Cruising With Soggy Paws 2010

Blog Consolidation & New Blog Link

2011-01-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

I have finished consolidating my yearly blogs into one new blog.

Last year's change by Blogger--where they won't publish to my website anymore--threw me for a loop that I'm only just now recovering from. But recover I have.

I took a look at Sailblogs (again). Looks great, nice community feel, some neat gadgets, and if I were starting out from scratch, that's probably where I'd start out. But I'm not starting from scratch.

I also spent some time playing with Wordpress, because my web host, ReadyHosting, provides a Wordpress installation that would be ON my website. I even *finally* figured out how to import one of my Blogger blogs into a Wordpress blog. But I could never get get a template that I liked, and I was a little nervous about the fact that Wordpress stores its posts in a database, and I wasn't sure how to back that up etc. Sure I could figure it out, but just don't have the time.

Then I went back to Blogger. Things seem to be settling down around Blogger--more stable. And they've implemented lots of new features that I like (check the new blog to see a couple of them). So I finally abandoned my custom template, picked a template as similar as I could to my old one, and then imported all my blogs-by-year blogs into one big blog.

The link is here: http://svsoggypaws.blogspot.com

And with any luck, my blog link won't change every year...

Christmas in Far Away Places

2010-12-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

We had a fairly quiet Christmas Day. We did a nice "Sunday Breakfast", and spent the morning playing with making gifts for each other. Dave finally got around to mounting one of the black pearls we got in Tuamotus on a necklace. And I'm working on an iron-on logo for Soggy Paws.

CSY 44 Walkthrough Line Drawing for T-Shirt
Our friends across the dock were away with family, but Richard down the dock organized a mid-day dock party with chili.

Christmas Day on C Dock
I contributed a big pot of my best chili recipe (courtesy of Larry Rutledge of s/v Brisa del Mar, lo these many years ago).

Late in the afternoon, we got cleaned up and drove across the island to Dave's friend's house for Christmas Dinner with them. We had a some good food and enjoyed watching Mark's pet turtle do laps around the yard.

Mr T
This turtle is an African Spurred Tortoise, and it's nearly the size of a Galapagos Tortoise. Friend of theirs got Mr T when he was small, but when he grew bigger, they couldn't keep him in an apartment, and Mark and Bing inherited him. He lives in their back yard, and they have 'turtle bars' to keep him out of the house. He's so big it would knock over furniture if it were allowed to roam inside. Dave tried to stop him moving forward (so he could take a picture), and Mr T just kept right on trucking, no matter how hard Dave pushed back.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T17:50:00.000-08:00

We are sitting here in sunny Honolulu, and it's 80 degrees and doesn't feel much like Christmas. We are missing our families and that little nip in the air today!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, wherever you are!

Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau'oli Makahiki Hou
(Merry Christmas and Happy New Year)

Christmas Presents!

2010-12-24T12:14:00.000-08:00

Well, after a long voyage (Maryland to Florida to Hawaii) our new Frigoboat units have arrived. Great experience with H2OLogistics in shipping big stuff from anywhere in the US to Hawaii.

No Lunar Eclipse in Honolulu

2010-12-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

Bummer. We didn't get to see the eclipse last night. It's been overcast and rainy here in Pearl Harbor for the last 3 days. We have a front and a low kind of stalled over us. One day it rained so hard and so much that there was a Flash Flood Watch.

Gloomy Skies Over the Marina
I am ready for some sunshine!! (However, at least it is still 78 degrees here)

Back in Hawaii

2010-12-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

After a very busy last week in Florida... wrapping up our affairs... a couple more doctor visits... a few more social visits... a few maintenance items on the rental properties... paperwork associated with the accident... etc etc, we fled chilly Florida for a very warm and inviting Hawaii.

Welcome to Hawaii Sign at Honolulu Airport
The cold front the last week were there was a nice reminder of how good we've got it. In Melbourne it was in the low 30's and even driving south to Miami, it was still awfully cold for this Florida girl.

It was a looooong flight back... we got up at 4:30am for a 7am flight from Miami airport, and then went via stops in Orlando, Chicago, and LA, before landing in Honolulu about 8:30pm (it was a cheap flight!). That's about 20 hours of traveling. But nice to have stops in between so we could stretch our legs. Chicago had been a mess from the big front passing through a couple of days earlier, and we were worried it would snarl us up too. But by the time we got there, it was fine.

Sunrise in Miami on the Plane
John from Nakia, to whom Mike and Sue on Infini had passed our car to when they left, picked us up curbside at the Baggage Claim area, so we didn't need to mess with anything else. All our luggage made it. Nothing broken or missing. And we weighed in as usual at 49.9 lbs with 4 bags full of 'stuff' (plus sent a couple of shipments from Florida to Hawaii via USPS and freight).

The weather in Honolulu is just gorgeous! About 78-80 during the day and 68-70 at night. Perfect working and sleeping temps. And we have a new dock neighbor living aboard for the winter right next to us. So we don't feel quite so isolated out at the end of the dock (with all our cruising friends 20 minutes away in the downtown marinas). Our new neighbors are retired like us, and spend most of the year in their RV, and then come visit their boat in Hawaii for 3 months in the wintertime. They bring their lawn chairs out on the dock for sunset and are very sociable, so we've actually been stopping boat work 'early' to have a sunset happy hour and socialize.

Dave Wrecks the Kia

2010-12-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

First, the important part: It wasn't his fault and he's just fine.

Dave was only 2 blocks from Cousin Bryan's house in Largo FL, when some distracted woman pulled right out off the side of the road into him, as he was passing by. She hit him hard enough that it rolled our poor little Kia on its side, and slid about 20 feet.

Fortunately, Dave had his seatbelt on, and he was fine. He had to kick his way out the front window, though, because both doors were jammed. Worrying about fire...

He ended up with a few cuts on his shins, from crawling out, but that was the worst of his injuries.

The lady who hit him admitted responsibility immediately and is covered by good insurance, so they are handling the whole thing. We got a rental car for the rest of our stay, courtesy of State Farm. She was the one who took these awesome pictures of Dave's car, and emailed them to us.

We were talking about buying a better car next year anyway--we spend so much time in the car when we're back visiting, that it's worth it to move up on car class for a little more added comfort (cruise control, smoother ride, noise reduction, etc). So we already have one thing on our "To Do" list for next fall...

I got my Driver's License Renewed!!

2010-12-02T19:54:00.001-08:00

I'd been dreading the whole process... sure that I'd take my whole stack of paperwork in, wait in line for hours, and then find I was lacking something. A friend told me it took 3 visits to get his done.

But what a nice surprise. Only a 2 minute wait (Indian Harbor Beach DMV Office), pleasant guy, only needed half of the paper I brought with me, passed the eye test, picture taken, new license in hand--done in 10 minutes. "Only" $53 (ouch!)

Lousy picture, though. I didn't really expect to complete the process in only one visit, so didn't bother looking in the mirror. Next thing I knew, I was in front of the camera. Another typical DL mug shot, but this time with my hair messed up--and it's good til 2018!!

I also now have "Safe Driver" on my driver's license (no driving=no tickets).

Catching Up A Little (Whew!!)

2010-11-23T13:09:00.001-08:00

When we last talked to our hero (that's me), she was gamely battling evil forces trying to mire her in mounds of paperwork.

Well, I'm still there. Big "shout out" to our friends from s/v Windy City in Hawaii watching over Soggy Paws. They went onboard and got all the docs I need (I hope) to prove to the State of Florida that aliens haven't taken over my identity. I can't seem to make an appointment online for a Driver's License. So after Thanksgiving I'll just have to go stand in line, and see if I have enough paper to satisfy them that I am still who I have always been as a full-time bona fide voting and driver's license-carrying resident of Florida since 1970.

Well, we have been doing our usual "visit home" crazy schedule--trying to fit in a year's worth of catching up with friends and family, getting medical checks, and acquiring needed boat things and tech toys to carry on for another year of round-the-world voyaging.

The first step on arrival was to go retrieve our car, which has been stored for the last year at my brother's house in Hawthorne (3 hours north of Melbourne). That's pretty much an all-day trip.

CSY Breakfast at the SSCA Gam 2010
Then we had one day of rest before we launched in the Seven Seas Cruising Association Gam activities. It was another great 'Gam' and we got to see lots of old friends, and meet some new ones. We organized another "CSY Breakfast" where we got to meet a bunch of new CSY owners. What a group!

We also enjoyed a few seminars and the vendor area at the Gam. But our favorite is always the flea market, and this year didn't disappoint. We got a few things we needed at really good prices, that I know the sellers were happy to part with. Dave and I had a good time sharing our experiences at the 'Round Tables' sessions on Sunday morning. Dave handled the 'Eastern Pacific' round table, I handled the 'Western Caribbean', and our friend Gwen on Tackless II covered the 'Western Pacific'. (Wish we could have attended Gwen's, but she gave us a private briefing later).

Then we rushed off to catch the last of the Waterway Net get together in Wickham Park. More reunions with many old friends.

The week after SSCA should have been a 'recovery' week, but I had promised Melbourne Yacht Club that I'd do a slide show on this year's cruising adventures... which I hadn't started yet. I "crammed" all week... trying to fit 10 months of intensive adventure, photographed by multiple photographers, into a 1 hour presentation. It turned out to be an impossible task. I ran out of prep time at 5:45pm the day of the presentation, and was already up to about 240 slides. So I just said "The End... More to Follow" after I covered the first half of the Tuamotus. *sigh* It ended up taking about 1 hour and 30 minutes, and was just about the right length. It was well-received, and a few people asked "Well, when is the 2nd half?" Not this week!!

The next day we left for the west coast of Florida, where we visited Dave's cousin Bryan and Aunt Eva Nell, and 2 different CSY's that we hadn't seen before... owned by new people we hadn't met. We always get new ideas for doing stuff when we see another boat like ours. And we're still "paying forward" all the help we got from other CSY owners over the years as we were working on Soggy Paws. We had a great round of golf with Bryan, and then a nice visit with Don and Gwen, formerly of Tackless II (now happily in a house and w-w-w-working).

After a few stops on the way back from the west coast, we have just enough time to regroup, do laundry, and repack for our Thanksgiving 'tour' to see family and friends in Georgia and North Carolina!!

More to follow... and hopefully pictures *some day*

Driver's License Renewal Woes

2010-11-11T21:11:00.001-08:00

This country has gone crazy!!

My driver's license is coming due for renewal in 2 weeks. Last time I renewed it, I did it online and they mailed it to me. No such luck this time. I went online and they said they needed to see me in person. So I made an appointment online. No big deal. I didn't pay any attention to the 'Documents You Need' link on the appointment page... I'm RENEWING an EXISTING a driver's license in the state I've been living in, and had one continuously in, for 40 years for heaven's sake!!!

However, we just got our stack of mail that's been piling up at home, and going through it today, I noticed a postcard from the State of Florida telling me that in order to renew, I need a passport or birth certificate, and some other forms of ID. Well, we left our passports onboard. Dave, when he was gathering up stuff to leave, decided not to take our passports--we're not crossing any borders, they are safer staying on the boat.

No problem, I can get a birth certificate... maybe? I was born in California... that might be hard (in the time frame we have to work with). It has to be certified, and it can't be the one the hospital issued. And... the name on that birth certificate doesn't match my current name. In fact I've had 2 name changes. So even if I CAN get my California birth certificate (I just MIGHT have a certified copy in my file cabinet here in Florida), I still have to get copies of EACH of my 'proof of name change' documents (Marriage Licenses). My first marriage was almost 30 years ago!!

Then, in addition, I need my Social Security Card. Well, guess where that is??? Yep, the Social Security Administration recommends you not carry it with you. So mine is tucked safely away in a filing cabinet on the boat.

Maybe I can go to the local SSA office and apply for a duplicate. But you need proof of id... what do they say I can use?? My DRIVER'S LICENSE!!! (and it takes '10 to 14 days').

Alternate documents that can be used in place of a Social Security Card are ORIGINAL W-2 forms, pay checks, or 1099's showing my complete Social Security Number and my current name. Well, I'm not working, and guess where all my tax records are???

And one final thing I noticed... the card says "You must pass a vision exam and MAY be required to pass written and road skills test." MAY?? Do I or don't I? This card has my name on it and my date of birth, surely they can tell me whether I do or don't need to take any tests...

I've had to cancel my renewal appointment, which was for Tuesday--there's no way I can get all this gathered up in the next 2 working days. And when I tried to reschedule for December (just before we leave to return to Hawaii), there are no appointments available. (but I can still go as a 'walk in')

Sheesh, this wouldn't be a big deal for anyone with a normal life, but for me, it might mean I can't renew my driver's license before we return to Hawaii (and/or I spend all day running around trying to document myself).

It's just crazy.

Heading for Florida

2010-11-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

We've been too busy all day to blog. But we are sitting at the Honolulu airport waiting for our flight to Florida, via Chicago. We land in Chicago at something like 5:30am Chicago time, and finally get into Miami at 1pm ET. Not looking forward to the flight.

Am sitting at the airport with no free wifi, so not sure if we'll get this posted before we take off. We loaned our Mobi Hele wireless data stick (which only works in Hawaii) to our friends on Infini. I already miss it.

As usual, we have a very ambitious schedule... something planned every day between now and December 14th, and sometimes 2 or 3 things planned in one day. We will be trying to fit a whole year of socializing into a 5 week trip, including visiting family in Largo, Atlanta, and North Carolina. Fortunately, the 'shopping' part of the trip is not as significant. We can get almost everything we need in Hawaii, and therefore won't have to concentrate on that so much.
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Sherry & Dave
in Honolulu, Hawaii for the winter
At 11/5/2010 6:06 PM (utc) our position was 21°22.26'N 157°56.27'W

Sonar Attack!

2010-11-07T01:40:00.000-07:00

Early this evening we started hearing a beeping onboard. We are pretty familiar with all the beeps that can happen on our boat--bilge alarms, fume alarms, watches, cell phones with low batteries, reminder alarms, errant air conditioners, etc. But this beeping really stumped us. We spent about 10 minutes trying to localize it... was it down below? In the bow? In the stern? In the engine room? It is REALLY hard to tell where it is coming from.

We were pretty convinced it wasn't onboard, but when we went outside to see who else's boat was beeping, it was not as loud as it was down below. Hmmm...

We finally came to the conclusion that it must be Sonar signals coming through the water. A chat with a neighbor on the dock confirmed that occasionally a ship in Pearl Harbor is testing their sonar. She said sometimes it lasts for 24 hrs or more. Ooooohh nooooooo!

I'm a light sleeper. It's nearly 11pm and still beeping loudly. I think it's going to be a long night!!

But... it seems to change tone every now and then... almost like it's moving around. Do we have a mini-sub playing in our harbor??
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Sherry & Dave
in Honolulu, Hawaii for the winter
At 11/5/2010 6:06 PM (utc) our position was 21°22.26'N 157°56.27'W

Getting Soggy Paws Cleaned Up

2010-11-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

The "mostly boring stuff" we've been doing is cleaning up Soggy Paws and getting ready to head to Florida for a month.

Dave Washing Our Genoa
We have taken down our genoa and staysail, washed them, and inspected them carefully for places that need some repair.

They both look in pretty good shape after 3 years and 15,000 miles. But they do need a restitching in a few spots. The old adage "A stitch in time saves nine" really applies. It is so much easier to restitch something that is still hanging together than try to put it all back together once you've let it fall completely apart.

We have also taken down all the halyards--running up 'sacrificial' halyards--really cheap line we buy at Home Depot.

We put up our foredeck awning to protect the dinghy, which is still stored on the foredeck.

We are trying to offload some stuff that we haven't been using, or are upgrading. There's a marine flea market at the downtown marina area tomorrow, so we've been hauling all our stuff out to sell.

We have spent a lot of time online researching the new things we plan to buy in Hawaii, placing orders, and getting ready for some major refit activity. And planning our activities in Florida.

We are still learning our way around Hawaii... Dave let me take the car out by myself for the first time yesterday. Just down to Hickham AFB Exchange, where we had to return something we bought last week. I made it there and back successfully without getting lost.

3 Shoes to the Wind

2010-11-05T20:37:00.001-07:00

Well, we were dismayed to find yesterday that the Wind God took our shoes. We leave our shoes on the dock, and it was a really gusty morning. Dave stepped on to the dock and went to put his shoes on, and only found one shoe left from 2 pairs.

The Orphan Shoe
This, of course, is not a disaster, but we LIKED those shoes, and we miss them! We are left with one half of a pair of well-used imitation Crocs (from a city market in Peru) and I had to dig out my old Crocs (boatyard-stained and also very well used).

Dave has temporarilty reverted to his '2 left feet' sandals (which I find a little embarrasing). Back to Walmart we go!!

Dave's Temporary Shore Shoes
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Sherry & Dave
in Honolulu, Hawaii for the winter

Univeristy of Hawaii Football Game

2010-11-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

Well, we've been doing lots, but it's mostly boring stuff (boat maintenance).

But last night we went to a University of Hawaii football game at Aloha Stadium. We happen to be docked right in the middle of the 'Tailgate Zone' for Aloha Stadium. Our parking lot, which is normally a pretty sleepy place, turns into party city before the UH home games.

We saw that there was a home game (at Aloha Stadium, which is within walking distance), and went online and bought tickets. It is their Homecoming game, so we figured it would be hard to find tickets. But the stadium was only 2/3 full. We probably could have 'scalped' some tickets for less if we'd been patient. We tailgated a little with some other people on the dock, and then walked to the stadium. We are closer to the stadium here on the boat, than the parking lot we normally park in for Gator games.

But it was a great game--a lot more laid back than a Gator game (with 3x as many people and a lot more pressure due to 'standings'). The fans were just as fanatic (and a few just as drunk and rowdy). The UH Warriors totally wiped out the Idaho team, so it was fun watching the game. Lots of opportunities to cheer for 'our' team.

And, earlier in the day, we watched the Florida-Georgia game on TV. A great game that went into overtime, with the Gators winning in the end.

Getting Settled in Honolulu

2010-10-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Pearl Harbor on October 19.

The Pearl Harbor Shipyard Area
We (snif) had to split up with our cruising mates on s/v Infini... we went into the Rainbow Bay Marina, in Pearl Harbor, and Infini went into the Hawaii Yacht Club in the Ala Wai Yacht Basin. Only military (retired or otherwise) can get into Pearl Harbor.

Rainbow Bay Marina in Pearl Harbor

We spent the next several days running around with our new friends on s/v Windy City, who have been here at Rainbow Bay for about the last year. They have a car, and graciously offered to chauffeur us around to help us get settled. Our primary job was to find a car for ourselves. We started at the "Lemon Lot" at Hickham Air Force Base and worked our way through a few used car dealers nearby and some possibilities we found on Craigslist.com.

Our New Car
After 2 days of looking, we had a pretty good idea of current values in the "under $3000" range. We settled on a nice looking but fairly old/high mileage Toyota SUV Rav/4 L, for $2800, no sales tax, and $25 registration/inspection fees. Not too bad. It has 4 doors, 2WD, a roof rack, and cold air. We think we can easily resell it for about what we paid for it when we leave in 5 months.

The marina here has recently had a drastic personnel turnover, and the new manager, who didn't get any coaching from the old one, is struggling with simple issues. It took us 3 days to get a mailbox, and we're still not in a permanent parking space. But it's otherwise a really nice place, with decent showers, laundry, book swap, and a hanging out place for residents. And very secure. But not so secure that friends can't visit--it is Navy property but not within the gates of the base, so anyone can come visit without any hassle.

Today is College Football Day on Soggy Paws. One of the few things we miss about being in the U.S. is watching college football on TV. We are using our spiffy HVR-950Q WinTV receiver on our laptop to watch TV. With the tiny supplied antenna we are getting about 6 channels, and contemplating a better antenna that can be mounted higher.
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At 10/20/2010 7:32 PM (utc) our position was 21°22.26'N 157°56.27'W

Three Days in Maui

2010-10-19T13:58:00.001-07:00

Three days in Maui is certainly NOT enough!!

First, arrival... We got across the Alenuihaha Channel by 11am--before the wind in the channel got too bad. We decided that since we were making good time and it was a nice day, that we'd stop at the small island of Molokini for lunch. This is a popular snorkeler's day trip from Maui and we could see the tourist boats coming and going as we approached. Fortunately, we got there at about 11:30am, just when the morning trip boats were leaving. By 11:45am, ALL of the tourist boats had left, and it was just us and another outboard boat with a family aboard. We grabbed a vacant mooring over near the tip of the western arm of the "U" that is Molokini. The moorings here are not on the surface--the mooring ball is about 8' below the surface of the water, easily visible when you get close, in the clear water. The mooring has a tag line that hangs down. The tag line is long enough to hook into with the typical mooring line from your bow. But someone has to jump in the water and get the tag line. Dave assigned the "ship's diver" (me) to this job.

We just stopped for lunch and a quick snorkel. This is one of the 'premier' snorkeling destinations for Maui, but it was a real yawner for us, after French Polynesia. Very nice clear water, and surprisingly warm, but not a lot of coral and not much fish life. (The water in Hilo Harbor, when I jumped in to clean the prop was, by contrast, 'freezing'). We located a dive buoy further out near the west arm of Molokini--it looked like a great place to stage for a dive on the wall that faces west (outside of the "U") there. But there was a pretty strong current running out over the reef towards the wall, so I didn't want to go too far to check out the wall.

By 12:30, we were underway again, motorsailing in light air, toward Lahaina. We arrived in Lahaina about mid-afternoon, and easily picked up a Lahaina Yacht Club mooring, located west of the channel, toward the end of the row of (mostly commercial) boats. There is a completely protected harbor here, but there is NO CHANCE to get a slip. Someone at Lahaina Yacht Club said that they had just gotten a slip there, after being on a waiting list for 15 years (!!!). But the moorings suited us better anyway.

The LYC moorings are well-maintained (I dove down and checked ours out--strong and in good shape), and cheap. Can't beat 'no cost'! There doesn't seem to be a time limit for staying there--as long as there were moorings available they said we could stay, and seemed disappointed that we were just passing through. We had a beer at the bar and talked to some members and they were wow-ed when we told them we'd come all the way from Florida.

Once you've hooked up to a mooring marked LYC, make a note of the mooring number and take your dinghy into the dinghy dock in the harbor. It's a little hard to find the Lahaina Yacht Club in this Key West-like tourist town, but it's about 3 blocks west of the harbor along the waterfront--keep your eyes open, it's easy to walk past the alley-like door on the water side of the street, just past 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' bar. Tell them what mooring you are on, fill out a 'we won't sue' set of paperwork, and they will issue you a temporary membership card. After that you are free to use their facilities, beer is about $3.25 on special, and lunches run $6-10 and dinners $9-25. Showers are upstairs over the bar.

For the next 2 days, we rented a car with our friends on Infini, and toured the two major tourist destinations. (Note: Book your rental car ahead... they have just added 3 new flights into Maui and all the rental car companies were out of cars when we rented ours--we booked ahead and got a comfortable van for $75/day). There is a bus that goes around, but I don't think you can get to the 2 places we went (below) by bus.

