Arrived in The Marquesas

-->

        19 days, 3000 miles, over two dozen squalls, hundreds of sail
changes, and 6 gibes later were here. We made landfall in Fatu Hiva at 1 pm
local time on the 8th. After some tidying up of Quester, Steve, Jan and I
headed into shore. Fatu Hiva is one of the least populated islands in the
Marquesas chain and only gets about 500 visitors per year, mostly people
off cruising sailboats. Though we get cell service, there are no
restaurants, hotels, shops or really anything besides a few locals playing
in the water, eating pomplemousses (French for grapefruit, which is grown
locally) and serving up some volleyball.

        Once ashore, we ran into the crews off of Pearl of Persia, Chinook,
In Flagranti and Purusa. They told the three of us about a hike to a
waterfall, and mentioned that a few of the guys had started their way up.
Steve and Jan decided to hang around the dock, while I hustled up the trail
after the other guys. This waterfall is difficult to find, and I the only
reason I was able to get there was that on the way, I ran into several
other people who hadn’t found it. After some deductive reasoning that would
have made Sherlock Holmes proud, I was able to figure out which trails
didn’t work after hearing reports from the passing hikers, and I made my
way to the waterfall.

        I caught up with the guys from the other boats about halfway up
this trail. After hiking for about 40 minutes, we broke through the thick
rainforest-like jungle and a picturesque 200ft waterfall, cascading down
into a little pool, appeared before of our eyes. A gentleman off the Pearl of Persia interrupted this fantastic view as he stripped down to his birthday suit and cannonballed into the water…so much for the perfect picture! But after a good laugh, we all jumped in (keeping our bathing suits on) and enjoyed the refreshing water.

        The hike back was just as interesting. On the way down, we were
waved over by a big old local guy sipping French wine out of a Fanta bottle
next to a stream. So classy. Lucas from In Flagranti is fluent in French,
along with about 5 other languages (gotta love the Swiss), and he started
up a conversation with the gentleman. This guy said that he would barter
with us for some grapefruits. Luckily Lucas had a fishing lure with him
that he traded, along with the promise of some wine that we would later
retrieve from the boat.

        Once the price was negotiated, this guys wife led us over to a
tree, pointed up, and told Lucas in French, that we could take as many
pomplemousses as we wanted, we just needed to go get them. Figures. We
volunteered Roger to climb up and grab the fruit off the tree. Roger is
about my age, and sailed here on Purusa with Brendan, the owner. Roger met
up with the Oyster fleet in Shelter Bay Marina in Panama after sailing
through the Caribbean on a different boat. He sailed on Aequitas to the
Galapagos, and then jumped ship to Purusa for the sail to the Marquesas. It
was just him and Brendan on the way over, and since someone always needed
to keep watch on deck, he and Brendan were both pretty sleep deprived from
trading 3 hour shifts, so naturally we thought he was the best one to go
climbing up a tree.

        After a risky climb, he managed to drop about 15 grapefruits into
our arms (keep in mind that we’ve all been eating canned food for the past
week, since we’ve been at sea for almost 20 days, so this seemed like a
godsend). So hands full of fruit, we started the 20-minute walk back to the
dock where the dingies were tied up, but before we got too far, the local
grapefruit trading wino shouted to us that we could take his car. What?

        We had met the guy 8 minutes ago, didn’t really know what to do, so
naturally we took the car. He, however, volunteered stayed behind to polish
off his wine. This island has about 100 residents, all of whom are
Polynesian looking, and 5 cars. So 4 gringo kids in one of the 5 cars
sticks out quite a bit. We got back to the dingy dock and immediately got
confronted with locals asking where we got the car, since they all knew,
and were probably related to, the owner. We had to explain that we didn’t
steal it. We're not sure if they believed us, but we left Lucas with the
car as a sacrifice. The Swiss are good at keeping peace right? We took the
dingy back to the boat to drop off our bounty and pick up the wine that we
had promised.

        I got back and Lucas hadn’t been killed by locals which made me
happy, so we drove the car back and dropped the wine off to our new friend,
who had consumed quite a bit more out of his Fanta bottle in the 30 minutes
that we left with his ride. He invited the two of us to join him, so Lucas
and I sat down next to the creek and passed a cup of wine around for a few
minutes. It would have been rude to refuse his offer right?

        All this happened within 3 hours of arriving. What an afternoon.
We’re leaving tomorrow to head over to another island in the chain, Hiva
Oa, for a few days. From there we will continue on to Fatu Hiva, where
Oyster has arranged for a welcome party for the 25 boats that have made the
trip. We are all looking forward to hearing the stories from the past few
weeks as everyone recounts their most memorable moments, good and bad, that
happened during the sail across the largest stretch of the Pacific. Ill
post some pictures of all of this when we happen across some Internet.

Congrats to Uncle Ben and McKenna, sorry I missed the celebration guys!