Mo'orea

Before we left Tahiti for Moorea we paid a last visit to the roulottes and to the final night of rehearsals for Heiva in the outdoor stadium at the end of the waterfront promenade. I highly recommend trying to catch the free rehearsals two or three nights before the official start of Heiva. Some of the younger dancers didn't appear to have their act together yet, but an older troupe was very good. We arrived before sunset which was too early. We should have eaten first and then walked down to the stadium. As it was we watched a couple of numbers and when there was a break in the action we walked to the roulottes for a crepe and a hamburger. We returned to the stadium after 8 PM and stayed until 11 PM for the grande finale (in full costume).

We paid our bill at the quay and officially checked out of French Polynesia. Papeete is the center of all things official in FP, and we need do nothing more than check in and out with local gendarmes at each subsequent island (we're even stamped out in our passports). We then made the five mile trip to Marina Taina past the Papeete airport where we filled up with gasoline and duty free diesel. We exited a nearby pass for the 20 mile sail to Moorea. It was a terribly uncomfortable motor sail with confused seas in the channel between the islands. But as we rounded a point on Moorea John looked out over the distance just in time to see a lot of wind coming our way. He reefed the sails before we got hit with 25-30 knots of wind, and it was a quick sail to the well marked and easy pass at Opunohu Bay (past Cook's Bay). We anchored in 12' of water next to the coral extending out from the reef inside the pass. In most of these bays you can also anchor at the head of the bay where the water is much deeper and you are more shaded by the high mountains. If we were to do it again we would anchor closer to the beach side because all the tour/dive boats speed between Nakia and the reef on their way back and forth between Cook's Bay and our pass and beyond.

We made a brief visit to Stingray City where the tour boats don't mind if cruisers join in the melee of feeding rays and black-tip reef sharks (there were easily over two dozen of the latter darting in between people standing in the shallow water). We had done something similar in the Bahamas with a smaller group and fewer sharks and this was a bit too chaotic for me. We took the dinghy farther down the bay to try to find some snorkeling but the wind suddenly kicked up and we needed to go upwind back to Nakia. We managed to get in the wake of a small speedboat who "broke trail" for us. Then we passed a smaller dinghy with four people going very slowly. They were having trouble with their motor and motioned us over. We offered to take their two Belgian guests aboard our dinghy, which improved their situation, and we led the way back to their boat. Of course not much later, the wind calmed down and it was a beautiful afternoon.

In fact every day has been absolutely gorgeous and it wasn't until yesterday afternoon that we had any clouds. After our trip to Stingray City we went for a snorkel on the shallow reef next to Nakia, but most of the coral was dead and covered with some kind of strange weed. I counted five crown of thorns sea stars so that is part of the reason for the poor condition of the coral.

Since the snorkeling isn't very interesting we've concentrated on land exploration. On Saturday we made a five hour round trip hike to Belvedere (lookout) and Three Pines for stunning views of the two bays and the pineapple fields in Paopao valley. Sunday we took a walk after the solar eclipse to Jus de Fruit in Cook's Bay, but alas it was closed. And yesterday we caught an early morning bus to the ferry terminal in Vaiare. I was under the mistaken belief that it would be the biggest city on the island, but there wasn't even a bank. Instead the main city appears to be Maharepa where the post office and a few banks are located. Without much to see in Vaiare we walked to the Super Champion grocery store and then back to the terminal to wait for the next bus. The bus schedule is tied to ferry arrival/departure times so we waited for over an hour just people watching. We caught the bus going to the south and west sides of the island even though we were fully aware that it only went as far as Hauru at the northwestern tip. Hauru was a little tourist town where we bought a couple of fresh baguettes and started walking towards Papetoai with our thumbs stuck out for every passing car. Finally a pickup truck slowed for us and we hopped in the bed. But the driver motioned for us to get in the cab with him because it's illegal for people to ride in the back. Our driver turned out to be a city councilman who spoke excellent English. We told him how much we were enjoying Moorea and he told us that there's been a big campaign to get the garbage off the road sides and beaches. He said the next big job will be to build some new schools.

It's nice to be out of the big city, but this is also a busy place probably because it may be a holiday week for many people with Bastille Day coming up tomorrow (Wednesday). Saturday night a place on shore right next to the anchorage blared awful music literally all night long. The volume went down a bit some time in the wee hours of the morning when we think someone might have complained. We suspect it could have been a solar eclipse party since it was still going strong later in the morning. The eclipse was fun. We had our commemorative glasses and a clear morning for viewing it. As the shadows lengthened the air became significantly cooler. While we weren't in a zone of totality, it got pretty close but not close enough for an actual solar corona.

Tonight we leave for Huahine which is reputed to be a quieter, more laid back place where we hope to find better snorkeling.

Linda

{GMST}17|29.346|S|149|51.082|W|Opunohu Bay|Moorea{GEND}

Papeete, Tahiti

It's been another busy week! We ended up spending a few more days at Apataki waiting for a front to blow through. This gave us a chance to do some more reef walking and snorkeling, and chores like defrosting the freezer and baking bread. But it was quite windy and rainy so we also had a bit of down time.

The most interesting event was seeing Tutatis hauled out at the carenage (boat yard). The operation is similar to the one at Marina San Carlos but with even less water and no dock at the ramp. Tutatis draws only 6' but Tony (Alfred's son) was in the water during the entire operation, first to dig a ditch in the sand using pressure water, and then to make sure the boat was positioned on the trailer correctly. After hours of work the trailer raised the boat out of the water, but it was just slightly crooked. Everyone took a break to wait for the tide to come up a little, lower the boat back in the water, and reposition it on the trailer. They finally dragged it all into the yard before sunset with a combo back ho/front loader. There are absolutely no supplies available other than what can be delivered by plane so you'd have to have everything you needed for repairs or maintenance before you hauled out.

The next day we left for a two night sail to Papeete in the Society Islands of French Polynesia. It was a rolly downwind sail with a wicked half hour squall the first night. The wind gusted to 45 knots and it poured rain. But we left Apataki with two reefs in the main and only a little bit of the jib out because we knew we were likely to go through some heavy rain clouds. John hand steered through two more squalls that night but nothing as bad as the first one. Rather than get bulky foul weather gear soaked John prefers to wear swim trunks and his wet suit jacket to stay warm out in the rain. Fortunately there were only a couple of light showers during my watches, and nothing requiring hand steering.

We arrived after sunrise on Friday as planned and called Port Control for permission to enter the busy harbor. We stood off for a few minutes to let one of the Moorea ferries go ahead of us. We then turned left into the harbor only to be met by a wall of canoes in the distance. As part of the Heiva festivities in July canoe races were being held last weekend and Friday was a practice day. At first we tried to stay to the left side of the harbor, but after the canoes started it was apparent that was the favored side, and we dodged right to stay out of their way. After they had passed we needed to go left again to get around and behind the buoyed start line, and into the ferry terminal and yacht quay area to our right.

The yacht quay now has three docks floating perpendicular to the wall complete with mooring lines, electricity, water, and locked gates. I imagine some of the flavor of the old days of tying directly to the wall has been lost, but this cuts out the hassles of crossing anchors with other boats and jockeying for position on the wall. I can't imagine what being on the wall must have been like when the ferry wakes went through rocking all the boats. We are the odd boat in that we're tied a good 12' from the dock to keep Ziggy from jumping off. We also chose a spot at the very end of the dock to keep us far from the gate which leads right out to a boardwalk along the main waterfront street where Ziggy would be toast in no time flat. Just like we did in Hawaii we get from the boat to the dock in our dinghy which is on a pulley system for going back and forth.

Rather than waste our first day here sleeping we charged out into the city to find Cost and Company which turned out to be a mini version of Costco at almost twice the price. But they had Kirkland coffee and just about everything else you could want if you hadn't seen it in years. Since we were still well stocked from Hawaii we drooled but didn't buy much. We didn't quite make it to the Champion grocery store at the other end of town before a huge downpour so we took shelter across the street from a Protestant church and watched the Tahitians in their finery (the ladies hats are something to behold) going to Friday evening services. The store had very French things like brie and truffles, and we tried to buy only what we needed.

Back to the boat to drop our purchases, shower, and head out to the roulottes in the town plaza for dinner. There must be close to a dozen vans to choose from, most of which feature Chinese food which is usually cooked to order on woks and grills right outside the roulotte. We ate at another chow mein roulotte last night, but next time I'd like to try one of the crepes.

On Saturday we got a late start out to the industrial area of town to investigate the local version of West Marine, and a real Ace hardware. Unfortunately because things open at 7 AM, they close by Noon on Saturday (and anywhere from 4-6 during the week!), but that made walking around a little easier. The sidewalks here are almost as uneven as in Latin America and cars use most of what would be sidewalks for parking. On the way back to the boat we stopped at Les 3 Brasseurs (a waterfront brew pub) for some refreshment, and after lunch I did some laundry in the rain and we filled our tanks.

Our Fourth of July was a non event. There was a party on the dock in front of us, but they all looked under 40 and the babes in bikinis and the beer bong reminded us of the annual bash on the Delta back home! We started our day early by visiting the big Sunday city market for veggies, finished our shopping at the Champion, and did some more laundry. No fireworks, and early to bed for us.

The last couple of days were spent doing a lot of walking trying to get our paperwork sorted out and ordering duty free liquor. Since we didn't understand that we had to do the former before we could do the latter, we made a lot of wasted trips which fortunately helped work off the pan du chocolate and other wonderful pastries we bought at the market. We hope to take delivery of a case of very questionable (but cheap!) Martinique rum this afternoon. We've decided to stay one more night in hopes of watching an evening of practice dancing and music before the Heiva festivities officially get under way. In the morning we'll get fuel and be on our way to Moorea.

Linda

{GMST}17|32.420|S|149|34.228|W|The yacht quay Papeete|Papeete{GEND}

Pictures of the Tuamotus

We finally have some internet, so we've posted our pics of the Tuamotus:

http://picasaweb.google.com/svnakia/Tuamotus

John

Apataki

Except for the hour or so it took to run the HF radio net on Wednesday we motored in light wind all the way to Apataki. Interestingly enough, at one point we could see Apataki ahead of us with Toau still in view behind us. We departed Toau at 0510 and were in the lagoon at Apataki by 1000. With light winds and a two meter swell, we had an easy entrance through the well marked pass.