The first was the Haleakala National Park--on the (non-active) Haleakela volcano. On the way there, we covered a lot of what else there is to see in Maui. One notable place was the windsurfer beach at Kanaha Beach Park in Kahului Bay. There were literally over a hundred windsurfers and kiteboarders out there having a blast in the good winds and surf conditions. Almost every place we stopped, one could easily spend a day just hanging out. But we were on a mission to see everything we could in 2 days, so only stayed for 15 minutes. :(

On the second day, we did what is known as 'the Hana road'. It is a narrow, winding road along Maui's north coast, with lots of stops for beautiful breathtaking scenery and waterfalls, and lush tropical foliage. At the very 'end' of the road is the lower end of the Haleakela National Park, a place called 'The Seven Pools' where there is a 2 mile hike through an amazing bamboo forest to a 200' waterfall, which feeds a chain of waterfalls and pools. We had time to stand in the waterfall for pics for a few minutes, and then head back down. Again, we could have spent a whole day just at that one location!! If we did it again, we'd stay overnight someplace between Hana and the park, and devote a whole day to that area. We saw tents in the Waianapanapa State Park just before, so I know camping is possible there, for people on a budget. I'm not sure about lower Haleakela National Park.

On the last day, we turned the car in and hitched a ride on the Budget shuttle to the Whaler's Mall. This is a very upscale mall near all the resorts on the west coast of Maui. Fun window-shopping, but out of our price range. Lots of $20-40% off signs in the windows, but 20% off a $150 outfit is still well above Walmart prices. We mainly went there for the Whaling Museum. This is a small, but nicely done free musuem. From there we caught the $1 bus back to Lahaina where we 'power shopped' at Ace Hardware and a big grocery store across the street, within easy walking distance of the harbor. We bought sandwiches in the grocery store and took them to the park by the harbor to eat and people-watch.

In the afternoon, we visited with our friends from (formerly) Peace and Aloha, who live on Maui. They are in the 3rd year of building a gorgeous home overlooking the south coast of Maui (David and son Eric are doing ALL the work themselves). We had a nice evening socializing in their rental condo in the Napili point area. (See their rental condos on VRBO.com Listing #305703).

Again, we should have spent AT LEAST a week in Maui, and more would have been better. Allocating two weeks would not have been too much.
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At 10/18/2010 6:16 PM (utc) our position was 20°56.52'N 156°46.41'W

Underway for Molokai

2010-10-18T11:10:00.001-07:00

Too busy having fun to write up our Maui experiences, but it was fun and we could easily have stayed 2-3 weeks and not gotten bored. 3 days was way too short to do it justice. We're coming back in the Spring! I promise to write it up and post some pictures as soon as we slow down!!! (not sure when that will be as long as I stay married to Dave :)

We are currently motorsailing in very light winds for a harbor on the south side of Molokai called Lono Harbor. It is a disused commercial harbor where we can supposedly anchor over night in sheltered water before moving on to Honolulu tomorrow.
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At 10/18/2010 6:09 PM (utc) our position was 20°56.04'N 156°45.85'W

Crossing the Alenuihaha Channel

2010-10-14T13:28:00.001-07:00

We motorsailed all day yesterday, reaching Upolo Point on the NW tip of the Big Island around 4:30pm. Then we turned left down into the Alenuihaha Channel to Nishimura Bay, where we anchored for the night just as the sun went down. On the last leg, we were in the lee of the island, and in the stronger winds, sailing along at 8 knots. It was fun.

Our friends on Infini opted to sail the whole way, planned to cross the channel during the night, and carry on to Lahaina, on Maui.

We had a nice dinner and got to bed early for our 4am reville. The Alenuihaha Channel can be extremely rough in prevailing winds--bounded by two high islands (Hawaii and Maui), the wind whistles down through the channel at 10-15 knots higher than prevailing winds. So the trick is to scuttle across as fast as possible in the wee hours of the morning, before the sea breeze picks up.

We were underway by 4:45am this morning, and are now enjoying a not-too-boisterous motorsail across the channel. Our ETA for the other side is about 10:45 am, and for Lahaina, about 2pm.

We plan to stay in Maui for a couple of days. We've reserved a car for 2 days, so we can see the island and also visit our friends formerly of s/v Peace and Aloha. Dave met P&A in the San Blas in 2000, and they have since completed a circumnavigation, sold their boat, and are now building a house on Maui.

After Maui, we plan to stop overnight on Monday night at Moloka'i and then go on into Pearl Harbor on Tuesday. We have already obtained a security permit to enter Pearl Harbor (by faxing our boat documents, including a completed Coast Guard Safety Inspection Report, to the appropriate authorities), and confirmed our reservations one more time at Rainbow Bay Marina--the Navy Marina in Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor will be our base of operations for the next 4-5 months.
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At 10/14/2010 5:38 PM (utc) our position was 20°23.24'N 156°09.89'W

Underway for Maui

2010-10-13T10:42:00.001-07:00

Yes, I know, I haven't even finished posting our Big Island adventures, and here we go again. But, what the hey...

We left Radio Bay (Hilo) early this morning, bound for tiny Nishimura Bay on the NW corner of the Big Island. We'll anchor overnight there, and (assuming conditions are OK) will get up at 04:30am tomorrow to cross the trecherous Alenuihaha Channel between the Big Island and Maui, in the nighttime calm.
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At 10/13/2010 5:41 PM (utc) our position was 19°48.05'N 155°04.29'W

Is an e-Reader in our future?

2010-10-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

We have been envious of a few cruisers who have had Kindles on board, and are seriously contemplating buying one or two e-readers while we're back in the Land of Stuff. Not just for the downloadable books, but also because we now have many manuals and cruising guides in PDF form.

I knew about the Kindle and the iPad, but didn't realize that there are now about 20 other brands of similar devices. Uh-oh, choices!! Now just trying to sort out price vs. functionality, etc.

Someone told us 'definitely the iPad is the best', but then I looked at the iPad starting price and had a heart attack. Another friend highly recommended the Kindle 3 over the iPad--better daylight readable, better battery, and a significantly better price. At $139 for a new Kindle 3, we could actually afford to buy 2.

On the Air on the Big Island

2010-10-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Our final stop on our first day of touring Hawaii was the Leilani Bed and Breakfast. This is the home of Lynn and Randy VanLeeuwen, in the South Point area of Hawaii.

Randy and Sherry in Randy's Radio Shack
Randy is KH6RC, one of of the main Pacific Seafarer's Net net controllers. We have been talking with Randy for the past year on the radio, and really wanted to meet him face to face.

We had a delightful evening getting to know Lynn and Randy better. And their B&B was a delightful experience.

But the highlight of the evening, for me, was being guest 'Net Control' of the Pacific Seafarer's Net. I got to use Randy's radio and fancy beam antenna to run the Pacific Seafarer's Net. I talked to Net Relay stations scattered from Florida to Pitcairn Island to New Zealand and Australia, and took position reports on 9 boats that were underway to various locations in the Pacific Ocean. It was fun.

Randy's Big Beam Antenna
And all the Radio Equipment!
Sherry On the Air as Pacsea Net Control
KE4BKF, KN4TH, and KH6RC

Touring the Big Island - Day 1

2010-10-06T15:45:00.001-07:00

We finally took a break from shopping to make plans for a quickie tour of The Big Island.

Touring the Wet Side of the Big Island
Our next door neighbors in Radio Bay had rented a car for about $40/day, and that seemed pretty reasonable, especially when split between two boats. But when we went in to their rental company to book a car for a few days, they told us that all the prices were higher now. Apparently there's an Ironman Triathlon going on this weekend in Kona (on the west coast of Hawaii), and all the cars were booked.

So I went online to try to book a car with our USAA discount. The first 2 big companies I tried--Avis and Budget--were all sold out. So when Hertz came up with a car for 'only' $49, we grabbed it. And for only $7 more, Dave upgraded us to a nice mini-van, when he picked up the car.

Dave and Sue
Our first stop was the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It was raining when we left Hilo, and still raining when we got to the Park. And still raining when we left the park. We saw a nice volcano video, and drove the crater rim road. There is no active lava there now, but lots of old lava, live steam vents, and lava tubes. We also stopped at the Jagger Museum in the park, with more displays, and some active Seismometers.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Steam Vents
Lava Tubes
The Kiluaea Crater
Monitoring Seismic Activity
The next stop was the Punalu'u Black Sand Beach. The big attraction here was... black sand. But also, something I've never seen before, green sea turtles sleeping on the beach in broad daylight. Apparently they come up onto the nice warm black sand to warm up. They were sleeping so soundly they looked dead, but we did see them blink once or twice.

The Black Sand Beach

Hawaiian Green Turtles on the Beach

Power-Shopping in Walmart

2010-10-04T01:25:00.001-07:00

Well, we made up for yesterday's frugal day by blowing $350 in Walmart in about 1 hour.

Our friends on Infini came in this morning about 9am (trailed by a USCG launch--they got 'practiced on' by the local Coast Guard cutter as they were crossing the harbor). They stuck it out through the light winds and sailed right up until about 10 miles out when the wind dropped off to nothing. They were luck and got cleared through Customs in about an hour--having told Customs (via us) that they were coming today, there was a guy in waiting for them. No overtime fees either.

As soon as they got cleared, we arranged a taxi to the Mall and Walmart. The free bus doesn't run on Sundays, but 5 of us splitting the $11 taxi ride to the Mall wasn't too bad.

Dave and I were on a mission--to buy 2 bicycles. But we also hit the mall (where I bought a new pair of adventure shoes), and showed the Infini crew where everything was in the Mall/Walmart area. We had lunch at the Oriental Food Court next to Office Max, and then went back to Walmart.

Walmart had some nice 'priced right' mountain bikes for $92. Another cruiser who wrote a little 10-page cruising guide to Hawaii, really recommended you buy bikes when you hit Hilo. Great idea, and thanks a bunch for all the advice, Mita Kuulu!

We plan to use the bikes while in Hawaii over the next 6 months, and then sell them at a discount to someone else (we hope) when we leave. But if we use these bikes enough, we might spring for some good quality marine folding bikes before we leave Hawaii in the Spring. We bought a few accessories (locks, luggage rack for the back, cover for the bikes, etc) and spent an hour in Walmart trying to assemble this stuff, so we could ride our bikes and our other stuff back to the boat. It was a success. We had a nice ride back, and are looking forward to exploring some more of Hilo on the bikes later.

I also bought 2 bathing suits--mine from 3 years ago are in tatters. I hate to shop, in general, but I love 'power shopping' in Walmart.

We have arranged a 3-day car rental for Tuesday morning. It was a bit of a struggle--there is an Ironman Triathlon going on in Kona (also on the Big Island) starting in a few days, and all the rental cars are getting sold out. For the same car our friends rented for $40 a day this past week, Enterprise wanted $70/day for this week, but told us they didn't have any cars. I finally went online last night and found a Hertz car for 'only' $50 a day. This was after checking Budget and Avis and finding no cars available.

We are going to cram 5 of us in the rental and split it with Infini, so it will end up being pretty reasonable. We figured we can get the highlights of the Big Island in 2-3 days, leaving Hilo (where we are) for more leisurely exploration using the bikes and the free local bus transportation.

Tourist magazines are in racks on every corner, with maps and ads and recommendations for what to do. There are lots of guided tours available that all sound really interesting and fun, but they start at $100-$150 per person for a half day tour. Forget it! These range from horseback riding, ATV adventures, lava viewing trips, hiking, biking, etc. Cool stuff but pricey. (We got so spoiled by South America). With the rental car and a Lonely Planet, we'll do 'self tours'.
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At 10/2/2010 4:00 AM (utc) our position was 19°43.88'N 155°03.16'W

Safe and Sound in Hilo

2010-10-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

We dropped anchor and pulled Med-moor style into the sea wall in Radio Bay. It wasn't what I expected. Instead of dancing girls in hula skirts, we got a container terminal. But the price is right, and there's a free bus route to the mall from the front gate of the terminal.

We got checked in through Customs by the friendliest US Customs agent I've EVER EVER encountered, this morning. And made it to the mall (and Walmart, Office Max) by 10am. Didn't buy much, but sure enjoyed sight-seeing.
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At 10/2/2010 1:08 AM (utc) our position was 19°39.49'N 154°54.70'W

Land Ho!

2010-10-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

We sighted the Big Island of Hawaii at about 7am, and have been motorsailing toward the port of Hilo, on the NE coast. We expect to be anchored in Radio Bay before (JUST before) sunset.
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At 10/2/2010 12:52 AM (utc) our position was 19°38.38'N 154°53.33'W

Enroute to Hawaii - Final Day

2010-10-01T07:29:00.001-07:00

Only 75 miles to go!!

The wind got really light about 6am yesterday--just as had been forecast for nearly a week. I'm not familiar enough with the North Pacific weather patterns to know exactly what caused this big 'hole' in the tradewinds, but it's here. I do know there's an early cold front stalled out just above Hawaii. In a few days it will be back to 15-20 knots where we are, but right now it's like a lake.

So we reluctantly started our engine and started motoring in. We have now been motorsailing for almost 24 hours, at moderate RPM. Other than the sound of the engine, it waw a pleasant day... very sunny skies and smooth seas. We have a big long slow swell that means the surfers are going to be happy this weekend, and as we go over each one, it feels like Soggy Paws is having to climb a hill.

We put the fishing lines out yesterday morning after breakfast, and 10 minute later got a hit. It was about a 5' Marlin. He was pulling the line out like crazy--Dave thought he'd lose it all before he got him stopped. So we were a little relieved that he got off. We saw him jump a couple of times, but he cut the line and was gone. Dave re-rigged the lines but we have yet to get another strike.

Of the other two boats we've been traveling with, Apple, the Jeanneau 44, arrived in Hilo yesterday sometime. Infini is about 160 miles behind us, and as of yesterday afternoon, was still trying to sail, and making about 3 knots. Infini has a leaky injection pump and wants to minimize use of their engine.

We could have sailed a few hours more, but Dave got severe 'horse headed for the barn' syndrome, and just wanted to get in. He got it in his head that we're going to watch the Gators beat Alabama on Saturday, and that was that.

Fortunately, we have made very good time since cranking up Mr. Perkins. Motoring at moderate RPM, with the sails still up, we've been able to average about 6.3 knots. Our ETA is now Friday afternoon about 5pm local time.

We understand the Agriculture people confiscate any fresh produce you have left, so we've been having a bonanza--trying to eat everything up. As we ate down our fridge, we discovered a few bags of tomatoes and green peppers that we didn't know were there, and we still have lots of onions, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots. We tossed the last of the bananas a few days ago, and ate our last Pamplemousse (French Polynesian grapefruit) yesterday. We have one apple left.

So we will anchor up in Radio Bay around sunset. Radio Bay is in the Hilo harbor, at the NE tip of "the Big Island" of Hawaii. We'll have a good dinner, get a full night's sleep, and check in with Customs tomorrow morning. Then we understand there's a bar nearby with good fast wifi, and hopefully a TV or two with college football on.
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At 10/1/2010 2:22 PM (utc) our position was 18°59.84'N 154°07.14'W

Sunrise at Sea

2010-09-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

I am a morning person, and I've always loved to go for an early morning walk on the beach and watch the sunrise.

For most of the last year, we've had a watch system of 3 hours on and 3 hours off, and the way it worked out best gave Dave the sunrise. But we've been fiddling with our watch system over the last couple of passages, and this time, I get the sunrise. I'd almost forgotten why I love that dawn watch so much. I love watching the light slowly creep into the sky. Starting about an hour before sunrise, there is a barely perceptible easing of the darkness in the East. Then gradually, the light gets brighter, and most days, I am rewarded with some beautiful colors just before the sun pops up over the horizon.

Today is another gorgeous morning. We are STILL sailing, though the wind is down to about 8 knots. I can't believe this fat tub (don't let Dave hear me say that), can still be moving along at 5 knots in only 8 knots of wind. But we have managed to keep eeking out 5 miles every hour through the night.

The forecast is for the wind to continue dropping. We have done so well over the last 36 hours that Dave has gotten it in his head that we can make Radio Bay (the anchorage in Hilo) by Friday night. We will likely get in after dark, and will soon have to crank up Mr. Perkins. But we're both so looking forward to a good night's sleep.

The approach and entry into the Hilo harbor area, and Radio Bay, is well charted and well bouyed with lighted bouys. So we will likely go in anyway, even if we arrive after dark.

209 Miles to anchor down in Radio Bay!!
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At 9/30/2010 4:13 PM (utc) our position was 17°18.24'N 152°33.90'W

North Pacific Shipping Routes

2010-09-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

Boy, we saw more ships at sea today than we've seen in the previous 6 months! (3) Must be getting close to civilization. The last ship that passed us, near sunset, passed within about 300 yards. That's really close.

We saw him on AIS about 13 miles away, he was coming up behind us and slightly to starboard, on a converging course. The AIS indicated he was bound for Taiwan, probably from the Panama Canal, and we could see that he was tracking right along 15 N latitude, going straight west.

For the longest time the AIS was saying that the CPA (closest point of approach) would be .25 miles. So we finally called him on the VHF and told him where we were in relation to him. After a bit of conversation, he finally said he saw us on his radar (about 6.5 miles away).

We could see on the AIS information that he had changed course a tiny bit to starboard after we talked to him, to pass in front of us. But visually, he was still coming right at us, and the CPA kept showing that he would come very close (.015 NM). I was pretty nervous, but Dave said "He sees us and he won't run us down". When he finally drew abreast of us, he sounded his big air horn, and we could see someone out on the bridge deck waving at us. I got a great picture of them crossing in front of us.

Another ship we saw today was bound for Valparaiso, Chile. This is the second ship we've seen coming down that same course line from Hawaii toward South America. He didn't answer our hail on VHF, but we were well away from him. Dave says he was probably carrying pineapple from Hawaii to South America. If you draw a route in Maxsea (our charting program), from Hawaii to Valpariaso, the Great Circle route goes right past where we were.

We have had another 24 hours of nice sailing, and we anticipate tomorrow to be nice as well--though the wind is forecast to start slacking off.

394 miles to Hilo, we expect to be in on Saturday morning.
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At 9/29/2010 5:35 AM (utc) our position was 15°07.59'N 150°09.64'W

Enroute to Hawaii - Day 13

2010-09-28T10:01:00.001-07:00

We had a quiet night, the night before last, and a good sail yesterday. But as predicted, the winds are starting to relax.

We got down to about 4 knots of boat speed in the middle of the night last night, with the sails slapping, and finally relented and turned on the engine. 4 knots would be do-able if it weren't for the fairly large swell that rolls us around.

We motorsailed for a few hours, charging batteries and running the refridge.

Fortunately, the wind has come back to 12-13 knots this morning, and we are under sail again.

We called the Hilo Harbormaster on the Iridium phone yesterday, to ask a bunch of questions about arriving on a Saturday. He seems like a nice guy. Usually we would be trying NOT to clear in on Saturday (just sit on the boat and wait til Monday), to avoid overtime fees. But Dave has got it in his mind that he wants to watch some football games on Saturday afternoon.

We are still trying to get ahold of the Hilo Customs office--they were not answering their phone yesterday. The Harbormaster said there were 2 cruise ships in Hilo, that's probably why.

The forecast is for the winds to stay in the sailable range today, though getting progressively lighter, and start dropping off to 'too light to sail' tomorrow. We are hoping to sail as long as possible. It looks like we may have to motor the last 36-48 hours (or sit and roll and slap for 2 days til the wind comes back).

We are 465 miles from Hilo, and should be able to easily make port by Saturday morning.
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At 9/28/2010 4:59 PM (utc) our position was 14°30.99'N 149°04.29'W

Enroute to Hawaii - Day 11

2010-09-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

<yawn> Another long day on the high seas.

We had a very quiet night last night--the wind was light and we ghosted along, averaging only 4 knots. But we were able to keep sailing in mostly the right direction. I had to talk Dave out of turning on the engine several times, but fortunately every time the wind dropped off to the 'too light to sail comfortably' range, it would pick back up just enough to convince Dave to keep sailing.

For a few hours this morning we had some really nice wind--close to 15 knots, but it soon eased off again to the 10 kt range. We still were able to average 5 knots for most of the day. Our noon-to-noon mileage was 121 miles--the lowest so far this trip.

But it was a nice sunny day, and really a beautiful sail. However, we've been at sea for 11 days, and we are ready to "get there".

All 4 boats we've been tracking on this trip are now out of the ITCZ, and though we all suffered through about 36-48 hours of drizzle and shifty winds, no one clocked over about 22 knots, and no one saw any lightning. Pretty different than we expected. Hope we get as lucky on our return trip in April next year.

We have seen only 2 ships so far in 1300 miles of sailing. One was a freighter who crossed our in the middle of the ITCZ. It was enroute from Los Angeles to New Zealand. We 'saw' him on the AIS and the radar, and talked to him on the radio, but never actually saw him--even though he passed within 2 miles of us. The constant drizzle obscured him completely. Usually a freighter of that size is lit up like a Christmas tree, and you can see them 10 miles away. Another ship just passed us a couple of miles away. Again, we saw him first on the AIS, then went out and looked for him.

For the non-boaters, AIS stands for Automated Identification System. It is a new gadget that big ships are required to have that broadcasts a digital signal over the VHF radio (receivable about 25 miles away), with the ship info, location, speed, and direction. We have a receiver aboard that receives that signal, and plots it on our computerized charting system. It's pretty cool. Way better than radar. The ship's info includes the name of the ship, what kind it is (freighter, tanker, etc), how big it is, and its destination. I think we'll be upgrading our AIS receiver to a transmitter when we get to Hawaii. That way THEY can see US too.

658 Miles--about 5 more days--to Hilo, Hawaii.
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At 9/27/2010 7:14 AM (utc) our position was 12°41.29'N 146°17.14'W

Welcome to the NE Trades

2010-09-25T23:24:00.001-07:00

We are happy to report that we are finally clear of the ITCZ. We ended up turning on the engine last night about midnight, after I spent a frustrating 4 hours trying to keep us going in the squally conditions and shifty wind and really confused seas. When Dave took over, he said "That's it, I'm turning on the engine.". It was a good decision--the GRIB files showed stuff brewing up in the ITCZ and we just wanted to get clear.

By 6am this morning, we were at 10-10N, with some sunshine and fluffy white clouds, instead of the low gray clouds we'd had for the past 2 days. The wind filled in nicely from the NE, and we turned off the engine, rolled out the genoa, and have been sailing all day.

We had a fabulous sunset this evening--complete with a green flash, and then some great after-effects with the clouds. And we were visited by porpoises today as well.

Unfortunately, the normally-strong tradewinds are forecast to get lighter and lighter, and then totally die in a couple of days. I'm not exactly sure what's causing it, but it looks like we'll have to motor in to Hilo the last 48 hours. I keep hoping the GRIB files will change, but so far that has been steadily predicted for the last few days.

778 Miles to Hilo. ETA probably sometime Saturday, Oct 2.

We understand the Florida Gators beat Kentucky today. Go Gators! We'll be rooting for them to knock off #1 Alabama next weekend--maye we'll get in soon enough to even watch the game on TV!
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At 9/26/2010 6:05 AM (utc) our position was 11°11.94'N 144°47.72'W

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night

2010-09-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

Picture Snoopy sitting on his dog house with his typewriter...

Yes, we have a dark and stormy night. We have been making our way NW through the worst of the ITCZ today. We motored all night in light winds and rain. In the morning, there was enough wind to turn the engine off and put the sails out. But we've had squally weather and shifty winds all day. We've made about 10 sail changes today--genoa in and out, staysail in and out, pole up and down twice. The wind has gone from SW to NE--and all points in between, and between 0 and 20 knots. So far, nothing even approaching a Florida thunderstorm--no lightning and no wind over about 20 knots.

