Verdant mountains plunging into a blue sea, dark basalt spires piercing the clouds, jungle vines growing over stone ruins: the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia have an almost mystical aura about them. At the far eastern end of the South Pacific islands, only 9 to 10 degrees south of the equator, they are remote, hot and humid. They are high islands, volcanoes that have eroded into deep valleys and vertiginous ridges. In some ways, they are the ultimate South Seas idyll: secluded, tropical and ruggedly beautiful. But in other ways, they are far from the postcard picture. Because of their geological newness and because they are on the outer edges of the cold Humboldt Current, the islands have not developed extensive barrier reefs. So they don’t have the lagoons and consequent calm, protected bays that many other Pacific islands boast.

For sailors, this means anchorages exposed to the rolling ocean swell. Even though one finds protection from the strong southeasterly trade winds on the leeward sides of these islands, the swell inevitably rolls its way in. Most sailors don’t consider this a problem. After all, to reach the Marquesas, most voyagers have spent three weeks to a month sailing across the open ocean, in swells much bigger than what one encounters in the islands’ leeward anchorages; we’re acclimated to the motion and hardly notice it. But the fact remains that there is nothing so peaceful as a flat-calm anchorage, sheltered on all sides—especially after a long ocean passage.

Enter Anaho Bay. On the north (leeward) coast of Nuku Hiva lies this beautiful, calm bay, encircled by hills and headed by a bare basalt peak. In all but a north wind, it is perfectly protected. The necklace of beach ashore is soft, white sand, and there’s even a coral reef (a rarity in these islands) that’s built itself along the edges of the bay, home to the colorful and often unique reef fish of the Marquesas.

Read More: Lessons from the Sixth Circumnavigation

There are no roads into Anaho Bay. One can reach the place only by boat, or on foot or horseback along the trail that leads across a little mountain pass to the neighboring village of Hatiheu. The only sounds in the bay are the quiet lapping of water on the beach, the rustle of wind in the trees, the splash of a fish, and the thunk-thunk of the locals cutting copra. A few people do live in Anaho Bay, fishing, farming, and even running a small restaurant for sailors and any other tourists who hike over from Hatiheu. At the time of the lockdown, when the Nuku Hiva government was ordering cruisers to sail to the main town of Taiohae (where the police could more easily keep them under surveillance), the locals in Anaho Bay refused to let their cruisers be taken away. Those at anchor there at the time had been helping the locals with all kinds of projects on their houses and fishing boats. So the lucky sailors stayed in Anaho for the whole lockdown. While I wasn’t among them, I was thrilled to hear the story after the fact, a wonderful instance of the mutual generosity of visiting cruisers and their local hosts. That, even more than the stunning scenery, is what makes the South Seas such a special place.

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About 6,000 years ago — when the Pacific Ocean was unexplored and its tiny islands, scattered across a vast area of ­unimaginable size, lay quiet and uninhabited — a ­pioneering people from Southeast Asia pushed their double-hulled canoes from familiar shores and sailed deep into the unknown.

For over a millennium they migrated east, toward the rising sun, settling on islands never before seen by mankind, raising families and building communities before a brave new generation set sail to explore farther beyond the horizon. And while the remote islands evolved over generations into the separate regions and countries we know today as Hawaii, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Rapa Nui (Easter Island), they remain connected by the wakes of their ancestors, like the lines of an ancient family tree. And remarkably, while separated by time and by a vast ocean, the connection between the Ma’ohi, the Polynesian people, is not only remembered, but is celebrated even today.

For centuries, the rich culture and untamed beauty of the Marquesas islands (Te Henua Enana in local dialect, or “Land of Men”), which lie more than 700 miles northeast of Tahiti, have drawn artists and writers to their remote shores. Paul Gauguin, Herman Melville and Thor Heyerdahl were each seduced by the dramatic archipelago, and either on canvas or on paper, set out to capture its wild beauty. The Marquesas awakened something deep within them, a raw, powerful emotion that influenced not only their work, but the rest of their lives.

