Kincsem Adventures

July 4 at Musket Cove, Manolo Island, Fiji

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tomorrow is the start of the next leg of the World ARC 2025-2026 but Kincsem will not be on the starting line. We will cruise Fiji for another 3 weeks and then lay up the boat at Vuda Marina until late October when we will sail her to New Zealand. Participating in the World ARC has been a lot of fun and today are two more parties: a 4^th of July BBQ organized by Martha of Salinity and fare well drinks in the evening organized by WARC, including a local dance troupe. These parties always bring together a lot of boats and are great fun. Yesterday was a Karaoke party organized by the Japanese catamaran Nacula. It went past “cruisers’ midnight” (aka 9 pm) and a lot of people (including the entire Kincsem crew) participated enthusiastically. So I am looking forward to rejoining the World ARC (2027 iteration) in August 2027 but until that time, Kincsem will be doing some independent cruising. In 2026, we will start from New Zealand and visit some of the lesser visited islands in the South Pacific, including the Cook Islands, Samoa, Wallis & Fotuna, the Banks Islands and the North of Vanuatu and then sail to Australia via New Caledonia. If you are interested in joining the Kincsem team, please ask me to send you the cruising plan.

But back from the future to the present. After spending time in Somosomo, as described in the last episode of this blog, we hopped across the Somosomo Straight to Viani Bay to dive the Rainbow Reef. Viani Bay is a beautiful bay but it is full of coral so anchoring was a bit challenging. Whenever a 55 kg anchor is skipping across a rocky floor you know it’s going to be challenge. But my trusted Spade eventually hooked onto something and held well for the duration of our stay. Getting the anchor up and down has been a bit more challenging lately because our starboard anchor winch has been acting up. Sometimes when you press the button you only hear the clicking of the relay but the winch does not start. A light tap with the rubber mallet is all that is needed to get it going again but over the last few weeks, this has been more and more frequent and the necessary tabs have been getting a bit more forceful as well. But in the Fiji Compendium – a 250 page tome put together by a number of volunteer cruisers that is distributed for free - I found an electrician in Savusavu who has a great reputation for repairing electric motors and I made an appointment with him a few days hence.

At the Fiji Dive Academy in Viani Bay

Bar and Restaurant at Viani Bay Dive Resort. The resort has all but 3 cabins but the restaurant serves great food. We used the resort for diving the Rainbow Reef.

The diving on the Rainbow Reef was truly spectacular – not so much because of the fish but because of the different types of coral we saw. One dive was called Purple Corner because of the many purple soft corals. Another was called White Wall because – you guessed it – it includes a big wall of all white coral. It also included a few tunnels which were very exciting for me as I have never dove into a tunnel. I have no pictures of these dives but videos are in the Videos section of this website if you’re interested. https://kincsem-adventures.skipperblogs.com/videos.

We needed to get to Savusavu, a larger town, for two reasons. First, because Jeremy and Nicole wanted to go to their favorite restaurant there for their silver wedding anniversary – congratulations, Jeremy & Nicole! Second, we needed to have Rome, the electrician, fix the starboard anchor winch. The appointment with Rome was a 8:30 and he was on time – showing up with his young trainee. He confirmed my thought that the brushes needed replacing and he said he had done that on a winch like mine just last week – a good sign! Taking the winch off was hard work for the trainee – it weighs 34 kgs!

Savusavu – why is it that many names in Fiji are double takes? We cleared in at Lomaloma, we are going to Savusavu and we have to do Sevusevu to get permission to anchor!?? Well, ChatGPT doesn’t know the answer and who cares - Savusavu is a delightful town. There is very little, if any tourism except for the few yachts in the two marinas. There are no less than seven “supermarkets” – which sell mostly the same stuff, like spam and frozen chicken feeta and, of course, large sacks of rice. None of them carry French or Italian cheese or cooked or smoked ham or salami. I could not even find a salt shaker. But people seem to survive somehow! People laugh a lot and are incredibly friendly.

At the bus depot; Hino is not a Chinese company but a Toyota subsidiary

Sunbrellas? Yes and no - multi use against sun and rain!

Some nice and some not so nice houses!

We had the good sense of not eating here

Home Depot Fiji style!

Rome came back a couple of days later and with my help, installed the winch again. He complained about his trainee – why would a young guy like him go off on vacation when there was work to do? But still, he was the best trainee he had had in a long time. We tested the winch – purred like a cat for a few times. Then I tried it again from the helm station – nothing. Rome looked distressed but calmly declared he would have to go for lunch and then take it off again. The next day he came back and reinstalled the winch: it was working perfectly. He explained that he discovered a broken washer which shorted out the motor. He hadn’t noticed the problem before because he hadn’t needed to disassemble the entire motor to replace the brushes. When it came to payment he said his accountant said F$600 but he’d give it to me for F$495 because he hadn’t fixed the winch the first time around. This is about US $240 – and included a half-day taxi trip to the next town to pick up the new brushes! Of course I gave him the full F$600, still an excellent deal. The winch has been working flawlessly since.

If you look at a map of Fiji, it’s a straight shot from Savusavu to Nadi on the West side, which is close to Musket Cove. However, what looks like open sea is covered by coral reefs. To get through the maze of reefs one has to get through a number of narrow passes and then follow a winding, narrow fairway between reefs along the entire North side of Viti Levu. As always in coral waters, I overlay satellite pictures over the course to make sure that we’re not hitting any reefs. In critical places, we also have someone on the bow and of course, the forward looking sonar running. One entertainment was to see whether the various markers indicated in the chart actually existed. Less than 50% did!

Approaching the Nasonisoni passage – the reef is visible on the left

Nicole on lookout for uncharted reefs. Note the headset.

Navigation among the many reefs is tricky and charts are often wrong. Must have satellite pictures!

At the Volivoli Dive Resort

Cloud 9 floating bar outside Musket Cove

Stepping outside from the party at Musket Cove

On the morning walk at Musket Co

Somosomo, Tavenuni Island, Fiji

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The bureaucracy in Fiji is quite over the top and the WARC organization – uncharacteristically - didn’t prepare the fleet well for a very important aspect of it: the biosecurity rules. There was nothing about these rules in the WARC handbook. One of the boats in the fleet, Fruition, had left Tonga a week or so before the fleet and sailed to Savusavu, a bigger town, to check in. They underwent a 2 hour process with customs and immigration and had all fruit, vegetables and meat products on their boat confiscated by biosecurity! Hearing that caused quite a bit of angst among the fleet as many had filled their freezers with meats and purchased a lot of vegetables and fruit in preparation for the long weeks in Fiji away from civilization. An additional problem was that the fleet, unlike Fruition, would be arriving on Vanua Balavu, a very small island where we were told we could not count on purchasing ANY provisions! Visions of hungry crews ransacking the local stores on Vanua Balavu for anything edible were circulating!

Approaching Lomaloma on Vanua Balavu with Nicole as outlook on the bow. The charts in Fiji are notoriously unreliable and eyeball navigation is key

Well, at the skippers meeting we got a little bit more clarity (“it’s all up to the individual officer”) and some additional information was given, but too little, too late. On Kincsem, Nicole found the actual text of the biosecurity rules online and spent a lot of time and energy trying to fit our provisions into the many exceptions: All frozen ground beef was cooked and re-frozen, the tails of frozen shrimp were removed and even garlic was de-skinned! And some spam in cans was thrown overboard – no big loss there!

When we got to Lomaloma on Vanua Balavu, our check-in point, the reality thankfully was a lot different from the experience that Fruition had: Although some 10 official boarded Kincsem, they were extremely polite (but one of them didn’t take off his dirty shoes) and the whole process took all of 15 minutes, customs, immigration and biosecurity together. The biosecurity guy said: if you have any meat in your freezer, don’t bring it ashore. We said ok and that was it: nothing was confiscated! So what was excellent news, was also bad news as all of Nicole’s efforts were wasted!

This is the Fiji biosecurity team arriving at another WARC boat ….

The WARC fleet at anchor, waiting for their cruising permits

It took 2 full days at anchor in Lomaloma before we we received our cruising permit even though we were the fourth boat to arrive at the anchorage. The officials issued all permits for the fleet in one batch after inspecting the last and slowest boat. Without that permit, you cannot go ashore and explore. Very frustrating! That first shore trip, however, was definitely a turning point for us in our feeling about Fiji: the bureaucracy is one thing, but the Fijian people are quite another – they are just fantastic. After dinghying ashore in Lomaloma we happened to come across the Annual Women’s Competition where women from some 27 villages were competing in things like balancing an egg on a spoon in your mouth while running, sack hopping, eating bread dangling from a line with just their mouths and converting a coconut into coconut flakes. A fabulous time was had by all! After the competition we walked in the direction of the school to take a look and a local approached us and invited us for coffee to his house!

Bread on a string contest

Getting ready for the coconut shredding contest. Videos of the contest and the anchorage (from the drone) are found in the Videos section of the website.

This nice man invited us to his house for coffee – two big spoons of sugar, two big spoons of powdered milk and a sliver of instant coffee – looked a bit like I imagine cava must look!