We celebrated passing 9°N at 4pm today with another black squall line ahead of us. And 3 hrs later, we are still in the rain, and hard on the wind with the wind out of the NE.

Well, maybe 10°N will bring us clear weather and steady winds--hopefully dawn will bring us 10°N and sunshine.

We are now well past the halfway point. Only 924 miles to go (about 7-8 days of this).
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At 9/25/2010 5:33 AM (utc) our position was 09°17.78'N 143°18.55'W

Greetings from the ITCZ!

2010-09-23T22:49:00.000-07:00

We sailed all night last night and most of the day today, wing on wing. It's a nice rig--genoa poled out to windward, main vanged to leeward, and the staysail sheeted on the centerline. Very stable and pretty fast even in light air. We can tolerate course variations of up to 60 degrees (briefly), so the autopilot can handle the steering.

If we get a squall, we roll the genoa up and leave the pole set.

About 3pm, the wind came up and seemed to be shifting SW (as forecast). This was good, so we dropped the pole and gybed the genoa, expecting to have a nice broad reach up our course line. However, an hour later, we were in rain, and the wind went back SE, and then very light. So we reluctantly started the engine. We are now motorsailing with main and staysail sheeted tight to stop the roll. Even though there is only about 5 knots of wind, the seas are still big enough to be uncomfortable.

We had a nice civilized dinner tonight, with the table up and everything. Lamb chops, fresh mashed potatoes, and cucumber salad. Crew morale is good. We are looking forward to getting through the ITCZ within 48 hours. We are holding our breath that nothing major will spin up near us while we're crossing through.

Geek alert: With the Iridium phone hooked up to Sailmail, I can download a very small IR satellite picture from NOAA Honolulu's website. It has all the active storm cells along the ITCZ highlighted. I then pulled it into Sea Clear (a shareware charting program that lets you create your own charts), added some reference points, and voila, I can see our boat moving across the satellite picture. Pretty cool, and really helps in trying to pick our way through the hot spots in the ITCZ.

Only 1044 nautical miles to go to Hilo. We are about halfway. ETA probably sometime Saturday, Oct 2.
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At 9/24/2010 5:30 AM (utc) our position was 07°12.20'N 142°38.98'W

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

2010-09-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

Enroute from Marquesas to Hawaii, Day 7.

We are not quite halfway to Hawaii. The fun sailing is over and now what's left is over 1,000 miles in light and variable winds, interspersed with scattered squalls, and a few low pressure areas. Even the tradewinds that should normally give us a booming sail on the last leg to Hawaii, seem to be shutting down. At least that's the current long range forecast.

So we're at the inevitable 'beam me up' phase of the trip, where we are tired of all the 'fun', and just want to get it over with. Unfortunately, the warp drive is down and so we're just going to have to continue sailing slowly along at 5 knots.

Today's big THANK YOU goes to our friends: Winnie, Jim Yates and Barbara Emmons of s/v Carisma, and John and Linda on Nakia. Thanks for all the help and info you have sent our way!!
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At 9/23/2010 5:32 AM (utc) our position was 05°05.22'N 141°56.26'W

Back in the Northern Hemisphere

2010-09-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

We crossed the Equator at about 11am today. It's nice to be back where the High Pressure areas rotate clockwise, and the cold weather comes from the North, like we are used to. I can stop looking at weather maps standing on my head.

We are still sailing almost due north--heading for a waypoint somewhere near 10N 142W, where we'll 'fall off' (change course) for Hawaii.

About 1,380 miles to go to Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii.
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At 9/21/2010 5:53 AM (utc) our position was 00°48.28'N 141°38.61'W

Enroute to Hawaii - Day 4

2010-09-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

I hate to sound redundant, but we're still having a fantastic sail. 1,496 miles to go, as the seagull flies. All systems aboard are working well, and the crew are doing great. Nice meal of pork chops, baked potatoes and green beans for dinner tonight.

Dave's cousin Bryan reports that the Gators whupped the Tennessee Vols yesterday... sorry, Sally. Go Gators!!
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At 9/20/2010 6:26 AM (utc) our position was 01°22.76'S 141°33.68'W

p.s. PLEASE, if you want to respond to our emails (and we always look forward to hearing from you), do NOT send our original message back to us along with your message--we receive this email via HF radio, and every extra byte counts. Attachments and pics get automatically stripped from incoming emails, so pls send those to our svsoggypaws email address instead.

Enroute to Hawaii - Day 3

2010-09-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

Wow, what FANTASTIC sailing. We made 150 nautical miles in our first 24 hours--that's the best 24 hour run we've ever had.

Now the winds have moderated some, but it's still really nice sailing weather--10-14 knots on the beam, with moderate seas, and sunny skies. The moon is nearly full at night, so we've got nice shiny nights, too.

So far, the forecast for our passage through the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) (still 5 or 6 days ahead) looks like it is going to be pretty easy. We are prepared for a day or two of motoring to get through it, but not anticipating any nasty weather.

"Only" 1,660 miles (as the seagull flies) to Hilo... Current ETA probably 2nd or 3rd of October.

Of course, the troubles from home even follow us out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I got an email from Capital One about a suspected fraudulent charge on our credit card. It was only $12, but after 3 satellite phone calls (one to my daughter to make sure she hadn't done anything unusual), they refused the charge and canceled the card. But now I'm left wondering what 'automatic' payments I have on that card that might bounce in the next 2 weeks. (Since we had to cancel some cards and re-arrange finances after our 'swim' in Easter Island, I've lost track of what thing is on what card).

And my daughter moves out of our condo in Satellite Beach in 2 weeks, for a new job with GE in Cincinnati, and we still don't have a renter lined up for the house. Sigh. But we just might get to stay in our own home when we go home in November!!

We are in radio contact twice a day with the other 2 boats out here... Infini is 50 miles east of us and Apple is about 35 miles north of us. Both too far away for VHF, so we have an SSB schedule. And we are still able to check in every morning on the French Polynesia Breakfast Net (1730z 8164 USB), which our friend John on Nakia is now running single-handed, since we have left French Poly. We are also doing an evening check-in on the Pacific Seafarer's Ham net (0300z 14300 USB).

In between all these things, we're reading, sleeping, eating, and trying to keep "Henry", our steering vane, on track. This is the first passage that we've actually used Henry for any period of time. Using the windvane saves energy (about 30ah per day), but the sails have to be "balanced" for it to work properly. It's a real learning experience, but I think we've finally figured out how to balance Soggy Paws--at least in these winds.

No fish so far, but the fishing line has only been out for about 4 hours. We don't put the fishing line out unless the seas are really low and/or we'll be in port soon (We don't want Dave cleaning a fish on the back deck in boisterous conditions).
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At 9/18/2010 7:16 PM (utc) our position was 04°45.20'S 141°30.63'W

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On Our Way to Hawaii

2010-09-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we finally made it out of Anaho Bay at noon today. The winds eased off overnight last night to a nice 15 knots, and the skies cleared by mid morning. We got our final preps done--dinghy loaded, sail covers off, engine checks done, computers and GPS's programmed, living spaces stowed, etc. The anchor came up without any problems right at noon.

Since then, we have been having a great sail--15 knots on the beam--all afternoon. Just like when we used to go sailing for fun!! We averaged 7 knots for 3 hours!!. Now the moon is up, and the wind has eased to a nice 12 kts. We're going a little bit slower, but the motion is easier, too. I could do THIS for 2 weeks, easily.

Our friends on s/v Infini left about 2 hours ahead of us, and they are heading for a slightly different waypoint to go through the small islands and seamounts NW of Nuku Hiva, so they are about 10 miles NE of us right now, on a more northerly course. Another boat, Apple, left at the same time we did, and they are about 3-4 miles NW of us. We are all still in VHF contact, but by morning will likely be too far apart for VHF. We have an SSB schedule planned to chat every morning and evening, swap positions, and share weather information

"Only" 1,854 miles to go! At our historical average speed of 135 miles per day, we should be in Hilo Hawaii on Sep 30 or Oct 1. (but don't book your tickets yet!). The big unknown, speed-wise, is the ITCZ (formerly known as "The Doldrums"). This is an area of variable winds and squally weather. Historically boats could take weeks drifting around before they managed to break through an area like this. Fortunately, we have an engine in great shape and aren't afraid to use it. So the minute the wind dies off, we'll crank up Mr. Perkins and motor on through it.

We're not exactly sure what route we'll end up taking. Historically, people have headed north out of the Marquesas and set up to cross the ITCZ at around 140 west longitude, and then fall off for Hawaii. But we've been playing with the routing optimization software in the Maxsea charting program, and are going to follow its advice (until we decide not to). It takes in the GRIB files (weather predictions) and your boat's Polars (a table indicating what speed you can make in various wind conditions) and optimizes your route. Theoretically...

Sometimes Maxsea can come up with some pretty whacky results. But for now, I agree with what the optimization suggests. So we are headed 340 degrees (NNW) til tomorrow morning at least. This is almost directly on the rhumb line (the straight line course to Hawaii).
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At 9/17/2010 5:24 AM (utc) our position was 08°04.90'S 140°20.09'W

Preparing for the Sail to Hawaii

2010-09-16T09:50:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Anaho Bay, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia 08°49.35'S / 140°03.89'W

Beautiful Anaho BayPhoto By Simon Scott

Our main focus while here in Anaho Bay has been getting ready for the two-week, 2100-mile sail to Hawaii. In between hikes and snorkeling expeditions, both us and our friends on Infini have been working on boat maintenance issues--bottom scrubbing, rigging checks, leak fixing, etc etc.

I have also pre-cooked about a week's worth of meals, so all I'll have to do is pull something out of the freezer and heat it up.

Plus I've spent a lot of time over the last month collecting weather information about the trip. Mainly just watching weather patterns so we know what to expect. It should be a pretty decent trip. We are starting on a good weather window--wind today should be just aft of the beam at 15 knots. We'll sail N-NNW for the first week or so, until we get across the ITCZ (motoring if the wind gets too light), and then fall off in the northeast trades for our destination of Hilo Hawaii.

Though Sailmail gives us great access to many bits of weather information, we have enlisted our friend Winnie, a professional meteorologist based in Florida, to keep an eye on the 'big picture' for us. We are also getting advice from a Danish guy named Karsten who has been doing Pacific weather for cruisers out of Panama for awhile.

We will be in company with 2 other boats--Infini and another boat here headed for Hawaii called Apple. Apple is a Jeanneau 44, and is likely to go faster than us--though he swears he'll try to slow down and stick with us.

s/v Apple in Anaho Bay
We expect to make landfall in Hilo, Hawaii sometime the first week in October. The direct-line course from here is about 2100 miles, but because of the way the winds go between here and there, we may dog-leg east a little bit from a direct course.

In the last couple of months, we have finally gotten around to doing some of the less important tasks on our list--things like hooking our GPS to our EPIRB, so our emergency beacon will broadcast an accurate position if we sink. Though somewhat important, it never made it high enough on the list before our long trip to Easter Island. So we are more prepared for this trip than we ever have been. And the crew is ready...with over 6,000 miles under our belt already this year, we feel pretty seasoned!!

We plan to do a blog post and update our position at least daily. The easiest and quickest way to see where we currently are is via the Findu link:

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=KN4TH

But there are several other ways--check our Positions page on the website: svsoggypaws.com/positions.htm

Anaho Bay

2010-09-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

Current Location: Anaho Bay, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia 08°49.35'S / 140°03.89'W

We arrived in Anaho Bay, on the NE corner of Nuku Hiva, the northeastern-most of the inhabited islands in French Polynesia, about a week ago. It is the best anchorage we've been in so far in all of the Marquesas (except maybe Hanamoenoe in Tahuata).

This time of year, there is a large SE swell that makes all the anchorages on the south coast of Nuku Hiva really uncomfortable. And Taiohae, the main harbor, is particularly crappy, both because of the large swell and because of the 'williwaws' (wind gusts) that come from every direction. Daniel's Bay is better, but a little cramped, and still a little rolly. Anaho is flat calm and beautiful, and the wind blows from a constant direction at a reasonable speed.

It is a large bay with a series of pretty beaches interspersed with coconut-dotted rocky points. As everywhere on Nuku Hiva, there are signs here of a large population in the past. There are walls and tumbled-down rock structures buried all over in the foliage--all that remain of the 10's of thousands of Polynesians who lived here when the Europeans first made landfall.

There are only a few families living here now, but they keep the grounds pretty well-tended. There are the usual large coconut plantation areas, which they tend by piling all the fronds and husks into piles and burning. The coconuts get piled up and left to dry, then they are opened, and the meat extracted for 'copra'. This is eventually shipped to Tahiti and becomes coconut oil and other byproducts.

They also have the typical Marquesan gardens filled with fruit-bearing plants. We have been able to trade a few things for all the fruit we needed--especially bananas, mangoes, and limes. We got rid of the last of our 22 shells and a pack of old cigarettes for a huge stalk of bananas and some mangoes.

We were also able to trade for some pearls. There is a French boat anchored here who has spent 18 months in French Polynesia. He's a diver and spent a season helping a pearl farmer in the Tuamotus, and he was paid in pearls. So he came to us offering to trade some pearls for any leftover wine and other food we could spare. So we had a nice happy hour session with us and Infini and Florent, trading for pearls and going over all his favorite dive spots in the Tuamotus. We all came away from the trading session happy--we got a few 'quality' pearls, a few 'B' grade pearls, and a handfull of less than perfect pearls, but ones which family and friends will enjoy having as a small memento of our travels (we hope).

We have done 2 of the possible hikes in this beautiful setting. There is a lot more hiking to be done, but we're ready to head north soon. One beautiful afternoon, we hiked east over the low peninsula to the windward beach. We were warned that the beach would be buggy with no-no's (tiny biting flies much worse than mosquitos), so we went in socks and long pants and long-sleeved shirt. But it was pretty windy and I think that much coverup was overkill on that day--it was really hot hiking in all that clothing on a sunny day out of the wind!! We found a pretty beach, some semi-wild horses, some possible remains of an old habitation and not much else. We never did find the little farm back in the trees where friends had gotten fruit.

We also hiked over to the town of Hatieu, to the west. This was a little harder hike--up over a pretty high hill and down into the next bay. But it was mostly wooded and we picked an overcast day, so it wasn't too hot. The whole trail was lined with old mango trees. But some of the mangoes we collected on the ground--ven ripe ones--tasted very very tart--almost like a lemon--certainly not like any mango we ever tasted. In Hatieu, we visited the grocery store where an ice cold Tahitian beer was waiting for us. And also, of course, onions, cucumbers, potatoes, chips, and frozen baguettes. We ate lunch at Chez Yvonne on the water (we had called ahead on the cell phone for reservations, but may not be necessary). It was a yummy big lunch--most of their meals were in the $2000 CFP range (a little over $20). Between the 5 of us we had curried goat, curried shrimp, poisson cru, and goat in coconut milk. It was all good, and large portions. Even Dave was stuffed when we finished. Hatieu is a pretty little town anchored by a fairly large, fairly new catholic church. The caretaker of the church let us in for a quick look--it is only 5 years old, so pretty modern in design--'airy' is the best word to describe it. Probably built on the ancient foundations of a Marquesan marae (sp?) platform.

As everywhere in French Polynesia, we could easily spend 2-3 times the time we have spent here, and not be bored. Too bad the French insist on limiting our time here!! A 2 year cruise in just French Polynesia would not be too long, in my opinion. We have only touched on half of what's here, in the 6 months we've been here.
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At 9/15/2010 2:35 AM (utc) our position was 08°49.35'S 140°03.89'W

Cruising the North and West Coast of Nuku Hiva

2010-09-15T10:13:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Anaho Bay, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas

From the main town of Taiohae, on the south coast, to Anaho Bay, on the NE corner, it is clearly best to go 'eastabout' to get to Anaho Bay... shorter and less windward work. But leaving from Daniel's Bay, on the SW corner, the choice was not so clear. It was slightly shorter to go eastabout, but with an ESE wind, it should be much calmer going westabout.

After flip-flopping several times, we finally decided to go around the west coast. It would give us smoother water (for awhile), a chance to see part of the coast that most people don't go, and a chance to make water with our engine-driven watermaker. (It's a little dicey making water in the anchorages due to the amount of particulate in the water).

We also opted to break the trip into two parts, stopping overnight at what's known as the 'airport anchorage'--Baie Haahopu at the NW corner of Nuku Hiva.

Exploring the west coast--motorsailing slowly north and ducking into every little bay we saw to check it out--was fun. We hadn't done that type of gunkholing in awhile. Though the guidebooks only mention one or two anchorages on the west coast, we found a total of 7 bays 'possible', with reasonable protection and anchorable depths. As follows, N to S:

- Baie Marquisienne
- Anse Haatapuna
- Anse Tataia
- Anse Tapueahu
- Anse Haatuatua
- the unnamed bay just N of Pt Matatekouehi
- Baie Haahopu

A couple of these had signs of habitation--one house and a small skiff. But most were completely deserted. Some had rocky beaches, but as we got further north, more of them had sand beaches. Baie Haahopu had a pretty sand beach, but an ugly concrete dock and a building (uninhabited).

Once we got around Cap Motumano, the waves started settling down, and after rounding Pt Matateteiko, it was flat calm for the rest of the way.

The west coast of Nuku Hiva is arid and dry, so with little runoff, the diving ought to be clearer. We could easily see the bottom in 25' in Haahopu. We found another cruising boat there when we arrived, and we anchored just inside of him in at 08-49.5S / 140-14.94W in sand. There are some coral heads around, but lots of sand, so try to pick a spot in sand. From here it is possible to dinghy a crewmember into a cement dock and (hopefully) hitch a ride to the airport (but we didn't do this, so don't know the logistics). Most people opt to taxi over from Taiohae.

The winds were kind of weird on the west coast in the afternoon--we had a good 12-15 knots blowing from the WEST (against the trades). Obviously a 'sea breeze'. It died down at night and switch to the east.

The next morning we left early to head east along the north coast of Nuku Hiva. With the wind south of east, we had hoped to find some lee by staying close in along the coast. We did, but it wasn't as much lee as we had hoped. It was really wild going around the NW corner--big steep waves, lots of wind, and a couple of knots of current against us. But that didn't last long (the current died and the waves lengthened). We short tacked along the coast, staying in as close as we dared to get a little shelter behind small headlands.

It took us about 4 hours to go the 12 miles to Anaho Bay, but we did duck in and explore 2 bays on the way. Baie Hakaehu, where the town of Pua is, and Baie Hatiheu, where the town of Hatiheu is, are both possible anchorages, but not nearly as nice as Anaho. There are other possible anchorages, I think, along the N coast that we didn't explore--we just got tired of bashing to windward and wanted to get it over with.

When we arrived in Anaho Bay, we found 3 other boats. Our friends on Infini were here, and a French boat and a Belgian boat. These other 2 boats, being EU citizens, have the luxury of just hanging out in French Poly--the French boat had been all over all of French Polynesia, diving, for the last 18 months. We have a nice anchorage here in 35' sand in a beautiful bay.
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At 9/15/2010 2:35 AM (utc) our position was 08°49.35'S 140°03.89'W

Daniel's Bay

2010-09-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

Location: Daniel's Bay (Hakatea), Nuku Hiva, Marquesas 08-56.62S / 140-09.80W

We actually made 2 visits to Daniel's Bay, staying a total of a week there. The proper name for Daniel's Bay is Anse Hakatea, but among cruisers, it is known as Daniel's Bay. For many many years, the bay was home to a man named Daniel who was very welcoming to cruisers. He even went to the trouble of piping fresh water out to a bouy in the anchorage, so cruisers could easily take on fresh water from his water supply.

Unfortunately, the popular series 'Survivor' came to Hakatea one day and persuaded a very old Daniel to move to town, so they could use his isolated bay to film a Survivor series. Daniel passed away soon after, and his bay is now uninhabited.

However, there is still a small friendly village in the adjacent bay, within easy walking or dinghy distance. And there is still the '3rd highest waterfall in the world', only a 2 hour hike away. And it is still a better anchorage than the rolly gusty anchorage at the main town of Taiohae.

We made our first hike to the waterfall with our friends on Infini, who had already visited Daniel's Bay before. They knew the way, and so we had an easy hike on a nice sunny (dry) day.

The hike starts in the tiny village of Hakaui--really just 4 or 5 houses, surrounded by carefully tended gardens. There is a tiny church, no post office, no central electricity, and no cell phone signal. We understand that most people nowadays don't live full time in this village. Their main house is in Taiohae, and they visit their home in Hakaui on weekends--leaving a caretaker or one part of the family to stay in the house and tend the gardens.

The 'gardens' are a combination of flowers, ornamental shrubbery, and fruits and vegetables... including bananas, mangos, papaya, citrus, guava, manioc, breadfruit.

There is a fresh water stream that runs through the village and out into the bay. At high tide, it's possible to get a small outboard over the 'bar' and into the stream. It's a bit of a challenge--the bay is swelly and usually has some waves breaking on the rocky beach and across the river mouth. So you have to time the passage through the waves, and hope you don't miss the deep part of the small stream... grounding at the entrance is a good way to get swamped by the waves, which we did once. At low tide, it's still possible to get an inflatable dinghy with a light outboard in--you just have to be prepared to have everyone hop out of the dinghy and drag it in through what's left of the stream to the deeper water.

The alternative to surfing in over the bar is to haul your dinghy up very high on the beach in Daniel's Bay, and walk along the beach to the left to the start of the path that goes over into the village in the next bay.

The hike to the waterfall follows an old 'road', up through the valley along the stream. If you pay attention as you are walking, you can see that the path was once improved--in the low spots, there is a 2-3' high wall of fitted stones on either side, with earth filled in between. This keeps the path dry even when it rains. The path is still lined with ornamental shrubs in many places. On either side of the path, set back into the woods and nearly covered with jungle, you can see old massive stone platforms, usually surrounded by fruit trees...the only thing left from what was once a flourishing community of Marquesans in a spectactular setting.

The problem with the waterfall is that it is set in a 'fold' in the mountain, and when you are at the base of the falls, you cannot see the top of the falls at all... only the last 100 feet of the falls are visible. But, halfway there, at a wide spot on the path, there is a great view off to the left, over the jungle, over the stream, to the waterfall. (See picture, to be posted sometime when we have internet). This is also a spot where there is another massive stone platform that probably had a good view of the falls and most of the valley.

At the falls, there are some giant rocks (15 feet high) and a small pool. We swam across the pool and between the rocks to actually sit under the base of the falls. When we were there, the water was running pretty good, the falls were too strong to stand under, and there was a really wet and cold downdraft in the little cave area where the water comes down. We didn't stay long there.

We also found some fresh water eels and small shrimp in the pool. One of these eels was quite big--similar in size to a big green moray eel--and lurked just off the 'beach' waiting for handouts. We had fun feeding the eels and shrimp bits of our lunch.