And so it was here, far removed from a busy and distracted modern world, that the Marquesan Festival was born, a unique arts and cultural event celebrated only every four years. An event held not for tourists, but rather for the proud Ma’ohi people, a people who, even after thousands of years, remain connected by a strong spirit, one that spans an ocean and continues to unite its true discoverers.

My wife, Catherine, and I first heard about the festival during our own migration east across the Pacific in Dream Time, our 1981 Cabo Rico. We had arrived at the remote island of Raivavae after an arduous 28-day passage from New Zealand back to French Polynesia, and although at first the Marquesan cultural event seemed more rumor than reality (no one we spoke to could agree on when it would begin, nor which Pacific Islands would attend; even the island hosting the festival was in question), the uncertainty and mystery surrounding the unique festival only made it more alluring. And so we set off, sailing northeast, tracing the ancient wakes of the Ma’ohi canoes up to the Society Islands, across to the Tuamotus and toward the Land of Men.

We arrived in the Marquesas just three days before the festival. Delegates from Rapa Nui, Rapa Iti (Austral Islands), Tahiti and New Caledonia had already gathered, and an energy was building. You could sense it, like an approaching summer storm. The air — heavy, humid, unsettled — carried with it the rhythmic and alluring rumble of distant drums as groups practiced into the tropical night. Something powerful was coming. Remote villages hidden in ancient valleys and shrouded in jungle were ­awakening. You could feel it.

RELATED: On Watch: A Festival in French Polynesia

Then, over four exhilarating, spellbinding days, we lost ourselves to the rhythmic beating of the pahu, the drums, and to an energy that seemed to swell up and saturate the ancient stone me’ae and tohua, sites where distant ancestors performed tribal ceremonies and ritualistic sacrifices. We sat not in bleachers or behind barricades, but on smooth volcanic boulders beside the dancers. In the midday sun, we stood under the shade of a 300-year-old banyan tree behind the booming drums, close enough to feel the vibrations resonate deep within us. And in the evening, we sat among the long dancing shadows of more than 200 performers, who stirred the earth with bare feet and shook the air with one voice. A voice that seemed to reach back through the ages, echoing down through the craggy folds of valleys and out to sea.

We came to recognize faces and personalities; we felt connected to them. We walked among performers dressed in tapa cloth and adorned with shells, flowers, feathers, seeds, pearls and bone. Cracked paint and Marquesan tattoos covered bare skin. Under palm-frond lean-tos, traditional Polynesian arts were demonstrated: the dull hammering of wet bark into thin tapa cloth; the painful tapping of blackened tusk ­needles against exposed skin as intricate Marquesan tattoos took shape; the metallic ringing of chisel meeting rock; weaving; wood carving; canoe building. These traditional skills were shared and practiced by a new generation of master carvers and artists who, through their passion and their work, ­continue to keep an ancient culture alive.

Through song, dance and gesture, each cultural presentation told a story: an elegant rotation of a wrist; a subtle movement of a finger; an aggressive tilt of a head; a suggestive swaying of the hips; bared teeth; wide eyes. Every action and motion held a message, a story from the past, and even though we could not understand the words, we felt like we came to understand their meaning. We found ­ourselves rocking and swaying with each performance, to drums that, even in the tropical heat, raised goose bumps on our arms; drums that flowed and ebbed like the wind with a seductive and consuming rhythm; drums that seemed to lift the dancers from the ground and carry them away, away from this world and back to another time.

And we went with them.

As our epic eight-year voyage across the South Pacific comes to an end, I can still hear the rhythmic and provocative beating of the great drums, the haunting cries of the female dancers, the guttural murmurs of warriors preparing themselves for dance. I can still feel the black, gritty volcanic sand on my skin from those remote tropical islands and smell the rich, sweet scent of monoi oil in the air, mixed with the smoke from burning coconut husks.

