The Gambier Islands
11 March 2019 | Rikitea
Alan Cresswell and Katy Clay
Feb 28
....We visited Rikitea today. It consists of a church built in the early 1800's under the iron fist of a priest who had come here to convert the locals. And as a consequence the population went from 5000 to less than a 1000 in a few decades. Although I was told that when the priests got here, the islands were overpopulated, all the trees had been cut, the lagoon didn't have too many fish left and the various tribes were warring all the time (there are three islands in the lagoon; Mangareva is the largest). Destruction of resources sounds a little like Easter (as far at least as the cutting down of the trees go...no?
The small inter interisland freighter just docked on the Rkitea wharf. I'll go check with the captain if I can buy some fuel off of him..
Just had breakfast in the cockpit: absolutely calm weather and sunrise; it's magical...although already hot. The small skiffs of the locals are already crossing the bay: bringing kids to school and people to work and coming to the freighter to get freight.
....Our position is S23d07 W 134d58
March 1
I think we'll be leaving mid-day. Yesterday I managed to get some cash at the local epicerie to buy fuel. I had first tried to pay with Visa for the fuel which I wanted to purchase from the only source of fuel on the island: the small freighter un/loading at the village dock but the captain could not process credit card payments. So I went to the only place where people can withdraw cash: the post office (no banks of course and no ATMs on the island); but the "Poste" didn't accept credit cards either. So after a while I thought maybe I could go to the epicerie and ask the owner if she took credit cards and, if so, ask her for cash for a card payment and fee. And, miracle, she agreed Went back to the freighter to prepay 400 liters and then came alongside the freighter (actually we tied up along its transom, which by itself was quite epic) and started filling; the whole time marine had to fend off the freighter with one of the big fender because the transom of the freighter was too narrow to tie up Taya properly (more then half the boat was sticking out! It's a small freighter - maybe 200 ft). The tanks were full after 200 liters (i.e. the gauges are not calibrated correctly at mid-tank) and thus I had purchased twice as much as needed. I thought I had lost the money because the captain had said nothing about reimbursing the unused part although I had politely asked a couple times in an offhand sort of way. Then in the afternoon Marine decided to go and try to get the money back by asking point blank the "accountant" of the freighter who had set up shop under an awning on the dock.. I let her try although I didn't think it was going to work, but amazingly she came back with the money!!
Yesterday at the end of the day we went for a little dinghy ride, after all the fueling stress, and try to get to a beautiful and isolated white sandy beach that we had seen getting in, but the was a barrier of coral all around the beach and we could get to beach with the dinghy. It was nevertheless beautiful and we saw a black tip shark swimming around.. I did a little swimming there and then we came back to the boat. This morning Marine went to get some croissants and baguettes at the boulangerie but was faced with scary barking dogs on the way there, so came back empty-handed.
This morning we'll go provision a bit, remove the lazy bag which turns out to be a pain in the ass but keep the lazy jack. While at the epicerie I'll check windy.com and we should be on our way this afternoon. We'll probably be able to make Pitcairn, 300nm away to the East, but Easter seems harder given the current weather patterns. We probably going to have to dip to S35d to get a decent wind angle to go East which means that we would have to sail 500nm North to get to Easter and the dip South again. We'll see..... Another boat, a big Amel ketch, is also going to Chile (Robinsoe Crusoe island (just a bit N of
Valdivia) but they're leaving in a couple days. I want to leave today because if Pitcairn even is going to work, it has to be in the next 3 days; after that it's Easterlies for a long while it seems.
March 2
went at 6:30 am to find the boulangerie (it's only the 3rd time we try to find it!). Finally I found it - pretty much a box next to an epicerie.... I ask the epicier when it was going to be open and he said "it's open now, but there is no more bread until monday!) So we give up on bread from mangareva!
Somebody is bringing us lemons a few pamplemousses at snack Jojo. We'll go and get and a few more groceries to finish spending our FP money. Then we'll leave around noon.
I'll write tonite when we're at sea. Wind out of the SE so presumably we'll go NE on a starboard tack until the wind backs to the E; then we'll tack SSE.
Until then TTFN and lots of love