Baie Tai o Hae, Nuka Hiva

8'54.8S/140'05.9W
Baie Tai o Hae

We have made it to our second stop on Nuka Hiva. Taiohae is the capital of the Marquises Islands. It us just 5 miles, or one hour, from Daniels Bay. This is the largest city in the Marquesas Islands. They even have Internet here!

The bay is nice and big. It has about 30 boats anchored in it right now. Lots of folks we met in both Puerto Vallarta and Zihuatanjo are here. So it's nice to catch up and hear their stories. Most are waiting for some wind to sail on to the next group of island, the Tuamoto's.

Since we are now in the northern group of islands, we needed to check in again here. Then we need to check out of here before we head off to the Tuamous.

Before we leave, we would like to visit one more anchorage, Anaho Bay, that is suppose to have great snorkeling. It is about 4 hours from here. So we are here long enough to take a tour of the island by car, do some laundry, sample some cold beers, check our bank accounts, provision up, and maybe even squeeze in a tattoo for one lucky sailor.

The couple on the catamaran Cheers from South Africa, that we had met at previous anchorage, gave us a whole bag full of fresh Wahoo that they caught. So we had a big dinner party on Sandpiper, with Ken from Panache and Jiles from Petrel. The fish was great! We also had fresh corn-on-the-cob from the local market. Being from Indiana, and a corn "expert", I found the local corn to be great!

Yesterday we did our car tour with our friends Ken and Giles. Our guide Jocelyn picked us up with her 4 door Land Rover. Amy got to ride in the "way back". At 8:30am, off into the island we went. Jocelyn was very knowledgable regarding the island's flora and fauna. We stopped by two village ruins, saw petroglyphs, and got eaten by lots of mosquitos.

The tour was all day. It wore us out. Upon returning to the docks we saw a scary looking island dude jogging. We all made a comment. Our guide told us the jogger is one of the island's two prisoners. A prisoner here is allowed to leave prison at 7am. But need to return before 7pm.

They have this great yacht service store here on the docks that can help us get almost anything we need. They can get boat parts, send faxes, do laundry, and epair sails. They have two slow computers. Even though they have Internet access, it is slow. So we won't be able to post photos until Tahiti. So hang in there!

We are hoping to leave tomorrow for Anaho Bay for a few days. Then we sail back down here, reprovision, and take off to the Tuamotos. Hope all is well with everyone back home.

Amy and Tom