We anchored in the lee of a small reef just inside the lagoon to make a quick trip to the grocery store in the village for a few supplies. Then we motored into a light wind the nine miles to the SE end of the atoll where there is a carenage (boat yard) run by Valentine's cousin, Alfred:

http://www.apatakicarenage.com

We were tired of motoring all day so we headed straight for the W end of the first big motu rather than continuing E to where four other boats were anchored/moored in front of the carenage ramp. It was very weird to see a mast and foresail in amongst the palm trees on shore. We anchored in 24', clear sand, and ended up in 40':

{GMST}15|33.780|S|146|15.343|W|South East motu in Apataki|Apataki 1{GEND}

Thursday morning we took the dinghy over to visit the carenage. This is a new business for Alfred, adding to their income from his father's pearl farm (Assam's). Of course it's a bare bones yard but the few boats there look well secured for cyclone season. We met with Alfred and his wife Pauline and their son, Tony, who has studied at jeweler's school for two years in Papeete (to carry on the pearl tradition), and they encouraged us to move to their anchorage to be closer. So in the afternoon we dropped anchor at:

{GMST}15|33.534|S|146|14.628|W|In front of the Carenage in Apataki|Apataki{GEND}

On our next visit ashore I made the mistake of asking Alfred about the availability of tomatoes (from the write-up in one of the guides which says vegetables are available) and he immediately took me out to the tiny garden behind their kitchen/dining building. Before I could stop him he plucked the only three Roma style tomatoes that were barely beginning to blush red and gave them to me. I felt terrible about it. Right now he's still in the "test garden" phase to see how things grow here, and they really don't have enough extra to sell to cruisers. His mother keeps chickens and sells their eggs, and they use the droppings for fertilizer in the garden.

This morning (Saturday) I had just finished adding brown sugar and milk to our oatmeal when Alfred pulled up in their work boat with his son, Tony, another worker guy, and Carolina, Tony's latest girl friend from Nice. They asked us if we wanted to ride out to their pearl farm right that minute. We were already dressed in our bathing suits, so I turned off the stove, we grabbed our snorkels and swim ladder, and jumped in their big panga style boat. It turned out that they were only pulling up pearl buoys and not any actual oysters so we didn't see anything we hadn't already seen at Toau. But it was nice of them to include us. Tony speared a grouper which they offered to us when they dropped us back at Nakia, but we told them we already had some fish we needed to eat. There isn't supposed to be any ciguatera here but why take a chance...

After two days of calm, sunny weather the weekend is forecast to be wet and windy. Last night the lagoon was so still it was breathtaking, and today we've already had a little rain. Assuming the rough weather passes by Monday, we'll leave for Papeete this coming week.

Saying goodbye

Leaving Gaston and Valentine and Anse Amyot was one of the most difficult things we've had do to in our cruising life. It ranks right up there with leaving Bahia de los Angeles after spending three summers there, and leaving our good friends in Mexico behind as we continued south and west. Anse Amyot is a little piece of paradise in amongst the rest of the jewels of the Tuamotus, and if it weren't for the 90 day limit to our visas we would seriously consider staying in French Polynesia through cyclone season just to spend more time here. We are having a terrible time leaving for the Societies. What if we get there and find that we wish we were back here!

We are so grateful to G&V for doing all they can to accommodate cruisers, and for being so warm and welcoming. For all the pressure we put on their peaceful lifestyle they honestly enjoy our company. In turn we have a responsibility not to overwhelm them with our presence. It's obvious that they sometimes have a hard time saying no and we need to be sensitive to their work load and the supplies they have on hand to feed and service the constant stream of boats coming through. As much as they appreciate what we do for them in return, they must heave a small sigh of relief when the last boat leaves in September!

We enjoyed a last happy hour and musical jam session on shore Tuesday night with all the boats, and it was impossible for me to say goodbye without tears. This is not a place like Mexico to which we could easily return some day. The next morning we dropped our mooring at the first glimmer of dawn and, as we headed straight away from Toau bound for Apataki, it was even harder to watch the atoll fade away on our stern. As John was comforting me up on deck we both saw a bright shooting star in the morning sky. I'm not sure what that means, but it was a lovely farewell gift.

We will carry fond memories of Valentine's happy laughter (which could be heard all the way out to our boat); Gaston's endless energy and nonstop activity; Valentine's enjoyment in playing S/V Freedom's Marquesan ukulele during our happy hour jam sessions; Gaston's love of pancakes with peanut butter; listening to the B.B. King CDs we gave them while Valentine and I worked on making my necklace; the friendly dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens; Philippe's Tahitian songs on the guitar; and many more sights and sounds of Anse Amyot.

Saving Pursuit

Good grief, time sure does fly when you're basically doing nothing. Since our last blog: John made final (hopefully) repairs to our wind vane; he cooked another pancake breakfast for Gaston and Valentine with Soggy Paws and Jack, a 24 year old American who's been traveling since he was 17 (mostly by hopping freight trains until he ran out of railroad tracks in Costa Rica), as invited guests; and we did some more snorkeling and reef walking. Last Friday the weather turned wet again and we spent all morning catching water and doing laundry (which I threw into the shower wet since it was still too rainy to dry). John made bread and we spent the afternoon watching some of the Horatio Hornblower series for a second time.

Saturday morning I put the laundry out on clotheslines to dry and we went in to shore to see G&V. But they made a last minute decision to take the yellow bomber (their go fast boat) to Apataki to get gasoline, a propane bottle for us, and misc groceries. It was a nice day so we burned our paper garbage. I gathered coconuts into large groups under various trees and dragged palm fronds onto piles for burning later. John had brought tools in to fix Valentine's washing machine which wouldn't spin. After he fixed that he helped another cruiser figure out the problem with a broken portable generator. While he was busy with that I borrowed an axe from Philippe to open some coconuts to feed the pigs and then I let Bula (a rotweiler mix) and Lulu take me for a walk out on the point. By that time we were hungry and the laundry was dry.

John spent most of Sunday transferring propane from the big Apataki bottle to two small bottles for us and Soggy Paws. While he was on shore he attended the Father's Day church service which this time was mostly translated to English since there weren't as many French speakers in attendance. I stayed on the boat to bake brownies for the Father's Day potluck that afternoon. Gaston grilled chicken for those who hadn't brought their own meat in for the BBQ, and Valentine made donut sized "rolls" by flattening dough into thick pancakes which were then nested in between two special leaves and put on the grill to cook. The weather looked threatening so we set chairs for 20 people inside the restaurant and by the time we managed to tear ourselves away from the fun, it was just beginning to rain hard. I'm always surprised at how cold it can feel here when rain is pelting down and the wind begins to pick up.

We woke to more rain Monday morning but John and I went to shore to have G&V take a look at my 40 Kauehi pearls to see what could be done with them. I had arranged them all in a row, attempting to place the ones I thought were best in the center of the necklace. Gaston got his special machine out (not a Dremel tool) to drill holes in all of them for me. But I soon realized that it was hardly worth putting holes in the worst of them, and I asked Valentine if she would use her judgment for how best to use them. She knew how much I admired the necklace she always wears, and so she began designing something similar for me. While her necklace is mostly kaishi (natural pearls) mixed in with various decorative beads, she used 15 of my cultured pearls and from her own supply added kaishi, beads, and small Japanese cream pearls, plus two of her own pearls since she couldn't find enough of mine to match up well enough. She directed me in helping her find what she needed from her stores and we had a great time working together on it. I gave her my unused pearls to use in decorative projects but before we left they asked John if he wanted a "surfer" necklace. John picked out one of our pearls for Gaston to drill and then put it on a black cord to wear tied up close on his neck with a slip knot. Valentine said that's what all the Tahitian surfers wear. So now we have the most treasured souvenirs we could ever hope to receive from two of the nicest people we've ever met.

That night we went to bed early since it was too rainy and windy for a happy hour ashore. Which was a good thing because we woke at 10:30 to a call for help on the VHF radio. Pursuit had broken the line to their mooring and was aground! John immediately put his wet suit jacket on and lowered our dinghy in the pouring rain and howling wind to go to their aid. More cruisers in dinghies soon joined him and the rest of us stood by the radio waiting for updates and watching with binoculars as they struggled to free Pursuit from the coral. We learned later that boats with anenometers (wind indicators) recorded gusts up to 50 knots, but at 11:10 the wind suddenly died down enough to make better progress kedging the boat off with a stern anchor. The dinghies finally managed to push the boat into deep water. After the wind died Gaston was able to launch his big boat to come out with Jack to tow the disabled boat back to its mooring where it was resecured. By this time it was 11:40 and John was amazed to hear later that the whole ordeal hadn't taken longer. Pursuit's prop had lost a blade, but the next day another boat was able to loan a spare which will get them to Papeete for final repairs.

This is one of those events that truly brings cruisers together and we all met the next night for happy hour, relieved that no one was hurt and no serious damage had been done.

Still in Anse Amyot

I'm surprised to see that my last blog was written a week and a half ago, but life in Paradise has been keeping us busy.

We have been enjoying daily snorkels and/or reef walks and occasionally both in one day. I still can't get over the variety of fish we're seeing here and I continue to struggle with identifying as many of them as I can in our Reef Fish book. My new game is counting eels and yesterday I had a personal best of 11 morays including two little ones. During our reef walks John found several unoccupied cowrie shells to add to our collection. After one walk on a motu in the eastern section of the lagoon we dinghied out to a small motu with some pearl farming attached to it. We did a snorkel circumnavigation of the little island and it was very nice with tons of clams and live coral including a bit of brain coral which we don't see often.

One afternoon Gaston and Valentine took a French couple out in their work boat and returned with pearl oysters. The rest of us gathered on shore as Gaston split open the oysters to pop the pearls out into a small bowl filled with wet salt to clean them. We could see how labor intensive it was, but they ended up with nicer pearls than we'd seen in Kauehi. They cleaned each animal to harvest a nugget of meat for their meal later. They had also brought back a dozen purple pencil urchins. We didn't see what they did with the insides and they are now out drying in the sun.

