Nuku Hiva

We are here!!! Arrived in Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Group in French Polunesia yesterday at 9am local time. We did Las Perlas in Panama to here in exact 25 days! 6,5 days to Galapagos, 18,5 days to Nuku Hiva!

The trip had its ups and downs but all around it was a dream trip, much easier than we had thought. Brisa whom was thought to be a problem to be dealt with during the trip, turned out to be the maker of our trip. Without her it would be have been boring as hell. She was an absolute trooper, hardly ever complaining about the days she was not able to go on the trampoline and making the best of it on the days she could which made us way more active and playful than usual. She is a master of drawing circles, waves and zig zags, her pen control is amazing! Her imagination has blossomed during this trip, she role plays with all her toys being Au-au Levy (a barking puppet dog given to her by her good mate Levy in Curacao) and Gigi the Giraffe (given to her by my Dad when we were in USA) her favorites. She took these toys everywhere she went. Play doh can now be turned into little semi round balls, including faces!!

Sailing wise we had a mixed bag of winds to start with as we had a big blow from the north to shoot us out of Panama, but from then on we had mostly light winds up to 15 knots. It varied from S to SE to E then to NE. We used our main only half the trip, the rest was all up to the Kite, Code Zero and Genoa. The sea conditions were much bigger than expected by the amount of wind, and we had quite a few uncomfortable but tolerable days. There seemed to be a constant current with us which varied from 1.5 to 0.5 knots, it diminished the further south we got as expected.

It is a bit unfortunate that we could not enter through Fatu Hiva or Hiva Oa which would allow us to see a bit more of these friendly islands but we have been sailing for a long time now, Bri deserves a good anchorage and a nice beach for a while to rest up (I guess it applies more to us than to her actually...). We will have a look around here then plan to spend a bit more time in the Tuamotus which seem to be quite an astounding place.

We went ashore yesterday and it was dragon boat race day! Quite a neat little party ashore with drums and lots of smiles. They are polynesians no doubt, they look, smile and even dress like Maoris, but they speak french which clashes quite a bit with the way they look. Actually I seem to noticed they spoke their own language amongst themselves. I could not understand much. But the generous friendly smiles and that unmistakable laugh (ririri, know what I mean?) is very Polynesian, it is very much like our own Maoris - made us quite homesick!

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