Time seems to fly by, and it is already two weeks since I last did an update. I have to say it is an enormous relief to be at anchor in flat calm. I so often type while I'm at sea, which means lots of corrections, as fingers slide onto wrong letters with each lurch of the boat, and I try to brace myself to stay in one position!

Gus left us in Niku-Hiva, the northern most Marquesan island that we planned to visit, and also the capital. He was the perfect tolerant and helpful crew, by whom all others will be judged! How he stuck us so good humouredly for 6 weeks is a miracle!

Not to mention his fish catching abilities, which we really appreciated. For info, the fish species caught were: 3 Skipjack tuna, 2 Bullet Mackerel, 2 Dorado (Mahi-Mahi) - all good eating - 1 Snake Mackerel (very nasty) 1 Barracuda .(even nastier). After we reached the Marquesas Islands we caught more Skipjacks, Yellow-Fin Tuna and a Wahoo - which were all delicious !

Walking ashore on first arrival, a Sunday afternoon, we were uncertain which way to go, and went to speak to a heavily tattooed local playing boules, whose face and body were half covered in decorative patterns. When I asked to take a photo of him, it transpired that he was a prisoner, and I should ask his warder, who was sitting watching the game of boules, (presumably the inmates Sunday treat). Sadly I was declined!

Taiohae, the capital of the Marquesas has two grocery stores, a bank, a police station, a prison, and a tiny hospital, and a couple of churches, an internet caf=E9 and laundry, and about as many houses as there are in Wood Norton!

Niku-Hiva like the rest of the Marquesan islands is stunningly lush and beautiful, the huge natural harbour of Taiohae is entered by a relatively narrow throat, and then opens out into a huge steep sided bay, with vistas of mountains going back layer upon layer into the distance. There were a lot of boats anchored in the bay all it seemed waiting for the wind to pick up and take us the next 500 miles down to the Archipelago des Tuamotu otherwise known as the Dangerous Isles.

This gap gave us the chance to catch up on lots of internet things, and to make contact with a few friends from other boats who began arriving, as well as making new ones! We also managed to get the cruising chute head re-built, so let's hope it lasts better this time.

We moved along with friends in 'Shine', Tasmanian, and 'Invictor's Reward', to what is know as 'Daniel's Bay'. This is a totally stunning bay on the south west of the island, which opens out before you as you slide in between steep rocky cliffs. The bay is two pronged, where we anchored has a white sandy beach, and a valley filled with fruit trees, palms, bananas etc, while the other part is shingle, and a river mouth.

Daniel is a charming 78 year old, who had originally lived in the bay where we were anchored, until the team making 'Castaways' appeared, and built him a new house in the adjoining bay, so that they could take over his valley and bay for their reality TV show! I believe it was one of the earlier programmes of this genre! I certainly would have no sympathy with cast-aways in this little paradise of easy self-sufficiency.

In company with Lyn and Ian from Shine, we had a two hour walk up the valley to an enormous water fall, allegedly the 3rd largest in the world, and believably so. Our route meant numerous crossings of a very fast flowing river. When we got to the fall, our intention to swim was thwarted by the sight of an enormous fat warty eel, and as it was not too hot we whimped out!

On our return Daniel gave us coconut milk to drink, and then cut up the nut to give us the very tender flesh, as well as bananas. By the following morning the wind had arrived, so we left the other two, and set sail for the Tuomotus. This turned out to be a brisk sail for the 3 days it took us, we clocked 485 miles, on our Walker Log (ships log is not working), and averaged 6.05 knots, having sailed all of it at high speed, except the last little bit when we had a rush to make the tide at the entrance to the pass at Ahe. We were particularly keen to get there, rather than have another night at sea, as I was feeling pretty rough recovering from some kind of a sick bug.

The Tuomotus are coral and sand atolls, or 'motus', and are at a further geological stage than the Marquesas, which are relatively speaking 'young'. The motus are strings of land formed by coral which had originally attached to a long since vanished volcano, these form a lagoon, where once there was a crater, usually several miles long, surrounded by the sand motus. The coconut tree dominates. The lagoons formed by the motus on these atolls sustain a completely different marine life, protected as they are from the rough ocean. The lagoons are also crystal clear, so if there are not too many ripples on the surface, spotting the coral heads is not too bad. However, the tide for entering and leaving needs to be just right, as they can be as strong as 8-9 knots, in some places. With sharp coral to contend with it makes Blakeney entrance seem a doddle!

Having got our tides right entering Ahe, we then had 5 miles to go to anchor off the village, which we did very cautiously. All the books tell you to have someone up the mast and the sun overhead to see the coral, but here the tides come first, and the light was failing fast! Luckily there were some well spaced out beacons to help us.

We spent two very relaxing days in Ahe. The village had one shop, with nothing one needed or wanted! The people were charming, and we wandered round followed by fascinated children. We watched men catching small fish in a net, and were intrigued to find out what they were for, as most of the fish within the reef are poisonous, affected by ciguatera, a toxin they ingest from the coral, and can make you very ill. They explained that they used them as bait on long lines out at sea for catching tuna. The atoll has no natural water, so people collect it from their roofs, and electricity is supplied by banks of solar panels for each house.

We spoke to one of the teachers at the primary school, and discovered that there are four teachers in the school, and after the age of 11 the children go to the next door island, only returning at the end of term. The chief occupation seems to be copra, from the coconuts, and pearl farming. I was interested to see how the pearls compared to the ones I had bought in Venezuela. These are all black pearls, and seemed just nice as the ones I had bought myself, and about the same price.

This morning we were up at first light to catch the tide at the pass, but had trouble extracting our anchor from one of the enormous coral heads where it had become lodged, so got down there later than we'd planned. We were pleased that we had MaxSea, showing us the route we had taken in, as the tide was roaring out, and there were standing waves in the mouth, which we just had to hold our breath and get through! There was a nasty moment when Giles suddenly announced that we only had 4.6 foot, but mercifully we had crossed the bar, and were actually in excess of 1,000 foot, and our echo sounder couldn't get a correct reading! This was a few hundred feet away from the narrows, which illustrates the extraordinary formation of the atolls.

We are now motor sailing to get to our next atoll, 'Apataki' and to get the tide right while there is still some daylight. Oh for some tide tables, it's an awful lot of guess work!