Fijians are very religious and churches are usually the best looking buildings in local towns – next to the community centers. Here is the church in Lomaloma, easily the biggest building in town

Our first anchorage after Lomaloma was Susui, just 5 miles away. We were the only boat in the beautiful anchorage and went ashore quickly to do “sevusevu.” In Fiji, all anchorages are owned by the villages ashore and you have to ask permission of the village chief to anchor in them and you have to bring him cava root as a token of your respect. The Chief will then do a short ceremony – called sevusevu - to get us permission from the gods to have us stay in the anchorage. The cava root is turned into a brown powder which is then mixed with water and produces a slightly anesthetic effect. More importantly, the cava drink tastes like dish water and we wanted to avoid at all cost being invited to share cava with the locals who are all very social and want to share their favorite beverage! As cava is typically drunk in the evenings, our strategy was to arrive at villages in the morning when the chief hopefully is less inclined to invite us to share in the cava drink. Sure enough, the strategy worked beautifully in Susui: after five minutes of mambo zambo in Fijian – interspersed with the words “sevusevu” – we were declared members of the village for a year and free to anchor, take pictures and whatever else we wanted.

Ready to see the Chief in Susui – knees have to be covered.

The chief is the bald grey beard; to his right is a guy he called his son. A neighbor pointed out to us that the son had the eyes of someone who had indulged excessively on cava the night before …

The Chief’s house

At the school in Susui. Fourteen students, 3 teachers and one principal.

Excursion to the Hidden Bay from Susui

Snorkeling on the reef off Susui

Spirited sailing inside the reef on the East Side of Vanua Balavu island

Quick stop at MBavatu harbor. An American has purchased the entire bay and runs a big farm. We had a great hike but found out that the Alltrails app has its limitations ….

Next stop: the beautiful Bay of Islands. Videos of the views above and below the waterline are available in the video section on this website. We again had to do sevusevu – in the village of Delaconi - but we delayed that procedure until the morning of our third day – again, the strategy worked and we didn’t have to drink cava. The chief in Delaconi was not there but his sidekick was shrewd enough to not only claim the cava but also a cash donation for the road project!

Bay of Islands – above and below the surface

When in the Bay of Island, we met Sugar Shack, a well known catamaran whose owners share a lot of information online about the places they visit. They recommended we go to Namata Bay on the island of Qamea and what a great recommendation it was! The Bay is inhabited by the Mitchell family which are known to be very friendly to cruisers. There is also a house of an Australian family who live there part time and who came out to welcome us right after the anchor went down. We had a great time visiting with both families and inviting some of them onboard for drinks.

Kincsem at anchor as seen from our Australian friends’ home

At the Mitchell’s home

Namata Bay

The next “must see” on the way West in the Fiji islands is the Rainbow Reef. It lies between the islands of Tavenui and Vanua Levu. Most boats in the WARC fleet decided to spend time at the luxurious Paradise Resort Tavenuni where you can do dive and snorkel tours to Rainbow Reef. When we heard that one of the WARC boats, a relatively light catamaran, went missing with the mooring attached and that anchoring would be very difficult, we decided instead to see the reef from Viani Bay where there is a small dive resort. But first, we decided to go to the small town of Somosomo to pick up provisions. The handbook said Somosomo was a traditional Fijian town which was “delightful.”

Downtown Somosomo

Community center Somosomo

There were definitely no tourists in Somosomo - other than Team Kincsem. There is not even a pier where a ferry or tourist boat could dock – we anchored just off the reef which goes all the way to shore. To go shopping, we needed to get ashore with the dinghy – easier said then done. The reef goes all the way to the shore and at low tide, there is a wide shelf of reef at least 60 meters out from the shore. In those situations, we anchor the dinghy offshore to an anchor buoy and have an endless line running through a block on the buoy with which we can pull the dinghy in and out to the buoy. In Somosomo, we had to lengthen our shore lines substantially to fasten them to a bush ashore. Hard work for a little shopping trip! As luck would have it, we had made contact with AJ, a taxi driver recommended to us by Sia Mitchell (Namata Bay) and he helped us coming ashore at a private house where the conditions were the least difficult!

We wanted to shop for some fresh vegetables and fruits as well as luncheon meats and cheese but success was limited. There were some onions, some potatos and even some carrots to be had and some apples. But everything else was more difficult. Alas -I found a head of lettuce in one of the stands on the main street – which is the only paved street. This is lettuce I saw in any store since Papeete! Luncheon meats – no way, unless you want to get some of the many varieties of spam in cans. Cheese – there was something resembling camembert but it was like it came out of a can as well. There were some hard cheeses but they taste a bit industrial. Well, when in paradise, don’t complain about the few little annoyances!

The dinghy was quite the local attraction

The next day AJ took us on a little tour of Taveuni which was quite interesting. AJ is a guy in his twenties with a mohawk who has a Toyota pickup with 4 seats and AC – about as luxurious a vehicle as we saw in Taveuni. First stop: the Lavena Coastal Walk on the North east side of Tavenuni. First surprise: The 35 Fiji $ per person entrance fee were not included in the price we had negotiated with AJ ……. But the trail was very well maintained so we assumed it was the locals who lived along the trail who maintained it and received our entry fee. Wrong – it’s a corporation who collects the fees and puts the locals to work for a song! Second surprise: after 1 ½ hours we got to the highly advertised waterfall but not really. We would have had to swim for 100 meters to really see it but we did not have swimming gear. Second stop was another waterfall – this one, however, most impressive. Again, the entire attraction, consisting of three waterfalls, is owned by the same corporation which owns the Coastal Walk. At this point, it wasn’t a surprise that we had to pay to see the waterfall – but Udo negotiated a 50% discount! Last stop was the Date Line – a small monument on the 180^th meridian. The idea is that you can have one foot on one date and the other foot on that date plus one. Trouble is that Fiji has changed that date line so it’s East of all the islands and all of Fiji is on the same date all the time. It was fun nonetheless!

The elusive Wainibau waterfall on the Lavena Coastal Walk

Lavena Coastal Walk

The first of three Tavoro waterfalls

At the Date Line

We learned quite a lot about Fiji and Taveuni from AJ. He grew up on the island of Tavenuni and had only been off once in his life, for a one week trip to Suva. He got so disturbed by the many people and cars and general noise level in Suva that he cut his trip short and went back home to Taveuni after only two days. He opined that Fijian women have a “great life”. “They eat a lot, then rest, then eat some more and generally do nothing all day.” He didn’t like their voluminous bodies and wanted to find a slim, white woman to get married. Well, we wished him good luck but refrained from suggesting that he get rid of his mohawk and wife beater T shirt to improve his chances …..

Fiji here we come!

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Clearing out of Neiafu, Tonga, yesterday was easy (again) because World Cruising arranged for a special deal with customs and immigration. One friendly immigration lady was positioned at the Mango restaurant on the waterfront in Neiafu to stamp passports and issue the clearance papers. Normally, all crew have to show up for this at the miserable offices at the rotten main dock and several officers will pour over the paperwork. We could even enjoy a cool beer while checking out – an opportunity that some boats took advantage of! For us, only skippers needed to show up and the whole session took all of 10 minutes per boat. There was a schedule when each skipper had to show and Kincsem jumped the line when another skipper wasn’t ready at the allotted time slot. So we were cleared 2 hours early! This was much appreciated as there is not a lot of time to get to Lomaloma in Fiji in daylight on the second day after departure.

Getting Kincsem ready to sail offshore takes a bit of time. First, all awnings have to be taken off and stowed. At anchor on a mooring we usually have an awning over the wind screen to cool down the cockpit. There’s another awning over the bow which permits us to leave some hatches open even if it is raining. Lastly, we often rig another awning over the aft deck to cool down the aft cabins.

Second, the dinghy engine has to be lifted off the dinghy and stowed in the aft lazarette. The engine is heavy (50 kgs) and I don’t want to stress the davits by leaving the engine on the dinghy when sailing offshore. Then the dinghy has to be lifted up on the davits and secured safely and covered by its own awning to prevent it from filling with water in heavy air conditions. Dealing with the dinghy alone took the current Team Kincsem more than 1 hour in Bora Bora. Yesterday, it took all of 30 minutes! Experience and routine is a great thing!

Third, all hatches have to be closed – to be reopened only once we have confirmed conditions are suitable for opening them offshore. Lastly, all loose items have to be stored and all lockers locked to prevent them from opening at sea.

Now, after one day at sea, we’ve all settled in. Udo just baked a rum and Coconut cake – bravo, Udo!

We spent more than 2 weeks in Tonga, which was driven in part by the fact that we spent less time in Niue than planned and in part by the dates for check-in in Fiji. One of the benefits of joining the World ARC is that World Cruising negotiates a special clearance process in Fiji. One of the most attractive cruising areas in Fiji is the Eastern or Lau Group of islands but there is no port of entry in Lau. If one wants to visit Lau, one has to clear in on one of the two big Western islands and then sail back East to Lau – 100 + miles upwind! World Cruising flies immigration and customs officers from one of the Western islands to Lau so World ARC participants can check in in Lau directly without the detour to the Western islands and upwind sail.

The two weeks flew by in no time. We explored the town of Neiafu, the only significant settlement on Vava’u. After spending some time in the islands, we came back to Neiafu for a WARC organized tour of the Botanical Gardens, followed by lunch with local dance show.