After the hike, Mike and Sue took us to Ma'i and Maria's house, back in the village, facing the bay, on the far left (west) side of the rocky beach. Maria's family has been prominent in the village for generations, and she and her husband and young son are now the latest 'caretakers' of this prime family property on the beach. In addition to her native Marquesan, Maria speaks fluent French and pretty good English. Since Daniel's demise, and because she speaks both French and English well, Maria has been host to many cruisers. We traded some 22 shells and shotgun shells for a nice lunch of traditional Marquesan fare, including 'poisson cru', goat in coconut milk, and breadfruit prepared 2 ways. (They use the ammunition to go up into the hills and hunt the wild goat and wild pigs that roam the island).

Over lunch, Ma'i offered to take us goat hunting and pig hunting, if we were interested. So we set up and expedition for the next day, to scramble up the rocky, arid face of the mountain west of Daniel's Bay, in search of wild goat. By the next morning, however, it turned out that Ma'i had hurt his knee, and Maria ended up being the one who guided us up the mountain (without the gun). It was a tough climb, most of the way up a rocky stream bed. But once at the top, we had a spectacular view of the bay below us, the south coast of Nuku Hiva, and much of the western side of Nuku Hiva.

There is a big dry grassy plain at the top. We hiked along the ridge to the highest point and saw many wild horses and lots of wild goats. Since the locals usually come up here on a hunting expedition, the goats were fleeing in small herds ahead of us, across the rocky face of the mountain. We marveled at how fast they could run in the loose dirt and rock that we had to walk very carefully in.

The wind at the top of the mountain, facing east, was blowing about 30 knots, a welcome relief after the hot climb. We sat and enjoyed the view and the wind, and ate our lunch, and listened to the goats bleating (still fleeing). On a later expedition, when his knee had healed, Ma'i bagged 2 goats, and he and Maria's father each carried one down the mountain on their shoulders.

On our second visit to Daniel's Bay, Ma'i also took us on a pig hunting expedition. 2/3 of the way to the waterfall, we turned right, and scrambled up the mountain through a muddy swamp to where the pigs hang out. We saw lots of pig sign--pig poo and where they'd been rooting around and some pig wallows, but unfortunately we never saw a pig. We had 10 people on that trek and I think they heard us coming from miles away. This expedition was also to show us a 'cave' that Ma'i had told Dave about (Dave is nuts about caves).

We found not exactly a cave, but a 5-story high rock with a big overhang. Along the base of the rock, past inhabitants of the area had created burial sites by 'bricking in' (with rock) hollows at the base of the rock. Ma'i showed us one hidden in a cleft of rock that still had bones and the remains of a wooden canoe. After climbing a tree and scrambling to the top of the rock, we had another incredible vista of the valley.

You could easily spend a month (or more) in Daniel's Bay, hiking and hanging out and trading with the friendly Marquesans who live there. But alas... we had to get moving. On our second visit, we had already checked out of French Polynesia (our visa expired 1 Sep), so we couldn't stay forever. We bid tearful goodbyes to Maria and Ma'i promising to come back and visit (but knowing we probably wouldn't get there next year).

Next installment--still catching up--we cruise the west and north coasts of Nuku Hiva to Anaho Bay (where we are now staging for our trip to Hawaii).
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At 9/12/2010 12:20 AM (utc) our position was 08°49.35'S 140°03.89'W

A Week in Taiohae

2010-09-06T17:44:00.001-07:00

Location: Baie de Taiohae, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia 08°54.84'S 140°06.09'W

We've been so busy having fun and taking care of business, that I'm a couple of weeks behind in my blog entries.

Fortunately, we made it to Taiohae (Ty-oh-ha-ay) in time to take advantage of the car rental that Mike on s/v Infini had arranged to go pick Sue and son Matt up from the airport. The airport on Nuku Hiva is on the other side of the island, and it costs almost as much for a taxi ride to or from there, as it does for a rental car. So Mike had rented a 'car' for the day (actually a 4WD Pickup) and talked his local friends Laurent and Letitia into driving and giving everyone a tour of the island, after picking up Sue and Matt. Though there wasn't room for us inside the truck, Dave and I begged our way into the pickup bed for the 'island tour'.

(Sue has actually posted some pictures of this adventure, which you can see on her blog at svinfini.blogspot.com)

Laurent did a great job of driving us all over the island. We visited a religious site near Hakatea on the north coast, and we visited the village of Taipivai (ty-pee-vye), which Herman Melvile wrote about in his book Typee. We saw the 'desert' area on the NW coast near the airport--truly a desert and in huge contrast to the lushness of the southern and eastern sides of the island, where everything is green and there are many waterfalls. Dave took a billion pictures, which we've hardly had time to go back and look at, much less get them posted anywhere on the internet.

The biggest project for me while in Taiohae--the first internet we've had in about 3 weeks--was to deal with an IRS Tax Notice for our 2008 return, which required a response by Sep 1. Fortunately, I file our taxes using TurboTax, and part of their 'transmit your taxes' process invites you to buy 'tax insurance'. For $35, you can enroll in their Tax Defense program. Their claim is that they completely handle any audits by the IRS. Since we knew we'd probably be in remote places for the next few years, it seemed like a good investment. Thank goodness for that foresight!!

I called their 800 number via Skype and explained that we were in French Polynesia and preferred to communicate via email. They told me to send a copy of the IRS tax notice and my tax return to their email address, and I would hear within 48 hours from the agent they subsequently assigned. It has worked out well... the matter has not been concluded with the IRS yet, but the assigned agent was a knowledgeable tax expert, and a good email communicator. He and I got on famously via email, and he has now filed our response to the IRS with a Power of Attorney and my supporting paperwork. He said he did not expect to hear back from them for 6-8 weeks, and by then we'll be in Hawaii where communications will be a lot easier.

In addition to all the financial business we handle via internet (banks, credit cards, etc), Dave and I both spent a lot of hours on the internet while in Taiohae, catching up on U.S. and World News, sports news, news of all our traveling friends with blogs, etc. We download and save tons of stuff--without taking the time to read much of it--and then read it later when have time but no internet. Dave is also starting to research information for upgrades we plan in Hawaii, possibly new refrigeration, more solar panels, and a new, sturdier and hopefully more aesthetic arch.

We did take the time to enjoy some of Taiohae while there... eating big juicy cheeseburgers at Laurent and Letitia's Snack Babazook (in front of the blue grocery store), and ice cream and crepes at the Snack right by the dinghy dock. (A 'snack' or a 'roulotte' is a rolling lunch counter, very common in French Polynesia in the bigger towns. Most have a table or two and some chairs in the shade for you to enjoy your meal.) We also went once for lunch at the Pearl Lodge restaurant. Mike and Sue had eaten there before and said it was quite good. But our lunch--poisson cru--was so-so... there was no coconut milk in our poisson cru!! Since a beer in a grocery store is about $3, in a nice restaurant they are more like $5-$6, and the whole lunch bill for Dave and I was $48. We don't do that very often (and reminisce fondly about lunches in Ecuador for $2-3 each, including soup, main meal, and a drink)).

Taiohae is a great place for provisioning--the best we've seen in French Polynesia so far. There is a daily fruit and veggie market right next to the dinghy dock, so fresh stuff is easy. Most of this produce is grown on the island and so isn't too outrageous in price. We were able to eventually find lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, avocados, green beans, and of course the standby's: potatoes, onions, cabbage and carrots. Still no brocolli or celery, but at least some green stuff. And all the tropical fruits plus some apples. We stocked up for 6 weeks worth of groceries--that should get us to Hawaii. We never did make the 4am Saturday veggie market, though.

There are two conveniently located grocery stores, and between the two of them we managed to stock up on all the staples we needed to make it to Hawaii. Mostly we needed meats and snack food (cookies, crackers and chips). The meat selection was quite good--boneless, skinless chicken breasts, chicken leg quarters, whole chickens, pork chops, ground beef, lamb chops (and other cuts)--even bacon!! We also stopped at the afternoon fish market by the dinghy dock and bought a few kilos of fresh yellow-fin tuna and wahoo (nicely priced at $5/kilo uncleaned with the head removed, and you can buy half of a fish).

After Taiohae, we moved to Daniel's Bay, next door. But those adventures will have to wait for the next installment.
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At 9/3/2010 7:42 PM (utc) our position was 08°56.62'S 140°09.80'W

Passage from Tahuata to Nuku Hiva

2010-08-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

I am way behind on blog posts! This one should have been sent on August 17, 2010

We had originally planned to do quite a bit more cruising in the southern Marquesas area before we moved 75 miles downwind (NW) to Nuku Hiva. But we got a little bit of "horse headed for the barn" syndrome, and every time we turned around we dropped another stop off our itinerary. We ended up skipping Hiva Oa altogether--crummy harbor and no real need to go there (except to see Paul Gaugain's grave).

The biggest change was, when were discussing the next move--to Ua Pou, 25 miles south of Nuku Hiva, trying to decide whether we could make it in a day-hop or whether we needed to go over night. The trip was 65 miles, and I was worried about trying to make it in the short days we have down here near the equator. I finally convinced Dave that if we wanted to SAIL, we needed to go overnight--otherwise the timing was so tight that we'd have to motorsail all or most of the way to keep our speed up so we'd make it in to a strange harbor with uncertain anchoring before dark. And once we decided to go overnight, there was no reason not to go straight to Nuku Hiva, where our friends on Infini had been patiently waiting for us to catch up.

So we left our pretty anchorage at Hapatoni at about 7pm, after loading up the dinghy, preparing the sails, taking showers, and having a nice dinner. There was a nice moon up and we had calm conditions in the lee of Tahuata while we put the sails up. We motored for a little while until we got some steady wind--these islands are so mountainous that even 5 miles out the wind was flukey. Finally we turned the engine off after an hour of motoring, but had to turn it back on for a little while when we got in the wind shadow of the next island up (Hiva Oa).

But after about 11pm, we had a nice sail straight on course, not quite dead downwind, to Nuku Hiva. We made landfall in the morning at the SE corner of Nuku Hiva, near Controlleur Bay. We thought we'd go in close and sightsee along the coast as we sailed downwind to Taiohae Baie. However, with a SE wind, we got no lee at all, and the big swell was pounding on the coast, and bouncing back out to sea, and we had about 2-3 knots of current against us. So we gybed and went back offshore a little ways.

We finally got anchored in Taiohae Bay near our friend Mike on s/v Infini, just before lunch. Mike picked us up in the dinghy and whisked us for a much-needed Cheeseburger in Paradise, at Babzook's Roulotte (a lunch wagon on the waterfront that serves delicious cheeseburgers and french fries, as well as other, more healthy, sandwiches. We met Laurent and Letitia, who moved here from France a couple of years ago and started Babzook's.

After lunch, Mike took us on a short walking tour of the important parts of the town... the bakery for a couple of baguettes, the veggie market for some fresh tomatoes and lettuce, and the 'magazin' (grocery store) for a few staples.

We had Mike over for dinner on Soggy Paws--his wife Sue was off in the States and I knew he would be hungry for a 'home cooked' meal.
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At 8/30/2010 8:22 PM (utc) our position was 08°54.84'S 140°06.09'W

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Tahuata, Marquesas

2010-08-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

Current Location: Hanamoenoa, Tahuata, Marquesas, French Polynesia 09°54.45'S 139°06.28'W

We sailed from the Bay of Virgins on the island of Fatu Hiva to Baie Hanamoenoa on the island of Tahuata. This had been our friends on s/v Nakia's favorite anchorage in all of the Marquesas. We were ready to get out of the gusty Bay of Virgins and into someplace a little calmer.

We had quite a rousing sail with winds 18-20 on our starboard quarter. The seas were still pretty big, so we were surfing and slewing around a lot. We saw 8.5 knots on the GPS on one really nice wave. We were really happy to see that Hanamoenoa was as nice as Nakia had promised. Beautiful white sand beach, no town ashore, very little swell, and non-gusty winds. The bay also looks directly west, so it's a great place to watch the sun set.

There was one boat already in the anchorage when we got there--an American boat from Seattle who's name I've now forgotten. They left before we got a chance to go over and say hello. We got in late and we were tired, and didn't even put the dinghy down. We called them a couple of times on VHF, but they must have had their VHF off. The next day a French boat came in, and the the third day both boats left, heading in opposite directions.

We were so happy to be in a nice calm pretty anchorage, that we really just goofed off for 2 days. Dave did a little bit of maintenance, and we snorkeled over to the rocks and little reef on the north side of the bay, but mainly we just hung out on the boat. I snorkeled around quite a bit looking among the rocks for cowrie shells, but the surge was really bad, the water clarity so-so, and there were spiny sea urchins around. And then I remembered that we had bought some nice cleaned cowries in the Bay of Virgins for only $1 apiece. For that price, it isn't worth it to go through all the effort to clean a live animal from a shell.

While we were in Hanamoenoa, the cruise ship/freighter, Ara Nui III, was visiting Tahuata. They came late in the day, probably from Hiva Oa, only 10 miles away, and anchored right off our pretty bay. The next morning early, the Ara Nui picked up anchor and headed south, probably to the tiny village of Hapatoni, which we visited a couple of days later. They were back again in the evening, and again anchored in the same spot off Hanamoenoe. Must be a good anchoring spot!! Fortunately, they anchored far enough offshore that it didn't crowd us at all.

The final day in Tahuata, we motored about 7 miles south (no wind at all in the lee of the island) to the tiny village of Hapatoni, where our friends on Nakia had told us there were some great wood carvers, and a pretty little town. We spent a nice day walking around Hapatoni... stopping to see the wood carvers in their building by the water, strolling down the ancient 'boulevard' shaded by giant trees (from pre-European times), and hiking up to the cross on the hill overlooking our anchorage. The mangos were all getting ripe at once in Hapatoni, and there were fermenting mangoes on the ground under every tree. But the trees were so high that it was difficult to find even a newly-dropped one that wasn't smashed by its flight to the ground. We did manage to collect about 6 or 8 that weren't too mushy.

We really enjoyed Tahuata, and could easily have hung out in that area for a month. However, we really needed to be heading north--we're trying to hook back up with our friends on s/v Infini so we can cruise a bit with them before we leave for Hawaii.

So we left that night for the overnight sail to Oa Pou.
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At 8/15/2010 4:46 AM (utc) our position was 09°54.45'S 139°06.28'W

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And We Thought It Was Blowing Hard LAST Week!!

2010-08-12T12:35:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Hanavave (Bay of Virgins), Fatu Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia 10°27.90'S 138°40.06'W

We knew it was going to be windy--the forecast is for 18-22 kts for a few days. But we expected some shelter in the lee of this biggish island (and we did have a pretty nice anchorage when we first arrived). However, we hadn't counted on the venturi effect of the wind funneling through the valley into the anchorage.

We're not quite sure why it is so much worse today than it has been the last 2 days--the forecast is the same. But we clocked a gust this morning that was 62 knots, and we have seen several more in the 45 knot range. We had one of our heavy hatches propped a tiny bit open on a wine cork, and one gust got under the hatch and blew it back. They are all latched down now--something we've never done before in an anchorage (except for hurricane conditions). We also have had to tie our solar panels in place.

Since we're not leaving today, we talked about doing a little more exploring ashore, but it doesn't feel safe leaving the boat unattended at anchor in these conditions. Looks like a "boat project" day today.
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At 8/10/2010 5:09 PM (utc) our position was 10°27.91'S 138°40.06'W

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Trading in Fatu Hiva

2010-08-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

Current Location: Hanavave (Bay of Virgins), Fatu Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia 10°27.90'S 138°40.06'W

On our way back from the waterfall yesterday, we stopped at a house where our friend Joce from s/v Lares had been attempting to repair a sewing machine and a computer for them. There we met Teko, Teko's son Tim, and a few younger kids. Among other employments, Teko makes 'tikis'--carved wooden statues of Marquesan gods. He showed us a very nice 14-inch one in solid rosewood, which he said he could sell in Tahiti for 15,000 CFP (about 160 dollars!). We eventually expressed an interest in a smaller tiki, and said we'd be back tomorrow with some trade goods.

Unfortunately, when most people come to Fatu Hiva, it is their first stop in French Polynesia, and no one has Polynesian Francs (CFP). The locals don't seem interested in taking either Euros or Dollars here. But they are used to trading with the cruisers for crafts and fruit.

The easiest trade good seems to be liquor, but we have been asked for rope, cosmetics (nail polish, lipstick, perfume), fishing gear (larger hooks and good lures), snorkel gear, T-shirts, hats, handbags and backpacks, DVD's, and 'cartouches' (bullets to hunt the wild goats and pigs).

Our first attempt at trading, the next morning, was a miserable failure. We were trading only for fruit, with some people we'd met at a small house up the mountainside. Joce had cautioned us not to offer too much. So Dave had packed up a couple of old ratty T-shirts, some fish hooks and small lures, and some old ratty line. (The guy we were trading with had said he was looking for line to tie up his pigs). And his wife was looking for a 'sac' (purse) like the one I was carrying (an oversized belly-bag). So I had emptied the one I had been using, and switched to a newer one, so we could give the one I she had seen to her.

We met them as agreed at 9am. But rather than the wheelbarrow we expected them to come with, they had a very nice new 4x4 extended cab pickup with a bunch of fruit in the back. (This truck is better than any vehicle Dave or I have ever owned!) They took one look at Dave's old ratty T-shirts and old ratty line, and I guess they got their nose out of joint. They weren't interested in trading for 'used' stuff. The wife looked at my 'sac' and pointed out a few frayed spots, and wanted the new one I had switched to.

They wouldn't even make us a counter-offer--we certainly didn't need all of the fruit they had, but a few pampelmousse (grapefruit) and some bananas would have been nice. In retrospect, maybe they were hoping for some liquor--and were angry we didn't have any to offer. (I'm not out of rum yet, but we're almost out of wine, and starting to count the ounces of rum we have left). They left unhappy, and of course we were fruitless still. But Stephanie from s/v Lares said that was very unusual--they themselves had made several trades for fruit for much less than what we offered.

However, a few minutes later, some guy walked up to Dave with a couple of sacks of oranges, and just gave them to him, with a 'Welcome to Fatu Hiva' smile.

And later, we went to Teko's and made a good trade for an 8-inch tiki and some fruit. We rooted out some nicer T-shirts, some cigarettes, some fishing stuff, and a few other things. Everyone seemed happy. We also hung out for a couple of hours helping Joce repair the sewing machine and the computer (we supplied the fuse for the computer).

Even later in the day, when we were walking down the road, a girl came running out from a house asking if we had stuff to trade. We eventually traded with her mother, a couple of T-shirts and a thing of lipstick I happened to have in my purse for a couple of papaya.

We had planned to leave today, but our tiki isn't ready yet, and the wind is up again. Maybe tomorrow.
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At 8/10/2010 5:09 PM (utc) our position was 10°27.91'S 138°40.06'W

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Hanavave, Fatu Hiva

2010-08-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

Current Location: Hanavave (Bay of Virgins), Fatu Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia 10°27.90'S 138°40.06'W

We spent most of our first day here on a hike to the waterfall. Fortunately we have hooked up with a nice young French family who doesn't mind us tagging along (and letting them interpret for us).

The waterfall was awesome--the hike was just the right length--mostly in the shade, in very pretty surroundings, and the temperature a perfect 79-80. We kept saying "We're not in the Tuamotus anymore, Toto". The Toots are flat coral atolls with mostly palm trees and scrub. The Marquesas are awe-inspiring volcanic rocks with lush vegetation. We just couldn't get over how lush everything was.

As we walked through town, Dave was drooling over all the fruit we saw hanging on the trees...mangos (almost in season), papaya, limes, oranges, pampelmousse, breadfruit, bananas, etc. Joce (Joss), the French guy from s/v Lares, promised that he would help us get some fruit after the hike.

On the way back, we found some 'free range' limes along the side of the road, and filled a bag with them--nice little Key Lime-sized limes. Then we stopped at a few places, with Joce telling the people that we were looking to trade for fruit. One guy just gave us 2 stalks of bananas. Another made an appointment to meet us on the quai with some fruit tomorrow morning.
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At 8/10/2010 5:09 PM (utc) our position was 10°27.91'S 138°40.06'W

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Anchored at Fatu Hiva

2010-08-10T09:36:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Hana Vave (Bay of Virgins), Fatu Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia 10°27.90'S 138°40.06'W

After a long day of bashing to windward in 20-25 knot winds, we arrived at our destination yesterday about 3pm. What a relief it was to get into the wind shadow of this big high island. We sighted land at about 35 miles out--at about 9:30 in the morning, but it took us nearly all day to finally reach sheltered waters. We motored slowly along the coast, sightseeing--about 100 yards offshore, but still in 250' water.

This bay is beautiful. Like the rest of the Marquesas, it is volcanic, and rises steeply out of the water. The early sailors named this the Bay of Penises, because of the large rock spires that punctuate the sky. The priests who came later, add an 'i' to the 'Verges', to make it Vierges, which means 'virgins'. So officially, this is known as the Bay of Virgins. The Marquesan name is Hana Vave (or Hanavave).

We are hoping for rain, but so far only a sprinkle. We are really salt-encrusted. Dave washed the cockpit down yesterday after we arrived. Though we were well sheltered from getting drenched by big waves behind our cockpit enclosure, we only put up one side, so we get ventilated on the other side. But this makes a vacuum and sucks spray from the lee rail into the cockpit. Thank God for our big watermaker, that gives us enough fresh water to rinse things when we need to. But the rest of the boat will have to wait for a big rain.

There is only one other cruiser here--a small sailboat--a young French family with 2 small children, on a boat called Lares. During "Puddle Jump" season there must have been 20 boats in this anchorage--we are glad we are here now (waving good-bye to the PJ-ers as they hurry west now to Suwarrow, Niue, Tonga, Fiji, and NZ.

There is a small town here--but, sadly, they don't have a bakery here. No fresh baguettes for us today. But the people on Lares gave us a pampelmousse (grapefruit) yesterday when they stopped to chat. They had bags of fruit and veggies in their dinghy, and fresh green bananas hanging in their rigging. They said it was easy to trade for what you need.

We plan to stay here for 2-3 days and then head north for the town of Atuona on Hiva Oa, for some provisions and internet. We hope to hike to the waterfall today.
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At 8/10/2010 4:06 PM (utc) our position was 10°27.90'S 138°40.06'W

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Sailing Like a Scalded Dog

2010-08-08T23:50:00.001-07:00

Well, the wind has come up as forecast. And we have managed to claw our way far enough to windward over the last 24 hours, that we can now fall off a little. So we have eased the sheets, and this old girl (not me, the boat!) really likes these conditions. We have a double-reefed main, the staysail, and about 60% of our genoa out, and we're averaging 7 knots, right on course for Fatu Hiva. Woo hoo!

Sailing On A Close Reach
Dave Hangs On (In Our Nice Dry Cockpit)
The wind is supposed to gradually increase through the night up to about 18 knots, but stay south of east. So we hope we'll have a nice sleighride into the Bay of Virgins (Hanavave) in Fatu Hiva, by about 3pm tomorrow.
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At 8/9/2010 6:39 AM (utc) our position was 12°04.59'S 139°40.84'W

Having a Great Sail

2010-08-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

We are not quite half way to the Marquesas. Our first day was quite relaxed--the wind was very light, and we opted to motor close in along the coast of the twin atolls of Raroia and it's close neighbor to the north (with no pass), Takume, a total of 25 miles. We faithfully dragged our fishing line the whole way, but no luck.

