June-August 2025

The boat rocks gently as the palm trees sway in the breeze and catch the last of the sun’s rays. The dolphins do their final cruise around the bay before disappearing for the evening. Another day in a near perfect anchorage on Tahuata comes to a close.

The gorgeous views from our anchorage in Hanatefau, Tahuata. We saw the legendary green sunset flash for the first time here in the Marquesas.

We have been in the Marquesas, French Polynesia, for 5 weeks now but it hasn’t always been such a pleasant place to be. Many of the anchorages are uncomfortably rolly, with dinghy docks that are not protected from the resulting surge making getting ashore a fraught exercise. Not to mention bashing the dinghy around unless you go to the trouble of using a stern anchor to hold the dinghy off the rough concrete dock or surrounding rocks. Then there are the insects. Sandflies, “affectionately” known as no-see-ums or no-no’s, are particularly vicious in some bays on Nuka Hiva, forcing Phil to use the heavy duty DEET repellent for the first time in 10 years. They certainly are a deterrent for going ashore! The bites appear one to two days later, itch like crazy and turn into little sores which run the risk of getting infected in this tropical environment.

Phil armed with an insect swatter of appropriate proportions, given the numbers of not only no-see-ums but also mosquitoes in some areas.

Not long after we arrived we were delighted to catch up with our friend Sven, and his crew Marina. We did the passage from Panama at roughly the same time and had been keeping in touch with position reports via text messages. We had a joint celebration for my and Sven’s birthdays.

Happy birthday to Sven and me. It was too windy on board “Kwilena” to get a photo with the candles.

We spent some time with them in a few different anchorages on Nuka Hiva, our favourite being Anaho Bay. It’s a protected bay with a small village, and some nice walks. There are even some vegetables available from one of the locals who has a farm there. The down side is the plentiful no-see-ums. Sadly we said goodbye to Sven and Marina who left for the Tuomotus, and beyond. Another farewell but we are likely to see Sven again in Australia as he has a son who lives there.

Anaho Bay, Nuka Hiva

We spent my actual birthday in a spectacular anchorage called Hakatea Bay also on Nuku Hiva. Entering the bay requires you to sail almost right up to an incredibly tall and steep mountain before turning hard right to get into the anchorage itself.

The entrance to Haketea Bay on the left – you have to sail past that very low point and almost up to the high cliff before turning into the bay. Photo on the right shows two of our friends leaving the bay.

The main attraction here is a gorgeous walk to the Vaipo Waterall, reputedly tallest waterfall in the Marquesas. I’ll let the photos do the talking. There is a family in the village who provide a legendary lunch for returning walkers who order ahead. We had planned to make that my birthday celebration but wouldn’t you know their “restaurant” was closed that day as the owner had gone to “town”.

On the walk to the waterfall – creek to cross, some quite muddy tracks, and a good view of the falls themselves.

This is about as close to the Vaipo Waterfall that Phil could get – I waited at the sign that advised not to go any further.

Unfortunately Phil got a couple of blisters on his foot from his sandles shortly after we arrived in the Marquesas, and in no time at all they were infected. I threw all the topical antibiotics from the first aid kit on them and did my best with daily dressings. There was no swimming or beach landings to keep them dry but in the end Phil needed to go onto oral antibiotics before they really started to heal.

The churches here are just gorgeous. Every village, however small, has one. They are beautifully decorated with locally available materials -wood, shells, flowers, palm fronds. Each one has a drum rather than an organ. I had been wanting to attend a mass to hear the singing and on Ua Huka, one of the smaller Marquesan islands, I had the chance to do so. I’ll never forget the thrill in my heart at the first sound of their uplifted voices.

Drums rather than organs, beautiful native flowers, churches decorated with local craft

The churches come in all sizes! The one on the right overlooks the remains of a traditional me’ae- an interesting juxtaposition

We walked from our anchorage on Ua Huka around a headland and into the next village where there supposedly was a wood carver who ran half day workshops on making a tiki. We found his house just outside the village but apparently he had moved to one of the bigger islands so no tiki workshop for us. But a tiki was waiting for us.

Tikis are everywhere!

