We have been in French Polynesia now about 3 ½ weeks. We've written about some wonderful people we have met who have given us rides and free produce. The people here in general have been very generous and happy and are living a life style beyond their means supported by the French Governments multi Billion Euro/yr. support. Certain items like bread, butter, flour, diesel and gasoline are subsidized. We paid a duty free price for diesel fuel of about 5 dollars per gallon. When we bought gasoline we had to pay full price which was about 9.19 dollars per gallon!

We have read many accounts from cruisers who have blogged and written guides to these islands and no one has written about the rainy weather and rolly anchorages. There are not excellent harbors in all of the Marquessa Islands! We have had to deploy a stearn anchor everywhere to limit the roll. The swell generally comes from the continuous storms in the high south latitudes so it comes from the south to southwest. The tradewinds blow from the east. Sometimes north of east and sometimes south of east. Even bays on the north side of these islands get swells that wrap around the island. The high mountains from volcanic activity funnel the wind down into the bays and there are accelerations where it may blow 30 to 40 knots for 3 to 4 minutes. The boats drag frequently probably because of inexperience anchoring under these conditions. Several boats have been hit by boats dragging anchors but none that I know of have been lost ashore.

We are on our way to NukuHiva which will be our last stop before we head 450 miles southwest to the Tuomotos islands. These islands have a reputation for being dangerous as the cuts into the atolls are sometimes difficult to navigate except at slack tide which is almost impossible to predict accurately. One has to get to the entrance and then wait for slack tide before entering otherwise one might face standing waves andadverse currents of up to 8 knots flowing outwards.

These islands are a divers paradise and there are black pearl farms on some of the bigger islands. Needless to say Nancy wants to go and find some to buy. We do hope to do some scuba diving there as well.

Perhaps we have been unlucky with the weather but we think these islands are beautiful but we are not interested in spending any more time here than necessary. Maybe it's because we unexpectedly have been totally preoccupied with boat jobs and only the other day have completed our canvas/vinyl side-curtains for the cockpit and repaired the whisker pole which failed during out long crossing. We are still waiting to catch up on our blogs, edit photos and post them and have days of mostly leisure.

We need to move on since we want to be in Tahiti by the end of June which is only 4 weeks away and it will require about 7 days of sailing. There are going to be many festivities welcoming cruisers and celebrating Bastille day in Bora Bora. We don't want to miss that.

Well we decided to skip the festivities in Tahiti and will get a little extra time time in the Tuomotus. We're now on our way on our first day of 4 and having very good sailing conditions for a change.

Sorry it's been so long since we posted but you can't believe how busy life on board has been

Crew of Always Saturday