The weather has been particularly calm and John ended up putting the rocker stopper out for a few nights. But the swell has been low enough recently that he pulled it back out of the water. We had a few days of lots of clouds and overcast rolling through with no appreciable rain fall. The last few days have been crystal clear and calm enough for several trips to snorkel while our friends dove on the outside of the atoll. I don't find these trips particularly interesting because most of the fish are in deeper water and there's not much nice coral, but the upside is that we've seen fish out there that we don't find in the cove. One day we snorkeled in through the pass on our way back to Nakia and saw a few white-tip reef sharks, a barracuda, and a free swimming octopus.

Our evenings have been busy with various social activities. There was a potluck birthday dinner on shore one night, happy hours on friend's boats, a lobster dinner to pay for our second week of mooring, a happy hour ashore with Philippe on guitar and Valentine on ukelele, and the big dinner on Saturday prepared by Gaston and Valentine to celebrate their wedding anniversary. That morning we heard the final squealings of a small pig which was turned into blood sausage and pork stew for dinner. This was accompanied by more parrotfish poisson cru and baked parrotfish in tin foil packets on the BBQ. The cruisers all pitched in with canned fruit, juices, and various bottles of alcoholic beverages to make a potent fruit punch, and we didn't get home until 11 PM.

John helped install a few new moorings with Soggy Paws and Gaston to bring the total to 13, with three additional spots sussed out for anchoring. Yesterday we had a high count of 15 boats in the cove, but I don't know if that's a new record or not. Gaston and Valentine have been hard pressed to keep up with the increase in visitors and the quality of two of the meals has suffered as a result. There have also been problems recently with getting gasoline, which is always a scarce commodity in the these remote atolls, and Gaston hasn't been able to do any game fishing this past week. About a week ago Valentine's sister, Liza, and her family returned from Fakarava to run the pension a few doors down from G&V's place. The next day four men came out to build a fish trap not far from Nakia's mooring and the area we snorkel. They come out multiple times throughout the day to harvest mostly parrotfish and grouper, and today someone saw them take a Napoleon wrasse. They throw back butterflyfish and others, and morays eels are speared and thrown out of the trap. This morning John was so upset to see them spear seven morays that he went in to talk to Valentine about building a fish trap the eels can get out of, but he couldn't bring himself to broach the subject with her. It's hard to watch, but it would also be presumptuous of us to suggest they change what they've been doing for generations.

Last Thursday John cooked a promised pancake breakfast for G&V. At the last minute their three French friends showed up as well. Soggy Paws was invited, and John was kept busy in Valentine's kitchen flipping flapjacks and cooking eggs to order for everyone. We brought all the supplies including syrup, but G&V preferred their pancakes topped with peanut butter and I got raised eyebrows from the French when I buried mine in syrup! Sherry and I did the cleanup while the guys went off with Gaston to fix another cruiser's outboard.

Yesterday, as a courtesy for all of their hospitality, a number of us sat through a two hour church service conducted by Valentine. Gaston and Philippe were the only other locals in attendance, while there were 13 adults and four children representing seven cruising boats. Six adults spoke English and everyone else spoke French so the service was conducted in French. There was lots of singing accompanied by Philippe or Valentine on ukelele, and Valentine read passages from the bible for discussion. Of course this was the morning after the big anniversary party so everyone's head was a little thick and it was hard to keep from nodding off!

You probably haven't heard that there is a general strike in Papeete where the international airport and the commercial shipping ports have been closed for a few days. We still need to get gasoline and are hoping that the Thursday supply barge into Fakarava with carry some. We will probably leave Anse Amyot on Wednesday for the short hop to civilization.

Linda

Anse Amyot, Toau

We sailed dead downwind (DDW) to get from Kauehi to Toau, and two opposing wave trains made it next to impossible to get any decent sleep but we don't mind so much when it's only a one night passage. We arrived at 0700 Monday morning and Soggy Paws helped tie us to a mooring buoy. The family here has really turned their little cove into a business with up to 10-12 moorings and an informal restaurant. I say "cove" because the entrance is what they call a blind pass where you can't actually cross into the lagoon because of an interior reef blocking the way. Gaston and Valentine charge a fee to stay on a mooring, or you can buy a couple of dinners instead. So this is a bit unusual for the Tuamotus, which are otherwise free of charge, but the family has a very good reputation for their hospitality and friendliness towards cruisers. And I think more boats can be fit into the cove by using a mooring system, which is useful since it's such a popular place. There are no hassles with tides/currents to get in and out, and the entrance is short and easy with both sides of the reef marked and a lighted range on which to line up for your entry.

{GMST}15|48.222|S|146|09.110|W|Anse Amyot Toau|Toau{GEND}

Our first night was crazy with tons of lightning and thunder in the distance and wind gusting to 40 knots. Makes us kind of uneasy to be in severe weather on a mooring we know nothing about (John didn't have a chance to thoroughly check it out our first day here), but all five boats held just fine. And on Tuesday morning's net we learned that a few boats in both the village and the SE Kauehi anchorages dragged, so we feel pretty good about things here. It had rained off and on all night but was too windy to put the rain catcher up. While we were having our coffee on deck in the morning, enjoying a break in the rain, we watched a big black cloud mass coming towards us. John quickly put the rain catcher up, plugged the scuppers on the side decks, and we got out all the jugs and buckets to do some laundry after we filled our tanks. I threw all the wrung out laundry in the shower until the sky lightened enough to hang it out to drip dry. You can't imagine how great it feels to know we have more water than we could probably use before we have to leave the Toots for Papeete!

We are now on two informal HF radio nets, one at 0800 and one at 1800 (6 PM) to talk to other boats. We used to listen only to one for boats in the Tuamotus, but now we're starting to listen to one which was created by the Puddle Jumpers (the boats coming down from Mexico). It's a good way to track how many boats are in each place, and trade info on weather, good anchorages, tide info for pass entry/exit, etc.

Soggy Paws made a reservation for us to join the other boats for dinner Tuesday night at the restaurant. We were a party of nine with people from Argentina, Finland, Italy (Milan), and Australia. Fortunately for us Americans everyone spoke excellent English and had traveled extensively in the U.S. The little restaurant is charmingly decorated with shells and signs of cruiser memorabilia. Valentine and Gaston had been working hard all day preparing the meal. After a short happy hour (BYOB) we sat down to a meal of foccacia topped with garlic and wahoo as a starter, coconut bread, rice, wahoo sashimi on a bed of shredded cabbage accompanied by a delicious sauce, breaded and fried mahi mahi, parrot fish poisson cru (raw fish in coconut milk), lobster au gratin, topped off with a rich slice of coconut cake for dessert. Our arteries are probably choking to death, but it was all delicious and there was plenty of it. We'll just have to spend lots of time snorkeling to pay for it!

Except for an absence of colorful clams the snorkeling here is some of the best we've seen because there are many different kinds of fish, an occasional small black-tip shark, coral, and huge green moray eels. And this is all right from the boat - we don't even have to get in our dinghy. We did do one outer reef snorkel after the weather had calmed down on Wednesday. This was interesting from the standpoint of being able to see the steep drop off that our friends were diving, but there are loads more fish to see (and at a closer vantage point) right here in the cove. Visibility is best on an incoming tide so we did a morning snorkel today, but we were in the water after high tide and the visibility dropped significantly by the time we got out again. The only negative we can find is that the boat rolls in the small amount of swell that makes its way into the cove, but not enough for John to get out the rocker stopper yet. Usually there's enough breeze to keep us pointed into the wind which lessons the effect.

We are enjoying our stay here and are in no hurry to leave yet!

Linda

Kauehi

Somehow we've managed to spend an entire week at Kauehi, which is about 3-4 days too many. Several boats coming from the Marquesas have made this their first landfall in the Tuamotus, and I feel a little sorry for them. Yes, it's an easy pass for first timers, but there is nothing special about this atoll to warrant a visit. The water clarity in this lagoon is the worst we've seen anywhere else and the coral is mostly dead. We've managed to find a few nice, unoccupied shells, but the snorkeling has been mostly uninteresting. We haven't seen a single shark, but we've had remoras attached to our hull so maybe that makes us the shark.

We reanchored in the SE anchorage to position ourselves in front of what looks like an abandoned pension:

{GMST}15|56.668|S|145|03.572|W|South East Road Anchorage Kauehi|Kauehi Road{GEND}

There is a "road" leading from the pension seven miles to the village, which makes for nice walking or jogging should you feel the need. There's also a branch of road leading out to the berm on the ocean side for a good look at what the wind and waves are doing on the outside of the reef.

The deep, dark water in the lagoon makes conning less stressful for me since I can only see hazards that come to the surface. I'm more nervous in 50' of clear water where I can see every little rock and coral bommie, because it's much harder to judge their depth. On Friday we sailed directly to the village anchorage and there were many more hazards on that route than from the pass to the SE corner. The coral reefs were clearly visible well in advance, but a submerged pearl farm buoy and line caught me by surprise and we went over it without any problem. We skirted the rest of the buoys and crossed the navigable channel to anchor close in to shore:

{GMST}15|49.245|S|145|07.023|W|Kauehi Town Anchorage|Kauehi Village{GEND}

Before departing for Fakarava, friends told us that the mayor would return home at 5 PM for pearl sales and that he was particularly interested in getting a heavy jacket to wear in the cold weather (?!). So we looked in every compartment until we found John's beautiful, heavy, wind proof, North Face fleece jacket and an old Helly Hanson jacket both of which were basically brand new and unworn. I threw in a nice heavy sweatshirt as well, and hoped the mayor was a big man. We went in for a look around, hoping that the little store would be open. The posted hours at Magasin Tiaihau are 0600-1100 and 1300-1900, but I got the impression it's best to catch them open in the morning. Mayor Julien Tiaihau and his wife Nicole returned a bit after 5:00. Nicole opened the store and John went to do our shopping while I followed the mayor and three people from another boat to Residence Tiaihau which appeared to be the only home completely surrounded by fencing and a gate. In what we would call the car port the mayor opened a suitcase and spread a bag of pearls out on a cloth covered table. What a let down. These were mostly small (earring sized), rough, dull, and completely mismatched in color. One man found a nice pearl that he liked, but it was impossible for him to find a mate and he let it go to me. When we asked if he had better quality pearls for us to choose from the mayor told us that all the best pearls go to Japan (not Papeete). We asked to see larger sized pearls and these were in even worse shape.