The South Pacific has been the highlight of our world adventure. The scattered constellation of tiny island groups across charts that were once so foreign, distant and unknown feel familiar to us now, like home. Each cluster of islands holds precious memories, some of the best in my life, and as we sail west, toward Australia in preparation for Asia and a new ocean, the next generation of cruisers are about to begin their epic voyage across the world’s largest ocean, and it is something to behold.

Neville and Catherine Hockley have been outbound on an open-ended cruise since 2007 aboard Dream Time, their Cabo Rico 38. Follow their adventures on their website.

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When sailing west from Mexico last April, my husband and I left all the comforts of a visible coastline in our wake — no more fish tacos, no more chandleries, no more boatyards a block away. We were on our own.

The first 16 days of our voyage across the Pacific to the Marquesas brought the myriad conditions ocean passagemaking is known for: 48-hour batches of 30-knot winds in 4-meter seas, doldrums and rabid squalls as we passed through the intertropical convergence zone, the temperamental region where weather systems from the Northern and Southern hemispheres collide.

We spent our days hunkered down below or clearing flying fish from the decks, watching as the sun cooked through the salt-crusted brightwork or bullet-size raindrops gave Helios, our Island Packet 380, a shower.

At 1122 on May 4, we passed 00° 00’. Crossing the equator was our last major waypoint before we made landfall. It’s also a huge milestone in the life of any sailor, a moment to honor the tenacity of the crew and the blessings of the gods that bring safe crossing.

My dad was kind enough to forward along some of the literature explaining the traditions associated with equator crossing to our satellite phone — the gist being that as long as there are imaginary lines circling the globe, there will be humans who celebrate sailing across them. The Vikings celebrated crossing the 30th parallel, and the Phoenicians celebrated passing through the Strait of Gibraltar.

Rituals vary, but involve shellbacks — experienced equator-­crossing sailors — inflicting some gentle hazing on polliwogs, novice sailors crossing the line for the first time. Gentle hazing usually takes the form of supplication to the sea gods and ranking crew, and involves a saltwater shower.

We cobbled together our own ceremony, uncorking sparkling wine as the GPS, like a slot machine, flashed all zeros. We poured some for ourselves and some overboard as a libation to Neptune. We read a small passage from the Odyssey, ending with Odysseus’ prayer to Poseidon. We gathered coins from the United States, Mexico and Hong Kong and gave them up as offerings to the waves.

Having no more-experienced sailors on board, we took turns launching buckets full of seawater at each other, a refreshing turn considering the 80-degree water temperature — and a ritual we may need to continue as we pass lines of latitude going forward.

Quickly, we began to enjoy the benefits of being in the Southern Hemisphere: receiving a steady 15- to 20-knot easterly wind for 48 hours (our most consistent conditions yet!), leaving the squalls and their erratic conditions behind us and finding a friendly current, giving us an extra knot of speed as we crossed 1 degree south latitude. We grew bold enough to start calculating the distance to our arrival: After 2,200 nautical miles, only 750 to go.

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Pacific Planning

Though the long passage to the Marquesas is often referred to as a “Pacific crossing,” arriving leaves you only smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. For this reason, sailors who aim to cross the entire ocean in one season must plan to arrive in the Marquesas as the November-to-April South Pacific cyclone season wanes, to allow plenty of time for the miles still in front of them. For those who plan to hole up in the South Pacific during cyclone season, the schedule is not as tight, and a later arrival in the Marquesas is possible — and desirable if you want to share island anchorages with fewer boats.

Because the prevailing trade winds north and south of the equator are easterly, a passage to the Marquesas can be started from anywhere along the Pacific coast of North America. Each year, however, the bulk of the fleet begins its passage from either Mexico’s Baja Peninsula; Mexico’s mainland (Banderas Bay in particular); Balboa, Panama; or the Galápagos Islands. The northernmost jumping-off points are up to 1,000 nautical miles closer and offer better points of sail, but cruisers emerging from the Atlantic side of the canal usually enjoy a nice run once they hit the trades (and with planning, the Galapagos make a good stop en route.)

