Iles Marquises also known as Marquesas Islands

MARQUESAS ISLANDS

We settled into life on board.  Our daily routine became coffee at around 6.00 a.m. as we watched the sun rise.  Arti couldn’t resist the wonderful sunrises, and sunsets, so we have many, many photos of them both.   After coffee came breakfast, our usual bowl of homemade muesli and yoghurt.  Thereafter it was dishes, tidying up the bunny blankets and harnesses etc. which we had used in the night, showers and doing any repairs necessary that we were able to do while under way.  Thereafter we settled down to reading, downloading weather gribs, Arti did some knitting and we caught up on sleep.  We always needed daytime naps to catch up on sleep after night watches.

On the way to the Marquesas

We  alternated 6 hour night watches, one night doing the early watch, 6pm. to midnight and the next doing the midnight to 6am.  The swell on this leg was very uncomfortable.  It became impossible to lie along the length of the boat as it was rocking side to side too violently from the beam swell and we had also developed a knocking in the back cabin, so we could not sleep on the bed there which was the best position for the beam swell.  We hunted high and low to find where the knocking was coming from.  The inside of the boat is like the inside of a musical instrument, in which the sound radiates. We eventually decided that the noise was coming from our steering gear, the gears of which are under the bed in the aft cabin.  We managed to contact a technician from Lewmar the maker, who suggested we tighten all the bolts. This did not help either. 

Swallow tailed gull which flies at night as well as during the day

We resorted to putting a mattress down sideways on the floor of the saloon and there we both slept for the rest of the three week journey, until we reached an anchorage to fix it

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We arrived in Taiohae, the capital of Nuku Hiva, the main island, early in the morning.  We slowed the boat over the last night so that we would arrive in daylight.  We were looking forward to calm water as we were very tired of the beam swell but unfortunately the bay we anchored in was open to the south and the swell continued rolling in.

Taiohae, the capital of Nuku Hiva

We had once again snapped the halyard for the Code Zero sail during this leg so Dimitri needed to go up the mast to replace it.  This is not an easy feat when the boat is rolling as the pendulum effect is magnified up the mast.  Arti tried to keep the nose of the boat into the swell while Dimitri did this but still he was thrown around and come down bruised and battered. The anchor chain was still down in all this so manoeuvring was limited.  We could only move a little forward before having to reverse again.  We had neglected to tie the dinghy on the side of the yacht and with all the reversing, the dinghy line got snagged by the propeller shaft and was cut.  We did not notice our dinghy floating away until a boat further out hailed us and said they had our dinghy.  We were very grateful to them as our dinghy was on its way out to sea, with no chance of acquiring another until a ship arrived from Papeete, Tahiti, several weeks later.

We took a tour of Nuku Hiva with a French expatriate lady.  She was very knowledgeable, telling us the Polynesian history, explaining the ancient ruins to us, showing us various plants that were used as poisons, hallucinogens and dyes and pointing out the various tropical birds. The Polynesians used to be cannibals. When they captured their enemy, they would drug several with a hallucinogen and then choose one for sacrifice. They would lie his head on a curved block of stone and then bash his head with a war club.  The important people, king and nobility, would then eat his eyes, heart and liver.  The eyes were considered the font of knowledge, the heart bravery and the liver strength. After this, they believed, droughts would end, fishing get better, be healthier or whatever the current need was. His remains would be put into a Banyan tree, which in the east is considered a link between the heavens and earth and thus sacred. We saw the platforms, prison pit, curved stone and Banyon trees. To avoid a family losing all its males, every family would bring up the first born male as a woman, in case all remaining males died in battle or were sacrificed so as to keep the family line going (only captured male warrior enemies were sacrificed, hence the need for constant raids and warfare), These feminized male individuals are highly sort after today, as they continue this custom, as cooks, cleaners and waiters.

Another feature of there culture is tattooing. They were a stone culture, and some stones on tattoo platforms had holes for the plant based ink. The tattoos would illustrate the achievements of the individual, and were on both sexes.Circumcision and tattooing would indicate passage into adulthood. At this stage, they would be give a pony, in Raiatea a canoe, and in Tonga, land.

 Because of the high rainfall, Nuku Hiva has many waterfalls.  The day we took the tour it was raining quite hard and many waterfalls had appeared along the way where they had not been the day before.  Once we moved off the coast, the rain settled and we had a wonderful day, walking about in villages, seeing the Polynesian influence in the churches and we had a lovely Polynesian meal on a beachfront.

The Marquesas Islands are very beautiful. They are mountainous and densely covered in vegetation. They have a lot of rain and the islands are dependant on rainfall for all their drinking water.

Fishing boats come into the port in the morning and the fishermen then fillet and clean the fish on the dock.  When we were there, they had beautiful tuna which they were selling for $2-3/kilo.  They were throwing the left over bits into the water.  Silky sharks have learnt that they do this at a particular time of day and several large ones were there, eating whatever was thrown into the water.  It would not  have been a good time to take a tumble off the dinghy!

Filiting tuna on the dock

When we cleared into French Polynesia, not being Eu citizens, we had to pay a bond which came to approximately $2,000.00 each. This we would only get back if we did not overstay our visa and we had to nominate the island of departure from French Polynesia.  We chose Raiatea as we were sure that we could get fuel alongside there.