Our first island in French Polynesia was Ua Huka, which normally doesn’t get a lot of sailboats. It is one of a total of six inhabited islands of the island group of Marquesas. We cannot check into the country on this island, but as it was Pentecost the weekend we arrived, all of the public offices were closed. Therefore, we decided to make a pitstop here and wait for the offices to reopen.
There are a total of three anchorages on Ua Huka. We picked the western anchorage called Bahie Haavei, as it seemed the easiest to access for our late night arrival. Arriving in the dark is never fun, and we seldom do it. However, after three weeks at sea on our transpacific passage, we were keen on dropping the anchor and get a good night’s sleep.
The bay is fairly broad, but not as deep as we thought it would be. We dropped the anchor a little too close to the beach, so we had quite a lot of swell from the waves building as they got close to shore. We therefore moved a little further out the next morning.
There were no other boats there, and no locals. We had heard a lot from other sailors about the very full anchorages in the Marquesan islands, as this is the high season for all sailors landing after crossing the Pacific from North, South and Central America. So, we felt very privileged to wake up the following morning, having the anchorage all to ourselves.
Our friends Karmen and Tom from SY Sauvage showed up later in the day. They left Galapagos about one month before us, and have explored the Southern islands of the Marquesas. This was their first stop of the Northern islands. It was so nice to see them again!
We invited them over for a celebratory passage dinner the same night, and made plans for doing some dinghy exploration of the area the following morning.
The bay is truly beautiful, with two very different bird islands situated right on the inlet. The smell is so-so, though… bird poop from sea birds en masse is veeeeery strong… 😣
After checking out the bird islands, we went to the neighboring bay just west of us. Supposedly this is a favorite beach of the locals, who often spend the weekends there. It is not marked as an anchorage on our charts or apps, but definitely seemed like a decent place to anchor for a few nights. No pictures from this bay, though.
The following day, Tom and Karmen continued on to the next island, Nuku Hiva. We decided to stay one more night, and explore the island. As the surge on the beach is big, we decided to swim ashore, and then hike from the beach. It was a beautiful hike of a total of 8 kms, back and forth to the small town of Vaipae’e.
We met lots of wild goats on our way. Supposedly, you find wild goats on all of the Marquesan islands, as they decided to stop domesticating them, and rather hunt them when they want their meat.
Vaipae’e is the main town of this island with only 650 inhabitants. As this was Pentecost Monday, it seemed everyone on the island had gathered for mass at the town church. We could hear the congregation sing hymns in French as we approached the town.
We arrived in Vaipae’e just before noon, and were lucky that there was a mini market open, as we did not bring any food. Considering that we have not walked for three weeks, we were already getting quite tired, so some cookies and an ice cream was just what we needed to get the energy for the return.
There is also a bay to anchor in by this village, but we would not recommend it to anyone. The water is colored dark reddish brown from the volcanic soil covering the mountains surrounding the bay. There is also a river running into the bay, which adds to the brownish color.
We had the last night alone at the anchorage as well, and left early the following morning for a 30nm sail to the biggest northern island in the Marquesas, Nuku Hiva. We are so happy we made this pitstop, it was a great introduction to the Marquesas. We are looking forward to the rest!
