FROM NUKU HIVA

Just finished reading Joseph O'Connor's novel Star of the sea, Irish immigrants bound for New York, fleeing the Irish Famine, in 1847. I'm sitting in the cockpit at anchor in Nuku Hiva. Read all day yesterday. Arrived here day before yesterday, after a feisty ride - beam reaching and steering by hand at 7 knots in the trade winds across a twenty-five mile stretch of ocean between this island and another, called Ua Pu, where we spent the previous night. Some facts and figures to start with. What a strange and magical island! What a bizarre night - getting fouled on a floating barge hawser, scraping the wharf, running aground and keeping anchor watch all night! Being helped by an Aussie who has settled on Ua Pu after selling up on the Sunshine coast back home! Tell you the story in a minute!

Let's go back a little . when I last wrote we were in Hiva Oa, first port of call in the Marquesas, and I knew we might be unable to get messages out, probably due to the high volcanic hills around us. So here's what (seemed to have) happened in the meantime .

A week after dropping anchor in Hiva Oa and after two visits to the town, the shops, internet banking and the Gaugin Museum, we left there, loaded with baguettes - heading out towards the promise of a pretty beach on a largely uninhabited island called Tahuatu, separated by only a few miles from Hiva Oa. An easy sail of a few hours, and we let go the anchor in the clearest blue and aquamarine water by a sand beach backed by palms and behind that, raw hills. A swim, a shower, and a visit from our friends on Magenta, Larry and Kim, whom we met via the radio on the daily skeds coming over. Lovely folks.

Another day, another night, without going ashore, and we left in the early hours, 4 am, for Ua Pu, 65 miles away, a planned 10 hour run at 6.5 knots. But it was not to be . the trade winds died, and we waited in the lee of the island of Hiva Oa for a while, then motored out until the wind picked up. Late afternoon, and getting near to the strange volcanic formations as the sun dropped lower, I powered up the engine and pushed our speed as the wind faded slowly. Only a mile or so away from where the sheer cliffs were supposed to open up and allow entrance to Baie d' Hakahau, as the brief dusk showed only the forbidding lava extrusions, looking like stone idols on the dark island of Doctor Moreau, I felt that sense, not of dread, but of some sort of fear that I get when entering an anchorage for the first time, and the sun had gone down by now! I nearly got on the radio and called for advice - are there any hazards I should know about, entering this port? I wish I had.

The port is very small. There is a concrete and rock breakwater built out across the small bay with a red light at its end, and a single yacht anchored with its stern tied up to a lamp post behind the breakwater. But the steep rock face - no ledge or pathway - didn't look easy if I were to choose to copy the yacht and tie up to - where? So I swept slowly past that and thought I would take a look beyond the huge rusty barge (actually two barges, I found out later) sitting in the middle of the small bay. Here is where the trouble began. A concrete dock stuck out toward the barges, with a tugboat tied up to it, and I steered our brave Bluebottle between it and the barges. Suddenly we were not moving. Something's wrong, I said to Adrienne. I tried the forward throttle only once, realizing I could foul the propeller, and then peered over the side in the dark, the only light now coming from half a moon and a scattering of street lamps. There it was - like some nasty brown serpent - the thick rope floating on the water, stretching between the barge and the dock, by way of the gap between our rudder and our keel. We were straddling it! I poked at it with the boat hook, no good. Then I thought, well - we have an aluminium pole about 5 metres long - try it. Poling it - the hawser - down on the starboard side was easy, but didn't change things. Poling it down on the other side worked a little miracle - we floated over it and were now free! But not completely, there was another long hawser from the barge(s) to the shore and we were between them. Talking about it now, it seems no big deal, but we were in for a few hours of bother, before the rum-and-cokes-with-ice, and the lying to an anchor!

We are drifting toward the dock . we try to tie up to it. the concrete threatens to scrape the hull . we get shouted advice from the men on the York Star, the tugboat with its lights everywhere . "do you want a hand?" they call - "yes!" we yell back, but they don't come. "Why don't you try stern tying to the dock, and anchoring out?" a man calls. Adrienne thinks it a good idea; I reluctantly agree, it means a very long line if we are to get the anchor well off the bow . I think I would prefer to tie alongside the dock, already three- quarters complete. While the lines are tied together to make them long enough I DON'T NOTICE WE ARE DRIFTING! (unintentional Caps Lock, leave it in) and before you know it we are aground. AGROUND!! Gun the engine - no good. Oh no, the wheel is spinning - that means the rudder is hitting the ground!

Now a friend appears - he is an Australian man I met earlier while I was tying up to the dock - and he says "take your stern line, put it on the windlass, and winch it in," and I think, this won't work, we're aground, but I do it just the same. He's right, and I winch away, foot by foot, on the anchor windlass (which has a barrel for rope) and the boat slowly but surely comes around - and is afloat again! Funny I never thought of that, and it worked. Well, now we take the lines off from the dock, and motor out a little ways and drop the anchor - all too close to the barges and the beach and the dock, but that was all the swinging room we had. Now was the time for a drink! Keeping anchor watch, we took turns sleeping in the cockpit, ready for the scrape of the rusty barge. Morning, I was on the radio to the York Star, and before too long the barge crew removed the hawser and let us out, a few goodbye waves and we in the ocean, beyond the rock cliffs. Lesson - do NOT enter a strange port at dusk.

Arriving at Nuku Hiva, people keep calling us on the radio, "hello Bluebottle!" - people we met on the radio on the way across the big leap, and in fact they were waiting for us to arrive, before they pushed on to other places. We went out that night to a pizza restaurant with three of the boats - Windrider, Skylight and Sea Flyer, and Puppy too called us up, and Syzygy, off to Fatu Hiva. Then the following day an old friend from Panama days arrived - Sea Fury, Roger and Norma, and they invited us on board for drinks yesterday evening! All wonderful people!