Impressions of Neiafu – an immaculate church, well dressed school children, lots of very used cars in town, pigs everywhere, and a sunken fishing boat at the Customs dock

At the Ene’io Botanical Gardens cum local dance show event organized by WARC

And then there was the obligatory WARC party and prize giving: although we didn’t receive a prize at that party because of a calculation error, Team Kincsem won the leg from Bora Bora to Tonga! We now have 2 firsts and 1 third place out of three competitive legs. Not bad!

At the prize giving. The Lady in our middle is the acting Governor of Vava’u and a relation of the King of Tonga.

Everyone not accompanied by his or her spouse at the party was deemed unattached at the WARC party – hence the flower on the left ear!

But in many ways the highlight of our stay was time spent in the islands, which are just a few miles away from Neiafau.

Anchorage near Hinakauea Beach off Pangai Motu

Happy hour at Nuku Island

Nuku Island is the most photographed island in the Vava’u Group.

Anchorage behind the outside reef off Ovaka Island

Many of the islands are inhabited and we much enjoyed visits to these small settlements.

Graves are adorned with plastic flowers. Note that the Birthday is described as Sunrise, the date of death as Sunset!

This is the community boat of Falevai on Kapa Island which unfortunately is in disrepair. Among other things it is used to take children to school in Neiafu on Mondays and bring them back on Friday afternoon. I experienced first hand that teenagers in Tonga party hard when I awoke from loud laughter coming from Nuku island at 3 am on Saturday morning

These children in Falevai were happy to have their photo taken.

Police station in Pangai – not much crime here!

Hinakauea Beach on Pangai Motu

Lots of choice of Spam in the market in Pangai!

Pangai has about 20 houses and 3 churches. The Catholic church is in the worst shape. There is a Wesleyan church in slightly better shape. This church is not on Google Maps like the others and may be Mormon as it is well funded and is located in a great location: across the street from the only market!

Every town, as small as it may be, has a community hall. Tonga is known as the friendly islands for a reason!

Special hairdo? Even the cows are friendly in Tonga.

Huge bats on Nuku Island

The Swallows cave

Kincsem is not all party all the time: Udo and Jeremy fixing the kill switch on the outboard of Sea Biscuit

Bonus picture: the famous Delos, an Amel Supermaramu 2000, in the flesh!

Murelle Bay, Vava’u, Tonga

Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After Moorea it was time to sail to Bora Bora for the World ARC rendezvous at the Bora Bora Yacht Club. Time was short to get ready for the start of the next leg of the WARC, Bora Bora to Vava’u, Tonga. Jim and Stewart left and Udo, Jeremy and Nicole joined the crew. Udo was on leg 1 of WARC several months ago but Jeremy and Nicole haven’t been on Kincsem before, so there was a lot of introductions to do.

The locals take their canoo racing seriously – this race went right through the mooring field at Bora Bora Yacht Club

Rig check was next – I went up both masts to check for problem areas. I do this before every major ocean passage and usually, I find nothing wrong. This time, however, I found a chafed radar cable. It looked like one of the halyards on the mizzen had rubbed against the cable for a long time and cut into the insulation, exposing a couple of the wires. I had had the impression that the radar wasn’t working properly so here was the smoking gun! Luckily I have on board a self-fusing silicone tape so I could at least do a temporary repair and the radar has in fact been working a lot better since!

From the Mizzen Mast – BBYC in the background

There were only about 12 WARC boats at the rendezvous because the fleet had been split into two for the next leg. This is because there are only 15 moorings in Niue, some of which are always out of commission, and anchoring is next to impossible. Kincsem is part of group 1. Group 2 will arrive at BBYC once group 1 has started and will start 3 days after us. There has also been a fair number of boats who have now decided that the WARC goes too fast through some of the World’s best cruising grounds and they have left the rally to cruise independently. For the same reason, Kincsem will leave WARC in Fiji to cruise to New Zealand and do another season in the South Pacific next year.

Even with less boats the reunion was fun – it is always good to speak with the other boats. We are all very busy repairing our boats in exotic locations so all have stories to tell! Overall, Kincsem seems to have a lot less problems than most others – even than the other, much newer Amel on the rally, a recent vintage Amel 50 named Pelican. So far, so good!

The four days in Bora flew by and it soon was time to line up for the start of the next leg for our group 1. Kincsem was first across the line and one of only two boats to do so under sail! Next port: Niue, a small island some 1,000 nautical miles away. The sailing was again easy: within hours after the start the wind shifted to be straight from behind and our “standard” rig of genoa and Code Zero, both poled out, went up. It’s always a fair bit of work to get everything set but from then on, there is very little to change on the sails.

Nicole and Udo setting up the starboard pole

Which topping lift is for which pole??

We did know that we would be crossing a front on our way to Niue and during the night of day four we did: thirty knots of wind, torrential rain but worst of all: MOAT - the Mother Of All Thunderstorms. There was thunder and lightening all around us for more than an hour and a half. There were flashes almost every minute and all around Kincsem. We tried to escape the inferno by motoring first North, then South but nothing seemed to help. Message from the autopilot: drive unit not found, no wind data shown on the instruments, it was getting worse by the minute. Ultimately, we decided to motor straight into the wind on the theory that this would get us out of the squall the quickest if it was moving downwind. It took more than 45 minutes before we were actually through and could see the stars and we put up reefed main and genoa to get underway again.

The autopilot would still work but not on wind direction, only on compass. Resetting the wind instruments cured that problem and brought back wind data to the instruments and the autopilot but only for a few hours. One of the displays was definitely no longer working and we struggled with the wind data until we removed that display from the network. Other damage: Single side band transceiver is dead; VHF doesn’t have position data, and most troublesome: the depth transducer is not working anymore. But we don’t use the SSB anyways, the VHF position data isn’t really needed and we have a forward looking sonar which shows the current depth just like the echo sounder. There may also be other things we have yet to discover but after quite a bit of fiddling, Kincsem appears to be in good shape again. I have ordered replacement parts and one of the WARC participants will bring them from New York when she visits her son for a few days in early June!

After seven days at sea we reached Niue and took a mooring at the Niue Yacht Club. The mooring was in 35 meters of water – yes, anchoring would be next to impossible! Niue does not have a harbor and there is not even a dinghy dock where you can leave your dinghy. Instead, there is a crane on the main dock which is used to lift out the dinghy! This is quite an operation but leaving the dinghy at the dock is prohibited and there is such limited space between the dock and surrounding reefs that there's no way to anchor the dinghy. Well, World ARC makes it easy: we were met by Paul and he showed us how to operate the crane and then drove us uphill to customs and immigration to check in.

Approaching Niue

The dock at Niue; pulling out the dinghy

Mainstreet Niue – look at the street signs! There are total of 1,700 people who live in Niue. All Niuens have New Zealand citizenship so many have left for NZ

The mooring field in Niue; Kincsem is being dwarfed by Luminous, a 73 foot carbon sled built in Italy, which has 2 professional crew. This is not the only boat crewed by professionals. Not quite the spirit of the World ARC …..

The Mormon church is everywhere!

Kincsem team at the “world famous” Niue Yacht Club, short NYC (move over, NYYC)!

The guy in the yellow vest claimed to be the Prime Minister of Niue. He said he’d been in power for 8 years (if I recall correctly)

Given that group 2 was following us from Bora Bora 72 hours later, we were only allowed 72 hours in Niue. We had planned to rent a car as well as to do some shopping for food. However, we also had been watching the weather for the next sail to Tonga very carefully and there was a system which looked like it might prove troublesome. Depending on when we left Niue, it might hit us with up to 35 knots of wind and even Westerly winds – upwind sailing. Gentlemen, as they say, never go to weather so we wanted to avoid that eventuality at all cost. When I re-checked the weather at the end of our first day in Niue – and a lovely party at the Yacht Club – it became clear that we needed to leave earlier than 72 hours after arrival if we wanted to avoid some serious weather. The morning update confirmed this assessment and we left at 7 am – so no tour of the famous caves and no shopping. The routing promised less than 25 knots of wind for the entire 270 nms but in fact, we had more than 25 knots for most of the way! Top wind speed we saw was 39 knots and a very confused sea because of large wind shifts! But everything was good on board albeit very uncomfortable.

At happy hour of our second day out from Niue we rounded the Northern tip of the island of Vava’u in Tonga. We arrived on a Saturday – after loosing one day on the international date line. As Tongans take their Sundays very seriously, there was no chance to check into Tonga until Monday so we dropped anchor in a beautiful bay just a few miles from Neiafu, the town were we would check in. We were not allowed to go ashore before having completed the check-in but we could go for a swim and could invite the crew of another WARC boat, the old S&S Swan 48 Montana, for drinks the next evening. A good – and long - time was had by all. Needless to say, we did not arrive in Neiafu at the allotted check-in time of 0830 the next morning….

Flight show put on by the local birds in Murelle Bay. Apple Photos is not identifying the birds here in Tonga - maybe when I'm back in SFO I will find out what they are!

