However, once up, it was hard to go down again as the four boats (the Kiwi boat Freedom Hunter arrived yesterday) in the tiny, narrow "V" of an anchorage were bucking and rolling in a horrid onslaught of 3-5' waves. Don and I sat up until daylight, when we added coffee to the mix, and Bill finally emerged when the dish drain with all the dinner dishes crashed to the floor.

Are we having fun yet?

No. Our little hidden paradise has become a bit of a trap. The prudent mariner would surely put to sea and ride the weather out in the open, but we can't even consider that as our dinghy and engine are in still in the water. Steve on Apogee took a shot at it, and turned right round and tucked back in, meanwhile scaring the beejeezus out of the rest of us.

So we have spent most of the morning staring at the seas breaking on the reefs around us as the tide slowly goes out and the wind ever so slowly backs toward the east. The sun is breaking through and things are beginning to settle. As soon as things settle enough, we will yank the engine off the dinghy and hoist the dinghy itself onto the foredeck to be ready to break out when the time looks right.

Later:
The lull we were waiting for came in the mid afternoon. With the three of us working together and a safety on the outboard, we managed to hook it and yank it off the dinghy transom before the next big roller got us. Smug with our success we tackled hoisting the dinghy onto the deck, and all went well until the windlass –which we use in company with the old spinnaker halyard to raise the 178 pounds of dinghy out of the water – STOPPED three inches shy of the lifelines. Well, the boys were able to manhandle the beast the rest of the way aboard, and we got it down and secured.

BUT what was wrong with the windlass? Don and the multimeter and his ½"wrenches went through every connection. We even opened up the motor cover to see if the problem lay there. To make a long story short, Don & Bill's perseverance (with as Ms. Stepandfetchit) revealed the problem to be the 150amp circuit breaker, even though it had checked positive for continuity. The problem identified, Don was able to wire it direct so we can get the anchor up not just when we are ready to leave tomorrow but should conditions get bad again.

What Uncle Bill makes of the show we are putting on about the cruising life, I cannot say. He was on hand for all the day's projects, and he has been a stoic sport about the nasty roll. Freedom Hunter left the anchorage this afternoon and reports much better conditions at sea. Let's hope they prevail until tomorrow!

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The French seem to be good custodians of their islands. They import an infrastructure of communications, medical, education and police services, staff it with Frenchmen, fund it French francs, import French foodstuffs to feed the staff, and then pretty much leave the cultures alone.

Small and off the usual cruising routes, Wallis and Futuna are not often visited by cruisers, although Futuna has become a popular destination for boats in Fiji who need to extend their time there with a quick trip out to another country. Usually, those boats arrive, drop the anchor, clear in and out in one stop with the officials, and then weigh anchor and head back south.

On our way north, we had done our usual preliminary orientation by reading about Futuna in our Lonely Planet Guide, and it sure seemed a shame to sail all this way and not give it a look-see. So when we went ashore that first morning to go to customs, we decided among us to stay two days. We arrived with a little anxiety about customs because the last two boats to make the trip had arrived back in Savusavu without the proper clearance paper and been heavily fined. But everything seemed to us straightforward and clear, despite the language difference, and we left the office with our clearance already in hand.

The next stop is the gendarmerie, about a mile or so walk east down the coast road. Outside the gendarmerie, we ran into two men with a TV camera, and we wondered what was going on. It turned out we were what was going on! It seems that this is the first time there has ever been three sailboats in the harbor at one time, and it seems that in Futuna this is newsworthy. The reporter and cameraman --Nasalio Leleivai and Jean Francois Puakavase – wanted to do a feature on the sailors and what we do when visitnig Futuna.

And so began our day as TV stars. The gendarmes got into the spirit of the filming, serving us a round of demitasse cafés for us in their air-conditioned office. As we've noticed on other French islands, the French gendarmes do not subscribe to a uniform code, more often than not appearing in the briefest of shorts and T-shirts.

From the gendarmerie, we moved on to the money changer, the proprietor of a small store who sat behind a counter and happily changed "Mr. Bush's money" into Central Pacific francs. He had no use for either Kiwi or Fijian dollars, and he had less use for the TV camera. "Taboo," he said, shaking his head repeatedly. "Taboo."

By now we are all hot to trot to find something to eat. We had skipped breakfast saving ourselves for croissants and baguettes. Apparently, however, there are no "snacks" in Futuna, and the only restaurants are at two the hotels and absurdly expensive. So Nasalio and Jean Francois steered us to the supermarket, whose shelves were filled with such French treats as baguettes, small rounds of Brie and Camembert, and canned pate, and armed with this loot, we went back to the TV station to woof it down in Nasalio's office.

Once fed and watered, Jean Francois took us all on a tour of the island in the station's vehicle. About 33km all the way around, our tour took all of ninety minutes, especially as our guide had some pressure to get back for an interview with one of Futuna's two kings at the hospital.

Our first stop was a fine fale fono in our guide's own village. The fale fono in Futuna, like the ones we saw in Samoa, is where the men gather in the evening to drink kava and discuss community business. A beautiful oval structure in the Samoan style, this fale was built completely with traditional materials: an impressive latticework of beams secured with traditional sennit (much like the Fijian magimagi we saw at Nukubati) and topped by thick thatch with woven palm "blinds" lowerable for shade or protection from the wind. Inside were stacks of mats, several large tanoa (kava bowls) and the mortars used for pounding the roots. A bunch of kids were hanging out in the shade, waiting for the bus to carry them back to school for the afternoon session, and they were quick to speak with us in English. Apparently English is now a required subject in school, as per an edict from one of the kings.

