Yacht La Novia

Even in the euphoric afterglow of completing the longest passage that most cruisers ever undertake, the mundane imperatives of life still command. First order of the day here was haircuts all round. Boys have been moaning about their hair all trip but the motion of the boat and their incurable fidgets made a trim at sea too dangerous.

Everyone studies the same weather forecasts so we had left at about the same time as many other yachts that we knew. In theory, it would be reassuring to stay within a few hours of each other in such a huge expanse of ocean, but in practice it rarely happens. We did keep in touch by email on a daily basis throughout the voyage although we soon found ourselves hundreds of miles apart.

The arrival of 3T & Sea Fever at Hiva Oa after us was hilarious with the kids in a lather of excitement and pent up energy, I started collecting children in our tender before their anchors were even set and before we knew it there were 9 kids running riot on La Novia’s deck.

We spent the next three weeks cruising in the Marquesas, which looking back, have probably been more successful in holding on to their Polynesian roots than the rest of French Polynesia. The scenery is utterly spectacular, the anchorages are lousy and the people of Hiva Oa are particularly friendly. In the absence of taxis or buses, everyone in a car stops to pick up hitch hikers as a matter of course. The days are brutally hot but nights remain cool.

The dreaded ‘NoNo’ flies are not as omnipresent as rumour suggests, but one encounter is enough to force anyone to modify their behaviour to avoid a second. These things excise a chunk of flesh when they come to dinner and the bites itch unbearably for days afterwards.

Fatu Hiva, the southernmost island is the least developed of the population centres, home to about 600 people, and unique in being free of NoNos, which pretty much qualified it as our favourite island in the group! After a tough sail down there, hard on the wind, ( how very French to prohibit formal entry at the windward end of the island group ), we had a nightmare arrival in the dark and torrential rain, feeling our way up the narrow, cliff lined gorge on radar.

Some clown was anchored in mid channel on the outside of the anchorage with neither light nor radar reflector and Catherine, up on the bow, didn’t see him until about 30 metres dead ahead. 

Her Shriek of “Boat! Boat!” may not have been a textbook example of precise instruction, but it made up for any shortcomings in positional information with the urgency of its tone.  As she pointed out later, with unassailable feminine logic, the thing was right in front us, so it really didn’t matter which way  I turned! We missed them by 15′ so she was probably right at that.

As if one fright wasn’t enough, we then had our anchor chain jam with 10 metres out in the tight and crowded ( with 6 or 7 boats! ) anchorage with winds gusting to 35 knots from random directions, bouncing off the cliffs. This was not a problem that we wanted to sort out short handed in such a confined space, but just as we were about to put back out to sea to sort out the mess, a friendly soul aboard another boat in the anchorage dinghied over to help after seeing us struggle and five minutes later we were grateful to have our anchor firmly set, La Novia swinging wildly in the gusts, sleep unthinkable, anchor watch crawling through the darkness until dawn.

But what a dawn. A place to free the imagination and let one’s spirit soar. The cliffscape is like no other. A lush panorama of towering faces reaching to the clouds with an inner ring eroded to fantastical shapes. Like the creatures of a child’s nightmare, the shapes assume new identities with each passing glance. One moment, the phalluses that so offended the first missionaries. Then pagan faces, scowling deities to ward off unwelcome visitors. One towering slope is dominated by a great chieftain’s head, a shattered visage lying like some Ozimandian warning, to remind us of the teeming civilization that flowered here just two hundred years ago.

A passing cloud, a change of light and they are gone. The rocks return again, sober, dour, bereft of life until the shafts of sunlight pierce the clouds anew, and beneath a sky lit like the canopy above a pagan Jerusalem, a fresh cast of characters emerges from the geological wonderland around us.

We have visited Daniel, the yachtsman’s friend for 40 years on Nuku Hiva and signed his wonderful visitors book - nothing less than an history of Pacific voyaging in small craft.

This is an unforgettable experience for any Pacific sailor. His book now stretches to seven volumes. Names, signatures, drawings, photographs, messages of goodwill.

Such names they are too! Bernard Moitessier, Robin Knox-Johnston, Chay Blythe, are just a few that leap out at you from the pages. As you turn the pages, you are completely overwhelmed by a sense of standing in the history of your present endeavour.

Daniel himself is now ancient, but as charming as ever.

Ironically, he no longer lives in splendid isolation in Daniel’s Bay. His enforced departure from his home must rank as one of the creepiest cameos of modern life as distorted by the media.

Who I wonder, was the warped mind that coined the phrase “Reality TV”? Why do I wonder? Well…………….

The ‘Reality’ TV show Survivor took a shine to his bay and decided that it was not ‘Real’ enough with him living there. So they paid the government to move him against his will to the bay next door, and demolished his house in Daniel’s Bay, so that they could film a ‘Reality’ TV show about surviving on a deserted island in a perfect bay just 4 miles down the road from the capital of the Marquesas Islands, where beer & burgers were readily available for all involved.

But that’s probably more ‘Reality’ than the moronic audience of Survivor either need, or for that matter, want, to know.