Leaving the Pass at Raroia
Sailing along Takume
Today we were kind of sweating the wind--it was forecast to pick up a little and go a little south of east--which would make a great sail for us. The swing to the south was delayed by about 8 hours--it wouldn't have been a very pleasant trip if it hadn't switched. But finally about 2pm today, we got about a 30 degree wind switch.

Just at sunset we sailed close past the twin atolls of Tepotu and Napuka. They would be a great stop time-wise, except neither has a pass and there's really no place to anchor. We had one report from an SSCA newsletter of a boat that stopped there--he hand set his anchor on top of the coral, and his stern was in 100' feet. Another boat (Migration) tried to stop there 2 years ago, and couldn't. We could see a few buildings ashore, and a guy out fishing in a plastic kayak. But it was very close to sunset, so we sailed on by.

Now we're sailing along about 6 knots on a close reach, just a little high of our course. The wind is supposed to continue to strengthen, and we want to put a little "easting" "in the bank", just in case.

We got such a slow start that our ETA at the Bay of Virgins in Fatu Hiva is now close to sunset--it'll be a close thing whether we make it in before dark or not. And then there's always the choice of what to do--lay off all night and wait for daylight, or try to go in carefully after dark and get an anchor down and get a good night's sleep.

Let's hope this wind holds!!
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At 8/8/2010 7:15 AM (utc) our position was 13°46.93'S 141°09.13'W

We're Outta Here (Tomorrow)

2010-08-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

Looks like we finally have a weather window to make our way from Raroia to Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas. Our plan is to leave here late morning tomorrow, and we should arrive in Fatu Hiva (Bay of Virgins) on August 9th. The wind forecast is pretty good... 15-20 knots from E to SE.

We'll be checking in as usual on the Polynesia Breakfast Net in the mornings, and the Pacific Seafarer's Net in the evenings. We will also try to update our position about twice a day. You can track us using one of the links on this page:

http://svsoggypaws.com/positions.htm
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At 7/30/2010 6:02 PM (utc) our position was 15°57.35'S 142°18.97'W

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Why Aren't We Spearfishing?

2010-08-02T09:42:00.001-07:00

One friend asked us why he hasn't been reading reports in our blog of spearfishing, and lobster and grouper feasts, as we liked to do in the Caribean... The biggest reasons are (a) sharks (b) no lobster inside the atolls (c) reef fish with ciguatera (d) a freezer full of tuna and mahi mahi (e) the cooler weather

First, the lobster... we have YET to see a lobster on a coral head inside the reef, even in the most uninhabited atoll we've visited. That is just not their habitat here. To get lobster, you go reef walking at night with a light, and you have to pick the right time of the month, on a rising tide with no moon, so you don't just jump out there any night you feel like it. But when the time is right, it's usually pretty productive.

Second, the grouper... in some atolls you CAN eat grouper. However, we just don't want to risk making a mistake. The effects of ciguatera can be very bad, and long lasting. It just isn't worth it.

Third... there are always sharks around. They don't bother us much if we're just swimming around, but the minute you spear something, they just appear out of nowhere. Again, it just isn't worth it, when we already have fish in the freezer.

Fourth... we are getting all fish we can handle from outside the reef. Some we have caught ourselves, but most we have been given... For example, the locals had a fishing tournament in Makemo when we were there. In about 4 hours, using outboard-powered skiffs and hand lines, every boat came back with loads of tuna, mahi mahi, and even a big marlin. We stuffed our freezer with good guaranteed non-ciguatera fish.

Finally... The cooler water is another big factor--the water is a little cool (77 degrees) to stay in very long. And the air is cool and the wind is blowing hard, so when you get out, you're freezing. (yes, I know, we're wimps!!)

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Sitting Here Watching the Wind Blow

2010-08-01T17:55:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Raroia Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 15°57.35'S 142°18.97'W

I can't believe it is already August 1st! We had only planned to spend one night here at Raroia Atoll. When we left Makemo, it looked like the perfect weather window to sail to the Marquesas was shaping up. But 24-48 hours later--the whole weather picture had changed. A big high pressure had moved in from the west, which would strengthen the trade winds to about 20 knots.

Since then, we have had TWO big strong highs pass south of us, back-to-back. They are way south, between 30 and 40 south latitude, but they still really affect our weather. The wind has been blowing "like stink" for the past week. That is, steady winds 24 x 7 from 20-25 knots out of the East. And passing squalls crank it up to the 35 knot range.

As the Highs slowly pass, they trail a long high pressure ridge to the NW behind them, lengthening the time that they affect our weather. Just about the time one High departs, another one comes blasting in from the west... After a very mild June, we have had a succession of strong Highs for nearly the whole month of July. But this last week has been worse than the rest.

We have been snugged up in the NE corner of the Raroia atoll for a week now. It is a beautiful setting... white sand beaches everywhere we look, palm trees all over, gorgeous turquoise water, and not a soul around. The nearest sign of other people is about 8 miles south--a remote pearl farm who showed no interest in us when we motored back and forth in front of their building. The tiny town on the atoll is even further away--about 15 miles SW of us. We don't even see the glow of lights down there at night. And we haven't seen another boat--cruiser or local--except the pearl farm skiff about 8 or 9 days ago.

Though we have tucked up behind a palm studded island, to mitigate the wind somewhat, we can still see over the reef just to the south of us, and the big breakers crashing on the reef. We are really glad not to be out in this stuff. Though we are antsy to get to the Marquesas, we just keep reminding ourselves how bad it would be trying to beat to weather in these kinds of winds and seas.

It has been rather cool here--between the fact that it IS wintertime in this hemisphere--and the howling wind. The ambient air temperature is a nice cool 75 during the night and only gets up to around 80 during the day. The water temp is a cool 77 degrees. So we haven't even been swimming in the past week.

Though we're a LONG way from running out of food, we didn't provision as well in Makemo, as we would have if we had known we'd be stuck here so long. Fortunately we did lay in a big stock of baguettes, tomatoes, eggs, carrots, and cabbage. We still had a good supply of apples left from Fakarava. And we still have TONS of the basics--flour, rice, beans, canned fruits and veggies, that we stocked up on in Panama and Ecuador. Plus a freezer full of meat--when the supply ship finally came into Makemo, we were able to buy nice lamb chops, chicken, pork chops, and some beef.

And of course, we still have some of the wine and rum we loaded on in prolific quantities before we left South America... which is being carefully rationed to last us until we get to Hawaii. A poor-quality liter box of wine costs $10-12 here in the Tuamotus, and rum is in short supply, poor quality, and runs nearly $20 a bottle.

But Dave is starting to worry about running out of bread and tomatoes... we "only" have 6 baguettes left!!

We thank god (and Dave) every day for the SSB radio that lets us talk with other cruisers. Everyone else is just as pinned-down as we are by the weather. Though most people are headed downwind, going downwind in this stuff is only slightly less onerous than going upwind. Our friends on Whoosh who just arrived in Suwarrow after a several day passage, went the last 36 hours under bare poles, and were still making over 100 miles a day!

We are a net controller on the local "Polynesia Breakfast Net" that is now covering cruisers strung out all the way from the Marquesas to Niue (almost to Tonga). We also like to listen up on the Pacific Seafarer's Net--a Ham net that's on in the evenings (0300 UTC) on 14300. Their net controllers are all over the Pacific... from mainland US to Hawaii to Australia and New Zealand, and the cruisers they track are all over too. On a good night we can hear almost everyone--we had a nice short chat the other night with a net relay operating just outside of Tampa, FL!!

The current weather forecast shows MAYBE a break coming about the 4th or 5th of August. It's not a perfect weather window (we're looking for 10-15 kts out of the SE), but at least the wind lightens up for a few days. It might be long enough for us to get out of here.

Until then... we're enjoying paradise... doing boat projects... reading... and watching the wind blow.
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At 7/30/2010 6:02 PM (utc) our position was 15°57.35'S 142°18.97'W

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We Found the Kon-Tiki Monument!

2010-07-25T14:34:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Raroia Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 16°03.85'S 142°21.68'W

Anchored off the Kon-Tiki Monument, which is located at position: 16°03.873'S 142°21.548'W

Armed with a photo that our friend Jim resized and emailed us, from the article about the monument dedication, we finally located the monument. Of course, it is the only islet within a mile in either direction that we hadn't set foot on, it is the first one south of our first anchorage--which Dave had decided was too far north.

There is a nice plaque on the 'pile of rocks', and people have put shells and flowers on the 'altar'. It's very nice.

Even in the 3 years that have intervened since the photo was taken, the tree topography has changed--the most prominent palm tree in the picture--the tall one on the left--is no longer there. But with the amount of other non-palm vegetation in the picture, it was obvious that this had to be the island.

The waypoint that Jim found on the internet for Kon-Tiki is 16°04.649'S 142°21.980'W. The only thing that doesn't match up is that this waypoint is 8/10's of a mile from the island. The book says they camped on an island 600-700 yards north of the Kon-Tiki, which is more like a third of a mile. So we're not sure exactly which is right.
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At 7/25/2010 9:19 PM (utc) our position was 16°03.85'S 142°21.68'W

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Still Searching for Kon-Tiki

2010-07-25T11:55:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Raroia Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 16°08.35'S / 142°23.56'W

Thanks to our friends Jim Yates and Barbara Emmons, we have a GPS waypoint for the Kon-Tiki landing area, and a description of the 'monument' erected in 2007, with the help of Thor Heyerdahl's grandsons. The description is from this article:

http://en.tahitipresse.pf/2007/08/tuamotu-atoll-of-raroia-makes-world-headlines-3rd-time-in-60-years/

However.. the location Jim gave us, plots out in the middle of the reef area, and was quite 'awash' yesterday afternoon.

We have re-read the Kon-Tiki book several times now--the part about the landing and the island they camped on for a week before they were discovered by the Raroians from across the atoll. And we have studied the pictures in the book.

The biggest problem is this is all windward reef--even the islands themselves can be transient... they are piles of coral rubble and sand, topped with island vegetation. A really big storm could easily significantly change the landscape.

The narrative in the book talks about a big rock they piled all their stuff on, on the reef. The island that they ultimately camped on had much vegetation, the smell of flowers, palm trees, and white birds, with more islands 'distant in the blue haze' to the north, and another island with more vegetation to the south. They talk about eating big hermit crabs. Every islet that we went on yesterday (about 6 of them in total) fit that description.

The book shows pictures of them planting a palm tree brought with them from the coast of South America (62 years ago). We have visually checked every old, tall palm tree. You would think that someone would nail or tie a simple sign to the darned tree!!

The book also talks about them getting help from the islanders and the boat from Tahiti to drag Kon-Tiki in over the reef to the lagoon, and then tying Kon-Tiki up to a palm tree. We found a really big pile of really big rope wrapped around a palm tree.

We also found lots of windward debris--rum bottles, a little bit of plastic, and the inevitable assortment of shoes.

What we DIDN'T find was any sign of any man-made thing that looked like it might be a monument.

Barbara described the monument in the picture in the article as "a coral monument (a pile of coral) about 3 feet high and 4 feet wide", and Jim gave us a few more visual clues to look for on the island. So we're going back today--to exactly visit the waypoint on the reef (just for fun), and check out one of the islands that we visited yesterday that most closely matches this (from Jim's examination of the photos):

"The island they are on appears to be about 150' across and about 40-60 feet wide. It is covered in trees and has about 6-7 palm trees sticking out of the top of the tree line. There is a single palm tree sticking prominently above the other
trees at one end (don't know which end though...sorry) For reference, when exploring the islands, inside the island there is one palm tree that is almost horizontal for about 10 feet about waist high. The monument is not at the edge of the trees, but is somewhere in amongst the trees."

The wind is blowing 20-25 knots out of the east, so we're not going anywhere anytime soon. So this at least gives us something to do. It is as much fun as looking for Pancho Villa's gold!!

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In Rarioa, Near Kon-Tiki's Landing Place

2010-07-22T14:32:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Raroia Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 16°03.49'S / 142°21.47'W

We just arrived after an overnight motorsail from Makemo. Originally we had been waiting for SE winds to sail this leg, but when we saw a low wind opportunity to just motor on through, we took it. That way, we can use the expected SE winds to sail up to the Marquesas.

We left Makemo after 24 hours of light winds, on the slack tide at 1:30pm. The day was sunny and the winds were only 5 knots, and the seas were down--perfect! We were motorsailing directly on course at about 5 knots. Literally 15 minutes after we cleared the pass at Makemo a squall line appeared ahead of us. Oh no! All of a sudden we had 15-20 knots right on our nose, 100% cloud cover, and it didn't look like it was going away anytime soon. We even talked about turning around and going back to Makemo.

But we decided to just tack off and hope it went away. After about an hour of nasty weather, the winds gradually diminished and the skies cleared again. We ended up motoring the rest of the night in about 5kts ENE, averaging 5 knots for the night--not too bad in the open ocean directly up wind.

We arrived off the Raroia pass about 4:30am, and hove to to wait for daylight. At 7:15am, we had plenty of light, but the current in the pass was still running kind of strong. We waited another 15 minutes and then went in. We measured about 4 knots of outgoing current at 07:40. But with not much wind, it was no big deal--we just stayed left, out of the visible 'white water', and motored right in.

Rarioa is the atoll that Thor Heyerdahl and Kon-Tiki made landfall after their 101 day voyage in a raft from the coast of Peru. Our guidebook (Charlie's Charts) has a sketch of the atoll that shows the approximate location of the raft's perilous trip in the surf and over the reef--but unfortunately no GPS waypoint. A few notes we scratched in our book--from some cruiser we don't remember--said to head for the 2 palm trees next to 2 groups of 3 islands. That's where we are.

We hauled out our copy of Kon-Tiki to re-read Thor Heyerdahl's account, and look at the pictures. No help there, except that it was a low part of the reef somewhere in the middle of the eastern side of the atoll, within wading distance of another island that has more land and palm trees. Supposedly there's a monument out here somewhere, but we haven't gone ashore to investigate yet.

Someone might use Google Earth to check our location, and email us if there is a waypoint in GE shown for Kon-Tiki.

We'll stay here til we get a 3-4 day window with some southeast winds, WITHOUT all the squalls that usually accompany SE winds around here. Next stop... Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas (we hope).
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At 7/22/2010 9:27 PM (utc) our position was 16°03.48'S 142°21.47'W

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Made the Jump to Makemo

2010-07-18T11:44:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Makemo Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 16°37.62'S / 143°34.28'W

We did take the nice weather window to go overnight from Tahanea to Makemo--another 50 miles upwind.

We left the pass at Tahanea just before sunset, and were able to sail most of the night, arriving at our destination at the pass at the west end of Makemo about 1am. Then we decided that, rather than loitering around there until daybreak, and then motoring inside the atoll toward the east end, we would keep sailing around the atoll to the east pass. We thought we'd be able to sail most of the way and arrive off the east pass at around 7am.

However, we had not counted on the strong westerly current that we encountered when we cleared the northern tip of Makemo. At our boat speed and tacking angle, we were almost going backwards. So we finally started the engine about 3am. By that time, we'd messed around and lost enough time that we had to motor pretty hard 20 miles against the wind and seas in order to not be too late reaching the pass.

I had calculated slack current to be about 7am, and we didn't reach the pass until about 8:30am--by that time the outgoing current was getting pretty strong. Since the wind conditions were not too bad, we decided to go ahead and try getting in, rather than waiting for another slack in 6 hrs.

We crept into the pass from the west side, getting as close to the shore as we could before actually entering the current stream, and then pushing up to full RPM with sails up. We stayed out of the main channel as much as possible--Dave was on the bow calling the shots. I was fighting with the helm in the current boils, and watching our position on the chart plotter and the GPS.

At one point all three position devices showed us going a different speed and direction. The Garmin GPSMAP 76 CSx was particularly goofy... with the arrow showing us going north, but the position was actually moving south. (This is because the display switches from plotted COG to a built-in compass that activates when you drop to a very slow speed. The compass doesn't work well when the GPS is sitting in it's mount on the helm--it needs to be held level to work properly. I have since disabled the compass feature). Our Maxsea chart program, working from the same GPS, showed us creeping at about 5 knots in the right direction... most of the time.

We could see we were making progress by watching the shoreline. But it was really slow, and really hard keeping the boat in the right place with the strong current. At that RPM we should have been making about 7 knots, but we made less than a knot for about 15 minutes. That means the current was running at about 6 knots!!! Another hour and we would have gotten pushed right back out the channel.

Because of the current, and pretty good light, we decided to skip going all the way in on the main channel, and take the short cut. It looked a lot smoother, but the current was running stronger (shallower water). But we made it through OK.

We anchored off the town dock in what looked like nice sand--but what turned out to be sheet rock, covered by thin sand, and liberally sprinkled with coral heads. When I snorkeled our anchor, it wasn't even set--we had managed to drape the chain over a coral head, and the anchor was just hanging there on the other side of the coral head.

We also discovered eventually that we had anchored almost in the middle of the town outrigger canoe races. This was 'Heiva' week, and today's activities were apparently canoe races. The races started out near our stern and finished in close to the town dock. Everyone in town was out watching the races. There were men and women singles, doubles, and group races. A few times a canoe would flip in the middle of the race. It was fun to watch and we had a ring-side seat.

We should have jumped in the dinghy right away to go hang out with the townspeople, but we were tired, needed to get the boat cleaned up from our passage, and needed to find out what the schedule was for the stores and the post office.

We also needed to do something about our anchoring situation. The forecast for the next few days was for very strong SE winds, and we had poor holding and no protection where we were. We finally decided to go into the dock. Makemo has a really nice new big concrete pier. We had heard from other boaters that you could tie up to it for no charge. There were several catamarans tied side-to to the head of the pier, but we knew that the supply ship was coming in a couple of days, and they would want that spot. So we went in bow-to just in from the head of the pier. The wind was blowing us off the side of the pier, so we didn't need to immediately worry about setting a stern anchor.

After we got the bow secured with 2 lines into two separate stainless steel rings on the dock, Dave dinghied out the stern anchor, and I got in the water to help set it. Again the sand wasn't very deep. As I snorkeled around, I saw remnants of where other cruisers had tied off to the coral heads. So that's what we did eventually--we pulled in the anchor and set 2 lines astern to 2 different coral heads.

The wind has been blowing now for 4 days at 20-25 knots. The concrete pier protects us from the waves, and we are very secure. Eventually we had 3 monohulls and 4 catamarans, AND the supply boat all tied to the pier.

And best of all, we have wifi on the boat. It is the for-pay 'Manaspot', operated by the French Poly Telecommunications bureau, and situation in the post office. If you buy your minutes in bulk, it only costs about $2/hr, and the time is usable in most of the towns in French Polynesia. The internet comes into the island on a satellite link. At times it is so slow that it is unusable, but early in the morning and late at night, it's not too bad.

We plan to hang out here until this bout of 'reinforced trade winds' subside, and then either make a short hop (another 75 miles) ENE to the atoll at Raroia, or directly about 450 miles NE to the Marquesas. Depends on how long the weather window looks. Unfortunately, this time of year, the SE winds don't last very long--and they are usually predecessors to the squally and 'blowing like stink' phase of the weather cycle.
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At 7/13/2010 7:58 PM (utc) our position was 16°37.62'S 143°34.28'W

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We Saw the Total Eclipse!!!

2010-07-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

When we awoke yesterday morning at 05:30am, we were upset to find about 75% overcast and fairly squally weather. But we got underway at 06:15 as planned, for the viewing site about 5 miles from our anchorage.

We anchored off the small motu (islet along the reef) where we had planted the measurement equipment the day before. We dinghied ashore and hiked south along the eastern shore to where the southernmost photometer had been set up. We arrived on station about 07:30 am. Full totality was not expected until 08:34am.

Dave and Lydie Checking Out the Start of the Eclipse
By 07:30, the eclipse had started, and we played around with the cardboard 'Eclipse Viewing Glasses' that we'd been issued. I took a bunch of photos of the partial eclipse through the glasses, with varying success.

"Look, there's the Eclipse!"
Lydie eventually decided to walk further south along the shore--it was much easier now as the tide was much lower than when we'd been there the day before. She ended up watching nearly a quarter mile south of where we were, and got a much longer 'totality' than we did.

It was a squally day, and we prayed that we would have a clear view of the sun during the eclipse. We did get rained on a few times, but nothing serious. Fortunately, the sun kept coming out, and we ended up with a very good view of the sun during the totality. Since I was assigned stopwatch duty, I didn't get any pics DURING the totality, but Dave ended up getting some GREAT pictures.

He took them using the camera settings that one of the scientists had told him to use, and they came out really clear and nice. Plus the Canon camera time-stamps to the second, so we have accurate times on the pictures as well. We hope that they are of some use to someone--beyond the amusement of our friends and family.

Lydie and Dave Dismantling the Photometers
We only saw about 20 seconds of totality. But we had to wait around for another hour and a half for the equipment to shut itself down. We dismantled the 3 photometers on that island, and then motored east to another motu to pick up the last one. We weren't back in our anchorage until nearly 3pm.

At 03:30pm, San Saens, the charter boat with the other scientists, anchored next to us to pick up Lydie. Then they hauled anchor and headed back to the pass, for an overnight trip to Fakarava. They will all fly back from Fakarava, and then Arnold, the captain, will take the boat back to Raitea.

The Scientific Crew Leaving
Though we'd like to hang out here for another day or two, we see a good weather window to head for Makemo tonight. So we are planning to head out the pass around 4:30pm this afternoon, for a short overnight to Makemo. If we miss this weather window, it may well be another 7-10 days before we get another good window.
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At 7/11/2010 4:13 PM (utc) our position was 16°57.21'S 144°34.83'W

Waiting for The Total Eclipse of the Sun

2010-07-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

Current Location: SE Corner of Tahanea, Tuamotus, French Polynesia

Tahanea's SE Corner And the Edge of Totality
Optimum Viewing Spot on the Left, our Anchorage on the Right
Blue Line Shows Edge of Totality
We have been anchored here for a few days now, enjoying the solitude. We are not completely alone any more. A Canadian boat whose name we can't quite read with the binoculars, came in 2 days ago and anchored about a half a mile away. They, like us, have been mostly hanging out on their boat doing 'boat chores'. We were going to swing by yesterday in the dinghy on our way ashore, just to say hi, but we were running out of daylight before we finally got in the dinghy. Maybe tomorrow.

A third boat came in sometime yesterday. They anchored so far to the north of us that we didn't even know they were there until we saw a dinghy go by. "Where did that come from?" We had to get out the binoculars to see them.

But now we have met them. It is a boat from Dream Charters' charter fleet, with 5 scientists from France, here to study the eclipse. It is a 52-foot Jeanneau-style sailboat. They were running around in their dinghy looking for diesel fuel--they had planned to refuel in Makemo but found they could not obtain any until the supply boat came in a few days. So we sold them 10 gallons from our precious stock, and then were invited to help them out with their scientific observations.

Dr. Lydie Sichoix, Associate Professor from the University of French Polynesia, Shows Us a Photometer
Apparently, a total eclipse is a great way to measure the diameter of the sun. So their task is to place photometry devices around on the atolls to record the time and location of the eclipse. The eclipse is making a swath of totality who's northern border is just going to cut across the SE corner of Tahanea, where we are. That makes Tahanea a prime measurement spot.