I had been pulling aside anything that was even remotely round, blemish free, and with decent color on at least one side, until I had a pile of pearls with the nicest one (given to me by the man who couldn't find a match) set off from my pile. The other boat decided not to make a purchase, making a good point that it would cost more to mount them than they were worth. (I later learned from John that the woman had been told the pearls would cost $8 apiece!) I waited for the others to leave before beginning my horse trading, and the mayor's eyes lit up when I pulled out the jackets for him to try on. He is a tall, muscular man and he took everything I offered, even though I'd really meant for him to choose one of the three! The zipper was jammed by corrosion on the Helly Hanson (oops, forgot to double check everything before bringing it to shore) and we agreed to fix it and bring it on Saturday when we came in to get baguettes. Then the mayor took the good pearl away from my pile, put it in a little jewelry ziploc bag and put it in his suitcase. When I protested that I'd wanted to keep it for the man who didn't buy it, the mayor counted out my 35 pearls, scooped a few more from the reject pile, put them all in a little bag, and gave them to me. Obviously there was something special about that particular one which made me determined to have it, so I pulled a nice hat from my backpack to exchange for the pearl. Finally I understood that the mayor's biggest concern was that I should keep the pearl for myself and not give it to the "monsieur." We agreed to this stipulation with handshakes and smiles all around.

The next morning John discovered that the zipper on the jacket was beyond repair and he spent the entire morning ripping out the old zipper and replacing it with a new one. I'm not sure it was worth all the effort because he then discovered that the white plastic waterproof lining was flaking off and coming out of the mesh lining of the jacket. I just hope the mayor doesn't wear a lot of black... So now we've lightened the boat but not our wallets, and I have a small pile of black pearls which may never see the light of day, but we had fun doing it and I know the North Face jacket will serve the mayor well.

We've reprovisioned and taken care of chores like defrosting the freezer, vacuuming, cleaning the stove, and other cleaning chores. We took a list of supplies for Gaston and Valentine from Soggy Paws and we will be delivering those to Anse Amyot at Toau which is where we're headed tonight. We'll leave at 3 PM and sail overnight. So I'm off to get a swim before we depart!

Linda

Fakarava to Kauehi

Saturday night we made a typical last minute decision to move to another atoll to take advantage of this period of fairly settled weather. We would leave on the late morning flood at Fakarava's south pass, have a slow overnight sail, and enter on the early morning ebb at Kauehi's wide, deep, and straightforward (no obstacles) pass. We arrived at both passes well before slack but experienced only up to two knots of flood current at the former and a max of about four knots of ebb current (with more bouncy chop and whirlpools) at the latter. We could have waited longer to enter Kauehi, but after drifting around on a flat lake all night, we were antsy to get in for a pancake breakfast. John had made our usual Sunday pancake breakfast before departing Fakarava, but for some mysterious reason the pancakes never bubbled or browned, and we threw the pale, doughy pancakes to the fish. It wasn't until hours later that I hit on the fact that I'd recently swapped storage places with the white flour and the pancake mix (stored in identical containers). Oops!

As we sailed away from Fakarava I was struck by how clearly Motu Aito Paradise stands out from all other motus. When they built their pension Manihi and Tila planted fast growing fir trees and no palms which makes it very shady and gives it a unique skyline. I forgot to mention that when we asked Manihi where most of his guests come from he told us he gets very few Americans as 80% of them go to Bora Bora. As Fakarava grew smaller I also noticed a few clouds above the motus which were colored green by the intense reflection from the shallow waters.

So we had a quiet, uneventful, slow night on completely flat seas. We covered the last five miles at dawn to enter the pass at 0630. Since this is very poor light for conning we decided to drop anchor just inside the pass in 50' of water on short scope long enough to eat breakfast and wait for the sun to get a little higher for better visibility.

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?15,57.354,S,145,10.250,W,Kauehi%20Pass%20Anchorage

We were underway again at 0900 in spite of the building rain clouds around us. Somehow they all managed to dump their precious fresh water everywhere but on us. The overcast skies actually helped keep direct sun out of my eyes and I only saw a couple of reefs we needed to avoid. The water was otherwise deep for the entire five mile trip. We picked a spot well to the south of five other boats and, on the second try, we anchored in 44' off a motu with an abandoned shack on it. We haven't anchored overnight in water this deep in ages, but it doesn't look like we'll run into any coral here.

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?15,57.423,S,145,04.423,W,Kauehi%20SE%20Anchorage

This atoll already looks a little different to us in that there are very few breaks, or areas of reef, between motus. It's more like a few long continuous motus surrounding this end of the atoll. And the deep water almost to shore means we'll have a shorter dinghy ride, and we may even be able to swim to the beach from Nakia. We'll let you know after we've done some exploring.

Linda

Fakarava 2nd anchorage

At Noon on Friday we carefully motored Nakia over to the west side of the south pass to anchor in the shallow water (10-15') off an area of white sandy beaches where the pensions bring their guests by small boat for day trips.

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,31.078,S,145,28.232,W,Fakarava%20Second%20Anchorage

We brought Mike and Sue of Infini along with us so they could keep a navigation track on their hand held GPS in case they decide to move here later. We towed their dinghy and when our anchor was set we all piled in for a ride to explore the closest motu. The water shallowed up to where we had to anchor the dinghy and walk the rest of the way through ankle deep water to the beach. Evidently there is no market for the small black sea cucumbers which littered the sandy bottom. We didn't find too many unoccupied shells but John followed the tell tale signs in the sand to unearth two pretty white and orange miters which our shell book says are Episcopal miters. He carefully reburied them and I'll have to remember to bring my camera next time.

This morning we were off the boat before 10 AM to try a reef walk on an incoming tide. The theory was that we'd be able to bring the dinghy in closer to shore and have a shorter walk out to the reef but the result was that we were wading in ankle deep water on the reef. This made it next to impossible to see the shells deposited in the nooks and crannies of the reef and we came up empty handed. We had thought to bring our snorkel gear with us so, after a walk around another small motu, we got in the water to do a shallow drift snorkel back towards Nakia. This was very nice for shelling, though I had to put several pretty ones back when hermit crabs tickled my hand holding the shells. We finally made a positive ID on the money cowrie when we found a few with the distinctive yellow ring. And John pointed out a live one tucked in a hole with some of the animal's mantle peeking out over four corners of the shell, which was very exciting to see. He was also the first to spot a two foot lemon shark lying motionless in a hole under a small rock. It's tail stuck out one end and we had to go around to the other side to make out its head. It never budged the whole time we explored the area.

We were in the water so long that I was getting a headache from wearing my mask, and John said my lips were blue. But John noticed some black clouds potentially headed our way and we decided to wrap it up and get back to the boat. By this time it was almost 2 PM! We ate lunch, and John's taking a nap as I write this. We will most likely spend one more day here before moving on somewhere else.

Linda

Bliss Day 4

When Manihi called us on the VHF yesterday morning to confirm our dinner reservation at Motu Aito Paradise (www.fakarava.org) he explained that he had to go out and catch a big fish in order to feed the nine of us plus his four guests, and he invited any of us to join him. Bill, Dave and John jumped at the chance to do some ocean fishing since we haven't been fishing inside the lagoons due to the high likelihood of catching something with ciguatera. The grouper we see snorkeling are fearless because no one's interested in eating them, but pelagic fish are okay to eat. After a couple of hours they came back with a wahoo that Dave caught on a hand line, while Bill lost one on a rod and reel, and John did all the boat handling. Dinner for that night was on!

Some of us then went out for a quick snorkel of the coral between the anchorage and the pass. We first did a drift snorkel towards the pass but the current was ripping and we quickly got back into the dinghies and headed for calmer waters. We saw an eel and some colorful clams but the coral in general isn't in very good shape here. We all went for another pass drift dive/snorkel on the late afternoon change of tide and this time it was much better. The surf has come down over the past few days so the water clarity was high enough for John and me to see all the way to the bottom of a shallower part of the pass where the gray sharks were congregating. Not in the numbers that the divers get to see, but still fascinating. Along the reef side of the pass the fish were numerous and we spotted a large eel, the biggest barracuda I've seen, my first white tip shark, and three huge Napoleon wrasse. It was the best snorkel yet, and I stayed in long after my fingers went numb with cold.

We were back on the big boats by sunset to get cleaned up for a "night on the town." We took our own drinks in with us at 6 PM and Manihi made us all feel very welcome. He invited us to see the interior of his residence and explained how they catch rain water and store it in a cistern beneath the floor. He was born on Fakarava and raised his four children there (a daughter lives in Kauai with her husband and child, but the others are still living in French Polynesia). The motu was completely bare when he started building, and the trees he planted 20 years ago now provide plenty of shade and climbing adventures for his four cats (with a friendly dog looking on). We returned to the dining area where the table was set with tiare blossoms at every place setting, and the shallow water at the edge of the open air room was lit for viewing fish and small black tip sharks cruising in circles.

When dinner was served we were joined by a Japanese couple who had arrived two days earlier, and an Italian couple (from Pescara, Abruzzi) who had arrived just the day before. None of them would admit to speaking much English, but the Italians were game to try while the Japanese politely kept their own company. We sat down to a table laden with platters of cabbage and carrot salad, oven baked wahoo steaks, and beef bourguignon to ladle over the mounds of rice already on our plates. It looked like far too much food for all of us, but after seconds and thirds most of it disappeared. Our clean plates were cleared away and Tila brought out dessert plates with two squares of pastry on each. One was chocolate and one had maybe a coconut base, and both were tasty. Taken in all of its individual parts there was nothing particularly gourmet about the meal, but the unique setting and convivial company made it an experience none of us will soon forget. (And at 2,000 CFP per person we considered it a good night off for the cooks on each boat!)

