By Grant
So its been a while and as you all know when you are having too much fun you have no time to write and that is certainly true here. The last I wrote was about crossing the Pacific and fixing my windlass. Well the crossing the Pacific is definitely done but fixing the windlass is still a project. More on this later. It is weird how I crave to just sit with a coffee and write but sadly living on a boat as amazing as it is and sounds is not a place where time is endless and days are spent reading in a hammock. Sometimes yes, but other times fixing your boat, planning days and teaching kids just somehow gets in the way.
I am no expert on Geography and frankly I knew very little of the Pacific. And if you happen to know lots probably skip a paragraph. However, these little collection of Islands in the far North East of French Polynesia called Marquesas are incredible. Little islands of fertility filled with fruit, love and creative people. I don’t think they really compare to anywhere we have ever been and standout for their uniqueness. If you go into Google you will need to zoom and zoom and zoom until you find them and be careful not to move the mouse because they will disappear like they were never there. There are really just 6 bigger islands and a few smaller (not really inhabited) islands. Each have their uniqueness and a visit certainly requires you to explore them all and we certainly did.
Fatu Hiva, Hiva Oa, Tahuata, Ua Haka, Nuka Hiva and finally Ua-Pou. Quite a mouthful and certainly took us a while to get our mouths around them all but over time we got them and loved them all. What really stood out for us about these Islands was the cleanliness and incredibly well kept nature of the islands. Obviously these are tiny communities and very very far from the rest of the world. Hard to imagine a place further to be honest but yet their respect for the environment and love of their own property was incredible to see. Quite stark in comparison to places we have been in the Caribbean for example or even my own continent Africa.
And then there is the fruit… OMG (excuse me using this teenage acronym but somehow is you imagine me saying it OH MY GOD which big eyes and all you will understand why it is so apt. Never have I seen a place with such abundance of fruit. You simply just walk and eat. Mangos, Lemons, Oranges, Pampamoos, Guava, Grapefruit, Limes, Pears, Avocado in abundance. Its like the Garden of Eden. Very easy to imagine living in such a wondrous place. Then there are the mountains. Massive and imposing and each of the islands seen to have a range running mostly north south with mythical escarpments on the windward (east) side and equally jagged slopes on the west leading down to the lush green lower slopes on the leeward side which gets all the rain. For this of you familiar to Cape Town you get a little similarity to the Atlantic seaboard and Newlands and Constantia as the breadbasket on the rainy side. Almost all civilisation is on the leeward side with a few villages per island. The first island we stopped was called Fatu Hiva and the oppressive cloud which hangs over the mountain didn’t bode well with me largely because it effected my ability to make solar power but this unique topography also eludes itself to catabolic winds which whip down the mountain in fitful gusts. Never stable never the same but bursts of energy which always seem to surprise you. And I guess because we are on a yacht can frighten you. Frankly, it is safe to say I don’t like catabolic winds unless we are talking about Eric in Vasiliki but that is another story for another day (for those interested you could probably find a post about it when we were in Greece but you can also just google Eric Vasiliki).
So the windlass. I wont bore you to death about windlasses anymore but it is safe to say that I am now, maybe not an expert in the true sense, but certainly bloody close to being one in fixing these blessed machines. After another 2 or 3 times completely dismantling the windlass, the motor and pretty much everything I finally managed to get a fairly reliable windlass again. I must thank Alex and Simon for their grunt and help because I had a sore hand (ill explain) and some of the jobs I couldn’t do. They were marvellous company and not too bad handlangers (Afrikaans), Xiaogong (Mandarin) and weirdly I don’t actually know the right word in English to describe. So I will just leave it there. Hehe.
The Marquesas was also very sad because it was finally time to say bye bye to Big Alex. What a fixture of this boat. It is only after he has left do you realise the presence he had on SV Arabella. To find him sitting in his office in the morning having his coffee and vice. To his running shoes lying in the sun airing, to always seeing him doing the dishes and for my wonderful backgammon companion. It is not easy to live with someone in your home for more than 6 months and I am not an easy person. I guess this is a testament to what a wonderful person Alex is. He wasn’t just a passenger or crew he was simply part of the family. We all miss you Alex and hope to invite you back when we cross the Indian Ocean.
Sharks, sharks and Manta Rays. The first thing that hits you when you arrive in French Polynesia (FP) is the abundance of sharks. They are everywhere. Big small, cute and scary. They are always around the boat, they are often on the end of your fishing line, they are simply a fixture of FP. After a while you really start to watch them and the whole process can become mesmerising. But in the Marquesas the water isn’t always very clean. It can be a little murky from the huge mountains on the islands and murky waters plus sharks make you feel a little nervous. Well not just a little but quite a lot so frankly in the Marquesas we didn’t swim very much. The place is all about the land which is amazing. Except for the Manta Rays. Wow what incredible species they are. So majestic and chilled. So big!. Some we have seen are at least 7m across. And the just glide through the water effortlessly. And the best is to see them when they are feeding with their massive mouths open collecting tiny plankton. I was scooting along holding onto the Seabob when I a huge Manta was coming towards me. He seems completely oblivious to me and I gelt like I was going straight into his mouth. Fortunately at the last moment he changed course and swam away. It felt like I could see all his insides his mouth was so big.
As many of you know I like to dabble in a little woodwork. So our latest little project was the hammock. Nothing is a simple as it seems at first but in this case it was no different but what a wonderful fun project to do with the kids. Effectively we collected loads of driftwood from the beaches and then cut them up, drilled holes, sanded them and then strung them together. In total I thinks we had around 300 pieces of wood to make our hammock. I can imagine that many would think a hammock made of wood cannot be comfy but you would be soooo wrong. It is deliciously comfy and has become a popular spot.
So back to the fruit. We couldn’t possibly leave the Marquesas without seriously loading up with fruit for ourselves and the folks in Tuamotus who don’t have much fruit. But it was the genius of my wife to come up with a whole bunch of ways to prepare and preserve fruit. But firstly we need to pick and buy what we could. The mango hunting was something else. Hundreds of kilograms of mangos were picked and carried to our boat. And then the serious production of peeling and cutting. I must say I was very involved in the collection but far less in the preparation. This was Arabella, Alex and mostly Delphine. We ended up freezing loads of pre prepared smoothies, we canned mango and we even tried drying mango. Quite a production but also such bliss and enjoyment eating and drinking them. And then when we finally got to the Tuamotus we enjoyed giving dozens and dozens of Pampamnous to the local school.
One day whilst exploring on the dingy, Simon and I noticed a dive site recoded on Navionics. The message was that at around 20m are 2 huge caves. We didn’t hestitate and the next day we dived the caves. WOW!. Inside were hundreds of Crayfish everywhere. Above you, below you and basically all around you. It was too much for us to cope and we took 2 each because we had no bags. But don’t worry we came back the next day to get more to fill our freezer.