We pulled the two anchors up just after dawn as the morning wind pulsed down the valley in 20-30 gusts. Grey clouds gathered over the mountain peaks getting ready to bring showers. The winds were much quieter than when we anchored and we had developed a plan to avoid smashing into the vertical black cliffs 100 feet to our south. Somehow the waves on the clioffs seemed less unnerving and more familiar.

As the gusts pushed us away from town now highlighted by the sun's crepuscular rays and the hills disappeared in the rain, we departed not with our hearts full of the music and community but also in our bodies attuned to the geology. The Fatu Hiva geology feels very different than the ups and downs of the lava flows of the Galapagos. The oldest part of the Fatu Hiva is a collapsed caldera, a topographic feature resembling a cereal bowl formed when the center of a volcano falls in on itself. Fatu Hiva is only half a broken cereal bowl. In the middle of the cracked bowl the volcano made one more mountain building effort spewing a pile of new lava flows that became a dome in the center of the busted cereal bowl. As the volcano was making its last effort to build a mountain the trade winds and the rain also made a mess. Lots of water atop the steep slopes triggered landslides and avalanches along the caldera wall resulting in a slurry of rock and mud. This messy slurry filled the slot between the collapsed caldera and the new layered lava dome. These messy debris flows make the virgins and other notable topography and the bays where towns are built and sailboats anchor. We had a chance to feel all these geologic units.

Encountering a collapsed caldera begins with a walk along slowly climbing stream valley. The walk starts along a road, then a dirt track and eventually a trail marked by stacks of black rocks, basaltic cairns. Following the cairns, the trail steepens more until in the middle of the dense forest there is a metal cable to help you climb. Cables usually are found on a bare mountain tops such as Gothics in the Adirondack Mountain. The ever-steepening climb is the entry to the collapsed caldera. The climb ends where your legs will not carry you any further at the 200' waterfall feeding a deep dark pool of water. Looking up from the pool of fresh water with the mist of the waterfall moistening your face at a cliff face the water can tumble down but your legs cannot climb is the caldera collapse.

The volcanic afterthought, the central dome, the last pile of lava to erupt form the cliffs we climb up out of Havanae and down into Omoa. Layer upon layer of basalts flows each ~1-meter-thick or 3 feet form cliffs. Your legs are burn as you ascend switchback after switchback until we reach the 1800-foot cliff top and peer down on the Mable Rose . She looks like a small bath toy. The hike across the the dome is a gentle continuous climb until we reach the top and begin to descend On the way down to Omoa ever as you try to put spring in your knees you can feel the long steep edges of the dome throughout your body. This 10 milte hike was educated your body on what a lava dome is.

The debris flows surrounded us. While almost every cliff in the Marquesas has a face hidden in to, the debris flows are made of many chuncks rocks captured by the flowing slurry. The erosion and the human imagination have people (virgins and others) emerge, faces and body parts. The feel of the debris flow is in the mind.

Leaving Fatu Hive on our stern the passage to Tahuata met our minimum criteria for success - no one died. When you clear into a country you are often asked to list all the fatalities since your last port of call. We always high five when we put the anchor down and everyone is alive. As it makes the paperwork simpler. Along the way we speculated whether would be squirrely winds off the southern tip of Tahuata. The 30-knot squall off the end of island end sent swirling spray into the air again the red and black cliffs. Karl steered through the squalls and we went under bare poles for a while. I experimented with collecting rainwater during the squall, filling the kettle for afternoon tea with enough remaining to make a cup of Robin's Freshwater Hot Cocoa to warm Karl up. The sail was making water as fast the watermaker for much of the squall.

Safely anchored in the bay and set the anchor with the engine pulling as strongly as it could in reverse. Since we have anchored it has continued to rain and gust so we are quite content to be down below for afternoon tea.