Thursday 19th July

Nuku Hiva
Marquesas

8 54.888 S
140 06.115 W

So much for a good night’s sleep! The rain and wind continued all night, at about 01.30hrs we seemed to be rolling a great deal more than previously so I made the huge mistake of getting up and peering out of the hatch to make sure we hadn’t
drifted off. Well we hadn’t drifted off but we were not pointing in the same direction that we had been when we went to bed – we should have been as we had both the forward and a stern anchor out. I called out to Gerry to come and have a look and to try and work out what was happening, we concluded that our stern anchor had given way in one of the gusts and was no longer effective, we were swinging around our forward anchor and were now side on to the swell hence the rolling. We decided to try and drop the stern anchor again, Gerry got in the dink and I hauled the excess line in on the stern anchor. With the wind gusting quite badly Gerry motored out in the dink to reposition the anchor, unfortunately the dink couldn’t compete with the wind and drag the stern of the boat back around enough to drop the anchor. We tried 2 or 3 times without success, I even had the motor running to try and keep us facing the right way whilst Gerry dropped the anchor – that didn’t work either. We then had to make the horrid decision to move completely as when we swung on our forward anchor we were getting far to close to Y Not who had a stern anchor out behind us and we didn’t want to bump into them in the middle of the night. Gerry tied the dink onto the boat and climbed back onboard; we donned the headsets and then proceeded to hoist the forward anchor. It was pitch black and we knew that there were a couple of other boats nearby so we had the radar going as we picked our way through the anchored boats and over to a spot where there was nothing anchored for a good distance around us, unfortunately it was opposite the harbour entrance directly in line with the incoming swell but at least we weren’t going to hit anyone when we turned. We dropped the anchor and sat watching the boat swing around it, doing figure of eights but at least not drifting off. We didn’t bother trying the stern anchor, knowing that trying to get it to set in the gusts was not going to be a happening thing at 02.00hrs! I went back to bed and Gerry watched for a while then joined me, the rest of the night was rolly and we managed to get the minimum of sleep. By 06.30hrs we were back up and preparing to move the boat back to a better anchoring spot. We went further in towards the dock and took the space left vacant by a boat that departed yesterday. Gerry got in the dink and took the stern anchor out and this morning had more success in dropping it and getting it to set – the wind had dropped and he was able to tug the boat around into the swell. Once we were set I cooked us breakfast before we ran the engine to top up the batteries and cool the fridge down. Once we had finished with the engine running Gerry went into dock to collect our laundry, it was just beginning to spit with rain again so I stayed on the boat. When he got back the rain had let up and we both jumped in the dink to go ashore to do the last minute stocking up of food. We took the boat documents with us as we had to check out with the Gendarmerie – we were going to be leaving in the morning. At the supermarket we found most of the things that we needed but had to limit ourselves to what we could carry in the back pack and bags. As the back pack was very heavy Gerry decided that he would come back in the afternoon to check out. We stopped at the craft building on the return journey and I bought a piece of tapa cloth and a carving, this was just about the last things that we could manage so we got in the dink and returned to the boat where we stowed everything away, ate lunch and then had a brief afternoon nap. Mid afternoon Gerry returned to town and checked out at the Gendarmerie and picked up our last bag of laundry whilst I cleaned out the fridge. On his return we took a couple of beers and our slab of bacon over to Y Not – they have a slicing machine and were kindly going to slice up our bacon for us. We spent an hour or two on their boat and then it was time to go ashore for dinner. We met up at the only restaurant we have found and had a pleasant evening meal together, this time the restaurant had vegetables! Following dinner we headed back to the boat for the night, it was a much better night as we stayed firmly in place for the night. Tomorrow we are off; first we are stopping at Daniel’s bay which is just 4 miles away as we can get filled up with fresh water there and then we are taking off straight away heading to Tahiti where we are picking up Abigail who is joining us for a month. There won’t be any photos for a while but hopefully my sister will be kind enough to load the blog for me for the next week or so.