Excellent meal cooked by Christoph from SV Montana (with the big mustache)

Tiki Anchorage, Moorea

Fri, 16 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It has been more than 4 weeks since we last went shopping for any food, so stores, particularly vegetables and fruit, were running a bit low as we are at anchor in Fakarava. The food shopping is not that great in Fakarava but there is a fantastic Carrefour hypermarket in Papeete, Tahiti. In addition, new controllers for our electric winches and a new drogue (to dampen the rolling of Kincsem in swelly anchorages) are waiting for us in Papeete. So we decided to do a quick pit stop in Papeete but there was one more stop in the Tuamotus on our list: The “false pass” anchorage Anse Amyot on the island of Tuau. The anchorage there is located on what looks like a pass into the lagoon which is, however, too shallow for most boats to pass. It is known for its snorkeling and for its “restaurant” – the private home of Valentine and Gaston which offer French meals to cruisers from time to time.

Kincsem at anchor at the town anchorage in Fakarava. Notice the two fenders and anchor buoy in the water in front of our bow. We are “floating” the anchor chain with these fenders to keep it away from any coral “bommies” on the ocean floor. This is supposed to prevent the chain from wrapping around the bommies and preventing damage to the bommies and the boat. A win-win - if it works!

After an uneventful sail from Fakarava, we got to Anse Amyot in the mid-afternoon and found all four mooring buoys occupied and the space available for anchoring rather limited. Fortunately, Dave from the WARC catamaran Watersprite from Australia offered to tie our mooring lines to a mooring buoy located 2 meters below the surface! Dave is a free diver and took no time at all to tie us up and we were all set! He even investigated the state of the mooring tackle and pronounced it in good condition.

The ”restaurant” at Anse Amyot

So while we were all set on the mooring, we had issues with the two main selling points of Anse Amyot: the restaurant and the snorkeling. It turned out that the cook was off island in Fakarava and none of us was able to snorkel. Why, you may ask? Because each of the three of us onboard Kincsem had gotten a tattoo from the “world famous” tattoo artist Tereboy in Fakarava! What we did not know before we got our tattoos was that one should not be in salt water for 1 to 2 weeks after getting a tattoo!

The evidence! These tattoos are made up of Polynesian symbols. Mine has symbols for my wife Nicki, my two children, my two grand children, adventure and sailing!

So we were off the next day to sail to Papeete – some 250 nautical miles. The conditions were again very mellow and chill: 7-12 knots straight from behind so we could have our double headsail rig of poled out genoa and poled out Code Zero up almost the entire 2 days and 2 nights. The Pacific is definitely a quiet ocean here in French Polynesia as indicated by its name – I cannot recall the last time we had 20 knots of wind – ah, except for that long squall in Tahanea I reported on in the last issue of the blog! There is sometimes some Southerly swell from some Southern Ocean storm but that is usually quite benign as well with a long period between waves.

Approaching Papeete, Tahiti

In Tahiti, you are back in civilization. There are literally hundreds of boats at anchor behind the reef and you have to ask permission via the VHF radio to enter the main pass into the lagoon and permission to pass by the airport. There are superyachts over 50 meters long in the Taina marina and there are marineros who help us to tie up med-style – with the stern to the dock and an anchor at the bow. There is a ship’s chandler right here in the marina where I can get some keenly desired items for Kincsem. There are restaurants galore. And there are many World ARC boats in the marina next to us. We arrive on April 30^th and May 1 is a holiday – no supermarket is open. We make the best of it by renting a car and circling the island of Tahiti.

Notre Dame of Papeete, a bit different from the one in Paris ….

Ancient site of worship, Arahurahu Marae; I didn’t feel the vibe one is supposed to feel. And that despite of my Polynesian tatoo!

Twin waterfalls at Vaihi

Wild cocks are everywhere

Cascades de Faarumai

Pointe Venus; here is where Cook anchored. It is now a well visited amusement area right at the beach

Genuine French beef tartare with raw egg on top. Delicious!

At the restaurant next to the superyachts. One of the yachts moored there was a sistership of the Bayesian, the giant yacht which capsized in a squall and sank in Sicily earlier this year.

After the big shopping run at Carrefour, we are off the next day to the neighboring island of Moorea. Moorea is world famous for it’s Cooks Bay – where James Cook anchored when he was discovering the Society Islands. It is breathtakingly beautiful and we found a nice anchor spot right next to a little church. If you go to https://kincsem-adventures.skipperblogs.com/videos you can watch a little video of Kincsem in Cook’s Bay, including some drone footage. By the way, according to his journal, Cook named these islands the Society Islands because they are quite close together.

Moorea from the pass at Papeete

Approaching Cook’s Bay

Cook’s Bay

The little town at the base of Cook’s Bay

From the hike to the Three Coconuts Lookout. Unfortunately, it rained the day before the hike and we did not dare climbing up the last few meters to the lookout. The terrain is very steep and very slippery!

Our next anchorage was just inside the reef to the North West of Cook’s Bay, the so-called Tiki anchorage. It derives its name from the many tikis that are on the ocean floor just 2 or 3 meters below the surface. The anchorage also provides access to a place where tour guides feed the sting rays so they gather and swim happily around the many tourists in the water. These creatures are quite friendly but if a sting ray and a shark come at you at the same time, that increases your heart rate substantially! Luckily, the rays like to be touched and don’t usually attack you and all the sharks we saw were reef sharks – which do not have humans on their list of favorite diet. According to the accepted wisdom, that is!

At the Tiki anchorage

Thanks to Stewart for most of these snorkeling photos

There is a video of our snorkeling in Moorea under https://kincsem-adventures.skipperblogs.com/videos.

Fakarava, Tuamotus

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Tuamotus are traditionally called the Dangerous Islands. This name stems from times when there was no GPS and navigation was by dead reckoning and celestial navigation only. The Tuamotus are essentially volcanos that sank into the sea, with only the top of the rim sticking out nowadays – dangerous reefs. The South and West sides of most of them is just barely above water, if at all. As a result, approaching them from the South or West is very dangerous as you don’t see the reef until you are almost on it – unless you have GPS. The North and East sides consist of reefs a little bit further out of the water (maybe 6 feet) and interspersed “motus” – little palm studded islands. Sometimes there is no pass at all into the interior of the volcano – the lagoon. But many of the Tuamotus have passes that are navigable at the right time. Getting into these passes is the name of the game in cruising the Tuamotus. It is not easy to get in or out of these passes as tidal currents often rage and there is little guidance of when is the best time to get in or out. Once inside, however, there are often terrific anchorages of undescribeable beauty and the islands are very sparsely populated so often there are no towns or even houses in sight. A dream destination for cruisers.

We left Ua Pou in the Marquesas after a fantastic, late lunch and soon settled into our routine of 3 hour watches during the night and 4 hour watches during the day. After a few hours of motoring the Easterly trades set in and we had a great sail all the way to the Tuamotus in 10-20 knots of wind. Unlike our sails in past weeks and months, most of the time was spent on or just off the wind, which makes for a much less comfortable experience than downwind sailing. One of the WARC boats even posted on the Whatsapp crew chat they had experienced “survival conditions” – well, it wasn’t that bad for us but nonetheless we were looking forward to getting there ….. Our first atoll was Raroia, the atoll where the Kontiki was shipwrecked some 50 years ago. Our plan was to anchor right by the motu where the Kontiki landed, which is on the South West side of the atoll.

How do you determine when is the best time to get into a lagoon? Obviously, you want there to be no or little current – “slack water”. In the first instance, the time of slack water depends on the time of low and high water. When the tide is low or high, the water should not be flowing in or out and the currents in the pass should be slack, right? Wrong! There are several factors which throw off this logic. The first is that there is usually a delay between high and low water and the current stopping. This delay could be a few minutes or more than an hour, depending on the geography of the atoll. The bigger the atoll, the bigger the delay – at least in theory. The second is that the seas breaking on the South side of the atoll (given the steady South East trade winds), will fill up the lagoon so in many atolls the ebb (outgoing current) is running longer and harder than the flood (incoming current), particularly if the seas are up and breaking heavily over the reef. So the time of slack water at high tide is earlier than high tide because even at high tide more water has to exit the lagoon. Conversely, the time of slack water at low tide is later than low tide since the current keeps flowing outwards even if the tide is low. And last but not least, the time of low and high tide for most atolls is not really publicly available so it has to be interpolated from the passage of the moon.

So how do you go about calculating the time of slack water? A few cruisers – starting with SV Soggy Paws (maybe they have dogs on board?) – have come up with an Excel spreadsheet called the “Guestimator.” It is a very much simplified calculation of the various factors that sometimes yields good results but more often does not. And then there is another cruiser who has dispensed with the Excel spreadsheet and supposedly improved upon the accuracy of the original Guestimator - https://www.thefloatinglab.world/en/guestimator.html. Well, it is 0700 – four days out from the Uo Pou - and we’ve arrived at the Ngarue pass into Raroia. The Guestimators are saying slack water is in 30 minutes. Looking at the pass, the current is absolutely ripping out and there are high breakers everywhere. We are waiting another 30 minutes, then another, then another. It looks like the situation is a bit improved and one of the other World ARC boats, a big catamaran, is heading in. Not for the faint of heart: 2 meter breakers on port, some 20 meters away, standing waves in our path but only less than 1 meter high. Breakers on starboard. Top current: 4.5 knots outgoing. All is good.

