swell rolling is an uncomfortable way of life.
Wind Wanderer is sluggish and seems to be reluctant to have her freedom curtailed
by an anchor again. 4.5 knots is about all we can get out of her with the occasional
outburst to 5. Although we’re on reduced sail I would have expected a bit better.
With less than 150 miles to Nuku Hiva it was time to do some serious calculating
so we’d get there in daylight, and our best course was to head a little more south,
which eased the rolling too. We’d skip between Fatu Huka, a tiny dot of a rocky island
on the map, and Hiva Oa, a very large island, then swing north west for a heading
directly to Nuku Hiva and a morning arrival around 9am.
Early on Tuesday morning we were in the cockpit discussing our course, Sandy was
very worried that we’d run into ‘that little rock’ and that the gap between it and
Hiva Oa was narrow.
Well she happened to look up and there, 14 miles away was a mountain of rock
rising 1000 ft straight up out of the sea. A huge dome shaped thing that was a
magnificent sight, our first sight of land in 30 days.
We were hit by a wave of excitement that neither of us had expected. It’s hard to
look cool when you’re jumping up and down. But it was a real emotional reaction.
We’d made it.
The longest passage ever tackled by most cruisers and probably the longest
we’ll ever make.
Slowly we drifted by the ‘rock’ with the big island of Hiva Oa just a smudge
in the haze on our port side.
Once clear of Fatu Huka we nursed our torn yankee and mizzen sails across to port
and found we could set a heading directly for Taiohae Bay, our anchorage destination
on Nuku Hiva. We still had a night to get through with a few islands
to miss on the way, but it went like clockwork and we even took in the mizzen
sail to slow us down to around 3.5 knots for a dawn landfall.
We eventually set our anchor in a beautiful, protected bay at around 11am.
The village has about 2000 people and is typical of the westernized villages
that have replaced the ‘traditional’ villages. Those are on the more remote
islands of the Pacific and more so in some countries, like Fiji, than others.
The people are really friendly and the warm welcoming smiles are genuine.
The good thing is that they’ve also stopped eating new arrivals too.
Although in the last year or two a yachtsman went pig hunting with a local
here and never came back. His ‘guide’ just said there’d been a terrible accident,
and then disappeared. Investigators later found a human jawbone in a burnt
out fireplace in the bush. We don’t have time to hunt pigs here anyway.
We were not expecting to get much done here, but within half an hour of
getting ashore we met Kevin, a Californian who married a local girl and
lives here. It looks like we may be able to get the yankee sail stitched and
the furler mandrel repaired for the trip to Tahiti.
It’s a huge relief. He is also able to help with a bunch of other stuff relating
to the visitor bond requirements etc.
We were shocked to see the outside of the boat as we launched the dinghy.
There is brown scummy slime for 6 inches above the waterline, but the
biggest shock was finding we have some kind of shell creature an inch long
growing by the acre under the boat, and we had the bottom cleaned just a
month ago! It’s no wonder she’s been sluggish.
We’ll have the bottom nice and clean before we leave for Tahiti.
Fortunately, these critters come off easily.
With any luck and a bit of hard work we should be patched up and on our
way in a few days.
Until next time...