On our way through the village, we had passed a woman sitting in a wheel chair outside her house. She had a lovely open face and smile and started chatting to us. With my limited French and her limited English, we managed to understand that she wanted to show us the artisanal woodwork shop. We politely declined, not wanting to be the only potential buyers but also because we were saving our cash for the woodwork workshop. However, she was still waiting to see us on our way back and this time we agreed since the workshop idea had not come to pass. She had clearly had a stroke but nonetheless she wheeled herself down the very bumpy street to the artisanal which she opened up for us. What a surprise -the place was like a woodwork warehouse! It was packed full of some really excellent pieces, and here we found our tiki.

Paseafique at anchor Ua Huka.

We had a lovely stay on this island- very friendly and helpful locals, who stopped to give us a lift back from one of our walks. Unfortunately we had to cut our visit short when the wind changed direction and started to bring the swell into the anchorage. A very thoughtful local man passing by in his boat, stopped and managed to communicate to us that the swell would soon start breaking in the anchorage and that we should leave. We had been hoping to wait a few more days for a more settled forecast to sail to our next anchorage, but we took his advice and headed out to sea. It was a rough sail but at the end of a long day, we were securely anchored on Tahuata where some just delightful anchorages awaited us.

We ended up spending several weeks on Tahuata, moving between the three good anchorages: Hanamoenoa with its gorgeous white sandy beach and plentiful fish life including big manta rays; Vaitahu where there is a village and a couple of small supermarkets; and Hanatefau with the spinner dolphins and nearby village of Haptoni.

We swam with the manta rays -beautiful graceful creatures who were a bit shy of us so we didn’t pursue them as they glided away. The first morning we were in Hanatefau there were something like 60 dolphins cruising around the bay and putting on a magnificent acrobatic display for several hours as they leapt out of the water and spun around.

Hanatefau, Tahuata, where we saw a wonderful display of spinning dolphins.

We were lucky to witness a couple of special cultural events. The first of these was in Hapatoni, a gorgeous little village. There are four main communities living in different valleys on Tahuata, and once a year each community hosts the other three communities for several days of celebrations which seem to have a mostly religious theme. It so happened that it was Hapatoni’s turn while we were anchored nearby. We spent a delightful evening ashore at the final event which included singing, dancing and some short performances. We felt privileged to be made welcome at a true community event that was not a show for tourists. Everybody was involved from the little children to the senior members, and there was much joy and laughter.

Community event in Hapatoni – there were marvellous harmonies from the men’s and women’s voices for this song. I was captivated by the drummer just visible on the very right. He was so very enthusiastic!

The second cultural event was the Bastille Day celebrations in Atuona on nearby Hiva Oa, where we had a brief stay before returning to Tahuata. As you might expect, the Bastille Day events included some formalities at the war memorial in town, followed by dancing and games at the large community oval.

The start of the formal procession to the war memorial, and one of the floats on it’s way to the community oval

Part of the formal ceremony at the war memorial

Spectacular traditional dress

More dancing for Bastille Day at the community oval.

Back on Tahuata, we visited the three anchorages again, and our pace of life slowed down. Unlike much of our cruising experience which is often somewhat fast paced and filled with new experiences, we had a lot of quiet time.

We enjoyed a lovely evening on the white sandy beach of Hanamoenoa with some new friends -a Danish couple and their two crew, and a German couple. We made good use of the beach fire pit to cook a BBQ dinner.

Phil preparing the fire in the BBQ pit, Hamamoennoa on Tahuata.

The Danes had brought a large bowl of bread dough and to my surprise proceeded to twist long pieces of it around the end of a stick for cooking over the coals -exactly as I did when I was a girl guide in my early teenage years. However unlike the “twisters” of my youth, that were filled with butter and jam, the Danes put cooked sausages in theirs -so like a sausage in a freshly cooked bread roll.

Our Danish friend, Rikki, cooking the perfect “twister”.

The evening ended on a rather disappointing note for us. Landing and leaving this beach in a dinghy requires quite come care and consideration as it shallows very quickly and has dumpy waves close to shore. We had previously successfully executed dinghy manouevers on this beach so we were cognizant that we needed to be extra careful leaving the beach in the dark. But nature still managed to get the better of us, sending in a rather large wave just as we had the dinghy beam on while Phil was about to get in. I was in the dinghy already with my back to the swell so was very much taken by surprise when I got a good dunking as the wave broke over the dinghy, filling it with water and sand!

