Category Archives: Cruising Guide

Information for other cruising boats. Our experiences finding places to anchor, dealing with officials, provisions, etc.

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 →

Anaho Bay

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Monday, May 28, 2007 – Anaho Bay is truly amazing. It is a glimpse at what all the Marquesas were probably like 30 years ago. It’s probably what all the islands were like 100 years ago. It may be the last genuinely unspoiled town left on earth. We wish we could send a photo because words cannot even begin to describe it, but we’ll try to paint the picture with words.

Anaho resembles Taiohae in that high mountains thick with foliage plunge straight into the water with little shoreline. The bay itself looks like it is out of a picture book, with it’s beautiful horseshoe curve and blue water. In some small spots near the shoreline the water is a spectacular blue-green. The land along the water is odd there are a few small isolated spots of white sandy beach, but it is mostly a narrow beach that immediately becomes thick, dense foliage. Continue reading →

Special Blend and Getting Fuel

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May 23 to May 24, 2007 – Wednesday was a really mellow day. We had gotten in from dinner late on Tuesday, so on Wednesday we slept late. We spent most of the day tiding and doing some laundry. Tidying is another one of those chores that sounds easy enough, but is laborious on a boat. Putting things back often means pulling everything out of a storage area and repacking it all back in because it needs to be packed in a certain order. As we use up things, spaces open up that need to be repacked so things don’t move around within the storage space. We often need to shuffle things from one storage area to another, causing both areas have to be completely pulled out and repacked.

Around 09:30, “Special Blend”, another Nordhavn 43, pulled in and
anchored (translation: parked) near us. They came from Florida, through the Panama Canal, and departed for the Marquesas from the Galapagos. Eric took the dinghy over to visit them, and also went and introduced himself to some people on another nearby power boat. Special Blend is in the foreground and Kosmos is in the background and another one with Kosmos on the left: 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 →

Avalon and Night Runs

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Departing October 20, 2006 San Diego, CA arriving October 21, 2006 to Avalon, CA (Catalina Island) and returned October 22, 2006 to San Diego. We left at 11pm Friday night. It is a 12 hour trip to Catalina at Kosmos speed, which is about 6.5 to 7 knots. We had 5 guests with us — Christi’s friend from college, Omar, Christi’s life long friend, Brandie, and Brandie’s husband and two oldest children.

There was no moon and it was quite dark as we headed out. Still in the bay we heard a call on the radio. Hailing fishing boat passing the sub base. Hey, we were passing the sub base too. Hey, wait a minute, radar shows we are the only boat passing the sub base. We do look like a fishing boat. We answered and switched to a working channel. Continue reading →