Landfall

April 27, 2025, 1616 Ship’s Time | 20 miles NW of Hiva Oa | Sailing towards Nuku Hiva

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The first shouts of “Land Ho!” drifted through the companionway at 0545 on April 25. Hiva Oa was visible in the pre-dawn light just off our starboard bow. French Polynesia. The South Sea Islands.

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I was asleep, sound asleep because the engine was on and we were motoring that final home stretch in a calm, and with that white noise of a constant RPM in the background, man there is no better sleep aid that I know. Change that engine speed by just a few RPM though, and BAM! Best wake-up call going. When I finally crawled out of bed we were already past the easternmost tip of the island, steaming west and only ten miles from Atuona, our first port of call.

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High green hills surrounded us on three sides as we approached the bay, a ragged ridgeline running down the center of the island, black volcanic slopes disappearing into the sea where the gentle southeasterly swell exploded onto the rocky cliffs in high plumes of spray.

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We stopped FALKEN about a half-mile outside the bay and shut down the motor while the crew had a landfall swim. Then we moseyed into the anchorage where maybe a dozen or so other cruising boats were holed up, some inside a small breakwater and the rest in the (very rolly) outer part of the bay. The supply ship was in from Tahiti, so half the boats on the inside had had to clear out at 0300 on the ship’s arrival. We were forced to anchor on the outside in the worst of the swell, but once that anchor set, the shade awning was rigged over the boom and the champagne was popped, nobody cared about the swell.

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We dropped anchor after 16 days, 19 hours, sailing some 3,259 miles from San Cristobal in the Galapagos. That works out to an average of 193 miles per day, or 8.04 knots, pretty fast considering our slow start through the doldrums and frustratingly slow finish in light winds. The middle part of the passage we managed to reel off 8 straight days of 220+ miles per day, our best day’s run topping out at 238 (an average of 9.9 knots). Fast, effortless sailing with the jib topsail poled out and the main, often reefed, prevented on the other side.

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The crew wasted no time in getting ashore. Alex, FALKEN’s lead skipper, has been in charge of Pacific logistics this year (he arranged both the Canal transit and our permits in the Galapagos), and he arranged an agent for us here in French Polynesia, Sandra, who within an hour of our arrival had organized a little rental car. Hilary led the shore party and after a rolly dinghy ride into the wharf, the crew disappeared into the hills. Emily & I stayed back, keeping an eye out on the Tahiti ship, which was rumored to be leaving any minute—as soon as we heard their horn blast one long signal for departure, we weighed anchor and were the first boat to move back inside the breakwater and into relative calm.

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Our two days in Hiva Oa drifted by in a dreamlike stupor, as the initial days after landfall always do. Most of the crew ate dinner ashore that first night, and on the second day, discovered a small hotel up on the hillside overlooking the harbor that had an infinity pool, cold beer and hot cheeseburgers. For $40 per person they gave you a lift up the hill, lunch, and a spot to lounge for the afternoon. The place specifically caters to arriving sailors, many of whom have spent much longer at sea than we did on FALKEN, which was the biggest boat in the bay.

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In fact, Atuona and Hiva Oa in general is way quieter than I’d imagined, the “town” really just a small beachfront village with a small grocery store, and some residential streets tucked amongst the coconut palms and under the shadow of a 4,000-ft, knife-edged mountain. There’s a tiny boatyard behind the breakwater where they can haul out boats up to about 50 feet (John Kretschmer stored his Kaufman 47 QUETZAL here only a few weeks ago), using a heavy tractor and a submersible trailer. We watched them haul a big yellow steel boat up the ramp as we arrived in the dinghy and man was it sketchy! Hiva Oa feels and is quite remote.

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Meanwhile, me, Aidan & Erik stayed back to refuel FALKEN. We were down to fumes after our long motoring stint on leaving Galapagos, and being that there was a gas station right on the dock, we decided to get it done then and there. Our friend Ben Shaw was anchored in the harbor on his DOVKA and let us borrow his jerry cans (Ben is the host of the ‘Out the Gate Sailing Podcast’, and a former 59º North crew on ICEBEAR, when he and his wife Lauren joined us in 2019 on a passage to Lunenburg. They’re now in year 2 of their cruise with their two kids, 8 & 10, and had arrived from Mexico a few days before us). We took on 380 litres of fuel, schlepping it in the dinghy from the gas station in 11 yellow 20L cans and siphoning it into the tanks. Not quick, but quite smooth, and by early afternoon we had (mostly) full tanks again.

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Later that day, while the crew remained at the Hanakee Lodge, Aidan and I hitched a ride into town to get our obligatory Polynesian tattoos. I’d seen a sign for Kaha Tattoo earlier when we’d been to the grocery store, and popped my head in the tiny studio space up the hill behind the grocery store to meet Kaha after we’d cleared customs at the local Gendarmerie (the islands are French). Kaha was there just finishing up an armband on a Danish sailor who’d only arrived the day before, just like us. Kaha himself is Marquesas with dark olive skin and black hair, and covered in traditional Polynesian tattoos from head to toe. He was shirtless and wore a necklace of wild boar tusks intricately carved with beguiling designs. There were about 8 empty Jack Daniel’s bottles on the bookshelf behind the countertop and reggae music played from a TV in the back. I booked us in at 1600.

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The sailor tattoo tradition in this part of the world goes back at least 300 years. Captain Cook and his crew had passed through the Marquesas on several occasions and his sailors were some of the first westerners to return home inked up.

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Aidan & I went in with no expectations beyond getting something that symbolized the voyage in the classic Marquesan style. The motifs I got on my left forearm represent love, freedom & the ocean; Aidan’s is similar, with a travel/migration motif, the ocean and man’s oneness with it. We spent a delightful three hours in Kaha’s studio flipping through his books of Marquesan tattoo culture and sharing stories through his broken English and our non-existent French. The only downside is now we can’t swim for a week until the tattoos heal…

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And now, after only two nights, we’re en route to Nuku Hiva, our final destination for this crew. We had planned to anchor for the night in a remote bay on the NW corner of Hiva Oa before setting sail tomorrow, but when we arrived the wind was funneling around the backside of the island and blowing straight into the bay. I saw one other boat anchored off the palm tree-lined beach, but she was on a lee shore with whitecaps all around and her bow pitching up and down in the chop. No thanks, I said, so we turned downwind, set sail and switched right into passage making mode for the home stretch.

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As I type Emily is making dinner, Aidan’s taking a nap, Jim & Udo are on watch and we’re about 45 miles from the bay at Taiohae. It’s wide open and an easy entry, but we’ll be making our arrival in the dark tonight, and with no moon, so we’ll have some excitement. But for now, the sun’s going down out ahead and FALKEN is flying at 9 knots in perfect trade wind conditions.

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—Andy