So yesterday, we loaded up on their boat and went down to one motu in the extreme SouthEast end, and anchored temporarily to plant 4 Picali Photometre Solaire devices. Then they are going to leave one of the scientists with us today, and sail to another atoll 20 miles away to observe the eclipse from there (Motutunga). We will keep Lydie with us, take her to the proper spot to observe the eclipse, and then retrieve the photometry devices. When they return from Motutunga, they will take Lydie and the photometers and leave immediately for Fakarava.

Setting up the Photometers
Checking the Angle Precisely
The Photometer Set Up
It is still blowing like stink here (20+ knots) from the East. In lighter winds, we would go down and spend the night at the proper spot, but it is really rough down there. So we will spend the night tonight anchored comfortably here in our sheltered spot, and then get up early and go down at first light (about 5 miles away). The eclipse will start at about 0720 am and reach totality about 0824am here on the 11th (actually 1824 UTC).

(These calculations came from eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov, for location 16.9871S 144.6639W))

We are just on the very edge of the path of totality, so the scientists say that we will only have totality for about 10-20 seconds. Dave is going to take our camera and try to take pictures. And the scientists gave us some plastic viewing glasses. They are similar in form to the cardboard glasses you get at 3D movies, but with much darker plastic--made for viewing solar events.

We have also been issued chronometers supplied by a professor at Yale University, to time the totality. One of the things being studied is how the irregularity of the surface of the moon (which is causing the totality) affects the eclipse, and their efforts to measure the diameter of the sun.

We are excited to actually be involved in a scientific experiment, rather than just hanging out here drinking beer!
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At 7/8/2010 12:14 AM (utc) our position was 16°57.21'S 144°34.83'W

Back in Tahanea, Chainhook Recovered

2010-07-06T12:51:00.001-07:00

Dave has been adamant that we stop in Tahanea on our way East toward the Marquesas... partly because of the free stainless steel chain hook waiting for us there, and partly because it is so beautiful. So when the wind stayed way more north of east than forecast, and lightened up (also not really forecast by the GRIBS), we made a quick decision to haul ass overnight from Fakarava S to Tahanea, the night before last. Our course was about 110 degrees, and with light NE winds, it wasn't really sailable, but nicely motorsailable.

Back at Lovely Tahanea (This Time All Alone)
Because of pass issues, only 11 hours of daylight, and the 49 mile passage to windward, we opted to do this as an overnight passage. We went out the S Fakarava pass at slack tide at 3pm, and motorsailed as reasonably fast as we could on port tack, until about midnight, when the wind direction went, as forecast, more east. At low RPMS with only the reefed main up, we made 4.5 knots right on course.

Then when only 20 miles from the Tahanea pass, we turned off the engine and tacked comfortably in the light air til dawn (somewhat ineffectually, but making about 1.5 to 2kts toward our Tahanea waypoint). We went through the middle pass at Tahanea at 0830 with 2-3 knots of incoming current, but only 10 knots of E wind, so pass conditions were not bad.

There were 3 boats anchored west of the middle pass when we entered at 8:30am, but no one responded to our VHF call. We recognized Tao 8 from a distance, but they're not close enough friends to bother with--we had only met them in passing in one anchorage in Western Panama 2 years ago. We certainly weren't interested in either anchoring there near them, or even trying to entice them down to our private spot.

From the pass, we proceeded directly east to the waypoint that John on Nakia had given us, where he lost his nice Stainless Steel chainhook (plus the attached snubber line) in 50' of water, the night that we had the bad storm there in May. While anchored together in Anse Amyot, over John's delicious Chicken Enchiladas, we had traded our spare non-SS chainhook for his waypoint. His waypoint was located just W of the big coral reef inside the NE corner of Tahanea, that we had snorkeled on the day before the storm.

A chainhook, for the non-sailor, is a hefty hook that is designed to hook around anchor chain. You attach a strong stretchy line to the hook, and hook the hook around your chain about 10 feet off the bow of the boat. The line comes back to a cleat (attachment point) on the bow. The stretchy line is designed to take the strain of the anchor as the boat moves around, instead of putting the strain on the non-stretchy anchor chain and expensive windlass (machine that helps you roll in and out the heavy chain and anchor). In rough weather, without a 'snubber', as the hook and line arrangement is called, it is common to snap even very hefty chain, and/or your bow roller or windlass. There are several wrecked sailboats in the Tuamotus caused by snapped chains in rough weather.

Nakia's Stainless Steel Chainhook
It is not unusual in very rough weather to break the line on the snubber, which is what happened to Nakia in the middle of the storm. Most boats in rough weather will have a backup snubber as well as the primary, which Nakia had. In the wild weather we had in Tahanea 2 months ago, their primary snubber snapped and the chainhook dropped off into the deep water. Just for referece, this chainhook probably cost about $30.

Back to the salvage operation... we tried to drop our anchor just ahead of the waypoint, trying to position Soggy Paws' stern right over the spot. We didn't want to mess up the situation with our anchor and chain dragging around. But I missed the spot a little, so we ended up with the waypoint between our anchor and the boat (90' from the GPS in the cockpit, ahead, and slightly port).

We were sitting in 55', so I personally didn't have much hope of locating it from the surface, and the idea of coming back to a waypoint 2 months later and finding something that small was a little ridiculous. However, Dave wanted to look for it, so there we were.

We lucked out and managed to arrive there toward the end of the incoming tide, in fairly settled weather, so the water was about as clear as it gets inside an atoll. Though the water is crystal clear outside, inside the atolls, the water is often only 10-20 foot visibility.

We could see things on the bottom from the surface, and only had to snorkel down about 10 feet to have a pretty good look at the bottom. Dave and I jumped in the water with only snorkel gear and snorkeled up either side of the boat as far as the anchor. Within 5 minutes Dave had located the hook and attached line, about 20' from our bow. Ain't non-dithered GPS AMAZING?! Dave had to point it out to me twice at the surface before I managed to see it, so he's got a pretty good eye for it. It was a 3" chainhook with about 15' of 1/2 inch line attached. He says "That's why I'm a Navy salvage diver."

At 55 feet, it was too deep for Dave to snorkel down and recover (he had already tried twice by the time I got there). But I made one attempt at it, and managed to reach the bottom, grab the line, and head for the surface. It was tough, but much easier than hauling out our tanks, etc. So now we have a nice shiny SS chain hook to add to our collection.

We then proceeded directly to our old anchor spot in the SE corner. See 'Lovely Lovely Tahanea' in May 2010.

After weeks of anchoring in groups of cruisers and lots of socializing, we are very very happy to be Alone At Last. I'm sure within a couple of days we'll be lonely and will be back on the net trying to get someone to stop in here and keep us company, but for now we are happy.

We plan to stay here until the eclipse on July 11th, and then take the first weather window after that to Makemo for supplies (hopefully in time for Bastille Day on July 14). We are still targeting arrival in the Marquesas for about Aug 1.
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At 7/6/2010 6:48 PM (utc) our position was 16°57.22'S 144°34.83'W

South Fakarava Revisited

2010-07-06T12:26:00.001-07:00

Dates: June 26-July 3
Anchorage Location: S Fakarava Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 16°31.26'S / 145°28.35'W

We had a nice time revisiting South Fakarava again. This time we anchored on the other side of the pass, where we heard from others that the anchoring was much better. Charlie's Charts only shows an anchorage on the north side of the pass, which the electronic charts cover pretty well. But last time we found only depths of 45 feet and lots of coral, with little protection from any northerly winds. Below I'll list a couple of waypoints to get into the south side anchorage from the main channel.

We ended up anchoring in 12-15 feet, with good sand and only scattered coral heads. In this area there is enough space to easily anchor 10 or so boats. There is a shallow coral bar to the north, and another one to the south, and the rim of the atoll to the east, so there is reasonable protection from North around East to the SW. There are a number of uninhabited atolls with palm trees and beaches within dinghy distance of the anchor area.

It is a little longer dinghy ride from the south side to the pass to go diving. We spent one afternoon looking for a shortcut across the shallow reef between us and the pass, but never found much of a shortcut. We could get across at high tide by picking our way very carefully with the engine half-cocked, but at low tide, with tanks in the dinghy, we would have never made it. So it is about a mile and a half dinghy ride to the pass (but the pass is also mile from the anchorage on the north side).

We got very strong E-NE winds for a few days due to a passing high pressure south of us. But we did manage to fit in 2 pass dives and one lunch with Manihi at Pension Motu Aito.

Manihi's pension (guesthouse) is the one with the red roof just ashore from the north pass anchorage. It is much more extensive than it looks from the water. He stands by on VHF 08, and can arrange a very nice polynesian lunch or dinner for groups of cruisers (2000 CFP per person). If you have friends flying in who would rather stay ashore, this is a VERY nice place to hang out. Much nicer than the pension at Tetamanu. Check them out at www.fakarava.org or email motu-aito@mail.pf or PH 74-26-13.

We were waiting for light SE winds to hop up to Raraka, about 45 miles NE. But as the NE winds persisted, we decided to skip Raraka and head straight for Tahanea.
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At 7/2/2010 6:28 PM (utc) our position was 16°31.26'S 145°28.34'W

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In Fakarava Provisioning

2010-06-26T10:03:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Rotoava, Fakarava Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 16°03.71'S / 145°37.14'W

We moved back to Fakarava on Weds to wait for the supply ship, and do some provisioning. When we first arrived off the town of Rotoava, there were only about 5 boats anchored. By Thursday, there were 20 boats! Everyone who hasn't left yet for Tahiti is in need of supplies.

As soon as we anchored, I had the wifi hooked up and started downloading my 232 emails (14 MB). And Dave was launching the dinghy. He wanted to rush to a private garden we had heard about, to buy veggies, before any of the other cruisers converging on the town got there. The nice lady, Hawaya, said she was pretty much out of everything. But we coaxed a bunch of bananas, and lettuce, bok choy, eggplant, and a few small green tomatoes out of her. The half stalk of bananas cost us nearly $12, but Dave has been searching for more bananas for a month, so we bought it.

The ship is generally due in Thursday morning, but it didn't arrive until after dark on Thursday. A bunch of us are here for gasoline or diesel, which you have to buy directly from the ship. Someone ran into the dock to make sure the ship would still be there in the morning, and then put out a call on VHF "be on the dock at 7am".

Dave dutifully reported at 7am with his 3 gasoline jugs and a fistful of Polynesian Francs (CFP). An hour later the captain finally showed up on the dock and got the ball rolling, but it was a madhouse... a 2-step process... pay first, get a slip of paper, then go to the guy who dispenses the fuel. With 30 cruisers and locals and no organization to the system. Though Dave was one of the first ones to get to the dock, he was one of the last ones served. He finally made it back with 15 gallons at 10am! Meanwhile, I was stuck on the boat while everyone else in town was buying up the cabbage.

We rushed into the beach near the grocery stores, and did find some veggies left--onions, potatoes, carrots, and cucumbers. Dave was happy to find apples and pears. But there was no cabbage to be had. The store we were in... Boulangeria Havaiki... said they only got 8, and they were gone "like that" (snap). I never thought I'd walk the streets looking for a lowly cabbage. But I did, checked the 3 other possible stores, and no one had cabbage. I think this is left over from the strike 2 weeks ago--they still haven't caught up. (Having 200++ cruising yachts in Tahiti trying to provision probably also had an impact on our supply out here).

We have 16 baguettes bagged in ziplocks in the fridge and freezer--enough to last us a month. I keep telling Dave I'll bake him bread, but I can't argue that this isn't much easier.

In the afternoon we followed a tip from another cruiser and went with Dave and Susie from Sidewinder, looking south of town for a vegetable farm. (Put your dinghy at Pension Havaiki, walk out to the main road, and turn right. The farm is about 200 yards south on the main road.) There we found Mr. Topaz working in his gardens. We scored more tomatoes, eggplant, some huge (18-inch long) cucumbers, and limes. We met his sons and his wife and had a good old time trying to talk to them in our very poor French. After chatting a bit, his wife went back into the house and came back with a pumpkin for Susie and I as a gift. Very nice and very Polynesian.

We checked out the menu at Pension Havaiki, as we walked through their hotel. It looked reasonable and a nice place to have a dinner out (main course about 1500 CFP). So we and Sidewinder dinghied back at 7pm in the moonlight for a nice dinner.

Today we plan to head south for the South Pass area of Fakarava. There to wait for an appropriate weather window to go somewhere east of here.
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At 6/26/2010 4:38 PM (utc) our position was 16°03.71'S 145°37.14'W

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The Crown of Thorns' Revenge

2010-06-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

Current Location: Anse Amyot, Toau Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 15-48.21S / 146-09.14W

As we have been diving the wall outside Anse Amyot, we have noticed one area of the reef that has the dreaded Crown of Thorns Starfish. These are about 18" in diameter with 12-16 arms, and bristly thorns 1-2 inches long. The Crown of Thorns eats coral polyps, and when their numbers increase, they can devastate a reef area pretty quickly.

The Crown of Thorns Starfish

In Australia, the Crown of Thorns has reached epidemic status and they are actively battling them. "Considerable effort has gone into developing methods to control crown-of-thorns starfish populations in local areas by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), CRC Reef researchers and the tourism industry. It is not possible to eliminate crown-of-thorns starfish from reefs where they are in outbreak densities but with sufficient effort, local areas can be protected."

"Some tourism operators in the Cairns region spend up to $300,000 each per year in crown-of-thorns starfish control. Some operations collect or inject 200 to 500 starfish each day in an effort to keep selected sites free of starfish. In 2001, the Queensland Government committed $1 million for reef management issues, including assisting the tourism industry in controlling populations of crown-of-thorns starfish."

Our friends on Visions who have gone ahead to western French Polynesia emailed us that Moorea has lost 95% of their reef due to crown of thorns. They urged us to think about trying to destroy any CofT animals that we encountered on Toau's pristine reef.

So on the last dive we made, when I saw a Crown of Thorns, I took my small dive knife which is permanently mounted on my BC and tried to poke a few holes in it. Ow! Those thorns, which look sort of rubbery, are really strong and really sharp!! I poked a few more of the ugly things with my small dive knife--and got poked back 3 more times for my efforts, before I wised up and decided to leave well enough alone. Moral of the story: Carry a bigger knife! Now my index finger hurts like hell, and is swollen and nasty looking.

We have looked up the Crown of Thorns in our Dangerous Marine Creatures book, which says "Even dead animals, washed up on the beach, are capable of causing severe pain to humans. The pain is well in excess of that due to penetration of a spine. Continuation of the pain, swelling, weakness, and limitation of movement may continue for many weeks or months, especially if any of the spine is left in the wound." In other words, there is some poison attached to the spines.

Oops. They suggest an X-ray or MRI to verify if any spines are embedded. We are a long way from a doctor or an X-ray machine, so we are taking the 'wait and see' approach. I has been 3 days now, and the one finger that got poked several time in the soft tissue by the knuckle is still swollen, and still hurts, though less than before. It also feels a little warmer than the adjacent finger. It seemed to me that there were no spines embedded--I just barely touched the spines. There is no visual evidence of anything left in the skin.

Though the wound seems clean, the slight fever in my finger has me a little worried. I am contemplating starting a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics. But I hate to take antibiotics 'just in case'.

Anyway, we will continue to try to exterminate any Crown of Thorns we encounter on the reef, but we'll be a lot more careful (gloves and a much longer knife).
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At 6/17/2010 5:03 PM (utc) our position was 15°48.21'S 146°09.14'W

Summary of Diving in Anse Amyot, Toau

2010-06-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

For divers with their own equipment and compressor, Anse Amyot is a diving paradise. The current in the 'pass' is minimal, there are very few sharks, and the anchorage area is in the lee of an atoll with a beautiful wall that runs for a couple of miles in either direction.

Gaston has installed 2 dinghy mooring balls for divers, and it is also very easy to drift the wall with dinghy in tow with a 75' 'leash'.

Sherry in the Yellow Dog Canyon
Mantas Feeding in the Lagoon

Lion Fish in the Grottoes
Our favorite dive spots are as follows:

Yellow Dog 15-47.468S 146-08.698W
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Dive bouy with deep sand canyons 50m east of bouy. Best dive at Anse Amyot. Start at 9m and go over the wall to as deep as you dare.

Snapper Hole 15-47.608W 146-08.832W
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A sand crevasse full of snappers. No bouy, but anchor your dinghy in 25-30 feet, or start here and do as a drift down the wall toward the SW.

Amyot Pass 15-48.040 146-09.360
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Dive bouy just outside the pass in 10m, close to the wall. Dive the wall, or slow drift into the pass on incoming tide.

Caves and Grottos
-----------------
15-48.674S / 146-09.906W
15-48.806S / 146-10.066W
15-48.938S / 146-10.206W

This is a series of large grottos along the wall SW of the anchorage. Each one is very nice, and there's a lot of nice wall to explore in between. Possible to do as one long dive or a series of shorter dives. 20-40 feet deep in and around the grottoes, and the wall to as deep as you dare to go. If you only have time to do one spot, the middle one is the best.

All these spots are along the wall just outside Anse Amyot. Diving is best in E to S winds.

For snorkelers, inside the reef close to the anchorage is a beautiful snorkeling area in 5-20' of crystal clear water. It is best to wait until 2-3 hrs after low tide for the incoming tide to bring in the clearest water. In a 15 minute snorkel you will see hundreds of fish, large and small, moray eels, lion fish, if you look carefully, and only an occasional shark. If you are adventurous, drift snorkeling outside the reef is also very nice in 10-30 feet of water.

For safety when going outside the reef, we try to always go in pairs, and always take a hand-held VHF-this would not be the place to have a motor problem! It's a long drift to Papeete.
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At 6/17/2010 5:03 PM (utc) our position was 15°48.21'S 146°09.14'W

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Trouble in Paradise

2010-06-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

Current Location: Anse Amyot, Toau Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 15-48.21S / 146-09.14W

Yes, we are still at Anse Amyot, and still enjoying this beautiful location.

We really had planned to leave early this week to go back to Fakarava. However, we have been getting low on gasoline--too much dinghy-ing around and too much dive compressor running--and we asked Gaston here at Anse Amyot to add an extra 200-liter drum of gasoline for us and other cruisers, to his order of gasoline. It was supposed to be here a week ago, and then again on Monday.

Unfortunately, there is/was a big 'general strike' going on in Tahiti starting late last week. All government workers, including the Weather Office, the firefighters, etc etc were on strike. The strike completely shut down the international airport for days, and also shut down the port in Papeete (Pap-ee-ay-tay). Visions had family flying out and had to rebook them 3 days in a row before they finally got out. And all the cruising boats arriving in Tahiti a few days ago arrived with empty fuel tanks after a near windless passage, only to find no diesel to be had in Papeete.

The strike is just over now, hopefully for good, but things are backed up. The supply boat bringing the fuel from Papeete could not get fuel to fill their tanks. So now it is 'next Monday' for fuel delivery. We know that Gaston here at Anse Amyot has a rather urgent need for gasoline, and he is pretty well connected to the supply boat captains, so we are confident the fuel will arrive here as soon as it's available. We've decided that the best choice is to sit tight and wait.

It is a great place to be stuck, though. We are still diving nearly every day--when weather and social commitments permit. We have covered almost all of the wall outside the pass in a mile in either direction, and now have our 'favorite spots' marked by GPS. Dave is getting really good with the underwater camera, having lots of time and clear water and interesting subjects to practice. Yesterday we returned to the 'Grottos' site to look for the elusive Black Lionfish that we saw on our last dive. We managed to find a pair, and Dave got some good shots. Yes, they will get posted eventually.

Though nearly everyone we knew here left for Tahiti a few days ago, a day later, a whole new wave of boats came in from the Marquesas. So we've had another round of social gatherings. The wind is still really light, so many people are delaying leaving for Tahiti hoping for more wind. I am sure the wind won't start blowing until WE start to try to head south and east.
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At 6/17/2010 5:03 PM (utc) our position was 15°48.21'S 146°09.14'W

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Diving the Yellow Dog Canyon

2010-06-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

Current Location: Anse Amyot, Toau Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 15-48.21S / 146-09.14W

The diving in general at Anse Amyot is spectacular. Unlike the other anchorages we have been in in the Tuamotus, we are only a couple of hundred yards from the lee side of the atoll. Here, the coral reef goes from 10' deep, to 30' deep, and then plunges to untold depths.

Gaston and Valentine, the Tuamotuan family that lives here, not only has put big boat moorings in their small cul-de-sac, but also put dinghy moorings out on the wall, to facilitate diving. There is one bouy just outside the anchorage, and another down the wall a little ways.

The best dive, according to Gaston, is called Yellow Dog. It is 1500 meters east of the channel entrance. Gaston has marked the spot with a bouy, so divers can hook their dinghy to the bouy and easily dive the spot. The feature of this spot is not just the 100+ foot visibility, nor the near-vertical wall, but a big canyon.

The wall plunges from 30 feet to nearly bottomless in a short space. The bottomless depths are deep dark blue, and as you drift down into the canyon, it almost feels like you are diving into deep space. It is a really weird feeling. Johanna, from Visions says she felt she was going to be sucked down into the hole. But there is no current, nothing but crystal clear 82-degree water, live coral, and thousands of fish. And of course, the spectactular vista.

As a group, we drifted down to close to 100' deep, and then looked up. The water is so clear, it does feel like you are in a canyon on land. Dave got a couple of great pics of me down in the canyon.

The canyon does go deeper... I ventured to 130' (that's pretty deep for casual sport diving) before Dave motioned me back up.

We have since dived on that spot 2 more times, and will likely go back a couple of more to show our friends the spot.

But the whole rest of the wall is pretty fantastic too. We have started a series of slow drift dives down the wall from the Yellow Dog, doing about 400-500 yards a dive. I tow the dinghy, and Dave takes the camera. There is about a quarter knot of current with us, and only 10 knots of wind in the lee of the island, so it is a really easy, gentle drift. We bounce up and down between 80 deep along the wall, to 30' deep on top of the wall, following the contours and the fish.
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At 6/3/2010 7:13 PM (utc) our position was 15°48.21'S 146°09.14'W

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Dancing with Manta Rays in Toau

2010-06-03T12:17:00.001-07:00

Current Location: Anse Amyot, Toau Atoll, Tuamotus, French Polynesia 15-48.21S / 146-09.14W

We have been at Toau's Anse Amyot for almost a week now, and I haven't blogged anything about this wonderful place. (Too busy having fun.)

We had planned to only stay a couple of days here, and leave for the next atoll, Apataki, when Visions left for Papeete. But we have finally found paradise. Dave says we may never leave!

On our first full day here, our host Gaston took all of us in his small outboard-powered boat inside the lagoon to 'a secret place' where the Manta Rays feed. It took him only a couple of minutes to locate the Manta Rays--flashing alternately white and black underwater. He anchored and urged us to jump in.

7 of us donned snorkel gear and went to swim with the Mantas. These rays are normally pelagic fish, and a HUGE. A typical manta has a 10 foot 'wingspan'. We found a total of 10 rays feeding on plankton. Even Gaston was impressed to see so many in one place. These mantas were doing graceful back loops, essentially staying in one general location, and scooping the numerous plankton into their giant mouths.

We had 2 underwater cameras in the group. Dave got a bunch of good still pictures, which we will eventually post here, and Gram, from Visions, took some nice video. You can probably see these videos by now on their photo site, linked from their blog at vofj.blogspot.com. It was amazing swimming among these giant rays. Our presence didn't seem to bother them at all, and we were literally swimming among them for 45 minutes.