Local Knowledge

If you see tapas, carvings or other art you like in the Marquesas, buy it. The cost of these same items is much higher in other parts of French Polynesia.

Outside the bigger towns on Hiva Oa and Nuku Hiva, trading is the preferred method to acquire everything from fruit to carvings to tattoos.

Shoes and school supplies are welcome, but by far the most in-demand item for trade is decent braided rope. Those old halyards in your lazarette are prized.

Wander off the beaten path. Get to know the villages on Tahuata and Fatu Hiva. Explore the more remote places on Hiva Oa and Nuku Hiva. You will absolutely find the adventure you seek.

The post Captain’s Knowledge appeared first on Cruising World.

A Bustling Welcome

The outline of Hiva Oa emerged before dawn. We pulled into Taha Uku, a small harbor within Taaoa Bay, or the Bay of Traitors. At the end was a rocky, palm-fringed beach where horses grazed on shoots of grass along a freshwater stream. Just over a headland is the city of Atuona, where about 1,500 people live — a Marquesan ­metropolis. Behind Atuona, Mount ­Temetiu ­rises to 4,000 feet. The tight quarters and ­incoming swell required that we anchor bow-and-stern in the narrow cove ­adjacent to the supply-ship dock.

We wandered ashore on Hiva Oa, immediately feeling welcome. Right off the bat, people pulled over to give the four of us a ride into Atuona. In the tidy city hub, no larger than a city block, we found a bank where we could obtain French ­Pacific francs. A woman selling vegetables from her truck piled free produce onto our purchases. We strolled through a small grocery store, delighted at the selection, frightened by the prices. We checked in with the gendarmerie, passed a crêperie/Internet cafe, and met a French farmer and at last replenished the egg supply that had dwindled to nothing on our passage. Amazingly, on Fatu Hiva, wild chickens were always underfoot, but with so many other delicacies at hand, no one cared to eat them or tried to harvest their eggs.

The French painter Paul Gauguin made his home on Hiva Oa. So did the Belgian singer Jacques Brel. Both men were buried in the cemetery. We found the museum that celebrates their works and has a reproduction of Gauguin’s home. ­Dedicated admirers make pilgrimages here, but as this modest museum is perhaps the largest tourist-drawing element, we found few other tourist amenities. There are no big resorts, and the single airport accepts ­only small planes that fly in from Tahiti, 850 miles away.

In a sense, every visitor to the Marquesas is an explorer, discovering a place that is what it is, for lack of a better phrase, absent any false vibe that comes from being catered to. Later, when we reached the island of Tahuata, I asked a new friend we’d made about the meaning of the intricate tattoos that adorn the arms, legs and even faces of so many Marquesans.

“There is none. It’s just for beauty. It’s about art and our heritage, ” he told us.

On these islands, we found that an appreciation for beauty runs deep. Women and even some men wear a gardenia or hibiscus flower behind an ear as part of their daily life. (They bloom year-round and drop from trees like leaves in a Northern Hemisphere fall.) Public spaces on every island are scrupulously clean, and art — paintings and weavings and woodcarvings — is everywhere, incorporated even into things like public benches.

There is a pride in place and culture that booms from the Marquesans I spoke with. The Marquesan people live on land that provides. More food than anyone can eat falls from trees, runs wild through the bush and swims offshore. Fresh water gushes day and night from overflowing cisterns. ­Perhaps it’s this bounty that somehow encourages and allows the Marquesans to keep their rich culture alive. Ahead of the annual Polynesian Heiva competitions, we saw people everywhere ­rehearsing for dance and music and outrigger rowing competitions. Women sat hunched over their tapas, applying ink to the pounded-out bark paper. Men carved pieces of ­rosewood and sandalwood by hand and with Dremels.

