonight we settled the argument by dragging out the sextant and the almanac and locating Venus within 2 degrees of the computed position. We might have done better but the stars are visible after "happy hour."

Tonight's supper is banana pancakes with tequila lime syrup, bacon, and eggs. I have no idea how she is going to use the leftovers for bait. We leave early tomorrow morning for Ua Pou.

@ 0410, we raised anchor and set sail from Tahuata to Ua Pou, some 65 miles away. It was dark when we began but we hoped we could arrive at the anchorage at Baie D'Hakahau in daylight. For the first hour or so, the winds were light and variable and the Genoa needed to be poled out to stop it from thrashing and possibly becoming damaged. We were sleepy and didn't fancy messing around with the pole system in the dark, so we decided to motor-sail until dawn. At dawn, the winds picked up nicely to the 12 to 14 knot range and shifted to a beam reach, so we just turned the motor off and sailed!

We arrived off Ua Pou in the early afternoon. All of the islands are volcanic but Ua Pou has these magnificent spires of volcanic plugs, reaching up from the greenery and burying their heads in the clouds. We anchored in the small enclosed bay at 1530 hours at S 09 deg 21.5' W 140 deg 02.9' a hundred yards or so off the beach with bow and stern anchors to hold us pointing into the swell.

We launched our dinghy and headed into town. The gendarme was very pleasant and gave us all sorts of directions to restaurants, stores, and internet. The sole internet access to the island had closed 30 minutes earlier and since it was Good Friday, would not open again until the Tuesday after Easter. We found a small bar / restaurant that we convinced to serve us both beer and supper. The owner of the restaurant is one of the local politicians. We had an interesting discussion regarding Marquisian politics. When he mentioned "Independence," he about passed out when I asked if this meant independence from France. "Oh no, independence from Tahiti." Many of their goods are supplied by France and he explained that the ships leave Marseille, France, pass through the Panama canal, and then pass through the Marquises on their way to Tahiti. The goods are then transshipped back to Marquises from Tahiti but the freight cost from Tahiti to the Marquises is the almost the same dollar amount as from Marseille to Tahiti thereby doubling the freight cost from France.

He complained about the price of a beer in The Marquises versus say Hawaii but was uncomprehending when I asked why they don't get a micro-brewery here. I mentioned the one we had visited in Grand Cayman which was operated by a single employee.

We went back into town for a little grocery shopping and then visited the local church. They tossed us out of there, as they were decorating the inside and outside of the church for Easter services but we confirmed the time of the Sunday service. We found an automotive looking store that was open, where we were unable to rent a car but we negotiated an automobile tour of the Island for Monday by the owner's nephew.

In the evening we entertained Rob of S/V "Carmelita." Rob's dinghy is named "Good Times" but "Good Times" seems to be slowly sinking and insisted upon beating itself against the Amel like it wanted to come aboard.

We cleaned ourselves up like Christians and rowed our dinghy back to the beach. We were only slightly late for the Easter service but the ushers grabbed us and stuffed us into a pew. We had heard wonderful things about the Marquisian singing and what we have heard was truly understated. The voices soared and harmonized - not the Anglo version of pretending you know the words or can carry a tune in a bucket - the congregation really sang. Most of the service was in the Marquisian language with just the reading of the scriptures in French, so we really didn't know what we were being exhorted to do (or not do) but were definitely being exhorted. The pulpit was an elaborate wooden carving of the bow of a ship upon the waves, with the various creatures of the earth below it. The women's dresses ran towards large flower prints or geometric patterns and many of the women wore flower leis around their heads or just a single exotic flower. The men were wearing flowered shirts or Tee shirts. The whole church had been decorated with flowers and palm fronds braided around the uprights and intertwined with more flowers.

After the service we tracked down Monday's driver to confirm our departure time. He was running an errand, so we sat and watched his buddies barbeque a whole pig and bought them some beer. It was then explained to me that they do drink beer when they are barbequing but not at the beginning of the operation. Since the procedure takes about 4 hours, they said it is not uncommon to get totally wasted on the beer and the pig is reduced to charcoal. Same in the USA.

