Hiva Oa

We're loving Marquesas! Scenery is just stunning - very hilly, and very green, with high steep cliffs.

We arrived here from the long crossing early on Sunday (my birthday!) cruising through the anchorage to cheers and horns from other ARC boats, welcoming us in with our damaged rig, quite emotional! 

And we needn't have worried about bars and restaurants being closed - there was quite a party with crews from quite a few other boats, all day!

We moved on from Hiva Oa to Tahuata whilst waiting for new shrouds, where we anchored in a beautiful bay with a beach fringed with palm trees. 

Then yesterday we came back to Hiva Oa to collect our lovely new shrouds and spent all afternoon fitting them, then most of today checking and trimming the whole rig. A learning experience, we now know exactly how to set up the whole rig from scratch!

We have opted to skip a planned visit to Fatu Hiva (allegedly one of the most beautiful anchorages in the world) as it would be just too much of a rush with the delays we've experienced, and everywhere is beautiful, really beautiful, anyway.

So we're about to leave for an overnight sail to Nuka Hiva for a few days before leaving for the Tuamotos (another big sail, several hundred miles) next week.