The Marquesan people are few in number and live on a group of islands that is not only in the middle of the Pacific, but a four-day sail from the nearest neighboring island group, the Tuamotus. They speak their own language (actually two, North Marquesan and South Marquesan); they have a history distinct from other Pacific Island groups; and for years, they’ve struggled to break free from the political chains of French Polynesia. I got the feeling that there is a conscious effort to prevent their culture from turning into a mélange of the dominant Tahitian and French influences. Say bonjour to a Marquesan, and despite the fact they’re fluent in French, you’re very apt to be corrected: ka oha.

Village Life

We topped off our fuel and water before setting sail for Tahuata, a sparsely inhabited island across the 3-mile-wide Canal du Bordelais. On Tahuata, we spent our first week exploring an isolated anchorage that Eric Hiscock ranked among the three most beautiful in all of French Polynesia. Hanamoenoa Bay is home to a Marquesan known simply as Steven, who lives a hermitlike existence. He fixes visitors with an intense stare, but get on his good side and he’ll likely show you how he cultivates tomatoes just above the high-tide line and sets elaborate traps for wild pigs and chickens. Apparently fowl holds more appeal in this corner of the Marquesas.

We spent time anchored off the villages of Vaitahu and then Hapatoni, each with a stunning church and some of the most sincere, open people we’ve met in our travels. In Vaitahu we spent a couple of days getting to know Jimmy, his wife, Tahia, and their kids. They welcomed us into their home and took us on a hike to their property in an adjacent valley, where they picked tons of food and filled bags with eggplant, coconuts, mangoes, grapefruit and ­oranges for us to take back to the boat. Our kids and theirs hit it off, and Tahia’s English was good. Walking past the local school, she explained that it only serves children up to age 10. At 11, Marquesan kids leave home for boarding school on Nuku Hiva. Throughout the upper grades, they’re gone from home for two-month stretches, returning for two-week visits in between.

In Hapatoni, we carried ashore photos taken by a cruiser friend who visited here in the early 1970s. The daughter of the late chief gasped when she saw them, recognizing family who were no longer living, and of whom she had no photos. She showed us carvings her husband made for export to Tahitian tourist markets, and filled bags for us with fruit from her trees while her kids and ours played with a litter of puppies. We said goodbye and took off at sunset for an overnight sail to Nuku Hiva.

A Last Stopover

Nuku Hiva is the largest island in the Marquesas and boasts the most populous town, Taiohae, home to about 2,000 people. Taiohae sits beside a large, picturesque bay in which 100 boats could anchor. Like most Marquesan anchorages, it’s subject to a lot of roll-inducing swell. The bay is said to be contaminated with agricultural runoff, so we didn’t swim. After watching fishermen dump fish remnants into the water near the dinghy dock one morning, and witnessing the ensuing thrashing frenzy of habituated sharks, we decided it was just as well.

When our Taiohae needs were met (food, fuel, water, butane), we skirted around to nearby Taioa Bay, better known as Daniel and Antoinette’s Bay. It was to be our last anchorage in the Marquesas.

What a finale. The bay, nicknamed for a couple who were renowned friends of cruising sailors, is one of the most protected anchorages we visited in the ­Marquesas. Peaks and ridgelines wrap around it, staggered in their placement, exaggerating ­perspective and luring us ashore to travel a well-trod path along a freshwater river and up the Hakaui Valley to the falls. Daniel and Antoinette are long deceased, but family still lives in this primordial setting.

The worst thing about the Marquesas is how nature and nations conspire to keep visits brief. We left after 42 days, lamenting the fact that we didn’t have more time to spend on the five islands we ­visited and the 10 we skipped. We wondered about the numerous anchorages we never saw and wished for more time with the people we met. But the French enforce a 90-day visa limit for all of French Polynesia — five island groups stretched over 1,200 miles — and they make getting a visa for a longer stay difficult. The Marquesas are remote, deep in the trade winds that blow in only one direction. Once a sailor continues west, a return trip isn’t trivial.