0600 hrs. At yesterday's pig roast, we had confirmed our scheduled island tour with our driver several times. "Can you be ready at 6:00 a.m.?", he had asked. 0600 hours therefore found us standing around in the dark at a deserted restaurant, where he had asked us to meet. After 40 minutes we gave up and were walking away, when a few houses away, Annette spotted a lady gardening. We asked her if she knew our driver. She did and indicated where he lived. We went over to his house and "roused the household." A man came to the balcony of his home, wearing his skivvies and admitted that our tour guide lived there. The man was his father and also turned out to be the local "pol" we had met the night we arrived. "Please wait," he said. About ten minutes later, he boiled out of there in a Land Rover 4 x 4. His son hadn't returned from last night's party and he was going to get him. Poor start.

We finally left and headed out of the bay where we had anchored, up a steep dirt road in the pouring rain. The road deteriorated into a trail not much wider than the Land Rover. There were rivulets that had cut across the road, streams that we had to cross which were boiling with rain water and small landslides, and boulders on the road that had washed off the precipitous hillside in the rain. Exciting! The Land Rover ground it's way upwards in 4 wheel drive, low ratio, bouncing and sliding. We bounced and slid around inside. After about an hour, we descended almost vertically into a small village on the east coast. By now it was lunch-time, so we picnicked on a lunch of left-over pig from yesterday's barbeque (Annette had been lusting over that pig for nearly 24 hours), breadfruit, and poisson cru. There was a small festival going on in the village celebrating "First Communion" of several children from that village and the adjacent village. It was very much a community affair with singing, speeches (of which we understood not a single word of Marquesian), and a huge feast laid on. We were invited to join the feast but since we had just finished our lunch, had to decline.

The village fishermen still used dug-out "out-rigger" canoes and the village also had on display a couple of large smooth boulders with various grooves and hollows in them. These were used for grinding baked breadfruit or bending wood according to which groove you chose.

We left the village and next visited a beach with "paepaes," which are stone platforms used as the foundations of ancient homes. How anyone could get canoes on and off that beach through the surf is a mystery to me. While mosquitoes feasted on us, we wandered up

and down the beach looking for "flower stones." This is a particular type of brown rock with embedded yellow crystals in the shape of flowers. We didn't find any but on the return journey, our guide stopped at a home and asked permission of the owner to view his collection of "flower stones," which we then did.

Next we visited the "Valley of the Kings" where human cannibal sacrifices were made. The site had huge multi-level "paepaes" where the king lived and held court. The site was rambling and in poor condition, as to being heavily overgrown with jungle and was also swarming with a dense cloud of mosquitoes. The owner of the property walked around shirtless and seemed unaffected by the little beasts. The ruins had some Tikis (Ancient stone carvings) in poor condition, as the other Tikis had been stolen in recent years

by souvenir hunters. We escaped from this site with considerably less blood than when we arrived and headed to another beach. Here, the Land Rover was forded across a river and we viewed ancient dry stone walls enclosing an area bounded by the ocean and partitioning the steep sided valley. These walls were built to contain livestock and were dry stacked of rounded basalt boulders. About this time our beer chromosomes were screaming, so we told our guide we needed basic sustenance and headed back to town.

We had waited since Friday for the sole Internet connection to open. It was now Tuesday. I logged onto the computer but after 20 minutes gave up. It was excruciatingly slow and just hung on certain sites. The pictures were downloading at 2 bytes per minute and 10 dollars per hour. We had to go to the post office to send a single page fax to the USA. This cost $15 to send and took nearly three days to arrive. The 22nd century has yet to completely arrive in the Marquises Islands.

We spent the rest of the day provisioning the boat. Annette fooled around with food and fruit and I bought 3 cases of beer at $2.50 per 11 ounce can. What is interesting is that you cannot normally buy fruit in the islands. Everyone has fruit growing in their garden, so the shops do not bother to sell it. Annette however negotiated with the store owner for a supply of various fruits to be delivered in the morning.

S/V Farne had unexpectedly appeared in the anchorage, so we all went out to a restaurant for "local food." The four of us shared "poisson cru" (raw fish prepared in a similar fashion to ceviche but with coconut milk) eaten with fresh bananas, goat curry, octopus, and a dish of red bananas and breadfruit. The octopus was surprisingly good and I overcame my gag reflex to have seconds.

