Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas

We motor sailed overnight to Nuku Hiva from Tahuata in very light wind. 85 miles and made water the whole time. We arrived at noon and started to explore but it was Sunday and election day so everything was closed.

The dinghy dock is located at a kind of public pier with open air restaurants, vendors, and fruit and vegetable vendors.

 This is the crepe girl.  She has a little truck parked by the dinghy dock and makes a killer crepe

 The anchorage in Taiohae Bay with mountains that meet the clouds.  (actually hilltop rain)

 This is a model of the double hull sailboat that the Polynesians used to explore the Pacific.  According to Linguistic researchers, the Polynesian exploration originated in China and worked it's way east out to the Marquesas and finally Hawaii from 5000 BC until 1500AD when European explorers discovered these islands.

 This is a map of the Polynesian exploration route.

They must have been amazing seamen to have done this with no modern technology.



We hit the ATM hard here because we will end up soon in places without a bank.
The US dollar doesn't buy much here though. 2 bags of laundry - $70. Pizza dinner - $60. Diesel - $6./gal
We topped off all hydrocarbons. Diesel, gas for the dinghy and generator, and filled the propane tank by making a transfer hose and gravity feeding the liquid butane from the French "GAZ" tank into our US propane bottle.

MUKTUK arrived after we were there 2 days. It was nice to see them again, even after such a short time.  Here is a picture of Karl, Jan, Ali, Noah, and Booker aboard MUKTUK.








The best thing was that we got wifi and were able to order parts and do some skypeing.

I thought the winds around here were pretty much tradewinds and wouldn't change much. Wrong! I pulled up the weather and the winds are forecast to be good 15-20kt for 4 days and then die down with no real improvement until after Lewis comes to Fakarava. So, even though we had planned to go anchor at Daniels Bay, the site of the 2002 Survivor Marquesas TV show, and hike up to the waterfall, we said our so-longs and took off for the Tuamotos at 11AM.

Nuku Hiva was a nice anchorage. The town was easily accessible unlike Hiva Oa. There are 2 relatively decent food stores and a nice hardware store. The island is very lush, green, and mountainous. Fruit trees of all kinds growing everywhere. The sweet smell of gardenias and other tropical flowers filled the air. Very Polynesian in culture. We could have stayed much longer.