Rapturous!

Our planned overnight motor sail from Oa Pou to Hiva Oa turned out to much more pleasant than expected. Instead of bashing into the 17 knot winds that were forecast, we had a close reach sail almost all night making 6 knots. Unfortunately, we had to fight the on-coming sea with about 6 foot waves that slapped Rapture's speed down to 2 knots at times. By midnight, the end of my watch, the waves had flattened so we were actually able to get some sleep. We arrived at our anchorage at about 10:00am. The best anchorage is behind the breakwater where there are no swells, but this area was packed with at least 50 boats, mostly stern anchored to keep them parallel, like sardines in a tin. We opted not to squeeze in and dropped hook (not too) close to the far wall where an impressive blow hole spouted with each arriving wave. As evening approached we decided to set out a stern anchor just to keep us pointed into the waves. It's quite a procedure setting out a stern anchor and there are several different ways of doing it. Each time we've tried a different method and each time it has been heavy, stressful work. This time we used the dinghy to row the anchor and chair out to the right position and then dropped it. This sounds fine unless your boat is swinging and you don't know where the right position is. Fortunately, we had two boats behind us so we could use them as points of reference. Safely set, we had a comfortable night knowing that the boom of the blow hole wasn't, in fact, coming closer. Hiva Oa is a scruffy little town about a half mile walk from the harbor. It has one restaurant with mediocre food where we ate twice , mainly to get 'free' wifi. Wifi is also available at Hiva Oa Yacht Services housed in an old shipping container half-way up a single-lane dirt road with the most incredible view. Sandra, who knows everything, arrives at 8:00am and stays until 10:30am. The wifi is free; she takes your device and types in the password that is changed every day so there's no chance of sharing. By 9:00am practically the whole anchorage is sitting at the picnic benches ignoring the view and bandwidth slows to a crawl. Still, it's lovely to talk to family and post a few pictures to the blog. Tomorrow early we pull both anchors to go to Fatu Hiva, the Bay of Virgins that Greg has been talking about for at least a year.