We dropped anchor this afternoon at Nuka Hiva. S 08 deg 54.9' W 140 deg 06.0'. Will write more later. This is the last island before we leave for the Tuamotus.

1200 hours we raised anchor and set sail for Nuku Hiva, a run of 30 miles or so. We had a terrible time recovering the stern anchor in Ua Pou and were sweating blood when we finally got it aboard. Anchor, chain, rode, dinghy and dog were finally tumbled into a messy pile on the rear deck and we sailed across the water to Nuku Hiva and anchored in Baie de Tahiohae at 1630 hours S 08 deg 54.9' W
140 deg 06.0'. This is a large bay and had forty plus sail boats scattered around in it. We anchored next to a British ketch, so we dinghied over to say "hello." Doug was the owner and had a single crew member, Patrick who is from Maine. Patrick had "jumped ship" 30 days earlier from a Dutch boat, that he had originally joined in Panama. This vessel had then bypassed the Galapagos and taken 49 days to reach the Marquesas. We thought our 19 day run was a bit too long.

We grocery shopped, filled up on diesel at US$4.50 per gallon versus the US$1.10 of the Galapagos, and had a terrific lunch. Annette had a fish in a vanilla cream sauce and I had veal "Normandie" with les pommes frites (well....French fries). A fellow yachtsman - Dave with "Scaramouche" - later stopped by to say "hello." Dave had met us in Grand Cayman and again in the Galapagos.

We must be hard to forget, particularly since Dave had had to fish Annette out of the marina in Cayman after she jumped in to rescue one of Attilla's dog toys that had been dropped overboard.

We took a day tour of the island by "Jocelyne" in her Land Rover. We were joined by a couple from Paris who had flown down for their two week vacation. We visited one of the most significant archeological sites on the North side of the island. The site had been extensively restored and sported several "Tikis" that looked centuries old but were in fact made about a decade ago. There was an immense (sacred of course) Banyan tree at the sacrificial altar site, plus pits nearby to hold the human sacrifices. I am usually skeptical about such claims but the archeological team who restored the site a decade or so ago, found the tree and victim pits, still full of human bones and slave butchering tools.

We also visited two local Catholic churches. I was impressed at the way the Catholic church had used a large stone artifact from one of the ancient sites as a baptism font. The sacristy in this church was also ringed in red stone, used by the ancient (cannibal) Polynesians for their sacred places. There was a Madonna and child carved from a single piece of Rosewood. I was pleased to see that artist had abandoned tradition by having the child holding a breadfruit and that the Madonna had her foot on the head of the serpent representing Satan. Since there are no snakes in the Marquises, the artist really didn't know what a snake looked like, so the snake had a full set of teeth like a dog.

We drove around the Bay where the young Herman Melville jumped ship from a whaling vessel and also the valley where he had hidden for three weeks. This was also the valley used for the television series "Survivor" (I have never seen it). It didn't seem too tough surviving on an island covered in all sorts of fruit and coconut trees and with feral pigs and chickens everywhere, plus abundant fresh water.

Annette had heard there was an open-air "market" on one of the wharfs around 0400 hours, so we climbed into our dinghy and set off to find it. In hindsight, it would have been better to take a couple of decent flashlights with us, to avoid running into darkened shapes such as anchored boats. We didn't hit any but this was solely due to judicious use of "the force." We got to the wharf but there was not a spark of light and we were about to turn away, when Annette spotted some dark shapes moving on the wharf. We found the market but it seemed to be conducted in total darkness. You find out what you bought, when you get home and similarly, the sellers find out what you paid them. Annette bought a bag containing 10 lobsters for $30. She was horrified to realize they were all still alive and when she asked the vendor how to prepare them, he just laughed.

We raised anchor at around 1500 hours and motor-sailed 5 miles or so into a pretty bay called "Daniel's Bay." We were the only boat in the Bay at S 08 deg 56.7' W 140 deg 09.8'. That evening's supper was......fresh lobster! This was in a creamed Chardonnay sauce with ginger rice with smoked dried bananas. No hard-tack here!