Category Archives: Food

What we are eating and where we mention food.

Manihi Walk on the Southwest Side

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Wednesday June 6, 2007 — We went to meet Richard at the fancy hotel. We arrived early to explore the island with the hotel. There is an airport (complete with a passenger loading/unloading boat dock), three little souvenir shops selling jewelry made with locally raised black water pearls, and a couple of houses. The houses are farther apart than in town and have no fences. The views of the lagoon are beautiful. There are a lot of dragonflies around, too. We were surprised at the amount of trash strewn about. In addition to the usual bottles and cans, we saw a lot of broken sandals and buoys.

Back at the hotel, we watched some workers put a palm frond roof on a bungalow. There is a basic wooden frame. It looks like the two halves of the palm fronds are braided about a third of the way down from the stem. The fronds are laid down and nailed at the stem to the frame. The fronds are laid down a few inches apart and overlap one another. The fronds are covered with chicken wire to keep them from blowing away. Continue reading →

Bay of Virgins

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Wednesday May 30, 2007 We pulled into the Bay of Virgins on Fatu Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia, at 8:30. As promised, it is beautiful. Fatu Hiva gets the most rain, and is thus the most lush. The original name for the bay the Marquesans gave it was Bay of the Phalli, because there are several rock formations that do resemble penises of various shapes and sizes. Rumor has it the missionaries were unhappy with that name (Baie des Verges in French) and changed it to the Bay of Virgins (Baie des Vierges just added an “I”).

Like Anaho, Fatu Hiva is extremely difficult for tourists to get to without a private boat. There is no airport and no regular ferry to take tourists to and from here. There are two towns connected by a road that is mostly dirt. There are a little over 500 people on the island. Like Nuka Hiva, steep mountains just shoot out of the water with little flat ground. Continue reading →

Traditional Marquesan Feast

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Saturday, May 26, 2007 – Today is the last time we will be able to send pictures for a few weeks. Currently, we are in “civilization” where there is an internet café’ (it is a slow and somewhat inconsistent connection, but it is something). Tomorrow we will be heading out to go island hopping. It is extremely unlikely that we will find an internet café on any island between here and Tahiti. So, back to text only updates. Continue reading →

Welcome to Nuka Hiva, French Polynesia

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To begin with, here are a couple photos from our days at sea. We didn’t get many nice sunsets, but the few we got were beautiful. We also had a huge rainbow around the boat the days it rained.

We dropped anchor at 6:00 am local time on May 19, just as the sun was coming up (8:30 am PST). The view of Taiohae was just as we had seen in photos. Continue reading →

San Diego to Nuka Hiva Day 6-7

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  • Position and Time: N 20-34 by W 124-24 at 2155 UTC, 818 miles from San Diego
  • Speed and Course: 6.0 knots, 210 degrees true, 1450rpm
  • Wind: 12 knots at 150 degrees relative
  • Waves: 6-8 foot swells at 10-12 seconds, 3-4 foot wind waves.

We are almost one third of the way.

The routine has pretty well set in. Doing watch, eating, sleeping, doing engine room checks, checking communications, etc. The obvious fact that we are about hundreds of miles from the nearest land (Mexico’s Guadalupe Island) occasionally comes to mind. The seas have picked up, and there is no doubt we are on the open ocean. We get a combination of a swell and wind wave about every minute or so gives us some strong roll, even with the stabilizers. We estimate these waves to be about 8 feet or so. Anything requiring moving around takes extra concentration and careful timing between rolls. Continue reading →