smallest Nomad crew member disappears

I'm missing Moko. We haven't seen him since last week when we were tied to the dock. Did he hear the call of the wild and jump ship? We were hearing other geckos chirping in the palm trees at night. Maybe he heard them too and followed their voices.

In other news, it was not 50 bananas in that bunch we received, it was over 150!! I have since given away almost 80 bananas but they keep ripening too quickly for us to eat them all. However, I'm now beginning the process of drying them-I slice them long and very thin and then lay them in the sun or (as is the case now) when there's rain and overcast skies, I put them in the oven on a low setting for a long time. Fortunately they are only about 3-4 inches long and getting smaller the closer they get to the top of the stalk. The top banana is only 1 inch long.

In the next few days we will leave for the one day journey to Maupiti, a rural island and the last of our French Polynesian stops. From there, we will depart for Fiji with a possible stopover in Western Samoa.

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surf pics

Brian on his "paddle board/windsurfer"
Another wave from Teahupoo
The M10 is repaired after it broke at Vairao. The local pearl farm workers were very interested.

pics on Raiatea

free bananas and more

It sure was a treat to hop off the boat and walk the 50 yards to the grocery store. Had yummy pizza from a pizza truck and took a great hike with an incredible view, went to church and got groceries and gas and hung out on internet for a few hours. It was civilization! :) After our two nights on the free dock at Uturoa we left "civilization" for Baie Faaroa. There was a river flowing into the head of the bay that we dinghied up. We passed were pretty much covered by shade all the way up, it was so thick with green growing things. Pretty. We stopped at the public botanical garden with a dock in the river. There was no signage, we just were told how to recognize it by other cruisers. At the garden, a local named James met us at the falling down dinghy dock and started showing us around and telling us the names of the plants and giving us things to smell and look at, some weird round purple and green fruit called canela that has sweet pulpy white insides to eat. When I ate it I had to ignore the way the flesh reminded me of ripping out a living organ from a purple skinned animal. We smelled the fragrant lime green strings that grow on the oolang oolang tree. We received a free vanilla bean, and a flower that looked like a purple speckled balloon with a probiscus. Then, he chopped down a whole banana tree and gave us about 50 bananas. Next he rowed down the river ahead of us in his kayak and stopped on the side to climb a palm tree and retrieve for us 3 green coconuts, which he husked. He wanted nothing for it.
This morning we dinghied down a few bays to the Marae Taputapuatea. Here's how the guidebooks describe it, "The Taputapuatea archaeological area held great importance to ancient Polynesians. When constructing new marae on neighboring islands, a stone from Taputapuatea had to be used in the making of the new temple...." This temple was also the staging grounds for the ancient Tahitian explorers that ROWED and sailed to New Zealand, Hawaii, and the Marquesas. Rumor also has it that Captain Cook was present at a human sacrifice, held in his honor, at this marae. Allegedly he was offered the victim's right eye (usually reserved for the priests) to eat, and he swallowed it. I figure, if this is true, he was just grateful he wasn't the one on the chopping block. Today, the place didn't look quite so ominous.
After we returned to Nomad, we pulled anchor and for the first time in a long time, SAILED (instead of motoring everywhere) around the north end of the island, hooked up on a mooring ball and hope to find a welder nearby. We are near a good surf break where Brian has already enjoyed two sessions.

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Sunday

I went to the local protestant church which was conducted in Tahitian and has a cappella congregational singing interspersed throughout the service. It makes me want to get to heaven right away. The harmonizing that lifts and lulls, the echoes on the high vaulted ceiling painted the color of the summer sky, the strange tongue put me right at the throne of God with the full congregation of the saints. I imagined I was standing next to Grandma Krake. Brian came about 10 minutes before the service ended. He'd been surfing and came when he got back. He got to hear 2 songs and the Lords Prayer (we think that's what it was) spoken by the whole crowd.
After church walked around the marina and kept spotting old plastic kayaks and old windsurfers. Brian has been trying to buy one since last year in Mexico. We saw two in a pile covered with an old sail and asked a kid about it. He was French but spoke enough English to tell us the yellow one was for sale. We bought it off his dad for 5000 Pcf's. Brian paddled it back to the boat, quite happy. Now we have a "kayak" and a paddle board and a windsurf board for whenever Brian can find a new mast to replace the one that snapped while it was being our fill-in whisker pole.

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Postcard Perfect

Yup, we're anchored in the ultimate South Seas postcard photo. Twenty feet of clear turquoise water and sand below us. The water changes color about 30 yards away to a color I can't describe very well. It's a pale pale creamy green over white sand surrounding two small palm covered motus, one of which has palm thatched cottages on pilings over the water. In the distance behind the tops of the palms, stand the peaks of Bora Bora. In between the two motus is a snorkeler's paradise. It's called the Coral Garden. Coral heads in purples, maroons, lavenders, yellows and whites. Fish in stripes, spots, solids of velvet black, neon blue, silver, butter yellow, maroon, and canary yellow flutter and fly around, ducking into crevasses or staring snorkelers cross-eyed they get so close.

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boat bound

It's been blowing hard for the last 3 days and the next two are supposed to blow even harder. Makes the anchorages a wee bit less relaxing because the boat swings and if you're near anyone, they swing toward you and maybe slide a little bit closer. The rigging alternately sounds like someone banging on a door, someone playing the same three musical notes over and over, or a ghoul screaming on Halloween night. Because it was a little less windy yesterday than any other time in the next 3 days, we left Huahine yesterday and sailed to Raiatea, 20 miles away. I was nauseous about 80% of the time, so Brian did all the work. Just as we arrived at the pass into Raiatea's lagoon, a lovely squall blew over with pelting rain adding to the 20ish knots of wind. Luckily, it is a well-marked, deep pass with no breaking waves so we went on in and into the less rolly but equally windy lagoon. Now, we say Raiatea (pronounced rye-uh-tay-uh) but it actually is two separate islands, Raiatea and Tahaa, enclosed by one coral reef with about 2 miles of lagoon and reef in between the two. We're anchored all alone in on the West coast of Tahaa, the north island, in Hurepeti Bay. These two islands produce 70% of the Tahitian vanilla. When we walked around this morning we saw these distinctive orchids being cultivated in many pockets of the forests and in large shaded green houses in peoples' yards (next to the canoes and the headstones). We hope to take a tour of a vanilla farm and a pearl farm (also quite prevalent here) some time before we leave.

So all this wind has us feeling quite boat bound. The surf is all blown out, and snorkeling or swimming is no fun with so much chop. Inviting people over is not so great because everyone wants to be tucked on their boats doing anchor watch before it gets dark. So, we've had movie night two nights in a row and tonight. Today, Brian has proposed a "dress up" night just for something different to do. I guess I'll go see if any of my nice clothes aren't too moldy to wear!

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