Next task: heading across the lagoon to our anchorage by the Kontiki motu. The charts do not show anything inside most lagoons – “uncharted” it says helpfully - yet the lagoons are studded with “bommies” – coral heads that stick up to or just below the surface. The way to avoid those is to chart a course on a satellite chart – Google Earth is one option but there are two others. These charts show bommies with great accuracy assuming they are properly referenced to the chart datum. Again, volunteer cruisers have created properly geo-referenced charts from satellite images and make them available to others for free. We have a separate tablet to run these charts at the helm station and I can upload the course charted on them to the chart plotter at the helm so I can have the autopilot follow the course. We also have a forward looking sonar which detects bommies very well. And lastly, one of the crew is placed at the bow with an intercom headset to spot bommies. This system is complex but works very well – to date, we’ve not hit anything! The Dangerous Islands are still dangerous – but we are able to control the risks.

There is another fantastic source of information about these atolls that I’ve not mentioned so far: The Tuamotu Compendium available on the Soggy Paws website. Therein I found a set of waypoints across the lagoon to the Kontiki anchorage which we chose to follow – after checking them on the satellite charts. The first lagoon crossing was a bit exciting to be honest but our confidence in our system increased immensely once we were safely at anchor at the Kontiki motu. The motu has a small plaque to commemorate the stranding of the Kontiki but it’s mostly a bird sanctuary. The snorkeling was also quite good – a wonderful anchorage and we were one of only about 5 boats anchored in the vicinity.

A White Tern

Annous

Our next atoll was Makemo, a much bigger atoll than Raroia. It was not originally on the plan but we had heard from other WARC participants that the snorkeling was supposed to be outstanding at a reef extending from the North East anchorage. It was also within a day’s sail from Raroia, avoiding an overnight passage. Retracing our steps to the Ngarue pass on Raroia was a breeze but the Guestimator was again wildly off: 4.5 knots this time outgoing current but for some reason that seas were more sedate than coming in against the current a few days before. By contrast, the Guestimator was much closer for the Tapuhiria pass into Makemo. Just 1-½ knot of current coming out of the lagoon.

Not much of this atoll is sticking out of the sea!

The snorkeling was not that outstanding after all so we only stayed one day at Makemo.
One highlight of our stay was seeing a shark of generous proportions sleeping under a rock. We could just see the back half of the fish and it seemed more than 1.5 meters long! We decided to not disturb this one!

Big shark asleep under the coral reef

First ride in our new kayak

Reef shark

The next atoll for us was Tahanea, an atoll that is uninhabited except during the copra harvest season. After a very early departure to make the Tapuhiria pass at slack water, we had a great sail to Tahanea and hit the Teavatapu pass there at slack tide – less than 1 knot of current. Bravo, Guestimator! Our first anchorage was just to the West of the pass and there was quite a contingent of other WARC boats as well. We met an Oyster 54 from New Zealand and they said that this was their sixth time at Tahanea – obviously we had hit upon a desirable place. The anchorage is between the Teavatapu pass and another, smaller pass (Motupuapua) which made for an excellent drift snorkel.

When these crabs retreat into their cocoon, they are indistinguishable from the coral rubble around them

There is very little soil on the motus in Tahanea – just coral of every shape

Magnificent Frigate Bird

Brown Boobie

Black tipped reef shark

But when we got back to the boat around 1600, we noticed that the wind had turned 180 degrees, putting us on a lee shore. A large, black cloud had developed and within minutes, the wind was up over 20 knots and the waves were building. I made the decision to depart immediately and we secured the dinghy and kayak and took down our sun awnings. When we started lifting the anchor, it was now blowing over 30 knots and the seas were over ½ meter high, building quickly. It was over 7 miles to the other side of the atoll from which the winds were now blowing – a distance that allows the waves to build to significant height over a short period of time.

One of the dangers in these lagoons is that the anchor chain can wrap around a bommie which reduces the effective length of the chain potentially to just a few meters. This eliminates the sag in the chain and its dampening effect as the boat pulls on the chain, resulting in immense forces on the anchor winch. The result can sometimes be a winch ripped from the deck and a boat on the beach! As it turned out, our chain had wrapped around a bommie and it took quite a bit of tricky maneuvering with the engine and bow thruster to free it. The wind and waves were so strong that it was very difficult to keep the bow into the wind but Stewart and Jim expertly directed the maneuver from the foredeck and the anchor was soon on deck. By now it was nearly dark and we followed the route we used to come into the anchorage to get back to the pass. Getting through the pass turned out to be easy although 3 knots of current were running.

So now what? We wanted to get back into the lagoon to explore another anchorage so we didn’t want to leave for another atoll so quickly. There was no way to get back into the anchorage in the dark even if the squall was blowing over. So we hove to under small sails and spent the night hove to (drifting slowly) or sailing around slowly. The squall was over in about 4 hours and we were back in the pass before 8 am the next morning. The weather was beautiful and we soon dropped anchor at an anchorage at the South East side of Tahanea. The place was outstanding and there was only one other boat – from the San Francisco Bay area!

My first time launching the drone from the boat. Check out the video on the Videos section of the website. https://kincsem-adventures.skipperblogs.com/videos

After two days of snorkeling and exploring we moved back to the pass in the afternoon to set for an early departure to our next atoll, Fakarava. The distances between these atolls are quite big and there are only two times of slack water during day light: one in the morning and one in the early afternoon. So it is often a challenge to cover the distance between atolls in one day as there is usually only about 6 hours between slack waters. Luckily, the current at Tahanea’s Teavatapu pass runs at less than 4 knots and the current at Fakarava’s South pass runs at less than 3.5 knots so we decided to leave Tahanea at first light once the [outgoing] current was still running quite hard to give us more time to get to Fakarava. The pass was a breeze and we had double headsails out – wind from behind - for much of the day, for the first time since arriving in the Marquesas.

Fakarava is probably the most developed atoll, with some 900 residents, although development is still a relative thing. At the South pass, there is a small settlement and one hotel consisting of a number of small huts. They don’t serve food to non-guests. At the main town there are a few more houses and there’s another hotel with a few more huts and a more upscale ambience. But if you’re looking for a sundowner at 5 pm, there’s no place on the island that is open at that time! So tourism hasn’t really fully hit here.

We decided to bypass the South pass anchorage and proceed through the pass to an anchorage on the South East side of the atoll, a very scenic place. There were maybe 10 boats anchored there, including some 5 WARC boats. One of the highlights of our stay in Fakarava was for me a dive at the “Wall of Sharks” on the South pass and for Stewart and Jim, a snorkel at the same location. The pictures speak for themselves although I couldn’t take any pictures on my dive since my camera is only good for 15 meters deep – the sharks are between 20 and 30 meters deep. So all pics are from the snorkel, not the Wall of Sharks dive.

Snorkeling right of the dock at the South Pass lodge

Beach BBQ with some of the WARC crew and other cruisers anchored in the South East corner of Fakarava

After a couple of days, we moved to the anchorage by the main town on Fakarava because there are a couple of stores there where we could replenish our provisions. The anchorage was delightful and we rented bikes to explore some more of Fakarava.

Brown Noddies are nice to look at but make a mess of the foredeck!

Defunct lighthouse

Ua Pou, Marquesas

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ua Pou is the last island we are visiting in the Marquesas and it is known for its crazy rock spires. The name is pronounced “U-a Po-u” (not “U-a-Pou”) as sequential vowels are pronounced separately in the Polynesian language. We just arrived here - Hakahetau Bay - from Nuku Hiva, a day’s sail away. Today’s agenda included a lovely hike to a waterfall with swimming hole, a visit to a chocolate farm run by Manfred the (German) chocolate man and a great lunch at Tipiero, a local restaurant that is now run by the third generation of a French family. We would love to have more time here and elsewhere in the Marquesas which are absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, our time is limited so we are getting ready to set sail for the Tuamotus later today.

This blog is about all of the Marquesas, starting from where we landed, Hiva Oa. Sorry for the long blog - a lot happened in a very short period of time.

Hiva Oa

As regular readers of this blog will recall, we arrived on Hiva Oa from the Galapagos after some three weeks at sea. This was just 13 days ago, enough to get a taste of these lovely and dramatic islands but not enough by any means to see even all of the major sites or get to know some of the people. Our first anchorage, Tauhaku Bay on Hiva Oa, was our port of entry to French Polynesia, so we had to check in with the various authorities. As usual, the WARC crew did a terrific job getting this burdensome task done with as little hassle as possible. Leslie even shuttled us around by van to the check-in with the WARC agent Laurent at the Hanakee Lodge hotel followed by a visit to the police station!

Unfortunately, while very scenic and centrally located in the Marquesas, Tahauku Bay is not an ideal place to land and reprovision the boat after three weeks at sea. The first issue is that the bay provides very little protection from the ever present South Easterly swell. Although the interior part of the bay is protected somewhat by a breakwater it is very small and was chock full with other boats as we arrived. None of the 30 WARC boats found a place in the inner bay except for a couple of catamarans with low draft. Moreover, anchoring is prohibited in a large part of the inner bay to permit the supply ship to come in and dock. Things got so bad that we sometimes did not dare to pull up the dinghy on the davits at night as there was a meter of swell running in the anchorage! Getting provisions out of the dinghy onto the boat was an acrobatic feat as we could not lower the stern platform!

