The skipper is a proud Exeter Chiefs rugby team supporter and during our relationship Stephen has introduced the love of the game to Debbie.

When we were land based we followed the team at home, or travelled nationally and sometimes to Europe for the away games. Just because we live on a boat doesn't mean we can't keep up with the Chiefs’ progress. Stephen has strived to watch as many games as he can via the computer, with the patience of a saint, waking at unholy hours in order to support his team. Consequently, life was on hold when Chiefs made it to the finals in Europe and the English Premiership. We had to be in a Bay with strong Wifi to enable the viewing of the game. Stephen’s dedication and patience paid off as Exeter Chiefs are now the European and English Champions. 

In between staying put for the rugby games, we sailed over to Ua Pou in a brisk easterly and anchored in an old favourite western bay of ours, Baie de Hakaotu. The bay is quite small and we had the pleasure of being the only boat in the bay, for a few days. Sheer luxury after staying in “busy” Taiohae Bay for far too long. Several years previously we had anchored in this bay with S/V Manatee and were invited to a family Sunday lunch ashore. The family still retain the cabin on the foreshore and when we arrived, the ripple of childrens’ voices and laughter tinkled through the air. The kids tumbled over the craggy rocks until dusk and then were ushered into the cabin. The one light on shore was a torch beam, otherwise the stars were our only illumination. Cuddled up on the aft deck, without a moon, we looked in awe at the sky packed full of twinkling stars, bright planets and the odd satellite. The mountainous backdrop was only visible as the rocky bulk blocked out the night lights. Earlier we heard the calls of the hunters, amongst the hills with the odd bark from their hunting dogs, after wild pig or goats. At one point, a disturbance caused the eruption of hundreds of birds from their roosts, who fled out to sea temporarily. We discovered the cause of this disturbance several days later when Debbie witnessed falling rocks from the erosion of the cliffs. A mixture of terns, noddies, boobies, frigate and red-tailed tropicbirds (Toake) live together in the withered trees and amongst the many alcoves in the cliffs. It was mesmerising to watch the birds fish in the small bay. Frigate birds, we are told, cannot land on the water, so their food comes from scavenging off other birds and decaying matter floating on the surface of the water. Despite this we have numerous times watched a Frigate swoop from high and scoop up a poor, unsuspecting small fry. We conclude that the Frigates must have fantastic distance eyesight. Stephen is keen to see the males of the species perform their mating ritual by strutting and puffing out their bright red crop. The thing is we don't know if it is mating season at present and our bird books claim that the mating season is a mystery.

During Sunday we watched two women fishing with bamboo poles in the pools along the waters edge, how successful they were, we will never know but they spent hours at this activity. The following day we observed two individuals in a home built wooden pirogue rowing around into the next bay, bailing out seawater as they went. The sun is fierce at this time of year and the duo with no shade in the boat were fully clothed and wearing hats woven from banana leaves. 

The water is clearer than Nuku Hiva (our water maker filters testify to this) with less stinging fiends and wow, have we missed jumping into the sea. It was like falling into cool velvet and the sensation was addictive during our short stay. We managed to check our through hole fittings and anodes. An attempt was made to rid Amelie of her heavy skirt of marine growth, which scrapes off easily in carpets of slippery, slimy gunk. The waterline is a mess and will need to wait for a high pressure hose-down during the haul out, as a glue-like brown substance is caked along the fibreglass and no amount of scraping and rubbing will remove it. The tiny crabs and “mud dwelling” marine life love this terrain, so as we scraped they would scurry to the next thick area. Stephen adorned with gloves, to prevent his hands being lacerated by sharp barnacles, experienced a crab crawling into his ear. The gloves proved to be cumbersome but for some reason the tiddly crab didn't want to set up home in his outer ear!

All too soon our need to return to “Wifi City” called and we returned to Taiohae Bay, resuming our life as if we hadn't left. The bay is very quiet with the odd boat arriving but overall the atmosphere is deflated here, playing the waiting game until a weather window in late March. We are hoping some of our friends will return for the seasonal period and then in the new year our lives will become busy again, preparing for possibly our longest passage on Amelie and looking forward to new adventures, catching up with some of our closest friends and getting back to the UK.

We returned to the Bay and caught up with the family on WhatsApp and the never ending Covid news, which has hit hard in French Polynesia.  The spike coinciding with the government’s abolition of quarantine requirements for overseas visitors since July, in order to boost the economy and tourism. As we approach Halloween, it has been reported in  a Tahiti newspaper that “trick and treating” will go ahead as normal! The “blue harvest” moon which was expected was occluded by heavy cloud cover and the next Halloween full moon will be in nineteen years time. The 1st of November is All Saints’ Day (La Toussaint) where many Catholics and some Christians honour all saints that have attained heaven. Google suggests that there are special services on this day. The shore appeared quiet except for beautiful singing wafting across the bay from the various churches.

Stephen aided our new neighbour, a young, solo sailor called Dmitri from Russia to extract his torn main sail from the mast. This took many hours in torrential rain, high winds and then blazing sun but eventually the main sail, in bits, was removed. 

Our good friend Paul, from El Mundo, had returned to his boat, presently in Tahiti. He kindly brought our spares from Oyster with a few domestic items for Debbie including much needed LED candle lights for the Christmas tree! Stephen’s cigar supply has increased and Mirjana surprised Debbie with a couple of Slovenian childrens’ story books. The author resembles a modern day Roald Dahl and the translated versions had Debbie roaring with laughter. We long to read these books to the grandchildren particularly as “Hustle the Dragon” and “Magic Muri”  have become a favourite on board Amelie.

We welcomed Carolyn and Andrew from S/Y Askari back to the bay and spent several evenings catching up on “Taiohae Bay News” and naturally what they had been up to for the past three months. Laughter rang out from Amelie, lots of “British” humour which was good for the soul.Unexpectedly the following day we received excited calls from two of our favourite boat families, plotting, planning and bribing us to up roots and join them for Christmas and New Year. We spent all of half an hour to decide to move on and as we were heavily provisioned, nothing was stopping us. We had an emotional goodbye with Kevin and Annabella from Nuku Hiva Yacht services, who sent us on our way with T-shirts artistically painted by the lovely Annabella. 

With a degree of in-trepidation but overall happiness we start the final chapter in our story here in French Polynesia.