Marquesas, Tahuata – May 2007
Then we headed for the close neighbour island Tahuata, a couple of hours sail away. There are about 600 people on Tahuata but the best anchorage is a beautiful but deserted bay and beach, so we had a lovely few days at the beach and saw not one local.
There were up to eight boats anchored here, including Tony and Linda who sailed across with us. There were also two German/Austrian boats with young boys, who played more with each other than with Dan, but it still provided a friendly atmosphere.
The bay was lovely, with clear water and lots of fish to snorkel around. Daniel loved the swimming! Lisa played in her paddling pool on the beach under our beach umbrella, or swam with one of us in the sea – she loves the water too! There were some mosquitoes at the beach but it was not filled with biting “no-no” flies as it apparently was in past years.
I saw two octopuses while snorkelling at this beach, that’s the first time I have ever seen a real octopus. I saw one that looked like a lump of weed on a rock except it was moving a bit. After I watched a while and realised what it was, it swam from one rock to another and hid in a crevice, it moved like dough, it was so stretchy! Its arms were nearly as long as mine! A second octopus was in a neighbouring crevice.
While Nigel was spearfishing on a reef at the edge of the bay, an eight or ten foot black tip shark swam between him and the reef in about ten feet of water …. he swam for the boat with extra power to his feet somehow!!
During our stay the bay was visited by a French Customs boat, which sent pairs of men to visit each yacht. The ones we had were friendly, one was French, from St Malo! He was very friendly once he realised we were really from Guernsey, and were familiar with his local coast! (So many yachts registered in Guernsey have never even been there). He had recently started a four-year contract based in Tahiti with his family. When the formalities were complete, Nigel asked whether they had a compressor on the Customs boat. The result was that our St Malo man very kindly arranged to fill Nigel’s dive tanks with air using their compressor, including pickup and delivery, for free!
The other guy was from Moorea, near Tahiti. The boat is based in Tahiti and comes to the Marquesas every so often for a week or two to do a circuit of islands, they do the same to the Tuamotus. The journey from Tahiti takes two days and the boat does 18 knots. Our St Malo man is doing his second stint in Tahiti with his family, what a life!