Tahauku Bay. If you look closely, you can see Kincsem close to the rocks with the stern turned to the right – the stern anchor is deployed.

The village of Atuana with all stores, restaurants and other facilities is so far away from the dinghy dock that a taxi is required to get there. Taxis are few and far in between in Hiva Oa and none operate after sundown – so no going out to dinner in the evening. Notable exception: you can go to the Hanakee Lodge, which has a shuttle and picks you up from the dock!

None of these logistical issues prevented us from having a great time. We took a nice little tour with a taxi driver to see some of the amazing landscape and a historical site. We visited the Gauguin museum. We attended a Polynesian dance evening at the Hannakee Lodge.

The ceremonial site of Ta’a Oa, complete with facilities for human sacrifice …. We are told the Marquesans no longer practice canabalism and none of the WARC participants went missing during our stay in the Marquesas

A tiki in the forest

One of several festival sites we saw in the Marquesas – partying is important! The mountain above is Mt. Temetiu, some 1,100 meters high. We never saw the top.

The Polynesian potato: bread fruit

The grave of Paul Gauguin, who spent many years in Atuana. The French singer Jacques Brell did as well and we were told he was much better liked by the locals.

Mt Temetiu, again.

Tikis in the Paul Gauguin museum. Most of the paintings in the museum were just copies of pieces hanging in major museums in Europe and the US.

Polynesian evening at the Lodge

The Ara Nui, the supply ship. I saw it come in at 2 am at night – an amazing feat of seamanship dodging too many boats anchored in the prohibited zone.

One thing that caused me some angst after arriving was the fact that Kincsem’s topsides had heavy growth on them above the waterline when we arrived in Hiva Oa – including many gooseneck barnacles under the stern of the boat. I was concerned that it would become more and more difficult to clean off these barnacles with time passing so I wanted to get it done soonest. Cleaning from the water was a non-starter in Tauhaku Bay. The water is murky and the locals advise against swimming in the Bay because of the many sharks. So I took to the dinghy and tried to scrub the waterline from there, which was a monster job in large part because of the swell in Takauhe Bay. From the dinghy I could not reach under the stern so it took another day in Fatu Hiva for Jim and I to finish it off from the water. We are now crossing our fingers that this pest originated in the Galapagos and will not recur in French Polynesia so that we don’t have to do another cleaning operation!

Gooseneck barnacles under the stern. These things are very hard to remove!

Fatu Hiva

After the new crew of Jim and Stewart arrived, we left Hiva Oa and sailed to the famous Bay of Virgins (or Bay of Penises, depending on which translation one fancies) on Fatu Hiva. It did not disappoint. If Disney were to do a children’s movie about a princess in the Marquesas, they could hardly improve upon the incredible landscape. It is simply breathtaking.

The Bay of Virgins

Hike to the Hanavave Waterfall

The village of Hanavave at the mouth of the Bay of Virgins is full of enterprising souls. No sooner had we tied up the dinghy in the little harbor were we approached by a local named Poi. Within minutes he had us sold on a tour of Fatu Hiva in his red pickup truck followed by dinner at his house. Mind you, he filled three trucks and had 25 WARC people for dinner at his house – more like a garage. The tour was phantastic and the dinner was authentic and tasty!

If you look closely, you see a white speck which is the “lovers’ hole” in the mountain. Those whose marriage was not arranged as is traditional in the Marquesas, would meet there ….

Kincsem, the only two masted boat, from 1,000 meters high cliffs!

The tour went as far as the next town, Omoa – the end of the surprisingly well kept road. The town boast a supermarket – not much “super” in that – and is the center of the local craft of tapas – cloth panels made from the bark of three different trees: mulberry, breadfruit or hibiscus. Depending on what tree they are made from , their color goes from white to red brown. We received a demonstration of how to make the cloth – with enthusiastic audience participation!

The bark is beaten with this big stick, which slowly transforms it into a flattish piece of paper-like material. The finished product can be rolled, unrolled, and even ironed!

Big catholic church in Omoa, the other village on Fatu Hiva. 99% of Fatu Hiva residents are catholics.

The “supermarket” in Omoa

A huge festival site right at the beach in Omoa. There is a lot of investment in party infrastructure in the Marquesas!

Talking about enterprising folks. These two locals approached us whether we might be interested in attending the Sunday church service. They promised to bring some fruit. And then, could we give them a tour of Kincsem – of course!

Stewart and I attended church on Sunday morning – all in Polynesian. The singing and audience participation were amazing!

Leaving the Bay of Virgins

Nuku Hiva

After spending a few days in Fatu Hiva, we joined the other WARC boats for the rendezvous in Nuku Hiva. Unlike Hiva Oa, Nuku Hiva has a large, protected bay in which to anchor and the town is right by the dinghy dock, making life a lot easier for cruisers.

Dinghy dock at Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva. In the mornings, the local fisherman clean all their catch right here on the dock and the water becomes a cauldron of sharks!

The local “chamber of commerce” had organized a welcome party for the WARC group which was a lot of fun.

The locals layed out their arts and crafts for sale, but there was no hard sell. Local foods were served and they demonstrated how to cook a bread fruit – it takes a long time!

In the evening, WARC put on a nice party with prize giving, local music and dancing, another well received event. Team Kincsem received two prizes: best guess before the start of our time of arrival in Hiva Oa from the Galapagos (we were only 20 minutes off!) and a prize for first place in Division A:

Her hips wiggle back and forth ….. Still looking for a good name and an appropriate permanent resting place for her on Kincsem. Please send suggestions!

On the World ARC, there is little time to linger as the rally is designed to get participants to sail around the World in 15 months. So after the rendezvous, we had only 6 weeks to get to Bora Bora, some 1,000 miles away. These 1,000 miles include some of the best cruising grounds in the World: the Marquesas and the Tuamotus as well as the Society Islands (Tahiti, Bora Bora, Moorea, etc). It is very hard to choose where to spend time among those places. Each of these island groups probably deserves an entire season of cruising! The trip to Bora Bora is free cruising – i.e. all WARC participants were free to pick their way through these options.

Our choice was to explore next another bay on Nuku Hiva, Anse Hakatea just a few miles from Taiohae Bay. We were rewarded with outstanding scenery and a somewhat challenging hike to the Vaipo waterfall. A few hundred meters before we reached the waterfall and associated swimming hole, there was a sign: “Stop, entry prohibited, severe danger of rock falls.” We took note (or not) and proceeded but when we got to the waterfall, we met
Anna, a young women from Croatia who is a professional tour guide and hikes to the waterfall several times a week with clients. She said every five hikes, rocks are falling down onto the swimming hole and suggested we stay all the way to the right of the swimming hole to avoid them! After that advice, we ate our sandwiches a bit quicker, hugging the right side …..

Entering Anse Hakatea

Our dinghy before the hike. Afterwards, the water had receded way past the point where you can see the breaking waves on the beach ….

The hike to the Vaipo waterfall

The village of Hakaui on Anse Hakatea is where the hike to the Vaipo waterfall starts. There are maybe 10 houses. The residents are engaged in farming as well as tour guiding and crafts. Anna, the tour guide, lives in one of those houses with her partner, a local artist tatood from top to bottom. He sells his craft world wide – the power of the internet!

Hibiscus flowers are everywhere. The hiking trails are littered with these flowers fallen off the trees.

There are flowers (and interesting leaves) everywhere

Getting back to the dinghy after the hike a big surprise awaited (which should not have been one): the tide had gone out and where we had pulled our dinghy ashore was now very far away from navigable water! With three people, we had a very hard time moving our dinghy as the wheels were sinking into the sand. The dinghy weighs 109 kgs (dinghy plus outboard) but to that you add 25 kgs for the full fuel tank, 10 kgs for the battery plus another 10 or so kilos for the dinghy anchor and various other things always in the dinghy – a total of some 160 kgs!! Mental note: next dinghy should be lighter! As luck would have it, another couple was struggling with their, considerably lighter dinghy and shared pain became lesser pain!

During the entire World ARC, I have been admiring one boat part of the WARC fleet: Alpha Centauri of London, a 1974 Swan 65 beautifully restored in Finland very recently. The Swan 65 Sayula won the first Whitbread Around the World Race in 1973 and this type of boat has been my dream boat since I was in my teens. Alpha Centauri is owned and sailed by two Germans, Edith (listed as skipper) and Matthias and they graciously gave us a tour of their lovely boat. A highlight of our stay in the Marquesas!

Alpha Centauri in Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva

The Longest Passage

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The sail from the Galapagos to the Marquesas is the longest leg of most circumnavigations. It’s 3,000 miles roughly but if there is no wind in Galapagos, one needs to take South-south westerly route initially before turning towards the Marquesas, which increases the distance sailed. The initial routing showed that we would indeed need to motor for a few days to get into the trade winds. We were planning on between 18 and 20 days so provisioning the boat for this many days became a big task. The team for this leg consisted of Stefano, Anna and Iain who joined a few days before the start and they went to work on provisioning right away. Unfortunately, Iain had to return home a day before the start to take care of a family emergency.