It took quite a deal of effort to keep control of the dinghy while Phil bailed it out enough for us to be able to haul it up the beach and sort ourselves out for another go. We were successful on the second launch and got back to the boat where we unloaded all the sodden plates etc and tidied up. In all the hullabaloo, Phil managed to re-strain his knee, which was only just recovering from a recent slip on a dinghy dock, and I sustained a separation of my right AC joint -basically the ligaments around the joint between the clavicle and shoulder blade were torn. Not what we needed a few weeks before boat pack up would start in earnest.

While in Hanamoenoa, we were joined by Tiger Lily and her crew -Pedro, Fabiola and Sophie, who had not long arrived from Panama. Phil had met the previous owners of Tiger Lily in Malaysia and spent time with them in Kenya. We knew they had sold the boat and so we were happy to meet the new owners and spend some time with them.

Fruit is abundant in the Marquesas – pamplemousse (seen here next to the bananas), mango, guava, limes, banana, coconuts. Generally though you don’t buy it in the shops. Rather you find a local who will sell you some from their garden, or outside of the villages you can pick the wild fruit.

One afternoon Phil picked up his phone to browse the news to discover that there had been a large earthquake just off the Pacific coast of Russia which had triggered tsunami alerts for most of the islands across the Pacific, including the Marqueases.

While we waited to see just how big the waves were in places that would be hit several hours ahead of us (like Hawaii), we moved out to a deeper part of the Hanamoenoa bay. We had thought that maybe that would be sufficient but the local authorities issued specific advice that vessels anchored or moored in the Marqueases should go to sea for the night so we, and the other two boats in the anchorage, did so. Even though the wave in Hawaii had not been as big as forecast, we felt it best to err on the side of caution having already been through one tsunami close to shore. Fortunately it was quite a pleasant night and the conditions were comfortable. We returned the next morning and observed that it did not appear that big waves had washed into the bay as there was no vegetation litter in the water and the beach looked normal.

Shortly after the tsunami, old friends Hanspeter and Brigitte on Shiva arrived from the Tuomotus. It was a very happy reunion and we had a lovely evening on board Shiva for Swiss National Day.

Enjoying Swiss National Day on board “Shiva” with Brigitte and Hanspeter

Hanamoenoa Bay had one more event in store for us – well mainly me- a close encounter with a SHARK! Phil and I were in the water cleaning the hull one afternoon when Phil popped his head up and said he had seen a shark but not to worry as it was on the bottom cruising past. So even though I’m pretty scared of sharks I decided to stay in for a bit longer and get a bit more of the waterline cleaned. Phil had finished his job under the water and so he got out and went around the other side of the boat to pull the dinghy up. Next thing I knew something bumped my legs and then my side, and here was this grey shark right next to me!!!! I screamed for Phil and he came racing around in the dinghy and I got out of the water as quickly as possible without splashing too much. It took a few hours and a couple of beers to stop feeling shaky! We found out later that the Danish people who were cleaning their hull that day also had a couple of sharks come very close to them. Fortunately the shark(s) were perhaps just curious rather than hungry.

Not the day of the shark encounter, but this is what I was doing on that day- cleaning the boat suspended on a pool noodle

The slower pace of life for us in the Marqueases meant that small interactions with the locals took on some significance. Many times we were given lifts by the local people when walking to town, we bought fruit and vegetables from them, we chatted to them in very broken French at dinghy docks. One guy who passed us when Phil was struggling with his sore knee to carry the water jerry can back to the dinghy, stopped his ute and reversed back and offered for Phil to put the jerry can in the ute which he then drove back down to the dinghy dock.

One of our loveliest interactions will remain an enduring memory. Phil got chatting with a local woman, Tahina, while I was off walking one day. Tahina, who can speak English, invited us to her house where she gave us some fresh fruit while we sat and talked. She played her ukulele and encouraged us to sing along with her. It nearly brought tears to my eyes to be sitting there singing “You are my sunshine” with her, followed by rounds of “Frere Jacques”, that old French song that we all learned in primary school. There was some point to learning that song after all.

View from the village of Haptoni, where Tahina lives

Having enjoyed the delights and beauty of Marqueases, we are once again in the process of packing up Paseafique to leave her in the yard here while we return to Australia for the cyclone season. We will be back in March 2026 to continue west across the Pacific.

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