On anchor at Hanahoa, Ua Pou Island

Hanahoa on Ua Pou has been voted by unanimous secret ballot of the Cosmos crew to be the loveliest harbor and village that we have visited so far. We will have to send pictures, and when we do, I believe you will agree with us.

We visited two small harbors on Thuata Island which is just a few miles south of Hiva Oa and then sailed to the north side of Hiva Oa and stayed on a rolling anchorage before making the sixty mile, daytime passage to Ua Puo. This harbor hopping eliminated the need to do any overnight passage from Hiva Oa to Nuku Hiva as originally planned. All of the harbors have been lovely to look at.

The two villages on Thuata are not mentioned in our travel or sailing guides. Several people in Atuona told us about them. On Thuata Island, we first anchored at Vaitahy. We anchored right in front of a sandy beach where a dozen kids were swimming. About eight of them swam right out to Cosmos to greet us. We gave each one a bag of M&Ms and they beamed.

I took the kayak ashore through the surf. I am not well experienced in the kayak, and it does not have the benefit of the outriggers as are on most local boats. I was pleased to just make it to the beach without capsizing. Once ashore, I walked about the village, which is laid out along two streets. One is the bay front road, and the other runs perpendicular to the bay front and up into the valley for a short way, before the switchbacks start to go up the side of the steep mountains. The main two buildings in the village are a beautiful new Catholic church and the school. The church was built in 1988 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the  arrival of the first missionaries on the island.

I said, "Bonjour," to numerous people and they responded in kind. Groups were sitting in conversation circles along the bay front, and in the churchyard. If I spoke French, it would be easier to get to know the people. No one speaks English. I found a store and bought a baguette and some frozen chicken. I walked back to the kayak and put them in expecting an interesting paddle back through the surf with the baguette on board. The kayak took on several gallons of water, but the baguette floated well in its long plastic bag.

When I got back to Cosmos, the beach was empty and all of the kids were either floating on buggy boards around Cosmos or sitting on the transom steps. They were all smiles and they wanted to talk to us as much as we wanted to talk to them, but we were able to communicate very little. They helped me get arranged to climb back aboard Cosmos and filled back in the transom steps once we had cleared the kayak back aboard. They had gotten a second round of candy while I was gone. They left about 15 minutes later with smiles, waves and au revoirs. The chicken from the barbecue and the baguettes were great.

The next morning, we traveled about three miles to another, less inhabited bay where the beach was white, and the water offered about 30 to 40 feet of visibility. Everyone swam ashore, where there were no roads, and just a few hut-houses. During our stay, we saw about eight or ten people, including a couple of eight or ten year old boys. A man and two women who were leaving the bay in an outboard motor boat stopped at Cosmos and gave us some oranges and we gave them some granola bars.

I went snorkeling along the rock walls to look for fish. I saw grouper, snappers, parrotfish and sheepshead. I swam back to Cosmos and got a Hawaiian sling, which is a six foot long steel shaft with points on one end and a loop of surgical tubing on the other. The surgical tubing is used to project the shaft to spear fish or crabs. I tried for about an hour to spear dinner and got within inches of fish, but they were faster than I was.

Later, I installed my video camera in a diving bag that was manufactured to allow for underwater video recording with my camera. The bag allows easy control of the camera and is waterproof down to thirty feet. Of course I tested it underwater first with nothing more than paper towels inside. The camera and the bag worked great. This was my first try at underwater video recording. I was working in breaking surf between a huge boulder that stuck out of the surf and the stone wall that was 15 feet from the rock. Once again, the fish had me at a definite disadvantage. I came away with nothing worth showing. I'll send the one still that I made from the videotape so that when I get some good pictures, we can see the improvement (I hope).

The next morning, we had an exciting sail to Hana Manu on the north side of Hiva Oa. When we got to Hana Manu, the waves were rolling directly into the open bay and we considered returning to Thauta island, but decided to drop anchor to find out what would happen. The anchor set well in hard sand. It always makes me anxious to be anchored overnight on a windward shore. Because of depths, we had to anchor about 50 yards from the shore. We estimated that if the anchor pulled lose, we would have about a minute to start the engines and get away.

After a few hours, the wind shifted so that it was not coming right up the bay at us and it dropped from 25 knots to about 15, so we stayed. We could see several house-huts under the palm trees, but no people. I swam ashore to a black-sand beach. By the time I got to shore, two horses had walked down to the beach and were feeding on the low growth just above high tide. No one was in the village camp. Several other horses were further up in the palm trees. A narrow stream flowed down the valley on each side, along the stone walls that kept sun out of the valley most of the day. I followed a trail until it got too overgrown and rough for me to walk in just my bathing suit.

All of this discovering and beauty in the largest mountain and the smallest shell certainly stirs the imagination. I stood on the beach with a one-inch piece of nautilus sea shell in my hand and considered which should be called more beautiful, the piece of shell, or the lush valley on a pristine bay surrounded by steep, barren mountains. For that moment, I decided that there is enough beauty for a lifetime of study and admiration in either the valley, or the shell. I brought the shell back to the boat and have contemplated upon it several times since..

The next morning, which was the 29th of August, we weighed anchor at sunrise to make the sixty-mile run to Ua Puo Island. We started with 20 knots of wind on our starboard quarter and had good sailing most of the way. About six nautical miles from our destination, we were reduced to four knots of sailing speed with only and hour to sunset. We started an engine and motored the final distance.

We anchored in Hanahoa, the most beautiful anchorage so far. Hanahoa means pillars in Marquisan. As in all harbors that we have visited in the Marquises, the small, blue bay is at the end of a narrow valley and the bay and valley are surrounded by steep, rocky mountains. The valley floor is covered with ferns, coconut trees, and mimosas and rises into the mountains as it turns away from the bay to go out of sight behind one of the mountains. But Hanahoa also has pillars of rock sitting on top of the mountains. The pillars must be over a thousand feet tall. One of the tallest is narrow at the base, pointed at the top, and has a maximum width of about 200 feet. This pillar, along with the others, on top of the steep rock mountains make beautiful viewing throughout the day as they play hide-and-seek in the clouds.

Hanahoa is the high school town of the Marquises. Sybrina, our guide in Atuona told us that the kids at age 14 go to Tahiti to school. But Roger, a physics teacher that we met told us that the kids come here from all of the Marquises. We noticed that all of the kids here are Marquisan. Sabrina was of French origin. Perhaps those that pay for private school go the Tahiti, and those that go to public school go here. The school is complete with dorms. Roger told us they started school on July 14th and will go to school for two months and home for one month until the end of the school year in May.

Roger was staying at a small pension on the hill overlooking the valley. We asked him to tell the owner of the pension that we would like to have diner there. He seemed to think that was fine and told us to come about six or seven. When we arrived, only Roger was there. He said the owners are building a house about twenty kilometers away and that we should wait. We sat down in a lovely seating area with great views and waited for about an hour. When the owners arrived, Roger spoke to them in French explaining our request. At first, the wife said she had nothing to serve and I asked if we could come the following night and she said that would be good. She asked what we would want and I told her fish. She said if we want fish, then she could prepare it now. As she prepared the meal, her husband served us drinks and set a table for six. We were delighted to sit at dinner with the proprietors and a friend. We gave and got life stories clearly spoken and understood in Frenglish.

Tomorrow we leave for Nuku Hiva.

Joe Dorr