Kincsem being prepared for the long haul in Santa Cruz

This leg is a competitive leg of the WARC – i.e. we’re “racing” and there is an official starting line. We had a pretty good start on an up wind course but the wind died within minutes of the start. So we and the rest of the fleet were again motoring like on the way to get to Galapagos …. Fortunately, we found some wind off and on during the first three days of the passage so were actually sailing a bit. From Day 4 on, the winds became more consistent and we could finally sail almost 100% of the time. For all of us on board, this is when the true enjoyment started.

The Doldrums at their max

Stefano readying the furling line for the Code Zero

These gulls don’t seem to be able to behave even for a few minutes!

The last of the Red footed Boobies from Galapagos, as usual soiling the foredeck

There is really nothing like a long sailing passage in the trade winds. The winds are from behind and generally neither too strong nor too weak. So there are often not many sail changes – we have had days where we did not change anything all day! With three people on board, we are taking turns and life revolves around the watches – although Max, the autopilot, is always on watch! Between 2100 and 0900, we have four 3 hour watches and during the remainder of the day, we do three 4 hour watches. This means that the time of one’s watch during the night changes every day so everyone has the opportunity to be on watch during sunrise and sunset, for example. Everyone gets 5 to 6 hours of sleep during the night and there is plenty of time to catch up on sleep during the day. We do 1800 happy hour religiously where we enjoy a beer or some non-alcoholic drink and some nibbles. One of us then cooks dinner and everyone else cleans up afterwards. Next day: Rinse and repeat!

Dinner time!

G&Ts for half time!

Code Zero and Genoa on poles and the mizzen are up at night!

From the beginning, the big question was where to find the wind. The grib (weather) files showed generally that there would be more wind South of the rumb line but catching the stronger winds would mean many hundreds of miles in additional distance and the difference in wind speeds was usually only a couple of knots. It is important to understand that the grib files are really only reliable for a few days – like 5 or 6 days – so everything beyond that is more like speculation. In addition, only one of the grib files, the US GFS model, goes out 16 days (others are typically 8 to 10 days) – but even that is not enough to cover the entire trip to the Marquesas. So running a “routing” on the computer using these grib files has severe limitations! So my plan was to stick as closely as possible to the rumb line after catching the trade winds and only deviate if that seemed clearly warranted. Many of our competitors had different plans however and soon were 200 or more miles to the South of us!

What were the highlights and low points? For the first two weeks, we had a nearly full moon during the nights which made being on deck at night very enjoyable. The Southern Cross was always with us and one fantastic stary night followed another. We tried the mizzen staysail – a huge sail that is like an asymmetric spinnaker set from the mizzen mast. In the right conditions, it adds up to a knot of speed and it is surprisingly easy to set and recover because it has its own snuffer - takedown sock. The Parasailor was up many days and nights – until it ripped leech to leech one day in moderate winds.

The Parasailor with one hole too many!

I had neglected to have a small hole professionally repaired last winter which started the rip. We spent many hours taping the rip but ultimately didn’t have enough good sail tape to do a good job so the repaired sail ripped again after only a couple of hours. From then on, our downwind sail plan became Code Zero and genoa, each on its own pole. This is a very stable setup which Max likes a lot but it takes a while to rig the many lines (sheet, topping lift, downhaul, foreguy, aft guy) and things can get really complicated when we need to jibe.

Under Parasailor into the night

Rocking along under Parasailor and Mizzen Staysail

There was only one equipment failure: one night we had the Watt & Sea hydro generator in the water when it suddenly made a strong noise so Stefano took it out of the water. The next morning we discovered that the electric starboard genoa and mainsheet winches were no longer working. It took me two days to diagnose the problem: the control units for these two winches were both blown out, apparently from a voltage spike. So Kincsem is now a manual boat on port tack until we can get replacement controllers shipped from Italy!

Our landfall in Hiva Oa was truly spectacular as the high mountains of Hiva Oa appeared right at sunrise. A few hours later we passed the finish line at the mouth of Tahauku Bay at Atuana, Hiva Oa after 19 days, 1 hour and 1 minute, which combined with our low motoring hours, gave us first place in Division A!

The finish line in sight!

The winning team after check-in

Santa Cruz, Galapagos

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tomorrow is the start for the next leg of the World ARC, Santa Cruz to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, the longest leg in the entire really around the World. Almut, Rainer, Caecilia and Achim left the boat a couple of days ago and the new crew, Anna and Stefano arrived the same day they left. Iain also arrived but he has to go back home to take care of a family emergency so we will be only 3 for the long leg to the Marquesas. The focus now is on last minute provisioning the boat, safety briefing for the new crew and small boat jobs.

In the 2 ½ weeks here in Galapagos, we’ve certainly seen a lot. After San Cristobal and Isabela, Santa Cruz is the third island where we got to spend some time. Isabela is probably my personal favorite because of the abundance of wild life.

San Cristobal

The advice is not to use your own dinghy in San Cristobal to go ashore as the sea lions will take possession of it and leave it in a degenerate state in no time. So everyone takes water taxis to get ashore. When I first set foot on the dock, the initial impression was simply overwhelming: sea lions everywhere. You literally have to scramble over them to get ashore. They don’t mind as long as you don’t step on them but they will also not move an inch to get out of your way! Interestingly, they don’t smell bad like the ones in San Francisco. The second impression is that the town is a very nicely done seaside resort with lots of nice restaurants and a beautiful boardwalk where you encounter not just sea lions but also pretty good sized iguanas everywhere.

The beaches in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal, are dual use!

The WARC yellow shirts had installed themselves in the attractive Rock café and most everyone on the rally who had arrived in San Cristobal showed up for happy hour the evenings. Our schedule was chock full with tours, starting the day after our arrival with a nice tour to a local island where we could see frigate birds and other animals close up.

Magnificent Frigate Bird

Blue Footed Boobie – this one doesn’t have blue feet. The more successful they are at catching sardines, the bluer their feet will get. This one is just a starter hunter but he didn’t mind that I approached to l meter!

Great Frigate Bird

Galapagos sea lion

It is prohibited in Galapagos to explore anywhere without the assistance of a certified nature guide. These guides universally added quite a bit of color to our tours, some even had a sense of humor!

Iguanas and Kicker Rock!

Striated Heron

These crabs are 20 cm across!

My favorite tour on San Christobal was to Kicker Rock where I did a couple of dives when everyone else on the team snorkeled. I have been just recently qualified as a scuba diver and a dive such as kicker rock is definitely a challenge for me. It goes down to 20 meters on a steep rock wall and there is some current and fishes everywhere. I saw 8 sharks including 2 hammerhead sharks, manta rays and countless other colorful fish. I’ve often seen those in snorkeling but at kicker rock they are supersized. We were very fortunate to have excellent visibility as well which made it an even better experience. In addition to the hammerheads, the highlight of the dive was a cloud of fish, maybe 30 meters across. They are 10-15 cms long and non-descript but swim in a very close formation. The dive guide told us to stay very close since the masses of fish eliminate all light and visibility. Sure enough, you swim into the cloud and suddenly it turns pitch black! After a while, you see what looks like little stars on a night sky which is in fact daylight showing through the cloud. Some of the snorklers at the surface could see the same cloud of fish and saw a shark enter the cloud with mouth wide open – as luck would have it, we didn’t see that shark!

Another favorite tour was to a turtle breeding center where we could admire giant turtles from close up!

Hello – better get out of the way if this guy comes at you!

One of Darwin’s finches, a Geospiza

Mockingbird!

Last evening in San Cristobal

On the water taxi back to the boat

Isabela

It is over 80 miles from San Cristobal to Isabela and we departed in the wee hours to get there during daylight. It is good we did because much of the usable space in the Isabela anchorage protected from the Southeasterly swell was pretty much occupied by a freighter at anchor and a number of tourist boats on moorings or anchor. We managed to grab one of the last protected places – but a couple of days later the tide got so low that we moved to the entirely unprotected area of the anchorage, joining the rest of the fleet, rolling heavily. Even catamarans were complaining!

Isabella is quite different from San Christobal. It is less developed and the town is ½ mile away from the harbor. Importantly, that meant that the WARC meeting place, the Iguana bar, was quite aways from the dock so less people were doing the treck for the 5pm happy hour ashore – we made it only once. But the Kincsem team was undeterred: Another gruelling set of great tours were duly executed and G&T’s were taken on board – check out these pictures!

Who’s the boss here?

This unfriendly looking fellow is a marine iguana, found only in the Galapagos. Don’t want to stumble over him in the dark!

This blue footed boobie is obviously a more successful specimen than the other one above with brown feet. I’m told the bluer the feet, the more success with the female boobies!

Two beautiful white footed specimens from Bad Homburg enjoying the snorkeling

Rare orange iguana or normal iguana who rolled in orange sand?

Iguanas bar

Nazca (not Nascar) boobie on a little fleck of rock off the coast

Seahorse - thanks to Rainer!

Seriously Turquoise fish – Apple Photos is struggling to identify it! Could it be a Parrot Fish??

Giant sea turtle

Galapagos Penguin.

Los tunelos – the Tunnels. To get here the motorboat we were on had to get through the high surf off the beach. On the way back out in particular, this caused a few hair-raising moments where the boat seemed precariously close to capsize, particularly with 3 guide dudes on the super high flybridge above!

