It’s done. The anchor is down in Atuona Bay, Hiva Oa, and Sunny Spells is at rest after 3,100 nautical miles of Pacific blue. I’m writing this from the cockpit, a bit weary, but full of that landfall glow — the deep kind, the earned kind.

The last few days, from the 5th to the 9th, reminded us that the ocean always has a final test. After more than a week of almost dreamlike sailing in the trades, we had to start making our turn to port to line up for Hiva Oa — and that meant putting the wind and sea more on the beam. Not uncomfortable exactly, but a bit more lively than we’d gotten used to.

The swells picked up a little — long, lumpy, and off-angle — which meant a lot more motion and the kind of interrupted sleep that makes you feel like you’ve been sailing for weeks (which, of course, we had). But the boat just kept trucking. Even with the shifting seas and slightly fresher breeze, Sunny Spells held 6 to 7 knots like it was nothing.

By the morning of the 8th we could feel it — that almost physical sense of arrival. The air smelled different. The breeze felt warmer. There were birds again, real ones, not ocean wanderers but locals. One tiny land bird even flew aboard for a quick inspection before flitting off toward nowhere. We knew land was close.

Then, just before first light on the 9th, there it was: a jagged silhouette on the horizon. Hiva Oa. Real land. We were still 20 miles out, but it was as if the crossing had ended the moment we saw it. Everything after that was ritual — sail trim, coffee, unlashing the anchor, switching off the ocean mindset and thinking about land and shoal water.

We rounded into Atuona Bay around 10AM. Mountains rising behind the anchorage, lush and sharp-edged, like something drawn from memory. The shoreline was dark volcanic rock, fringed with surf. A few other yachts gently swinging at anchor, and the smell — damp greenery, woodsmoke, soil. It’s always the smell that hits first.

We dropped anchor in about 9 metres, engine off, boat still. Just like that, the Pacific crossing was over.

There’ll be more to come — check-in, laundry, fruit, a baguette if we’re lucky — but for now we are just soaking up the stillness.

Sunny Spells carried us well. And now she rests.