May 5 - We leave Tahiti at 0930 with Mike and Colleen as our crew. This is their first ocean passage.

May 6 - We stop at Rangiroa. Mike and Colleen dive with my French dive instructor, Sebastian. We leave the next morning for Ua Pou.

May 10 - We arrived in Hakahau on Ua Pou in the Marquesas Islands and just miss the big Hoe (canoe race). The Party is over and the competitors have all gone home to the other islands of the the Marquesas, Tahiti and New Zealand.. We make landfall early in the morning and are just in time to see Kris and Ally Kjeldsen, our friends and canoe builders from Tutukaka, New Zealand before they have to catch their plane back home. We feel fortunate to be able to share Hakahau with Mike and Colleen. This was their first ocean passage and they enjoyed it so much that when Mike returned home, he bought a 32' Erickson and plans to fix it up to take ocean cruising.

Our time in the Marquesas was spent between Ua Pou and Nuka Hiva. On Ua Pou we learned that the young men at the canoe club had already built one OC1 canoe from the mold that we delivered in January on Asteria. Don and I did a "kaikai" on STARR; in a "reverse cultural experience" Rataro, his family and some of the canoe builders came on board for a pig roast; we had to cut the pig into two parts in order to fit it into the oven. After dinner we watched a video of "Survivor Marquesas" (Rataro did the Marquesan music for the series). We took Mike and Colleen around the village and introduced them to many of our friends from the year before: Pere Joseph; Tui the wood carver; Aro, the stone carver and Pascal, who was lecturing to children at the museum. A highlight of our stay on Ua Pou was our visit with Christian and Katherine Krevela on their farm in the valley adjacent to Hakahau.. We had time before Mike and Colleen had to head back home to show them a little of Nuka Hiva: to spend a night at Daniel's Bay and hike to the waterfall.

May 17 - Mike and Colleen leave. Don and I go to work on Starr, putting the pieces back together and organizing all of the "stuff" that hadn't yet been stowed away.

Click on the pictures below for larger photos of our adventures