Ocean Echo 1: March 2013

Dear friends.

Spring is coming to Northern hemisphere, so things are looking up for you. We have an end of the summer here and cyclone season is slowly winding down. Nuku Hiva Island in Marquesas has been very good hide out from cyclones. Local winds have never gone over 25-30 kts. It has been dry summer here with much less rain and squalls then usually. Local mountains and hills started looking like Mexican desert until last week. We are getting more showers now, which is good for water supply and farmers.
I have spent last few months doing the boat projects and a lot of research for upcoming cruising season. My next cyclone hideout should be a New Zealand, which will be busy with boat care and boat parts purchasing. I am planning to visit Tuamotu atolls, Niue, Tonga and a few smaller reefs along the way to N. Zealand. I expect N.Z. being a hard place with high winds and wild weather. It is a squeeze zone between 2 systems and a lot of cyclones end up tracking down to NZ as a storms and gales during their summer. I was mentioning cyclone development in last blog at Fiji. It turned out to be worst cyclone ever for Fiji, named Evan clocking 120 - 140 kts (230-270 km/h).
Spending more time in French Polynesia and Marquesas islands was very interesting for me. I had a chance to learn how the people live in small communities. Watching the locals gathering the sea food and fishing was quite educational and I have learned a few tricks from them.
Exploring tropical forests on local islands was also interesting. Banyan trees are huge, they look like giant broccoli among other trees, when viewed from distance.
Little bit of cruising reality for anyone, who might be interested to know.
There is a lot of cruising yachts visiting S. Pacific these days. My estimate would be 600-1000 boats annually. Tonga alone gets over 500 yachts every year. Some anchorages can be very crowded. This does influence mentality and attitude of lot of cruisers. We are in the way competing for shelter space (marinas, buoys, anchorages), food, fuel, Internet etc.. Local people and domestic cruisers are calling us "seasonal tidal wave of cruisers". Some communities get even annoyed with too many cruisers and chaos. I have personally experienced change of attitude in some communities, when our "tidal wave" is gone and life goes back to normal for the locals. People have been much friendlier in Taiohae on Nuku Hiva island during the quiet season. I do understand now, what is happening. Some of the cruisers are quite rude and ignorant with no cruising experience. A lot of boats are first time cruisers, who made downwind run to here and do not know anything about cruising etiquette. Local people are some times treated with no respect by cruisers. Please, do not think, that I do not like cruisers or do not enjoy cruising. This is the fact of life, while cruising. I used to be very naive about cruising life. I am less naive now.
There are a lot of catamaran's around these days, which are going to be sold in New Caledonia (French boats), Australia or N. Zealand.
Taiohae town/village on Nuku Hiva gets visited by cruise ships and large mega yachts during December, January and February. It is an alternative route for these ships, when there is a cyclone activity in Cook islands and Tahiti area. All the local artists and craft people are quite happy to sell their products to visiting tourists. Cruise ships traffic dies off, when the weather gets stable at mentioned regions. Best way to see Marquesas islands is on Aranui passenger/cargo ship, which departs from Tahiti and visits all Marquesas islands.

Maintaining this blog could by complicated time to time, because Internet signal/connection for uploading pictures, will not be as good/fast as it is in large cities/communities. Please, excuse my poor writing skills and grammar. Google translate does good job converting text to other languages.
I hope, that you will find something interesting in this blog – enjoy.

Jara   (JJ)   Holcman                            s/v Ocean Echo 1