Nuku Niva, our last call in the Marquesas. Here, despite the music and the dances, we prepare ourselves for the great crossing waiting for us : repair our computers who obviously don’t like the salty air, embark the last foodstuffs, here you can find nearly everything, we will keep the vegetables for 2 weeks, the lemons and grapefruit even more, the scurvy will not be for us!
A last wonderful anchorage in Hanakena, where the village is full of fruits and suckling pigs who eat only bananas and coconuts…The way to the waterfalls is an ancient royal road, the valley was much more populated before, as it’s common in the Marquesas, civilization has passed here also.
To be sure to come back one day we have thrown our flower collars and crowns in the bay, but the trade winds already catch us and we take our course true North.

Crossing the equator fishing comes again and this “tazar” 5 feet long, 30 pounds of weight will feed us for about one month ! Fresh, dried, in preserves, all is good ! Some stowaways : a falcon who couldn’t stay on bord, the brown bobies don’t agree, swarms of “St John boats”, as in the Med, and some folks of dolphins meet us. The trade wind follow us up to the latitud of Hawaï and then the high pressure start playing with us : calms, gales, but in fact we are not in a hurry to arrive, the days fly quietly, nearly no boats, only the polution, plastics, fishing gears, sadden us.
Some days before landing sharks will visit us and a whale make his show, jumping out of the water. The cold catch us, we enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and it’s Canada !
Nanaimo, Vancouver island : after 37 days at sea, 4292 nautical miles, we are back to civilisation, but here, at anchor in front of Newcastle island, indian reserve of the Snuneymuxw, we stay in nature, and what nature ! The Canada geese wander with their chicken while herons are served in the nest, deers come to graze at night, seals paddle, eagles lurk around in the air, and plovers, ducks, hu ming birds, squirels, racoons fill our walks. Wild life burst, in water as on land, and all this close to the town, that’s British Columbia !

We take some time to care of our Skøiern, 3 month of sailing since Panama have washed all the varnish !

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Tahuta and his church, the “Aranui 3” more a liner than a schooner, and then Atuona at Fatu Hiva, where we make a pilgrimage to the tombs and in the museums of Paul Gauguin and Jacques Brel.

Many things have changed since their “visit”,but the magic of the islands is still there.

We will soon leave them, these islands, on the way for Vancouver, some weeks at sea, some thousands of miles more, we will tell you.

Rikitea, Gambiers islands ,our first contact with french Polynesia, with the people’s kindness, the cheerfulness of the children who invite us to their school party : polynesian danses and declamatory art contest. We will meet also other sailing boats, some we had cross months ago and for the first time mutual assistance, friendship, that’s so good !

The wind will have some difficulty to push us to the Marquesas and for this we will appreciate even more Hanavave, Fatu Hiva. The arrival in Virgen’s bay is gorgeous, it’s the most beautiful anchorage we know. The island is not too densely populated, there is not too much 4 wheels drive, the nature is splendid and here also we will make links with the inhabitants, here also it will be hard to leave…

Pitcairn, a child dream, a sailor dream, here we are ! The swell is high and we go at anchor in what is called “Western Harbor”, a anchorage open to all swells, more than 10 fathoms deep… Andrew comes with his boat to pick us ashore and when we go through the tiny jetty, pushed by a breaking wawe of 10 feet, to come alonside to a no less tiny jetty, we understand that the blood of the mutineers has not vanished ! They are only 40, on their flowered island, only linked by boat, and internet, to the world ! All are descendants of Christian Fletcher and John Adams, the real patriarch. The young ones go studying in New Zealand, and don’t come back, Jean Claude, the pastor, has not many parochians…Fortunately there is the passing cruisers and sailing boats who add some spice in the life of this small community where history, their history, is everywhere and at all times.

We leave Pitcairn full of fruits and vegetables, we have exchanged our addresses, and we will receive the island “gazette” by internet, a curious blend of past and present!