After an early morning dive Soggy Paws and Visions of Johanna are headed towards the north end of the atoll today. Nakia is going to explore an area to the west of the pass in hopes of finding a new spot to anchor for a couple of days during this period of settled weather.

Linda

Welcome Home!

We did a snorkel alongside the entrance pass day before yesterday, but it was actually a little disappointing after the beautiful clarity and colors of the one we did on Tahanea. John went again yesterday and said the clarity was better. There are lots of fish and a huge "pet" Napolean wrasse, but I prefer seeing colorful clams and coral. Our diver friends said yesterday they could see more than 100 gray sharks on the bottom of the pass which was pretty exciting!

Yesterday John spent the entire morning tightening the motor mount bolts and realigning the engine after discovering that one bolt had worked it's way loose under a small drip of oil/grease. That was a major job requiring removing the entire contents on top of and underneath the quarter berth, plus lots of contortions in small spaces. Once he finished that unexpected project I could begin cleaning the boat in preparation for happy hour that evening on Nakia.

When John and the divers returned from their mid-afternoon expedition we all got cleaned up to pay a visit to the pension, Motu Aito Paradise, run by Manihi and his wife, Tila. Wow, Paradise is right! This is a charming, intimate pension with artistic details, nice bathroom fixtures, and a warm, welcoming feel from its owners. It's a sharp contrast to the larger, slightly run down operation at Tetamanu Village located at the pass, where we felt our CFPs were more welcome than our company.

A fourth American boat, Infini, with Mike and Sue aboard, just arrived this morning. They have been in company with Soggy Paws and Visions of Johanna coming up through the Gambiers and we are looking forward to meeting them in person. They will be sailing to Hawaii with Soggy Paws for cyclone season later in the year so we'll be exchanging information with them before we part ways.

Linda

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Tahanea to Fakarava

We enjoyed another beach walk with Soggy Paws on Sunday. We landed our dinghies one more motu down from the one we had circumnavigated on foot the day before. This time the group foraged for coconuts while I scoped out the beach for shells. Interestingly, there were fewer shells to be found on this much sandier beach. Our shell book doesn't have the exact coloring, but what we're finding in abundance most closely resembles the "money" cowrie in shape. Rather than circumnavigating another motu again we donned our snorkel gear to explore a shallow "pass" to an even shallower lagoon on this motu. There wasn't a whole lot to see (and not a single shark) but I never tire of looking at the colorful baby-sized giant clams and it's always nice to putter around in the water.

Monday morning looked like Bliss, Day 1 of 3. According to a very smart weather guy, in the Tuamotus you get 1-3 days of bliss followed by stronger winds. So both boats decided to take advantage of the calmer weather to make a slow overnight trip to Fakarava. This allowed us to exit the Tahanea pass at nearly slack early in the afternoon, and enter the south pass of Fakarava at nearly slack just after dawn the next morning (today). Of course we had a nice breeze most of the night and it was hard to go slow for the relatively short (50 some miles) passage, but it was otherwise very pleasant. We were in the lee of Tahanea, and then Faaite (I mangled the spelling of this atoll in a previous post) for most of the trip which made for exceptionally smooth sailing with no swell whatsoever. What a difference that makes!

We arrived at the entrance to Fakarava just before dawn and waited for the sun to peek over the horizon before following Soggy Paws in through the pass. This was a bit trickier than the pass at Tahanea, requiring use of a range and then two buoys to navigate the channel. Once past the range markers we were a bit panicked by 14' of water and found we needed to move closer to the buoys on the right hand side, but that was the only scare we had. We couldn't have asked for calmer winds, but better light would have helped. We dropped anchor in 45' with short scope, enough to hold us while we had a pancake breakfast. John explored the anchorage in the dinghy and we reanchored in 35' for the night.

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,30.376,S,145,27.342,W,Fakarava%20South%20Pass%20Anchorage

We are meeting up with SP and VofJ soon to snorkel a pass where they'll be doing a drift dive today. This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful dive areas in the Toots so we're looking forward to lots of fish (and hopefully only baby sharks). Bliss, Day 2 of (hopefully) 3!

Linda

Worm in the Apple

Okay, so now we know that some serious weather happens out here in the middle of nowhere and you'd better be prepared to cut and run. As soon as the sun came up (after we had anchored out in deeper water in the wee hours of Thursday morning), we moved back to our spot in front of the big reef. But then we decided that wasn't going to protect us from the forecast wind direction so we moved to another place which still wasn't perfect for the wind we were actually getting. Anchoring three times in one day is not my idea of paradise! When the weather continued bad yesterday we decided to head for the SE corner of the atoll:

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,57.233,S,144,34.851,W,TahaneaSE

Unfortunately we waited until the afternoon to leave, just when the weather started to go from not-so-great to bad. Big black clouds, thunder, and enough rain to bury our side deck in six inches of water when we stuffed the scupper to let it flow through our deck fill into the water tank. But we could see immediately that this was the place we should have come two days ago, and the skies cleared and we enjoyed a peaceful night for a change.

Last night we had sundowners on Soggy Paws as a farewell to Visions of Johanna who moved on to Fakarava this morning. This morning we took a beach walk (on broken coral; there's very little actual sand) with Dave and Sherry to circumnavigate the motu immediately in front of us, after which Sherry and I snorkeled a small shallow reef. I swam back to the boat and was surprised to see what John later told me were half a dozen ramoras swimming under Nakia's hull. I don't think I've ever seen one free-swimming before.

It's still a bit breezy with some big white clouds, but the wind is from the SE so there's no fetch and we are happy not to have had to move today!

Linda

Tahanea

Well, here we are staying up until it gets light on Thursday morning. We've been up since just after midnight when John woke up to go to the bathroom and realized that the wind had switched to the south putting us on a lee shore. He had to work hard to get the anchor back on the boat (much complicated by two sets of anchor buoys tied to the chain to keep it off the coral heads). I drove while he directed me from the bow which is not an easy thing to do when it's pitch black out and the wind is blowing 20 knots and there's a coral reef right behind you. But we only saw a low of 15' before we reanchored out in deeper water. Our two buddy boats had moved on to a spot near the main pass late in the afternoon, and one of them had to reanchor, and the other wound up in 12' of water. We all knew unsettled weather was on it's way, but it wasn't supposed to blow out of the south and we all prepared for N and NE.

Oh well, it was paradise up until now! Here are the places we've anchored so far.

Just inside and to the right of the main entrance pass:

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,51.045,S,144,41.540,W,Tahanea1

This was our first stop and had a small reef and good coral heads for snorkeling. This was where we got our first look at the "giant" clams, although these are only about six inches or smaller. They are quite astounding in their color variations (of the "lips") and are fascinating to watch. The corals were also interesting, and though there weren't very many fish here, we were elated by the clarity of the water. It was just like snorkeling in an aquarium!

To the west of the pass at the village:

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,51.675,S,144,39.937,W,Tahanea2

This was a nice position from which to visit the village where there are two rain cisterns with potable water (according to the gendarme). It was an easy dinghy ride across the pass (assuming reasonable wind and tides), as opposed to anchoring to the east of the pass which was much choppier. We did a nice "drift" snorkel in this pass and it was beautiful, but we went by everything too fast on the incoming tide! We also did a little laundry and explored the mostly abandoned buildings in the old copra village. The only place in good repair was the chapel which was absolutely charming because of it's immaculate condition out in the middle of virtually nowhere. As we finished up the laundry a cigarette type boat pulled up with 12 passengers aboard, including a gendarme. They had come from Makemo for an overnight before continuing on to Feeiti. The policeman asked us some questions and made arrangements to check our passports the next morning. They were all very nice, offering us drinking coconuts and letting us know that we were welcome to use the water. I only had one pamplemousse with us which I offered up "pour les enfants." On our way out the gendarme called us back to give us two baguettes which we passed on to our buddy boats who had been without fresh stores longer than us (they both came up from the Gambiers Islands).

In front of the reef in the SE part of the lagoon:

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,54.724,S,144,34.486,W,Tahanea3

Here we had two long morning walks and one night walk at lowish tides on the reef itself (not a motu with trees). It was an easy walk from where we landed the dinghy to the ocean side of the reef, though we did switch from our knock-off Crocs to tennis shoes for the rough coral. There was a little bit of shelling but most of the good ones were already inhabited by hermit crabs so we let them go. The most fascinating thing was watching the numerous eels making their way through the tide pools. We tried to rescue one which appeared to be trapped in a dry spot, but as soon as John disturbed the rock the eel shot off over the jagged coral just like a land snake. After we did this a second time we realized that the eels knew exactly what they were doing and didn't need any help from us! John went out with a few people from the other boats after dark one evening to look for lobster. He reported that it was cool to see urchins and lobsters out walking on the reef, but we didn't keep any of the latter for Nakia.

Near a small reef for snorkeling:

http://www.sailsarana.com/maps/map.htm?16,52.115,S,144,37.881,W,Tahanea4

This was the best snorkeling reef yet maybe because it's in deeper water beyond the anchorage. Here we saw a tiny snakelike seahorse, lots of fish, a good sized eel, and most exciting of all, two octopus playing rock statues on the reef. One of them reached a tentacle out to hold on to its mate/friend while I hovered well above them. Absolutely wonderful!

We've covered a lot of ground since we arrived on Saturday and have shared drinks, food, and the good company of Visions of Johanna and Soggy Paws for three of our five evenings here. We continue to be amazed by the clear water and beautiful scenery. People have told us, "If you've seen one motu, you've seen them all" but I can't imagine ever growing tired of the sight.

Linda

Happy Mother's Day!

I'm sending wishes for a very happy Mother's Day to my favorite mothers and hope you are doing something special to celebrate. This morning John made our usual Sunday pancakes (which we've missed for several weeks in a row for some reason) and now we're running the noisy generator to charge our batteries. I'll clean the carpets and sweep the floor while it's still relatively cool (0700 cabin temp is 82 degrees) and breezy. Then I need to get the sewing machine out from behind the stock of toiletries so that John can sew up a new rain catcher. We had a big black rain cloud pass through just before sunset last night which was bad timing as we had just showered and started an early dinner, and I didn't feel like getting out and wiping everything down to get rid of the salt buildup from the passage. By this morning everything was bone dry as a result of the wind which is blasting across the Pacific.