We marked the spot on my handheld GPS, so we could go back again by dinghy if we wanted to. But Gaston seems more than willing to take small groups out there.

Later in the afternoon, we made a SCUBA dive with the crew from Visions on the spot that Gaston and Valentine call 'Yellow Dog'.
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At 6/3/2010 6:45 PM (utc) our position was 15°48.21'S 146°09.14'W

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At Anse Amyot, Toau

2010-05-27T09:55:00.001-07:00

We sailed yesterday from Fakarava to Toau. We are on a nice mooring at Anse Amyot for a few days. Anse Amyot is a 'false pass' (or more aptly, a dinghy pass). An enterprising couple has put moorings out and invites cruisers in for dinner (more on the facilities here in a later post). We have heard the moorings are free for 3 nights if you have dinner there.

We are still following in Visions of Johanna's wake, and this was their selection as the final stop before the leave for Tahiti in a couple of days. They wanted a place that was easy to leave from, so they could time their departure for a convenient arrival time in Tahiti.

There is actually a pass that takes you inside the Toau lagoon. We hope to get back there later to check it out.

Our sail yesterday was relatively easy. We did an early exit from Fakarava on the last of the outgoing tide... with the current still running at 3-3.5 knots out. There was quite a chop in the middle of the pass, but we edged over to the east side, and it was no big deal, since the wind and the current were going the same direction. The wind blew all night in the 15-20kt range from ESE (right down the 25 mile length of Fakarava), so the 'chop' inside the lagoon was getting pretty big...2-3 feet when we left, and we had a fast beam reach for the 6 miles from the town anchorage to the pass. The pass would have been really nasty on an incoming current, with the current directly opposing the strong wind.

We set our route to sail right by the main pass at Toau, to get a look at it. The current was still running out, 2-3 hours after it should have turned to run in. We think this is the classic wind/wave effect, where the wind is blowing strong, pushing water into the lagoon over the low reef to the south. We thought we were passing far enough out that we wouldn't have been affected by the current, but we did get into some dicey waves, with the current still blasting out against the ESE wind and waves. We took one good square wave across the deck before we managed to get out of there... and we were almost a mile off the pass!

After that we had a really nice downwind sail along the coast of Toau. By the time we got halfway up the coast, Toau was sheltering us from the big southerly swell, which really smoothed the ride out. We gybed once to get around the corner, and on converging with the coast again near Anse Amyot, caught a nice big Mahi Mahi.

The entry into Anse Amyot is in the lee of the atoll. So even though the wind was blowing in the 20 knot range, it was an easy entry. It is pretty well marked, and the reefs are easily visible. The one thing we didn't expect was the 2-3 knot outgoing current. We understand that anytime the wind is blowing hard from the SE, there is an outgoing current here. This made picking up a mooring a little challenging, but fortunately, we had help from Visions in their dinghy. Fortunately there were 2 free moorings available when we arrived. (Our friends on s/v Puerto Seguro had answered our call on Ch 16 and confirmed there were moorings available, while we were still enroute.)

More on Anse Amyot itself later...
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At 5/27/2010 4:03 PM (utc) our position was 15°48.14'S 146°09.09'W

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Fakarava Diving

2010-05-27T09:49:00.001-07:00

I can sum it up in one word... WOW!!

Sherry & the Sharks
We did 4 dives at the South Pass in Fakarava, and each dive got better. 3 of the dives were on the low tide slack and one was on the high tide slack. Best clarity was on the high tide slack... go at the end of the flood, when all the clean ocean water has been washing in for the past 6 hours. You just need to be careful not to mistime it, and end up being carried out on a strong ebbing tide.

Dave Gets a Close-Up
Basically we estimate the time of slack, get to the pass a little early, where you can actually see the conditions, and wait until it looks about right. Once the current slows, we get the rest of our gear ready, wetsuits on, etc, and take the dinghy into the pass, a little up-current from where we want to be. Then, without anchoring, we jump in the water, go down quickly, and then do the dive, drifting with the current and towing the dinghy behind us on a 100' leash. With the light winds we've had, towing the dinghy is not hard at all. It drifts at about the same pace we do, 75 feet below it.

Bill and Gram from s/v Visions of Johanna
The waypoint we used as our dive spot was 16-31.086S 145-27.679W. If the sea is calm you can start a little further out, but on a day with any offshore wave action, be careful going much further out. This spot is over a big sand trench that is easily visible from the surface. From here, once on the bottom, you head for the NE side of the pass (the one with buildings). The sharks are most numerous about 10 minutes into the dive (at a slow drift in). We heard that other side of the pass is good too, but the NE side was so good, we never got to the SW side.

On the best dive we had, the visibility was over 100', that's double or triple the visiblity on a typical 'good vis' Florida dive!

The big attraction of the South Pass is the sharks. There are over a hundred fairly docile sharks just hanging out in the pass. Mostly gray reef sharks, some black tips and some white tips.

Once you're tired of watching the sharks (thankfully, they just sit there mostly), there is a nice sloping wall full of coral and lots and lots of fish. And at the end of the dive, about a half mile of 15' reef. In the shallower water after the incoming current has picked up, you just fly over this part.

Because of the challenges of the drift dive and towing the dinghy, we only took our camera on the last dive. Dave got a couple of great shots of me and the sharks.

Tetamanu Dive Center
There is a dive shop in the South Pass, Tetmanu Dive Center. They declined to fill our tanks, though. Liability issues, they claimed. They did encourage us to dive with them, but we didn't see that they added much value to our approach with the dinghy. Though a first dive with them would probably be a nice way to get your feet wet.

The pass at the north end of Fakarava is much further from the anchorage, so we contracted with Te Ava Nui dive shop for a package of 3 dives. With 5 of us and 3 dives each, we managed to negotiate a package price of $50 US a dive, using our equipment and their tanks.

Headed Out to the N Pass with Te Ava Nui
There are 2 other dive outfits at the north end. These two are almost side-by-side about 3 miles south of town. You can anchor off in this area, but then it is a long hike (hitchhike/bicycle ride) to town. Both Top Dive, associated with Sunset Beach Resort, and Serge at Fakarava Diving Center get good reviews from divers, but Diving Fakarava is a smaller outfit with a more personal touch. On scubaboard.com they got rave reviews, but you probably need to book them in advance to make sure you get the dives you want in a limited time.

Fakarava Diving Center is Easily Recognizable by the Big Dive Flag
Te Ava Nui is the biggest outfit, so they always have dives going someplace. Typically they want to you do the outside-the-pass dive with them first, so they can assess your ability and comfort in the water. Their actual pass dive is quite challenging. They do not time the dive for slack current, so you are often diving in fairly strong current. And the first stop of the dive is at 100', which is pretty deep for a novice diver. They basically take you to the bottom quickly, and anchor you there--holding on for dear life to the dead coral--to watch the sharks and other pelagic fish. After 10 minutes of flapping in the current, the divemast signals, and the group lets go and drifts a fast drift over the bottom, up to about 70'. Toward the end of the dive, there is a depression in the bottom, and they take you down into this area to get out of the current and give you some time to look around.

All 3 north Fakarava dive shops also make trips to the south pass. Typically this is done as a 2-dive all-day trip, for about 2.5 times the normal cost of a 1-dive north pass dive.

Our preference overall was the South Pass, hands down. The ability to wait for slack current and drift more slowly was a big one. So if you only have time for one or two dives, our recommendation is the South Pass.

Dave Refilling Tanks on the Back of Soggy Paws
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At 5/27/2010 4:03 PM (utc) our position was 15°48.14'S 146°09.09'W

Entering Fakarava at the South Pass

2010-05-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

The South Pass at Fakarava, from Outside, on a Calm Day
Our plotted course from Tahanea to Fakarava hugged the atolls as much as possible, trying to take advantage of the protection from the ever-present swell. (Light wind + large swell = hell). This course took us close along the coast of Faaite, another small atoll. We had about 5 miles of 'open ocean' between the west end of Tahanea and the east end of Faaite, which we crossed easily just at sunset. The wind was still OK, and we let the genoa out full, and we didn't roll very much.

When we got to Faaite, we stayed close (a little scary in the dark, but we were trusting our accurate charts, and checked occasionally our distance off with radar). We had just enough sail out to make 2.5-3kts. The plan was to lurk along the N coast of Faaite until we could bear off NW to Fakarava (11 miles away) and just make the slack current at daybreak at 6am. We were sailing in company with John and Linda on Nakia (svnakia.blogspot.com). (Pronounced Na-KEE-ah)

We met up with them in Tahanea and have enjoyed their company. We tracked their trip from Marquesas to Hawaii last fall, and their sail back to the Marquesas this spring, via the Pacsea Net. So we were glad to finally meet them in person, and have been able to talk extensively about their experiences wintering in Hawaii last year.

On my watch, it a pleasant sail and I enjoyed playing with the sails to try to match speed with Nakia. And keep from running into them--since we each only had a single light showing, it was sometimes hard to see when we were getting close together!!

Just at the time I turned it over to Dave, the wind died completely. We still had 15 miles to go and 7 hours til daylight and slack tide. And we were still in the lee of Faaite. So Dave rolled in the Genoa and lashed the wheel on centerline, and we just drifted west at about half a knot under the triple-reefed main. (The sailors are asking... "Why do you have a triple-reefed main in 10 knots of wind?" Our power sail is the genoa, and it's much easier to handle when sailing off the wind, and to change sail area. We knew we would be stalling, so we just left the triple reef in the main when we raised it.

At 3am when Dave turned the watch over to me, I turned on the engine and headed straight for our waypoint outside the pass, timing our arrival for 5:45am. The wave action wasn't as bad as we'd feared, considering that the big blow we had a couple of days ago was still blowing further south. It had turned into a long swell. We rolled a little, but not bad.

On arrival at our waypoint, it was just starting to get light enough to see. We circled once and wait for the sun to actually come up, and then went in close to have a look at the pass. Dave opted to circle again to give us better light for actually entering the pass. It was a little scary looking from outside, because the big swell was crashing on the beach on both sides. Dave could see enough to tell that it was NOT crashing in the middle. At about 6am we finally got the courage to enter the pass--we thought it was on the last of the incoming tide. Once we got fully IN the pass, we could tell the tide had turned and we had a little current against us (which turned into 2.5 against us by the time we got to the narrowest portion of the pass).

The trickiest part of the whole entry was trying to figure out where to go inside the pass. There is a range that you use to stay lined up while coming in. The range, when you get close, turned into red channel marks, which you put on your port side, and there are 2 green sticks ahead, which you put on your starboard side (passing between the range and the green marks). The pass splits then after the green marks. We had tracks from another boat that went left, but we knew that Visions was anchored to the right, so we went right.

s/v Nakia in South Fakarava

Photos by Bill Strassberg s/v Visions of Johanna, from the Rigging
Soggy Paws at South Fakarava
Though it is a lovely area, the north side anchorage turns out to be a pretty crummy anchorage. It is very very corally. When we circled around a couple of boats anchored in 25-35' ahead of Visions, we could see the bottom profile on our fishfinder was very erratic--lots of high-profile coral. Out further, in 50', there was less profile, and we could see small patches of sand. So we finally dropped anchor in 50', and did NOT set the anchor. I went down later with the tail end of one of our used SCUBA tanks to survey the situation, and was able to pull the anchor into a sand spot, and unwrap the chain from the worst of the coral. (old dead coral) Dave buoyed the last 100' of chain by putting a pair of buoys about 50' from the bow. It's not perfect, but it will hold if we need it to. We may have to dive to free the anchor, though, when we try to leave.

We're keeping a close eye on the weather, but for now, the forecast is for less than 10 knots for the next 4 days. (Of course, this was also the forecast just before the big blow we had a week ago).

We managed a drift dive in the south pass on the mid-day slack. (more on diving in another blog post).
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At 5/19/2010 7:36 PM (utc) our position was 16°30.28'S 145°27.36'W

Leaving Tahanea

2010-05-19T09:50:00.001-07:00

The distance between Fakarava and Tahanea is only 50 miles--normally an easy 8-10 hour daysail. However, when complicated by the fact of needing to wait for slack current in the passes--every 6 hours or so--and the fact that there is only barely 12 hours of daylight here, it's nearly impossible to do as a daytrip. Visions was able to make it as a daytrip, but they easily make 8 knots.

We opted to make our hop as an easy overnight. We picked a great weather window--the weather was fine and the wind started out about 12 knots from the SE and was forecast to die off from SSW during the night. Using Gram from Vision's 'current predictor' spreadsheet (which takes an available tide point, makes an adjustment for an estimate wind/wave factor, and also some minor adjustments based on personal observations at that pass, we had an easy out of Tahanea.

We sailed off our anchor from our favorite anchorage at Tahanea (Taha5) about mid morning, and used Vision's waypoints to go direct across the lagoon to the middle pass. We could easily see the coral patch reefs that Visions had mentioned to us, and also noted dozen more on our chart. Because 'Janet', our autopilot, was in a cranky mood, we wandered quite far from the intended route at times, and so got to explore more of the lagoon. The water in the middle of the lagoon is quite deep--100-125 feet. The coral comes up to within a foot or two of the surface. Each patch reef is more than just one coral head, but really a small patch reef--usually something like 20' wide and 100' long, with light brown/yellow coral. In decent light, they stand out from half a mile away. If there was any significant chop in the lagoon, there would probably be disturbed water over the heads to make them visible, too.

We had a beautiful sail across the lagoon. Sunny skies with 12 knots on the beam, and we weren't in a hurry!! We circled inside the pass once to take a close look at conditions in the pass, then headed out, still under sail. We did turn on the engine as we entered the pass, just in case, but it was not necessary. There was a little chop on the west side of the pass, but the east side, still in 50' of water, was smooth. As we got outside, we were greeted by a large pod of dolphin. They raced to meet us, jumping out of the water ensemble in their haste (sorry, we didn't get the camera on deck in time to catch this beautiful sight).

The current was still in full ebb and pushing water out the passes close to a mile offshore. But with a SE wind, the north side of Tahanea was calm, and we had a very nice sail close in along the coast in calm water.

Next stop, Fakarava, 50 miles away.
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At 5/19/2010 7:36 PM (utc) our position was 16°30.28'S 145°27.36'W

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Lovely Lovely Tahanea

2010-05-18T12:11:00.001-07:00

We have been here about a week now, and we could easily stay for a month. This is a beautiful place! And no one is here!

View of Our Favorite Beach

For the whole time we have been here, only our 3 cruising boats have been here. There was another boat (a large private yacht) who came in and anchored right by the pass for 2-3 nights during the stormy weather, but as soon as the weather cleared, they left. And they never went anywhere else but that one anchorage by the pass.

The Boats at Anchor

We have anchored in about 6 places and traversed twice the NE and E sectors of the atoll (see below for waypoints). The anchorage that we found as a refuge from the strong SE winds (Taha5, in the SE corner of the atoll) has been the best so far. It is 9 miles SE of the main pass.

Exploring in the Dinghy

We have a nice anchorage in 15' of water in good sand, with protection from ENE to SSW. There is a nice palm-studded motu protecting us from the wind and chop. We have been shelling and opening coconuts on the beach. And we actually walked around the whole island, and explored the shallow windward lagoon between the motu and the reef (where we could go lobster-walking at night, if we wanted to).

Coconut Gathering

We did drift dives in the passes, and had planned to do a couple of more before the bad weather set in. There are 3 passes side-by-side in Tahanea, so a lot of varied terrain to explore. On the outside of the pass, we saw sharks, dolphins, and big pelagic fish. In the pass... tons and tons of live coral of every variety and all the pretty reef fish you can imagine... We have yet to take a camera on a drift dive yet... still getting used to the procedure.

There is no one living here on this atoll. It has been turned into a park, so there are no permanent habitations and no pearl farms. We saw a 'park ranger' come by via speedboat from a neighboring atoll when we first got here.

Does This Look Like A Park Ranger To You?

He welcomed us to use the water in the cistern next to the block building at the east pass, which is normally unoccupied. We took our laundry ashore and did it right there at the cistern.

Sherry Doing Laundry

He said he visits Tahanea about once a month to check on things. He and a few friends stayed overnight and left the next morning. The only formalities, when he was here, was to look at our passports to make sure we had cleared in to French Polynesia somewhere else.

John on s/v Nakia has an intriguing Google Earth photo of the lagoon, and the 3/4 of the lagoon we have NOT explored looks very inviting. With a few days of settled weather, we could explore the whole atoll inside the rim, and try to find a location that has perfect protection from the occasional weather systems. We were especially looking at a spot at 16-57N and 144-44.6W, where a spit of coral comes way off the surrounding rim into the lagoon. If an anchorage could be found on both sides of that spit, by moving once, you could get almost complete 360 degree protection.

But alas... there are other atolls to explore, and we promised Visions that we'd hook up with them at Fakarava as soon as the weather moderated. They took off 2 days ago and made it there on a day trip. But the distance is such that we can't easily make it daylight and in the 12 hours imposed by the requirement to enter and leave lagoons at slack current. So we are looking for an overnight window, and are a little more particular about our weather window than they were. We have opted to hang out and let the SE winds drop a little. It looks like today is a good window. But Dave is already talking about coming back, after Visions has blasted West for Tahiti in 10 days. The South Pass at Fakarava is supposed to be some of the best drift diving in all of French Polynesia.

Here are our Tahanea waypoints, for our cruising friends following in our wake.

Anchorages:
TAHA1 S16°51.7245' W144°39.8052' Near E Pass, Moderate depth, some coral
TAHA2 S16°54.8479' W144°34.4900' E side of atoll, nice snorkeling
TAHA3 S16°50.6107' W144°41.8510' Lots coral, some NW protection
TAHA4 S16°51.0551' W144°41.5240' 25-30' LOTS OF CORAL, GOOD SNORKELING, near main pass
TAHA5 S16°57.2234' W144°34.8063' 14' SAND, FEW CORAL HEADS, GOOD PROT ENE TO SSW

Day snorkel spots
TAHA6 S16°52.1230' W144°37.8250' DAY ANCHORAGE. GOOD SNORKELING, ANCHOR 25' SOME HEADS
T16 S16°54.4110' W144°34.4916' NICE HEADS
T17 S16°52.5911' W144°36.0481' SNORKELING

Going in the Pass
TAHAAPPR S16°50.1375' W144°39.2266'
TAHAPASS S16°50.9968' W144°41.0125'
TAHA IN S16°51.5110' W144°41.1084'

Route from Taha5 back to Middle Pass
TH RT#1 S16°56.6190' W144°35.5768' There ARE isolated heads on this route, but easily
TH RT#2 S16°56.1030' W144°36.4693' spied with a good deck watch
TH RT#3 S16°54.4900' W144°38.0397' Depths 75-100 feet, with heads at 2'
TH RT#4 S16°53.5460' W144°38.7766'
TH RT#5 S16°51.8160' W144°41.0232'

Easiest navigation between anchorages is close around the rim. Stay in ~60. Only dicey spot is at Taha6. Easily seen and avoided from the deck on a reasonable day, but we recommend a stop to snorkel. This was the best snorkeling IN the lagoon. There is a pinnacle that comes up from about 40' with tons of pretty fish and sea life at about 5' deep, easy dinghy (or moderate swim) distance from Taha6.
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At 5/17/2010 5:56 PM (utc) our position was 16°57.20'S 144°34.80'W

Clear Weather and Calm Seas

2010-05-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

We are happy to report that after crossing the lagoon in a horrific thunderstorm to find protection from the SE, things finally started to clear. Last night was very gentle, and we are anchored off a nice little palm/sand island, and we've actually found an anchorage clear of coral heads (at least for the swinging radius) in 15' of water.
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At 5/15/2010 4:45 PM (utc) our position was 16°57.22'S 144°34.82'W

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Which Way is the Wind Going to Blow?

2010-05-14T13:29:00.003-07:00

Or... we finally meet "The Beast"

Our Weather Right Now
Next time all you East Coasters are sitting waiting for a cold front to pass, thank your lucky stars for the millions of dollars that our government puts into the NOAA weather service. Between GRIB files, scatterometers, and high resolution IR satellite photos, all available at your fingertips, and NOAA Weather Radio, you have everything you need to figure out what the weather is doing..

Out here in the paradise of French Polynesia, we are struggling to get believable weather forecasts. The French forecast only gives 'today and tomorrow', in French, and it is similar to the Bahamian weather forecasts 'Wind SE to NE at 10-20 knots with higher gusts in squalls'. And 'tomorrow' is really 'this afternoon' by the time we get the forecast in the morning.

There are some products from the Hawaii NOAA Office and the Fiji Met Office. There are almost no satellite photos available, even if I had the internet to get them. And our O-Holy-GRIB files, which were uncannily accurate when we were down near Easter and Pitcairn, and have generally been pretty good, are just flat wrong right now.

The problem is, there is a very complex weather picture, and the GFS computer program that generates the GRIB files doesn't deal with it well. What's buggering up our weather here is called the South Pacific Convergence Zone, sometimes called "The Beast" by knowledgeable cruisers. A convergence zone is a quasi-stationary area of very unstable warm moist air. What happens in this area is that cold fronts from New Zealand, moving east and bringing cold unstable air, stall out on top of a Convergence Zone, and then you mix in 2 strong high pressure areas side-by-side down south, with a trough in between, and the weather picture is VERY unstable and very unclear.

We are sitting in an atoll that is about 10 miles across and about 20 miles long. It is rimmed by coral and sand motus, but seems to be very deep in the middle. As far as we know, there is no protection in the interior of the atoll, but reasonable protection along the coral rim. There is no place at this atoll (Tahanea) to get 360 degree protection, and the next atoll that *might* have better protection is over 50 miles away over open ocean.

As this weather approached us, the GRIB files were forecasting almost a 180 degree wind switch, but not very strong, with a period of light and variable weather in between. We were watching it approach pretty carefully, and thought we were on top of the situation.

Well, 2 nights ago, the forecast was for the wind to clock from ENE-N-NNW through the night. So we picked a spot accordingly. As it approached and the wind started to go NE, we snuggled up to the coral rim in a place giving us good protection from ESE - N - NNW. Well, the wind went S-SE instead, and we were completely exposed across miles of 'fetch' on a lee shore, with our backs to the coral reef.

To complicate matters, there is no good sand anchorage here. Anchorages either have sand and lots of coral heads or sand and not so many coral heads. So it totally complicates the situation when a wind switch is expected. There is just no way to keep your chain from wrapping in the heads if you swing much, eliminating your 'scope', and making re-anchoring in the middle of a blow almost impossible. This adds a whole 'nother dimension of 'fun' to the bad weather equation. (See our next blog post 'Anchoring in Coral').

Anyway, the wind switched, putting us on a lee shore, with 15 miles of 'fetch' in 20-30 kts winds. We eventually had breaking waves over the bow due to the wind-driven waves. Even though our anchor was well set, we still broke loose in the wild conditions and dragged about 100' toward shore. Fortunately we finally stopped and held for the rest of the night.

Yesterday, we re-positioned to a better spot close by, and the wind went back to a more easterly direction, in which we had better protection. We and the 2 other cruising boats here, and 3 more cruising boats scattered among atolls within a few hundred miles of us, have been anxiously gathering weather, trying to figure out where the next bad blow will come from. The GRIBS are still not showing the weather we are seeing, so we do not trust their prediction.

