We leave behind a rainy Nuku Hiva, but we’re happy we went back to Taiohae Bay – we now have all things fresh that the heart can desire, what you would expect to take away from such a lush and fertile paradise. In fact we are better stocked than we’ve ever been, carrying baguettes, grapefruits, pumpkins, courgettes, aubergines and parsley, as well as cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots and bananas.
The crossing is pretty uneventful apart from Catching the Big Fish, which occurs around lunch time on Day 1, when an enormous mahi mahi bites and starts its fight for survival. It takes about an hour to reel him in, and as he gets close to the boat he dives under and wraps himself around the rudder, so David has to strip down and jump in to untangle the line. It takes a massive effort to get him on board, and once cleaned we have two large binbags full of fish – he didn’t fit any of our tubberware.
So we supplement the fresh fruit and vegetables with copious amounts of mahi mahi, and by the time we arrive three days later, we have consumed just over half the fish in a variety of forms including plain fried fish, fish soup, fish salad and fish curry. Sarah, who has never been a big fish eater, puts up a brave face on the last night as she picks past the fish in the curry, choosing to focus on the snake beans instead.
The children are accustomed to passages now. Apart from the usual involved Lego games, Matias spends much time playing chess on the tablet and reading on my kindle, whereas Lukie engages in his favourite activity of dragging out the Encyclopaedia of the Sea and asking questions like ‘Which shark is the biggest in the world?’, ‘Is a baby fish smaller than a dwarf goby?’ and ‘What’s your favourite whale?’.
At the end of Day 2 we have to slow the boat down to ensure that we don’t approach the island of Takaroa in the dark – we can only enter the pass through to the lagoon at slack water during daylight hours, so we hold off waiting for dawn, admiring the orange rays of sunrise that illuminate the low shapes appearing out of the ocean.
SV Bob The Cat 