The anchorage behind the atoll has only a little wind chop (no rocker stopper!), while out behind us white caps are raging in the lagoon. My vision of a tropical island paradise didn't include this much wind (which makes it hard to see down into the clear blue water!), but we're thankful for it since there are no mountains here to shade us from the hot sun early mornings and late afternoons. The wind is forecast to diminish over the next couple of days. If it calms down by this afternoon, we'll take the dinghy three miles through the lagoon to an abandoned village where cistern water might be available for washing clothes.

It's absolutely gorgeous and lives up to all the pictures. We're looking forward to snorkeling some of the coral reef today in spite of the black-tip puppies (which John neglected to mention are all of only 3-4 feet long). We quizzed our neighbors on Visions of Johanna and they assured us they weren't bothered by them when they snorkeled yesterday.

We'll be here for a few more days after which a change in the weather will probably send us to Fakarava for better protection.

Linda

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ARR Tahanea

We managed to find Tahanea this morning and get through the pass without any drama. Thanks to the help of a boat that we could see anchored on the other side of the atoll's coral reef (they let us know we wouldn't have any problems with entering on a flood tide).

As soon as we had the anchor down the local welcome wagon pulled up to NAKIA in the form of six black tip reef shark. They puttered around the boat until they were convinced we were not going to clean any fish and then went back to doing their regular shark things.

We'll probably stay here one or two nights and then check out the old village to see if the water cistern is still around. We have a little laundry to do from the passage.

All in all it was a pretty fast run for NAKIA; 545 miles in 91 hours for an average speed of just under 6 knots. Not bad for a 29 foot waterline.

Linda thinks she's in paradise, even with the sharks. Clear water, white sand and all the beach combing you can stand. Pretty nice.

John and Linda (and Z)

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=KE6HUA
(make sure to zoom in on this one)

One more night

Other than losing the use of the Cape Horn again after less than two days of use, the passage has been the usual. Fortunately the auto pilot is a real trooper and doesn't mind pitching in, but it's a bit of a battery hog and we've had to run the generator a couple of times. Today we had to get a reef in the jib in a bit of a hurry when a rain cloud turned out to pack a windy punch and our speed shot up to 7 knots. Was nice to get a fresh water boat wash and John got out there with a wash cloth too. Tonight we will try to get some extra rest to be ready to navigate ourselves between atolls before sunrise. After that it's only another 30 miles to our destination!

No flying fish whatsoever - not even during the daytime - on this trip, and no luck on the fishing lines either. Today I'm pretty sure I saw a frigate bird, so we know land is not too far away!

Linda

Farewell Marquesas

We got a bit of a late start from Taiohae to Daniel's Bay (Hakatea) after running last minute errands in town Monday morning. Had one last load of wash done at Nuku Hiva Yacht Services, bought five baguettes and two chocolate beignets from Magasin Kamake, checked out with the gendarmerie, and bought carrots and cabbages at the market, and sailed off before Noon. For some weird reason it took four tries to get the anchor down in our usual spot in Hakatea, and even then we didn't really get a hard set. Came up all muddy each time and was just slipping right through it. Went ashore to the beach in the anchorage and asked permission to take some pamplemousse from the loaded trees there. An even younger man than Mahi (sp?) is the caretaker there and since I picked over a dozen pieces of fruit we gave him Joe Tynik's old army duffel bag as a thank you. We'd been using it to store our big Fortress anchor in a hanging locker but it mildewed too easily on the boat, so we finally had to give it up. So Joe, now you know where to find your duffel bag, if you ever want it back!

Tuesday morning we went to the bay next door to cross the river bar on the rising tide with our water jugs in the dinghy to top our tanks with potable water. The time we can spend in the Tuamotus will be limited by our ability to conserve and replenish our water supply since we understand water there is a precious commodity. We thought we were going to need an early departure time, but John took another look at the forecasted winds and decided our average speed might be higher than he had previously anticipated. So we waited until 2 PM to depart for the 500+ nm trip to Tahanea in the Tuamotus.

I'm writing this Wednesday afternoon, and we've been making good speed so far. We're on more of a reach this time which means less spray over the decks, but some wackier boat motion as the waves tend to spin us off to the side at times. It's very hot (87 F) in the cabin and the water temp is 84.6 F, making sleep impossible without a fan to keep us cool. John anticipates taking three more nights to do the trip, for a possible arrival on Saturday.

We'll keep you posted!

Linda

Roulottes

We finally made the evening trek to town last night to try out the Roulotte Chez Germain. There are three roulottes here, which are basically what we'd call roach coaches at home, but these are regular van sized instead of the big fancy trucks at home. The first one, right at the dinghy dock is a creperie and soft ice cream place (250 for a single and 350 for a double; we haven't tried the crepes). During the day there's a hamburger and sandwich van outside Magasin Kamake by the basketball court, right on the water. They have a few little stools to sit on and for 700 CFP you can get quite a good hamburger and a generous portion of French fries, or various kinds of sandwiches on baguettes of course. At around 5 PM, when the hamburger van is shutting down, the "Chinese" van starts up a BBQ on a small half-of-a-metal-drum, and the traffic begins to pour in. Since it's always busy, we thought it must be something special. Well we came away with our curiosity satisfied, but not our appetites. The chow mein was okay but not a bargain at 900 CFP. John ordered canard laque (1000 CFP; the other choice was canard tamarin, which we figured had something to do with the tamarind fruit) which I knew was duck, and laque turned out to be Teriyaki. Duck is a pungent fowl and this one had been hacked into small pieces with the resulting small bits of bone throughout the dish, served over rice. Everyone else was getting theirs to go (mostly the steak frite which looked tough and gristly over fries), and piling back into their big Toyota Hilux trucks to take their dinners home. We should have gone in earlier and gotten hamburgers...

After running errands this morning we're heading back to Daniel's bay for water and more fruit before we leave for the Tuamotus.

Linda

Post cards to Tonga

Here's something we received from our friends on Carina which I thought I'd post to our blog for those of you who would like to participate:

Dear John & Linda with Ziggy aboard Nakia;

We quote from a poster we have seen around Neiafu, the principal town of the Vava'u group of islands in Tonga, where we have been for almost six months. The village of Matamaka is about 12 miles south of Neiafu on a small island. In the village of approximately 200 people is a small primary school with two teachers. Please consider sending a (snail mail) postcard to the address below...Many thanks and much love,

"POSTCARD PROJECT GPS MATAMAKA

Malo e lelei! My name is Farfum (Feleti) Ladroma. I am an outer-island Peace Corps volunteers at Matamaka, Vava'u. My students and I are pursuing a "POSTCARD PROJECT" and we need your help! We are asking for anyone outside of Tonga to PLEASE SEND US A POSTCARD from YOUR HOMETOWN OR CITY. We are trying to collect as many postcards as we can from around the world.

This project will help to enhance the students's understanding of other places and cultures around the world. I will keep a running list of all the postcards received with their origin at my blog - http://farfumandtonga.blogspot.com/ - so you can check if your postcard has successfully made it to Matamaka's children. This will be a great cultural exchange for everyone involved. Please help us if you can and tell your friends! Thank you very much - malo 'aupito!

Please send postcards to: Matamaka GPS, c/o Peace Corps, PO Box 136, Neiafu, Vava'u, Kingdom of Tonga, South Pacific"

Your friends of the yacht Carina,
Philip, Leslie and fat cat, Jake
website: www.sv-carina.org

Daniel's Bay (Anse Hakatea)

As usual we've been working and playing hard now that our passage is over, so I'll just try to hit some of the highlights.

It was most exciting to see Eiau Island come into view Friday afternoon since we knew Nuku Hiva was just one more night away. We got into Daniel's Bay early Saturday morning and immediately went to work putting the boat back to rights. Since the entire exterior (and even underneath the dodger) was encrusted with salt the first thing we did was wash the cockpit with fresh water. Then we reversed the contents of the Pullman and quarter berths to make the former back into our bed and the latter into our storage area. After lunch and a nap for John we put the outboard on the new dinghy for the first time and went around the anchorage introducing ourselves to the other boats, most of which had come from Mexico. Of course Ziggy was ecstatic to have the boat stop moving, and ran around the decks well into his usual nap time.

That night we were incredibly lucky to have a hard rain which washed the rest of the boat for us! I wiped down the boat, John took a look at the Cape Horn to see how he might fix it, and then we joined three other boats for a hike to the waterfall. Wow! That was probably the most beautiful place we've seen in all the Marquesas and I can't believe we skipped it last year. We were so paranoid about the notorious no-nos, but we only got a few bites apiece. The hike was long (about 14 kilometers round trip) but not particularly strenuous, and it starts out through the lovely little village at the river mouth in the bay next door to where we actually anchored. There were plenty of ripe mangoes on the ground along the way so we picked up a few that weren't split or terribly bruised from their fall.

When we returned from the hike we moved the anchor chain from an unused mid-ships tank back up into the bow chain locker, and John replaced a corroded electrical terminal block in our hanging locker. We definitely have a leak somewhere. Salt water is coming into the boat from the side decks and traveling through the overheads and down every wiring location including our beautiful Alpenglow lights. I opened one locker to find a manual only to see evidence of salt water along the bottom of the locker. So everything had to come out and get wiped down. Fortunately the locker next door hadn't been affected. But I'll have to go through every single one to see what's gotten wet.

On Monday John did some more work on the Cape Horn, and tightened the Spectra steering cable (supposedly the Spectra doesn't "stretch" it "creeps" - but I'm not sure what the difference is!). Then we took the dinghy over the river bar and up on shore where John installed the old dinghy wheels on the new dinghy. We made a trade for fruit with Mai, the young man in the green house who is of great service to cruisers. He asked us for a souvenir flag from us with our names on it for his collection so we gave him a Farallon Patrol flag which should be pretty unique among the others. Besides installing the wheels we were checking on the potable water status. A pipe had broken somewhere and water had not been available over the weekend. But the pressure was back so we returned to the boat for our jugs. First John installed a new holding tank vent thru hull, and then we made three trips into the river to take on a total of 108 gallons of water.

