My friend Ondra, an experienced skipper and a real sea dog, was preparing to sail across the South Pacific in 2016. He suggested that I go as a crew. I didn`t hesitate a bit!

When, with the map, I was researching in which direction exactly we were going to sail west with the trade winds, I discovered that there in our course was lying the island of Hiva-Oa too.

Who is just a bit more interested in the post-impressionism knows that the person who spent his last years there was Paul Gauguin. The skipper didn`t have any objections against my obsessive idea to take a break only just there as after the long sail from Panama we needed to anchor for a while somewhere in the Marquesas anyway.

After the 44 days of an arduous voyage, we got there. It wasn`t an elegant arrival though. Due to the technical state of our ketch, we almost shipwrecked there. But in the end, in the Tahauku Bay of Hiva-Oa, we cast anchor.

In the coming days we set out to look for the cemetery where Gauguin is buried. Ondra with a big camera and I with my smallest painting that I`d packed into my suitcase for the flight to Panama. After a prolonged hike up the hill when the sailor`s feet keep stumbling over each other because of weeks on a seesaw-swingy deck they were suddenly on a solid ground, we reached the old cemetery. There at the gravestone of this great master I took a picture of myself with my tiny canvas  - perhaps cheekily but with respects.

Later after a chat with a local artist, I left my minute picture displayed in the Art and Crafts Gallery in the little town of Atuona, where the local craftsmen, artists and even makers of various types of excellent jam sell their thing.

"The exhibition" took a long time because our boat was in a terrible condition and we kept booking spare parts from Tahiti and kept repairing and repairing and repairing...