But that’s not to say it wouldn’t be worth it. We’ll be back.

Michael Robertson is currently exploring Tonga with his family aboard their Fuji 40, Del Viento.

The post Sailing Into Paradise: Part 2 appeared first on Cruising World.

The Marquesas

Twenty-six days after sailing Del ­Viento away from the ­arid tip of Mexico’s ­Baja Peninsula, we dropped our 66-pound Bruce anchor and 300 feet of chain into 140 feet of water. It was the end of the longest passage we’d ­ever made. I’d not slept well the night before, and upon making landfall, I tried to record my first thoughts and impressions. I detected jasmine and gardenia and an earthy must in the air. I worried we’d never retrieve our primary anchor if it got stuck down there. Then, I thought of penises.

We’d sailed 3,000 miles to reach this place, a narrow anchorage cut into the small ­island of Fatu Hiva, smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s one of a group of 15 islands that the Polynesians who settled here around A.D. 1200 named Te Fenua Enata, meaning the Land of Men. Locals still use this name, though the rest of the world calls these islands the Marquesas, after the patron of a 16th-­century Spanish explorer. But in this bay in particular, where I was now recording my thoughts and impressions, the earliest residents thoughtfully considered the ­phallic spires of black basalt rising from the head of the bay and declared it the Bay of ­Penises. It was a place name befitting the Land of Men, but it made early missionaries uncomfortable, and they quickly corrected things. Today the French call this storied landfall Baie des Vierges, or Bay of Virgins.

Sounds exotic, doesn’t it? It definitely stirs thoughts of a South Pacific paradise, rather than simply the first waypoint on a trans-Pacific crossing, as it is for most. Had I been given the task of naming this place upon arrival, I might have gone with Baie de Paradis, but I am no more to be ­trusted than the missionaries. After all, any port reached after 26 days at sea can seem to a sailor like paradise. So you have to wonder: Is this the reason for the superlatives often used to characterize the Bay of Virgins and other Marquesas landfalls?

The Marquesas are among the youngest of the South Pacific archipelagos. Not enough geologic time has passed for fringing coral reefs to have formed. Compared to the tranquil, turquoise lagoons of the nearby Tuamotus and Society Islands, the water off the Marquesas is rough, deep and murky. The snorkeling, diving and surfing here are downright unremarkable. Because these islands rise from the depths, raw and exposed to ocean swells that travel thousands of miles to crash on rocky shores, even the best anchorages on the leeward sides are plagued by refracted waves that cause boats to roll uncomfortably. Dinghy landings are often either in surf or at surge-inflicted, inflatable-eating quays composed of jagged rock, rough concrete and rusted metal. When available, Internet service is slower than the average cruising boat, and the imported food seems to have been priced by a high-end retailer. Still, we spent six weeks exploring these islands. We wished we had six months.

Taste of the Cruising Life

On the windward side of Fatu Hiva, the trade winds hit a tall ridge and pushed upward to form the moisture-heavy clouds that spilled down toward us as we dropped anchor. A rainbow arced across the sky. The topography of these young islands ­reflects the dawn of time; the exquisite drama of the islands’ violent, volcanic origins has not yet been smoothed and worn. The mountainous backdrops demanded that I set a new bar for using words like “steep” and “jagged.” At the head of the V-shaped Bay of Virgins is a rocky beach fringed with coconut palms and mountains bearded in deep green, reaching steeply for more than 2,000 feet.

I looked around at the boats anchored nearby. Nearly all were French-, Dutch-, or Australian-flagged. Most had stalks of green bananas hanging from the rigging and cockpit hammocks bulging with fruit. I’ve seen thousands of boats in all kinds of anchorages, but this detail, combined with the backdrop, echoed the images I’ve returned to for decades, the ones of ­Wanderer or Dove or Joshua anchored in a similar ­setting, the images that for me define cruising. I was eager to launch our dinghy, go ashore and get my own stalk of ­bananas to hang in Del Viento’s rigging. Maybe I’d bring a machete.