Just after sunrise today we motored the short trip to Taiohae. We went to shore where I walked to the store for baguettes while John rinsed salt covered gear and lines and filled a few jugs with water for washing (the water from the faucets here is not potable). Back on the boat we emptied the chain locker and John washed it out with fresh water. Then we did the same thing to the lazarette. Meanwhile I defrosted the freezer and wiped down some of the things that came out of the salty lockers. We made another trip to shore for more wash water, and called it a good day's work at 3 PM. John is on standby waiting for a call from a friend who is rounding up strong bodies for help getting a new engine into his boat. Supposedly he is going to go alongside the Aranui where a crane will lower the engine straight into the sailboat. Hopefully everyone will return with all their fingers and toes.

There were 3-11 boats in Daniel's Bay (coming and going every day) and maybe 40 boats here in Taiohae. The Puddle Jumpers from Mexico are keeping very much in their own groups, but that won't stop us from crashing their party!

Linda

ARR Nuku Hiva

After our first passage to the Marquesas, from the Galapagos, I remember thinking to myself; 'That really wasn't that hard'. Well now I know what a hard passage is like. Everyday tight reaching or hard on the wind, and when we finally got south of the equator when we were supposed to have lighter winds more on the beam we had heavy winds even further forward then when we were in the northern hemisphere. We actually had to tack several times just to keep some of our Easting.

So here are the stats:
2104 miles made good
21 days, 1 hour
4.16 kts average speed

Broken gear:
Cape Horn Wind vane
Main Steering Cable
Automatic Bilge Pump
Staysail Halyard Chafed almost thru
Staysail Outhaul Parted
2 cabin lights damaged due to leaks
Holding Tank Vent Thru Hull

We're at anchor now, and are cleaning up and preparing for our next 'little hop', 550 miles, to the Tuamotus.

John

Two Bad Days ...

.. in a row.

It all started off yesterday morning. We'd been in the doldrums for three days and things were starting to look up a little. Friday night we had a wonderful breeze from the South. Not the greatest direction for us, but it worked well as it allowed us to sail just a little South of East, in order to keep that all important Easting.

Saturday morning dawned with a new wind from the South East, Ahh the trades at last! But what's this? First the wind is from the South South East (too far South for us to actually sail directly South) and it was building (too strong for the light weight jib we put up for the doldrums). I decided to wait a while and see what would happen, and what happened was that by noon it was way too windy for that big sail. We had to change.

Now, taking down a sail and putting up a new one is a lot of work to begin with. But couple it with a 20 knot winds and it gets pretty hard. It took both Linda and I to lower the big jib, fold it and get it into its bag. Then it was time to raise the working jib. I carried it out on deck, got it all ready to hoist and asked Linda to pull the halyard a little (the rope that raises the sail). I guess I didn't have the snap shackle on securely because the next thing I knew the halyard was blowing around in the wind half way up the mast! My first thought was that I was going to have to climb the mast to retrieve the halyard, but then I remembered a trick we'd used while at the dock to retrieve a halyard. I had Linda get out my fishing tackle box and give me a large treble hook. I attached this onto a small line, and then tied the small line onto one of our spinnaker halyards. Linda pulled the spinnaker halyard up while I held the small line tight and when it got close to the wayward jib halyard I pulled it back down. Fish On! The hook grabbed the jib halyard and I pulled it back down to the deck.

That little interlude over we put our minds back to hoisting the working jib which we did without further incident. The only thing was, we were both just about exhausted. We got the boat sailing and tried to relax. However, there were a couple other minor activities throughout the afternoon that kept us from recovering completely; tacking onto starboard tack for a few hours only to determine that being on port tack is better so we tacked back. That may not sound like a lot but when you're already exhausted it's a whole lot of work.

Then, just when I thought we were safe, Linda woke me up at 0430 this morning (I had just gone to bed at 0400) to tell me that nothing was happening when she turned the wheel. When I tried turning it myself the sound of the drive chain dropping into the lazarette confirmed that the steering cable had broken. 'No problem', I said. We are prepared for this failure. I got out the 50 ft piece of 1/4" high tech rope (low stretch and stronger then stainless steel) that I got just in case this happened. We took out the old broken cable, measured it, made a replacement using the high tech rope and installed it. We now have wheel steering again (the boat sailed the entire time on the autopilot which attaches directly to the rudder). But, it took almost five hours after a day/night in which I only got about an hour's sleep.

On the bright side, the wind is lighter today and we're making good speed if not good progress (we're 30 degrees below our destination in the Marquesas, so it looks like there's more upwind sailing in our future).

If anyone has a spare wish, you could send us an East wind. It would be much appreciated.

John and Linda

Drifting in the doldrums

Friday afternoon

We managed to make forward progress until this morning when the wind died again. It's a beautiful landscape with huge rain clouds all around us, the air itself is crystal clear, and the ocean is a glassy deep blue. But it's frustrating to have to waste time waiting for the wind to come up. It's truly a catch-22 because we don't want to run the motor and make the cabin even hotter than it already is, nor do we want to pay the exorbitant price for fuel in Nuku Hiva. So we wait.

And to top things off we are having to brush our teeth the old-fashioned way. Our plug in electric tooth brush just suddenly quit working. We think it may not have liked being charged on our little inverter because its blue charging light blinked rather hysterically over the past months. We looked at new ones in Hawaii but hoped to get one more year out of this one. I dug out our old portables and stuck new batteries in them, but wouldn't you know it they were both DOA as well! Fortunately we happened to have one manual tooth brush still in the bathroom cupboard which we'll share until I can get into a locker for another one that I know is stowed away.

Totally off the subject, but something I keep meaning to mention, is the fact that we found coffee beans and rum to be so much more expensive in Hawaii than we had been used to paying in Mexico and Latin America that those are two important items we decided not to re-stock on Nakia. It was a tough choice but we'll be a dry boat when our cheap Panamanian rum finally runs out! We'll hope to find coffee at a more reasonable price somewhere else along the way and in the meantime we're going to try a can of Kirkland French roast.

While John and I can't seem to drink enough cold water, Ziggy is the best hydrated member of the crew. His meals may look more like soup than cat food but at least he's still peeing like a champ!

Linda

A lot of reading in the ITCZ

Well, we are good and stuck in the ITCZ now and are taking any course but due north or due west just to keep sailing. At sunrise today we could see a big black cloud to our left (north) and when I came on watch at Noon the BBC was behind us and we were still motoring. Since it wasn't raining and the decks were clean from all the rain yesterday we took the opportunity to change jibs. Other than squalls the winds are anticipated to be lighter from here on out so we dropped the small jib, folded it on deck, and put up the big jib. Finally, after 24 hours of hot, noisy motoring, the BBC caught up to us and morphed into a big gray overcast with some breeze and we shut down the engine to sail. Ah, peace and quiet at last.

John is now reading the B. Kingsolver book of short stories and I have finished both The Reader by Bernhard Schlink and Alibi by Joseph Kanon. The former, of course, is the source for the Kate Winslet movie by the same name and I thought both were very moving. It surprised me when the Kona librarian who checked out the DVD to me said she hadn't liked either the book or the movie. The Reader is definitely not "feel good" material but it's thought provoking and well done. I don't usually pick up mystery/thriller novels but Alibi is set in Venice so I couldn't resist. And it turned out to be an engaging read with almost non-stop dialogue and an interesting view of post-war Venice and it's ex-pat inhabitants. Now I've started to re-read A Fish Flew Through the Porthole by Gerri Miller which is an account of their passage from San Francisco to the Marquesas in a small sailboat similar to ours. I had forgotten what a great sense of humor she has and I was already laughing just reading the prologue. This is a self-published memoir so you're not likely to find it on amazon.com but it's a hilarious tale of a passage fraught with more than any sailor's share of mishaps.

Here's a list of some of the things we'll miss after living in the States again:

Laundromats
Driving a car
Free Wi-Fi
Good multi-grain wheat bread (though I just realized I never got a sourdough bread fix!)
Having a library card for renting DVDs and doing internet
Shopping and pizza lunches at Costco with Ralph and Glenda
Brian Williams (NBC news; sorry Diane and Katie but after hearing Brian's guest spot on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me we love his sense of humor - which he occasionally lets creep into his newscast!)
Noah's bagels from Costco
The resident turtles (Stumpy, Barnacle Bill, Old Blue, and the rest of the gang) in Honokohau Marina
DQ Blizzards at the mall
New episodes of The Office, Lost, and The Amazing Race (even though the digital signal w/o cable was often weak)
Fresh fish from our charter fishing neighbors in Honokohau
Lava Man Red Ale from the Kona Brewing Co. (that's John's entry)
Did I already mention shopping at Costco?!

So we continue to read, sleep, eat, and (hopefully) sail our way across the Pacific. Oh yes, and we crossed the half way mark on Monday night!

Linda

Rainy day

We noticed a change in the weather day before yesterday (I'm writing this on my Tuesday night watch) when the clouds really rolled in by late afternoon and the air became even more humid than usual. Monday it was cloudy all day and when I woke up this morning for my 0400 watch it was raining. John said that at one point the rain was coming down so hard that the drops pelting the ocean excited the bioluminescence in the water and created a glow over the entire surface. It rained practically non-stop the whole day and didn't let up until a few hours ago.

Rain like this usually means no wind so we've been motoring since after noon. The flatter seas and slower speed (plus rain washed decks!) gave John a chance to really walk around the boat checking on things. His inspection turned up two broken sail slides at the top of the main and a missing bolt in the dodger frame. Fortunately he had saved the slides from the old sail and was able to replace the failed plastic ones with our old stainless steel ones. He remembered seeing those top two slides when we got the new sail and thinking they really needed to be SS or bronze and not plastic, and unfortunately he was proved right. He found a temporary bolt to fit the dodger frame and we were back in business. In the meantime he had also gotten a good soaking from the rain which gave me the idea to get out there with a bar of soap for a rain bath of my own. Too bad we didn't get the new rain catcher sewn before we left because we'd also have full water tanks again by now.