Across the street is a magnificent church of cement painted to look like blocks. The church, with two side towers, an impressive wood carving of Mary and Jesus, huge wooden doors and stained glass windows was built in just five months after an earthquake brought down the original in 1993. (note, this info does not jibe with what is given in the Lonely Planet!)

From there we drove to an overlook of Alofi Island. Alofi is uninhabited but for one caretaker. It is essentially a retreat for Futunans who can go out for the day to maintain gardens or just play on the exquisite beach. There is a church there and some fales for general use, and it is a popular spot for visiting yachts to anchor when winds are out of the southeast.

On the north side of the island at Poi, the main sight to see is the multilayered tower of the Basilica of St. Pierre Chanel. Pierre Chanel was the first Catholic missionary to come to Futuna. Initially he and his colleagues were welcomed by the king, but as he gained converts the king began to feel his traditional power threatened, and sent a band of warriors to kill him. Chanel was the first missionary lost, and eventually became the patron saint of Oceania. The Basilica is huge and cool inside, lit by panes of colored glass. There must have been hundreds of pews, surely enough to seat the island's entire population! Off to the side is an unexpectedly modern chapel where the sacred Chanel relics are kept. This chapel, all angles of wood, is extraordinarily peaceful with the susurrations of the sea on the beach in the background. Oddly, in the center of the church grounds is the tomb of the man who had Chanel killed.

From there the pace of our tour picked up as Jean Francois hurried to get back for his interview. Our only other stop was to admire the lava rock formations on the northwest point.

Jean Francois dropped us back at the wharf in mid-afternoon. For two cruisers who usually nap half the day after a passage, the day's activity was quite the departure from the norm. Don and I both took the chance to crash for the three hours until five pm, when the crews of all three boats gathered aboard Apogee with Jean Francois and Nasalio as guests.

From our point of view, the evening was the traditional gathering of cruisers for hors d'oeuvres and sundowners. From their point of view, this was the official interview of the American, New Zealand and Australian crews. However since I was the only one among us to speak French, I was the primary intermediary. Now I must point out that I haven't spoken a lick of French since the Societies, and that my vast reservoir of school French (a reservoir that has stuck with me faithfully for thirty years) got badly contaminated by my efforts to learn Spanish. So, here I am after a night of night watches trying badly to make sense translating for everyone all day, and I must tell you that Nasalio, with his mellifluous Futunan accent was damn hard for me to understand.

And yet it went well, and the completed "reportage" aired on Tuesday night's news program which we were actually able to pick up on our multi-system TV (the absolute first time we have every used it!.) We all looked great, and Jean Francois had edited things nicely so that I did not come across as the village idiot. Some of us had already seen the footage at the station in the afternoon, and Jean Francois made us a DVD that actually plays on our anglo computer!

Two small things that really amuse me about all this. One is that while trying hard to speak coherent French, I actually end up looking French, with the pursed lips, the quizzical tilt of the head, and the hand gestures. The other amusing thing is that a fourth boat cruised in this afternoon. Perhaps they'll have to reshoot the whole story!

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As night closed in and we were motoring anyway, we made a dogleg to the east below Naqelelevu atoll, to gain some easting should the trade winds ever return. But for the wind, conditions seemed idyllic, with a buttery full moon rising in the east. And when I came up at 0130 to relieve Bill of his watch and round onto our final NNE leg to Futuna, there was enough wind to set the genoa and shut down. I thought we might just sail this way the rest of the 153 miles. It lasted barely an hour.

Clouds rolled in along with rain showers, and the wind went away. This cycle repeated itself most of the rest of the night, although we had some pretty decent sailing and motor-sailing stints during the day Sunday.

Sunday night, however, the sky got more seriously overcast, and although the wind picked up, it picked up to 20+ and backed in the NE, too close for old T2 to sail on course. So on comes the engine yet again. Now, I know the sailors among are wondering why we don't tack our way upwind. Well, there's a reason this boat is called Tackless. She just doesn't sail close enough to the wind to make much headway without an engine. We end up sailing back and forth pretty near the same stretch of water.

So despite the wind blowing 15-20 all night, we had to motor, and the ride was pretty bouncy in the confused swell. To add insult to injury, a flat overcast hid our full moon (always the way!) Jetlagged, Uncle Bill had been having some trouble finding his sea legs, and the crappy conditions Sunday night kept him below. At 15 miles out, we picked up the bright lighthouse from Futuna, which, no matter how many fancy electronics you have, is a reassuring moment, the there's nothing to match the silhouettes of your destination -- in this case the islands of Futuna and its neighbor Alofi – when it appears on the horizon with dawn and breaking clouds behind it.

We followed our CMap right into the Leava Harbor, which is a very narrow "V" through the reef into the shoreline. The island is quite steep, so the village of Leava hugs the shoreline, and the anchorage is made even smaller by several hundred feet of fringing reef. Brand new red and green (French system—red left returning) beacons marked the edges of the reef around the tiny harbor, and a tall commercial wharf for container deliveries juts from the starboard. The beacons are a most welcome addition as the harbor was quite difficult to make out in the morning haze.

Already at anchor was Apogee, the boat we traveled up with ("with" being a relative term as they arrived eight hours before us!) and Curly's boat Stella Rosa. (Curly and his lady friend Barbara came up over a week ago and had a passage from hell with heavy weather and steering failures. They've been here since working on repairs.) We found a spot inside Apogee and got the hook down right at 0800.

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Labels: Ile Futuna, Passages

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Labels: Ile Futuna, Passages