Among the Marquesan islands, Fatu Hiva is remote and sparsely populated; about 600 people are spread across three ­villages. There is no airport on the island. We’d dropped anchor in front of Hana Vave, the village at the head of the Bay of Virgins.

Upon landing, we received a Kafkaesque welcoming — that is to say, a jarring and disorienting one, especially for wide-eyed sailors stepping ashore for the first time in nearly a month. The tiny quay was ­empty except for a big, heavyset boy in swim trunks who barked at us sternly and ­urgently in Marquesan. We smiled and said hello. He pointed and grew increasingly agitated at our inability to understand him. “Does he want us to move our dinghy?” my wife, Windy, asked.

The boy began grunting. Then he began poking his index finger at Windy’s shoulder. I began to sense he had mental health issues. Salvation appeared in the form of a large woman walking toward us. She had a green grapefruit in her hand. “His mom is coming,” I said to Windy.

I greeted the woman. She smiled broadly. I waited for her to rein in her son a bit. She didn’t seem to notice him. She locked her stare on me, her smile fixed, like a young girl in love. The boy poked us and grunted. Then we found ourselves in negotiations to buy her grapefruit. She thrust it at us. The boy was suddenly her English–speaking agent, translating numbers for her, poking the grapefruit. She only smiled and nodded. Now I began to sense she had mental health issues. “Let’s go back to the boat,” I said.

“No!” came the chorus from our daughters.

We treaded lightly with our girls in tow, wandering, taken by the smell of flowers and marveling at the trees and plants hung heavy with fruit. Our reception -began to make sense. Who else did we expect to stand at the waterfront and greet us? There were 20 other boats in the anchorage, 20 before that, and 20 before that — we were just another dinghy-load of visitors in a season–long procession. The people of -Hana Vave have no real need for visiting voyagers, and we’d long ago ceased to be the curiosity that early cruisers like Sterling Hayden, Robin Lee Graham and -Bernard Moitessier presented.

There was no litter anywhere. There were no signs either, and we walked up the narrow concrete road past a string of residences, a church, a school, a soccer field and a small but immaculate magasin offering a food selection similar to a 7-Eleven back home. Houses built by their owners stood on defined, ordered lots abutting one another, each with its own satellite dish. We offered smiles and a “ka oha” — hello in Southern Marquesan — to the few people we saw on a quiet Monday morning.

A woman in her yard waved us over. She said something in French. We looked at each other. She repeated herself, slowly. We heard the word échange, and she pointed to the grapefruit and mandarin -oranges hanging from the trees in her yard. Our Mexican citrus was long gone and -sorely missed. She motioned at a pile of five coconuts arranged in a pyramid. She held up a jar of viscous amber liquid and pointed to the humming hives at the side of her house. Then she pointed to the Teva sandals on our feet and said the word “corde,” while I flipped through our pocket-size French-English dictionary — corde (noun): rope.

We shook our heads no, we didn’t have shoes to spare, but yes, we had corde. I fumbled again with the dictionary and -promised we’d be back in two hours. We waved goodbye — au revoir! — and made our way, greeting other residents, even arranging a second trade. Then we dinghied back out to Del Viento, gathered things to trade and returned ashore, my backpack filled with an old halyard, clothing our girls had outgrown, and some of the children’s art supplies we’d stocked up on before leaving Mexico.

During the 10 days we spent in Hana Vave, our daily adventures took us about the island and our fruit hammock grew to bulging. We swam with manta rays next to our boat, we hiked to a waterfall that stretched to the sky, we made friends, and we learned we all love grapefruit. When we finally bid adieu and set sail on an overnight passage for the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa, we did so with a massive stalk of green bananas hanging in our rigging.

Read Part 2 here.

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