Ziggy doesn't like the noise of the engine (who does?) so he's retreated to a spot on top of all our junk stowed in the Pullman berth. He doesn't look very comfortable and I think he's also a little mad because there are no flying fish on a calm night like tonight. Last night he flew out to the cockpit in time to get a small one in his mouth before I could get to it. But I got him on his leash tethered to the binnacle and wouldn't let him below. So it was just a matter of waiting him out before he finally dropped it and I snatched it away with the metal salad tongs and threw it overboard. John thought that was pretty mean, but at least he got the thrill of the catch if not the actual meal.

This rain means we're probably in the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) now, even though it wasn't forecast to reach higher than 5 degrees North at the moment. But it's a slippery thing and moves with a will of it's own so you're never quite sure where you're going to actually run into it (or how long it's going to last...). Because of the upcoming equatorial counter current we're waiting until we get to 3 degrees North and 140 West before we make our turn to the south. That's one of those sailing strategies/decisions that John's been agonizing over, and we'll just have to hope that all the book references about it and prognostications are in our favor.

Linda

Shower day!

It finally calmed down enough for us to take salt water showers out on the side deck today! This has been the longest I've ever gone without taking any kind of full body bath, and it felt great. One of the things I forgot to add to my shopping list for Hawaii was baby wipes (who thinks of those again once you're done with a passage?), and I'm afraid the ones we bought in the Galapagos won't last this trip. But we should be running into lighter winds like the ones we're having today when we get south of the equator.

Forgot to mention that we've seen two ships so far. Well, the first one, on Sunday night, was only visible on the AIS since it was very far away. John saw the second one on Wednesday when the winds were so wild. The AIS has been great, and saves us having to run the radar for the very big ships (which are probably the only vessels we'd run across out here).

Last night was crazy with flying fish and Ziggy was on a tear trying to get one. We've resorted to closing up the companionway when they are coming on board at a fast pace so that he can't get on deck to try catching one. I don't fully understand why cats with UTDs can't eat fish since cats and fish seem to be made for each other, but we're not letting him have any. Since magnesium is the thing we have to avoid in his food, I'll have to assume that fish are high in that.

All is well on board and I'm looking forward to getting back to my Barbara Kingsolver book (Homeland) and maybe a crossword puzzle while John tweaks the sails and then tries to get some sleep. Oh, and it's gotten much warmer in the cabin since we hit 80 degree water temperature a couple of days ago.

Linda

Cooking on Nakia

Tuesday 4/6 [I composed this on paper and didn't put it in the computer before it got rough again.]

What are we eating under such rough conditions you may ask? Well, we're not as ambitious about cooking as some of our friends so we don't prepare meals ahead of departure, seal them in vacuum bags, freeze them (no room in the freezer), and then pop them in boiling water when the seas are rough. Personally my appetite goes way down and it's all I can do to force myself to drink enough water and eat much of anything.

So far we've finished one out of two "hands" of apple bananas, John's eaten one of his five rapidly ripening papayas, and I'm working my way through the Fuji apples. For protein and carbs we're eating peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, and cheese and crackers. The Safeway muffins showed signs of mold yesterday morning but there aren't many left and we just peel off the outer muffin top with a knife. When those are gone we'll switch to granola bars for breakfast. Last night John whipped up a packet of curry flavored ramen noodles to which he added some peanut butter. He thought it was quite a taste treat, but my stomach rebels at the thought of it.

Ziggy continues to turn up his nose at his wet (canned) food, but gets happy at the sound of the kibble bag. Since he still won't drink water voluntarily I add a little to the kibble and mix it in with the wet, but I basically have to hand feed him to get him to eat it. John caught a tuna today and Z was right there begging for some. The books all say NO FISH for cats with tendencies toward urinary tract disease, but we gave him a little anyway to entice him to eat his other food.

Thursday 4/8

Today we had the "Cooking with Captain John" show. John made our old standby - a cabbage, onion, carrot, rice bowl - and narrated it along the way. I guess I should have gotten the camera out to video it because it was pretty funny. Maybe he'll write some of the dialogue in his blog. Move over Chef Ramsey and Jamie Oliver!

Yesterday was pretty windy, but today is much better. We've gone back to our old friend, the wheel lock, to help steer the boat when the auto pilot can't handle things. This is especially important for doing any radio work (sending emails and checking into the net) which we can't do with the auto pilot. So now I don't always have to stand outside and hand steer while John takes care of those chores. John is in touch with Yves (the manufacturer) about ideas to get the Cape Horn wind vane to work again. We are keeping water (mostly) out of the boat, and have started reading books again.

Linda

Better today

That was quite a day yesterday. In the afternoon the wind was up to 30 kts with gusts probably in the 35 kt range. I was off watch and we had the boat steering itself (just using the sails and rudder to keep us sailing reletive to the wind). We were making good progress but by about 1400 we were crashing off of some of the waves very hard and I begged Linda to let me make a change to the sails (she would rather put up with the pounding if the boat is not having problems sailing itself). I rolled up the jib, eased the main and staysail and set the autopilot to put us on a close reach. What a difference! We stopped crashing down off the waves immediately. Luckily the wind was more to the north so we were still making desired course at a good speed.

After sunset the wind and waves subsided and we were able to set more sail only to be headed (the wind shifted more onto our bow) at about 2200 when Linda had quite a bit of work to get the autopilot to steer us again.

This morning we're back to sailing with just the sails and rudder steering (no autopilot) and are just barely making our course. The good thing is the wind is down to about 18 kts and we're not pounding. Hopefully once we get South of 10 North the wind will shift into the North more and we can get a little more Easting before the equator.

As of 0800 4/8/2010 we've made good 520 nm with 1490 left to go.

rough day

very windy/rough today. All's well, if not dry.

Better night

Last night (the night of the 5th) was much better. The wind backed off enough for us to set a little more sail and not feel like we were jumping off a cliff every third wave.

If anyone ever told me I'd be sailing hard on the wind into the trades I'd have laughed. Truth be told, we're not sailing as close to the wind as we could, if we were we'd be going even slower and have more problems keeping the boat sailing (both the autopilot and the windvane dislike having to sail close to the 'edge'). Be that as it may, we're still sailing upwind into the trades which is something I'd never have given us credit for.

We did a few things before this passage to help with windward performance which I'd like to mention to all the sailors reading our blog. First, we moved the anchor chain from it's normal position in the bow to the keel (NAKIA has a 15 gallon tank in the front of the keel that's never been used and holds our 250 ft of chain perfectly). Moving 450 lbs 12 ft aft changed the pitch of the boat quite a bit, the bow came up about 2 inches and I can tell as we go over the waves that the bow is staying up instead of slamming down into the water. Second, we 'stacked' the boat for port tack. All the canned goods, kitty litter and heavy spare gear are stowed on the port side as far outboard as possible. We also tried to keep it close, fore and aft, to the mast. Before we left Hilo NAKIA was heeling a good 5 degrees to port just sitting still. This helps lessen the amount of heel caused by the sails so we have a more comfortable ride.

Today we are at 15o 43'N, 151o 23'W and have made about 320 miles, giving us about 1700 miles to go.

Look for our position on the web at:

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=KE6HUA

still making progress

It's pretty rough, so this is short.

The good:
We're making progress along our intended route, about 100 miles a day.
Z doing better, though we're forcing about 10 ml of water into him per day.

The bad:
Broke the windvane (not sure what happened, but it doesn't work anymore) and are having to use the Autopilot. Lots more power down the tube.
Broke the staysail outhaul, staysail now lashed to the staysail boom.
Broke the thru-hull fitting for the holding tank vent. Lots of water into the boat even though this fitting is 3 feet above the water line. Put a plug in it. The vent now vents into the chain locker.
Broke the automatic part of the bildge pump, manual still works.

It's supposed to slack of in the next couple days, that will be fine with all on board.

John

On our way!

As expected it's been a rough start to our passage from Hawaii to the Marquesas. The NE tradewinds are blowing as high as 25 kts at times and it's a bumpy ride trying to keep as much easting as possible in our course. We don't want to bear off to the south too early or we might overshoot and end up in Tahiti!

We both took Stugeron (an anti-seasickness medication) before leaving Hilo and haven't actually been sick, although I've felt borderline queasy. I swore ahead of time not to feed Ziggy a full breakfast but when we woke up at 5 AM Saturday I figured that two hours would be enough for him to digest it all before we were at sea. Of course it all came back up sometime later that morning. When he perked up at the sound of a flying fish hitting the deck this morning I figured he might take some watered down canned food but, 1/2 tsp later, everything left in his stomach came up. We're mostly concerned about keeping him hydrated so I've resorted to force feeding him 1 ml of water at a time via a medicine dropper. We'll see if he can keep that down.

While Ziggy stays put in bed, that's where we wish we could be 24/7. We're rediscovering all those muscles that we use just to hold on, stay on our feet, and keep ourselves from being hurtled into hard objects. I've already taken knocks to an elbow, a knee, and my head, and I'm not even doing a tenth of the work John does. So he's wiped. Laying flat out in the sea berth on our off watches is a welcome relief from trying to sit, stand, or walk. But sleep is difficult when the boat periodically gets launched off an ill-timed wave, goes airborne, and lands in the water with a heavy crash. Or when a different kind of wave hits just right and sends a wall of water cascading into the cockpit. I think that's the worst part for me because I'd like to spend more time out in the fresh air. Except for our quarter-hour horizon checks and occasional sail adjustments we mostly stay below to keep dry.

We had rain to start out with but the skies cleared to mostly sunny once we left the influence of the Big Island behind. By 3 PM yesterday we'd lost sight of land as Hawaii was hidden in the clouds. If the local extended forecast holds true we should have slightly lighter winds this week which would be a nice break. But personally I'm happy to be getting the rougher stuff while we're fresh, knowing that we should be sailing into better weather farther south.

Linda

DEP Hilo HI

We're off.

As of 0700 local this morning. Started sailing at about 1030 and now have NE winds at 15-18. All's well on board.

John and Linda