We spent the last several days on the island of Nuku Hiva in Marquesas. Baie de Taiohae is a main harbor with a small town where we spent most of our time. We found this harbor to have lots of sea life. A few days ago we had a 5ft Hammerhead shark come right to the boat and swim around. He was the only one swimming for awhile after that! Then two days later we woke up to 8-10 Manarays swimming and feeding all around the boat. It was amazing. They hung around so long Gary jumped in with his snorkel gear on to get an up close look. Two of the rays swam right to him and appeared to be putting on a show turning and flipping every which way for him. After all of this, Mike wanted to clean the hull, which must be done quite often to keep the algae and barnacles from growing. It entails getting in the water and scrubbing the sides by hand. Well….being the Nervous Nellie that I am, I kept watch for sharks while Mike scrubbed. He no sooner finished and sat on the step to remove his fins when a very large “gray thing” appeared to have followed him. At my yelp, he lifted his feet out of the water and won’t be doing that again anytime soon!

We decided to stay anchored there because we wanted to see how the French celebrated Bastille Day, Polynesian style. We were told it was a big celebration so we were excited. To start, we missed the small parade that started at 7am and the speeches by the local politicians, of course in French. We ended up going to town around 10am and went into the large tent the locals had put up a few days before in preparation. Here they have live, local music, lots of flowers and greens decorated the tent as well. The women and girls all dressed in festive Polynesian garb with leis and wreaths of flowers on their heads. The men wore lots of large ivory necklaces, handmade of course. It appeared that the locals all bring homemade cakes and breads for all to eat. (There is no wonder you don’t see many thin Polynesians!) We helped ourselves to the treats and mostly just people watched and waited to see what was to come next. Slowly the crowd of a few hundred dwindled down, only to find out that was it! Celebration over. The few stores they have in town were closed for the holiday so there wasn’t much else to do. We passed a few boaters on their way to town only to tell them they missed out too. We were all disappointed but oh well…..we ended up making our own celebration on the boat and toasted the French with wine and played Ten Thousand (our favorite dice game introduced by Gary) until the wee hours. The next morning we rose to finish provisioning, said good bye to some friends and set sail for the island of Ua Pou, pronounced Wapoo.

Ua Pou is only 25 miles south of Huku Niva so it was a quick 4 hour sunny sail. We are anchored in a small (one boat) lagoon with lots of protection for the Pacific swells.
There is lots of vegetation, cliffs and mountain goats around us. Not much else here so we will be heading to the Tuamotu Atolls Islands. The definition of an Atoll is and island of coral that encircles a lagoon partially or completely subset in a special class of islands, the unique property of which is the presence of an organic reef – or a chain of volcanic islands. These 30 or so small islands are still part of French Polynesia. These islands differ from what we have seen so far as they are relatively flat without much vegetation and no mountains. Sailing is adventurous as you must keep watch for the many reefs and must enter at only high tide. Diving is supposed to be spectacular. We will set sail again Friday or so for the 3.5 day sail to the atolls. Life is Good…..Love to all…