Anous – a specie of sea bird

Grove billed ani, a kind of cuckoo. Interestingly, all flowers of endemic plants and all animals in the Galapagos are either white or black. The color strain is completely missing.

On the 17 km volcano hike; the last eruption was a mere 5 years ago

So this colorful grass hopper must be an import?

Still on the volcano hike. Rain hit just a few minutes later …

On the way back from the volcano hike we stopped by a farm for some fresh fruit and vegetables.

Cleaning all purchases before storage to get rid of lavae….

Santa Cruz

No more tours here in Santa Cruz but there is some provisioning to be done. And, of course, some boat repairs. The forecast for the long haul to the Marquesas looks light, too light. At least two days of motoring lie ahead. So after taking on 400 liters of diesel in San Cristobal, we are taking on another 300 liters here in Santa Cruz. A simple operation. A water taxi arrives with plastic barrels of diesel. The friendly local running it has an electric pump which he connects to a 12V battery standing in the boat with some clamps. Bingo, the fuel is flowing! As always, the yellow shirts are doing a super job here, personally sheparding the fuel boat to all the boats which need fuel – which is everyone!

On the anchorage at Santa Cruz

Team Kincsem for the Galapagos

San Cristobal, Galapagos

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been all of 30 minutes that our anchor has touched the bottom of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and already a launch full of officials has arrived. One is diving under Kincsem to look for small non-indigenous creatures clinging to Kincsem’s bottom that could upset the ecosystem here in Galapagos. Were he to find any, we would need to leave the National Park (the border of which is some 60 miles offshore), clean the bottom outside and return for another check-in. On top of that, we may have to pay a hefty fine. So fingers crossed!!

The other nine (!!) officials are seated around the cockpit table or down below at the salon table. There are two military, two National Park, two health service, two local government and the remaining, I have no idea what. They are accompanied by two employees of the private customs agency WARC hired for the fleet, who are mostly the ones who are smiling and making nice conversation. The others are busy filling in reams of paper or doing sundry tasks like checking whether we have any expired medications, the possession of which is illegal in Galapagos. They only found one empty nasal spray – because Almut and Rainer had spent hours going through the entire medical set and put all expired items into a separate bag, which we did not show the officials. It’s also illegal to have expired flares and other pyrotechnics of which we have a lot – but I wasn’t sure they would dispose of them for me so I decided to hide them.

Some of the “inspection” was outright funny. The two military guys needed to inspect the engine room and the national park guy needed to inspect our oil absorbing mats – also stored in the engine room. Alas, getting into the engine room would have required all nine official getting up from their seats around the cockpit table so those “requirements” were quickly dispensed with. A quick snapshot of the engine room while everyone else had left for the launch was sufficient!

The most annoying was the local government guy who went through our freezer taking everything out and throwing it back in, increasing the temperature and disrupting the carefully thought out order. He was looking for any meat and when he found some, he declared that we had to eat it all before the next port in Galapagos. We nodded politely …..

I think the Ecuadoran government is doing it’s best to match the bureaucrats of the EU in coming up with senseless rules. The entire boat is full or special stickers like “don’t throw garbage over board” and “don’t pump waste water into the sea” which we had to source and then stick everywhere in the boat. We also had to have special “eco” soaps which were very ineffective and on top of it, smelled badly of rotten seaweed.

Unfortunately, those requirements are not matched by means to comply with them. For example, everyone knows that the waste water tanks of our boats aren’t big enough to hold black water (the toilet effluent) for more than maybe three of the 14 days we are staying in Galapagos. Yet no pump out facilities of any kind are provided – unlike, for example in San Francisco Bay, where a pump out boat can be called at any time for free. So obviously, every boat is pumping the waste overboard! As a result, the water in the harbors here in Galapagos isn’t really very clear ….. Similarly, ashore there are no waste bins much less recycling facilities so one has to give the trash and recycling to a garbage boat that comes around at irregular intervals. One cannot help but suspect that all bags handed to the garbage boat – be they waste or the two kinds of recycling used here – end up in one big happy garbage heap ….

Well, even in Galapagos officials are required to be efficient since there are other boats to inspect who arrived just after Kincsem. So after 45 minutes, the show was over and the entire flock trampled back aboard the launch. We were informed the bottom of Kincsem was fine as well and our Zarpe was issued. Time to take down the yellow flag and have an arrival beer!!!

The voyage to get here – some 900 miles – unfortunately was mostly under engine.

All flags are taken down when we leave Panama

Normally one has 2 days of Northerly winds, then hits the Intertropical Convergence Zone with no wind and then has a couple of days of south easterly winds. Not for us. At the start, there was no wind so everyone started under engine.

The motor boat race begins! Kincsem hits the line within 10 seconds after the gun went off!

And the forecast Northerlies did not materialize for us at all. Most of the time, we had 3-5 knots of “wind” blowing directly from the Galapagos so we ended up using the engine for the entire way other than maybe 20 hours. We’ve never had the diesel tank down to only ¼ full – but it is good to confirm that Kincsem has an awesome range under engine!

Waterski anyone? This is hundreds of miles from land.

0.8 knots of wind speed from straight ahead …. But the current is helping

But even under engine, we had a wonderful time. A few days out of Panama, we were visited by the first birds of Galapagos, red footed Boobies. These are huge birds and totally unafraid of humans.

Boobies on our bow pulpit and on the flag pole on top of the mizzen mast

We were concerned that they would poop over the entire deck and initially tried to chase them away with a boat hook with mixed results. But they were mostly courteous and stayed on the bow pulpit where the poop conveniently drops into the sea! There was one, however, which didn’t get the memo and rested on the flag pole on top of the mizzen mast, dropping his stuff on the solar panels over the davits. Rainer and Almut volunteered to clean up that mess!

We also perfected the way to motor sail upwind. With just 14 degrees of angle between the course and the wind, the mainsail and the small staysail will increase Kincsem’s speed over no sails by ¾ of a knot. Bingo!

The World ARC has various WhatsApp groups – one for notifications from the organizers to the fleet, one for questions from the fleet to the organizers and a “crew chat”. With most boats in the fleet having Starlink, these groups are very active and many people seem to be glued to their phones for updates on the fishing results of Living the Dream (yes, that is a boat name) and the latest Boobie count from the deck of Mulan. By comparison, the single side band (high frequency radio) group consists of only 6 boats and has been dying a slow death. And there is the fleet tracker, which updates positions every four hours. With Starlink one is always informed of who is going where and at what speed over the ground!

The Galapagos Islands lie at about 1 degree South so we needed to cross the equator before arriving in Galapagos. It is a tradition that crew who have not crossed the equator before are introduced into Neptune’s kingdom by appropriate “rites of passage” at the occasion. Achim crossed the equator on a cruise ship when he was 9 years old and I crossed it in 2017 on my way from Cape Town to Grenada on my friends Fred and Chris’ catamaran. This left Almut and Rainer who needed to be introduced! Unfortunately, the equator crossing took place at 3 am in the pitch dark so pictures are a bit thin. However, here is the complete script for the ceremony, includingKincsem’s captain’s speech, drafted by ChatGPT:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Officers and Crew,

Today, we gather to honor a time-honored maritime tradition as we prepare to cross the Equator. This ceremony, known as the “Crossing the Line,” has been celebrated by sailors for centuries, marking the moment when we transition from “Pollywogs” those who have not crossed the Equator “Shellbacks”, esteemed members of King Neptune’s court.

Enter King Neptune and Court (played by Achim)

Captain: Hear ye, hear ye! All hands on deck to witness the arrival of His Majesty, King Neptune, Ruler of the Seven Seas!

King Neptune: I, King Neptune, have come to welcome you to my realm. Who among you dares to enter these sacred waters without my blessing?

Captain: Mighty King Neptune, I present to you these Pollywogs who seek your acceptance and wish to be initiated into your august domain.

King Neptune: Very well. Let the initiation commence!

Initiation Rituals (Pollywogs to consume an awful concoction of cheap rum, Worchester Sauce and other choice ingredients)

The crew undergoes traditional rites, which may include playful challenges and the offering of a libation to the sea, symbolizing respect and the seeking of safe passage. (One Pollywog graciously shares his drink with the sea)

Conclusion

King Neptune: Having faced the trials and shown respect to the sea, I now declare you Shellbacks, trusted sailors of the deep. May you have fair winds and following seas on your voyages ahead.

Captain: Thank you, King Neptune. Crew, let us celebrate this milestone and continue our journey with renewed camaraderie and respect for the vast oceans we traverse. The bar is now open!

End of Ceremony

The final day to San Cristobal turned a bit into a motor boat race. It seemed that most boats around us were going faster and faster to edge out the next boat for the earlier arrival time. Everyone knew that Galapagos inspections take a while and inspectors only work 0900 to 1200 and 1400 to 1700. No one is permitted to go ashore before the boat has been inspected and the Zarpe issued. Who wants to loose valuable shore time or not be able to go out for dinner because the other boat was inspected first? As luck would have it, we beat out Pure Joy by a minute and a half to the finish line by raising our rpms to 1,700 for ten minutes!

Kicker Rock just a few miles before the finish line