Because we have explored the atoll some in good weather, and laid down GPS 'tracks' we can follow back to other anchorages, we do feel we can move around if need be. We just can't figure out which way to go. The GRIBS are showing that our wind now should have been clocking around through the north, when we actually experienced very strong southerly winds. 36 hours later, they are still predicting moderate northerly winds and we've mostly had strong SE winds. Do we head for the southern rim of the atoll to protect us from SE-SW winds, or the northern rim to protect us from NE-NW?? We are still pondering that question.

We did have a few days of fun here in Tahanea, in gorgeous weather, and I will blog about them later... but for now, off to go collect some more weather (and share weather data via radio with other boats).
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At 5/14/2010 7:44 PM (utc) our position was 16°51.06'S 144°41.55'W

Anchoring in Coral

2010-05-14T13:29:00.001-07:00

We are at the atoll of Tahanea, in the Tuamotus of French Polynesia. Around here, your anchoring conditions are

(1) Solid coral bottom
(2) Sand with a lot of coral heads
(3) Sand with a few coral heads (rare)

Due to being chased around by weather, we are currently anchoring in sand with a lot of coral heads. The water depth is usually 35-50 feet, and the coral heads are 4-5' off the bottom, and scattered on the bottom at about every 6-10 feet or so, with sand in between. This is a perfect setup to badly wrap your chain, damaging the coral and endangering your boat. If your chain gets wrapped close to the boat, you no longer have the 'catenary' of chain that provides a shock absorber when the wind blows or the waves get big. You can snap the chain or break bow rollers and windlasses in this situation.

On the advice of another cruiser (also fairly new to cruising this area), we bouyed our chain in 2 places to make it hang in the water above the coral heads. This turned out to be a pretty neat arrangement. Using readily available 'pearl farm' bouys, which can be found on any windward beach, we tied 2 together with a short line, and tied that line thru the anchor chain, to make one 'bouy'. The amount of flotation required depends on how heavy your chain is and how far apart you place the bouys. We found that 2 pearl farm bouys is just perfect to suspend 25-50' of our 3/8 HT chain.

Our friend recommended one bouy 1.5x the water depth from the anchor, and another 2.5x the water depth, with enough floatation to hold your chain up. You first put all your normal scope out and get the anchor set well, then pull up carefully to add the bouys in the right place.

After deploying ours as recommended (using a total of 4 pearl bouys in 2 sets of 2 bouys), I snorkeled to check the anchor and the chain. It looked pretty slick. The anchor was well set, the chain was hanging eerily over the coral heads and we were ready for the expected windshift, no problem.

Well, the middle of the night brought almost a 180 degree shift, and 25-30 knot winds in gusts. The fetch across the 10 miles of coral lagoon caused 4-5 foot waves in the anchorage, and our bow was pitching heavily, with a few waves breaking over the bow. Dave actually sent me below in the middle of our anchor drill, to batten all the hatches as if we were at sea!.

For the first time in a long time, we actually dragged anchor. Over a period of several hours and several squalls, we first held OK, then came loose from one coral head and held at another position, but then in a particularly bad squall (when a neighboring boat also dragged), we dragged our big 88-lb Delta about a hundred feet through the coral heads before it finally re-set itself.

We ended up in 10' of water (after having initially anchored in 35 feet), on a lee shore in a blow, with an isolated coral head within about 2 feet of our keel (unbeknownst to us at the time), and the reef right behind us around 100'. It was rainy and dark as hell, so we couldn't actually see the reef behind us, but we knew it was there, and our chart plotter told us we were 'on the coral' already, so we knew it was very close.

Fortunately, with the shallower water, our 'scope' ended up about 10:1, our anchor had found a good pocket of sand, and we held finally pretty well. We were damned lucky. We spent the last 4 hours of darkness with the engine on (in neutral, but ready to go) and one of us at the helm, watching the GPS and ready at the throttle if we needed to. We counted the minutes to 'first light' so we could safely assess the situation and decide how to extricate ourselves.

We considered, but rejected, trying to re-anchor in the night. But, not knowing how our chain might be wrapped, and the complexity of getting the snubber and the bouys aboard as we're pulling in the chain, and the 25 knot gusts that would make low-speed maneuvering almost impossible, we opted to sit tight and hope our anchor would continue to hold. Fortunately, it did.

At dawn, holey moley, there was the reef close behind us!

I jumped in the water to assess the situation, and saw the one coral head a few feet under our keel as we swung back and forth. By then the wind had eased some, and gone back East a little, giving us a little protection from the waves. We turned out not to be too badly wrapped, the bouys having done the job well. To solve the problem of bouy retrieval while pulling in the chain, I took a sharp knife out and cut the bouys free.

As to why our 'never drags' Delta did drag, Dave suspects that the bouy close to the anchor was set too close, and interfered with our Delta's holding/resetting power under extreme conditions. We probably were also not set in really deep sand.

So when we re-anchored, we opted to go with only one (set of) bouys, placed about 1.5x the water depth from the BOW (vs the anchor). This leaves about 30-40' of chain laying on the bottom, where it might wrap, but also provides the correct angle of pull for the anchor. But the last 100' of chain is neatly suspended about 10' above the tops of the coral heads. If the wind switches, we would probably wrap the first 50', but we always have more chain we can let out (and another set of bouys we can deploy, if necessary).

To facilitate bouy attachment and retrieval, Dave found a snap shackle that fits the chain, so he now has 2 bouys tied together with a 3-4' line, with the shackle tied in the middle. He can easily snap on and remove a pair of bouys in a few seconds, as the chain is coming in or going out. The shackle only has to hold a few hundred pounds of chain, in water, so it doesn't need to be super-hefty. Caribiners or something similar might be scrounged out of your spare hardware box to do the trick. We have the second set of bouys ready to attach another 50' down the chain, should we need to let out more scope.

We'll let you know how the whole thing works out in the end.
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At 5/14/2010 8:14 PM (utc) our position was 16°51.06'S 144°41.55'W

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Safe Arrival Tahanea (and Diving!)

2010-05-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

We dropped the hook around 10am inside Tahanea, the pass was no big deal (3 knots incoming current with mild wind and sea conditions).

At 11:30, we took off in the dinghy behind the crew from Visions of Johanna, to dive the pass at the tail end of the incoming current. Nice dive!!

There are only 3 boats here that we know of... Visions, Soggy Paws, and Nakia (svnakia.blogspot.com).

Happy Hour on Soggy Paws tonight--coconut steamed breadfruit is my appetizer, along with breadfruit french fries.
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At 5/10/2010 5:22 PM (utc) our position was 16°49.35'S 144°28.47'W

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Dodging Unseen Dangers at Night

2010-05-10T10:14:00.001-07:00

We spent the night still sailing downwind, dodging small atolls. It's a little scary, but with GPS, accurate charts, radar, and a complete backup navigation system, I guess it's not too dangerous.

But 20 years ago, everyone just thanked their lucky stars when they could get safely past the Tuamotus, giving them a wide berth. The atolls are only coral reef with a few palm trees, so they are not visible for more than 3 miles. There are currents around here, between the atolls. It took some pretty tricky and risky navigation to do what we've done in the past 2 days.
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At 5/10/2010 5:13 PM (utc) our position was 16°49.48'S 144°27.51'W

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The Best Sail We've Had So Far

2010-05-10T00:27:00.001-07:00

Since about midnight last night, the winds eased to just under 15 knots, and the seas eased to about 4 feet. We have had a nice sunny, warm, tradewind sailing day. We have only had the big genoa up, and haven't had to touch it all day. With no main, "Janet", our autopilot, doesn't have to work so hard. No black clouds, and all the wind shifts have been favorable ones!

We've been sailing along in gentle winds and gentle seas all day, but still making about 5.5 knots. Nice!

I got several Happy Mother's Day's from Dave, a nice email from daughter Nicki (followed up by a short satellite phone call from me to her), and even the guys on the Pacific Seafarer's Net wished me a Happy Mother's Day.

We are eagerly anticipating landfall tomorrow morning sometime at Tahanea.

I went looking for other sources of slack current information, and found contradicting information in the British Admiralty and the US Pacific Pilot guide (Pub 126). The cruising guides seem to quote one or the other. Gram on Visions has put together a spreadsheet, presumably to enter the moon rise/set times and come out with expected slack times. I'm not sure which one he's based it on, but they've been in and out of 3 atolls now, so we are assuming they know. He told us to shoot for 9am tomorrow or 3:15pm. It looks like we'll get there in time for the 9am.
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At 5/10/2010 7:21 AM (utc) our position was 17°03.30'S 143°39.45'W

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Hello Hao, Goodbye Hao

2010-05-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

We were all set to arrive at Hao with possibly enough time to make a possible slack current event this afternoon. But due to really crappy weather last night, we missed it.

Just when we were starting to count our chickens, we got a wind switch that drove us more west than we planned. This was complicated by the fact that we had set the spinnaker pole up on the jib, and with the pole up, we couldn't 'harden up' and keep our original course line. We didn't want mess with trying to take that big spinnaker pole down in big seas in the dark. (For the non-sailors, a spinnaker pole is an aluminum pole about 20 feet long and 4 inches in diameter, used to 'pole out' a sail to keep it from flopping when sailing downwind).

We spent the whole night dodging squalls with 25 knots of wind, rain, and wind from the wrong direction. Neither of us got much sleep.

We took the pole down at first light, but by then the damage was done. We couldn't make our waypoint without really bashing into 20 knot winds and 8 foot seas. No thanks. So we took the easy way out, and sailed up the west side of Hao. It afforded enough protection from the big seas to give us a breather, time to take a nap, and consider what we wanted to do. We were close enough to see some tiny palm islands on the rim (called 'motus' in Polynesia).

We had planned to arrive at Hao with winds having eased to under 15 knots for at least 24 hours. But the forecast changed and it had been blowing almost 20 for at least 24 hours. We were pretty sure that, even if we'd made it on time, we would have found a 5+ knot outgoing current anyway.

If we'd really been stuck on Hao, we would have just hove to for the night and tried it in the morning. But it takes the lagoon several days to empty off all the water that washes into it when the seas/winds are high. So it was iffy. And Dave really wanted to go to Tahanea anyway. :)

So we had lunch, plotted a course for Tahanea, and bore off WNW for Tahanea, 230 miles away. Its almost, but not quite, dead down wind. So we will gybe a couple of times to get there (unless the wind shifts). We will have to dodge around a few atolls also. (Thank goodness for our GPS and very accurate French electronic charts).

So we are enjoying a nice downwind sail--no moon right now, but lots of stars. No squalls tonight, thank God. The wind has eased to the 15 knot range and the seas are much better also. ETA Tahanea sometime Monday, in light winds.

Our friends on Visions of Johanna are there, and the big attraction at Tahanea is DIVING!! (The visibility at Hao was very poor, Visions said). We are FINALLY going to do some serious diving in some seriously fantastic atolls.
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At 5/9/2010 7:37 AM (utc) our position was 17°45.33'S 141°43.76'W

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Destination: Hao, in the Tuamotus

2010-05-09T00:16:00.001-07:00

In anticipating our arrival at Hao, the next thing we are sweating about is when we will be able to enter the pass. Most of the Tuamotus are sunken volcanos--atolls with large fringing reefs that totally enclose the lagoon, and one or two passes that a big boat can use to enter. As you might imagine, the small pass on a big atoll can get a pretty good current going, so you have to time your entry/exit for a time of slack current. Fortunately the tidal range here is only about 2 feet.

The challenge we face in calculating the best arrival time is twofold. Exactly when is high/low tide and therefore when to expect a slack current. And what effect will the wind and seas have on things. (and third, how long we feel like hanging out outside waiting...)

We learned that at Hao, when the wind has been blowing hard for a few days, there is NEVER a slack current--the current is always outgoing at 5-10 knots!! This is caused by the waves breaking over the windward side of the reef, filling up the lagoon, and the only outlet is the passes, which are typically on the downwind side of the reef. Our friends on Visions, with a 62' boat that motors comfortably at 8-9 knots, went in without paying too much attention to the slack current issue, and got pooped by a huge standing wave (first time in 5000 miles of voyaging). They have a pretty good blog post about it (vofj.blogspot.com, about 10 days ago).

So the reason we left Gambiers in 'boisterous' conditions was to arrive at Hao when the wind was easing. We're hoping there will be a slack current at some point.

We use WXTide32 (freeware downloaded from the web) to figure our tides. Generally it is pretty accurate. But for the Tuamotus, there are only 2 tide points, and there is some confusion about what time zone the tide points are on. For Hao, there are actually 2 tide points--basically the same one but on 2 different timezones. One is labelled '-10', meaning, we think, UTC -10, which is the time zone that Hao is on (one further west than Hawaii). The other is labelled Tz: Pacific/Marquesas. The tide times are 1.5 hours different! (For some reason the Marquesas are on a half a time zone).

But knowing when the tide turns doesn't always tell you when the current will be slack. We have a reference from the Pacific Islands Pilot that says "To avoid a difficult passage through the reef, vessels should wait for the two periods of slack water associated with the flood current, which are short. Slacks usually occur about 4.5 hours and 2 hours before moonrise; and again 5 hours and 3 hours before moonset. When the tidal race slows or stops, the channel may be entered".

So this is what we'll be basing our slack current information on. (Plus the advice of Visions of Johanna, who was at Hao for a few days).
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At 5/7/2010 6:39 PM (utc) our position was 20°03.82'S 138°42.00'W

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Enroute Gambiers to Hao in the Tuamotus - Day 3

2010-05-07T11:44:00.001-07:00

Just another 500 mile passage!

No one warned me that the Pacific was so big and the islands so far apart. I long for the Bahamas, only 75 miles from home, with lots of islands only hours apart, and enclosed by a big protecting reef. (And fish you can actually eat!)

Dave keeps telling me that the Bahamas are crap, and he'll never pay $300 to go there (that's the entry fee they enacted for boats over 40 feet a few years ago). And he says... wait til you see the diving in the Pacific. Well, I'm still waiting. (Though our friends on Visions have been diving at Makemo in the Tuamotus and raving about it).

And we'd never get around the world hanging out in Marsh Harbor!! (or Double-Breasted Cays).

Anyway, I digress. We left the Gambiers 2 days ago, in pretty rough (for us) conditions. The wind was blowing 18-20 kts and the seas were about 8 feet. If we hadn't been going on a broad reach, I would never have been able to get Dave to leave in those conditions. But he is learning that wind is good!! (even if it does get the boat all salty).

It has been relatively easy. The biggest challenge has been getting our autopilot to steer well on a broad reach with the big genny up and a small triple reefed main. Dave likes to have the main up for a steadying sail and a 'last resort' sail in a squall. But it makes us unbalanced and Janet (the autopilot) doesn't like broad reaching with that sail combo at all.

Every time we get things set up so we're going where we want to go, the wind speed changes a little and we have to rebalance all over again. (Let sails in and out, tweak the heading on the autopilot). Add in the 'dark as hell' factor at night, where you can't see what your sails are doing (or the weather coming at you), and it makes life interesting!! When Janet doesn't like the heading we've picked, she responds by veering back and forth about 100 degrees... luffing the sails because we're too far upwind on one extreme, and because we're too far downwind on the other extreme. Tweak the heading 5 degrees, and she's happy and settles right down and steers properly.

We are threading our way between many small atolls, but unfortunately, none have passes that would let us go inside, and it doesn't seem possible to drop a hook on the outside in most conditions. (At least we have no guidebooks or cruiser accounts of anyone who has done it successfully). So we are going direct to Hao, which has a big pass, marked entry, and for which we have detailed charts.

We have about 180 miles to go--about 25-30 hours more at our current speed.
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At 5/7/2010 6:34 PM (utc) our position was 20°04.16'S 138°41.62'W

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Getting Underway for Hao in the Tuamotus

2010-05-05T08:45:00.001-07:00

Well, I still haven't caught up on all our past adventures. But it's time to move on from the Gambiers. We are leaving this morning for Hao or Amanu in the Tuamotus. They are neighboring atolls at approx 23N 135W.

This trip will be about 465 miles, and we expect to get into Hao late in the day on Saturday, May 8th. If you want to read up on Hao, check Visions' blog at vofj.blogspot.com. They were there about a week ago.

The weather forecast looks pretty good. We expect 15-20 kts on our port quarter for the whole trip, and are projecting an average speed of about 6.3 knots.
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At 5/5/2010 2:44 PM (utc) our position was 23°08.56'S 135°02.81'W

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Taravai

2010-05-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

Taravai is one of the islands in the Gambiers group. It is only about 6 miles from the main harbor of Rikitea, but being away from the main harbor, it is quite tranquil.

The primary harbor in Taravai is in front of an old church. But in the prevailing ESE wind conditions, that seemed to be pretty exposed to us, and there were already 4-5 boats anchored there. So we opted to follow the advice of another cruiser, and work our way into the uncharted south bay.

Chart of Southern Half of Taravai
Our tracks are in red
You will find little about these 'uncharted' areas in cruising guides. Even detailed S Pacific cruising guidebooks tend only to have a page or two at most on this entire archipeligo. Navigation is done by reading the color of the water, so our travel between islands is limited to 10 AM to 3 PM or so, moving with the sun behind your back in order for us to properly "read" the bottom. Dark blue is friendly and light blue is fine. Tourquise can be tricky as depth depends on water clarity. The water is getting thin as tourquise turns green and then to tan/yellow in sand, or brown over a reef. You don't go there!

We went on a day with good sun and it was easy to work our way into the bay. The trickiest spot was at 23-10.059S / 135-02.596W. Before this and after this, it was pretty easy. Though the water clarity in the bay is not very good, so proceed carefully.

Soggy Paws in the Bay at Taravai
We found a beautiful bay with a nice beach, and good protection from almost 270 degrees, plus pretty good protection for the 'open' sectur, due to the reef. We spent about 4 days there. If you work your way into the bay, there is one anchor spot in about 25-35 feet of water, good sand bottom, and enough swinging room (23-09.606S / 135-02.217W). Since that spot was occupied, we anchored a little further out, in about 40-45' and a few coral heads. We eventually had 6 boats in the bay, with adequate room for a couple more.

Denise et Eduard
While there, we went ashore and met Eduard and Denise living in a nice home on a lovely bay.
Eduard was born on Taravai, had gone off and worked in Hao as a welder on the French Navy base, and was now back on his family 'farm' for good. They are living nicely off the property, keeping pigs and ducks, and growing pretty much everything they might need.

Eduard's Awesome Solar System
They do have a few of the modern comforts--a very large solar array, a refrigerator and freezer, and satellite TV. From their house, they can't quite get cell phone coverage from the tower in Rikitea, but we could get it from where we were anchored in the bay.

They were very generous with us with their fruits and vegetables--giving us armfuls of pampelmouse, lemons, papayas, eggplant and coconuts.

Lunch with Denise and Eduard
One day we had a 'potluck' ashore with them. They had cooked a couple of canard (ducks) in the traditional polynesian 'rock oven', and also made a big pot of 'Poisson Cru'. Poisson Cru is a polynesian dish that consists of raw fish, chopped onions and such, in a coconut milk broth. It is sweetish and coconutty, but otherwise somewhat like a South American ceviche. We and the crew from Visions brought in desert and drinks for everyone (and an old pack of cigarettes for Eduard, which was much appreciated).

Poisson Cru
As we sat digesting our meal, we asked Eduard, in our broken French, about fishing. What lures did he use, and where were the best fish. This led to a 'fishing expedition' on Soggy Paws the next day.

Planning our Fishing Expedition
We loaded Eduard and Denise and the crew from Visions on Soggy Paws, and set out for the SW reef. We trailed 3 fishing lines, with all the right color lures, out the pass and around the reef, and back in through the reef at the north end of Taravai. We had nary a nibble.

Eduard Pilots Us Out Through the Reef
Gram (Visions) and Mike (Infini) Tend the Lines
Eduard had tried to tell us the day before that the time (moon/wind/currents) wasn't right. But we had fun anyway. And we got a chance to run down the west side of Taravai and explore a little. Again, the reefs are numerous, but accurately plotted on the Maxsea CM93 charts, and easily navigated with good light.

We re-entered the south bay at 23-09.720S / 135-03.627W and proceeded carefully back to our anchor spot without incident.

Denise and Eduard on Soggy Paws
A few days later, we did anchor in front of the church at Taravai. When we had been anchored in the south bay, we had dinghied around to the church and met Valerie and Herve on the north side of the church, and another guy on the south side of the church. They were both selling fruits and veggies to cruisers.

The Church at Taravai

Some Ruins Near the Church
Bill (Visions) and Sherry with Valerie
Dave especially wanted to visit Valerie again, because they had some really nice avocados. On our way out of Rikitea to stage for leaving the next day, we made a pitstop in the 'main' Taravai anchorage. We didn't know the way, so we just approached with a direct frontal assualt (with the wind at our backs and the sun in our eyes--a bad combination. We managed to cross the reef safely with a minium depth of about 10'. Once across the reef, it was deep and easy to navigate to a safe anchor spot. Though this anchorage seemed exposed, there really is pretty good protection from the offshore reef.

The proper entry is around 23-08.957S / 135-01.119W, where there are a couple of pearl bouys marking a 'channel'. From this point, you proceed carefuly NW around the prominent reef to your left, watching out for isolated coral to your right. Good light is mandatory. Our anchor spot was 23-08.751S / 135-01.499W in 45 feet sand.

Our final anchorage in Taravai was a bay on the NW side, where we staged to leave. This bay has great protection from the prevailing easterlies, with good 270 degree protection from N - E - SW. We anchored at 23-08.564W / 135-02.803W in 45'. With this anchorage, we completed a complete circumnavigation of Taravai.

In all, the Gambiers were worth more than the month we spent there, but with winter coming on (in the Southern Hemisphere) it was time to be headed north.

Oh No! No Baguettes!!!

2010-05-02T20:24:00.001-07:00

Well, the bakery here is out of flour, so there are no baguettes until the next ship comes in. :(

From what we understand, flour is a subsidized item, and the bakery gets an allotment of government-subsidized flour, and when that's gone, they go on vacation til the next ship comes in with a new allotment.

With all the cruisers passing thru now (gobbling up baguettes like they're going outta style), they really ran through their normal amount of flour early.

We still have one or two left in our fridge (we stockpiled when they were available). Since we can't get regular sliced bread, we use the baguettes for all our bread needs, so we buy 6 or 8 at a time. They're not too bad when re-heated in the oven--they get nice and warm like they were just baked, and soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside, just like good French bread should be.

I COULD bake some bread. I bought tons of flour in Ecuador before we left. But so far this year, I have only baked one loaf of bread!! Dave is a nut when it comes to stockpiling bread, and though I'd much prefer fresh baked bread... it's a lot of work!!
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At 4/18/2010 4:04 PM (utc) our position was 23°09.61'S 135°02.27'W

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A Grey Day in Paradise

2010-04-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, we are still at anchor in Rikitea.

Blustery Weather in the Anchorage
I've been trying to catch up on posting pictures to our blog posts in March and early April. I am finished with the 'On Passage' stuff as far as Easter Island, and Easter Island itself. You can see the final result by clicking here Easter Island. Next is Pitcairn, and a couple of Gambiers posts I haven't gotten to yet. The internet here is R-E-A-L-L-Y slow, and I often get up at 5am to try to get a little better speed.

Our friends on Visions pulled out of the Gambiers almost a week ago, on a nice weather window. We just weren't quite ready. I lobbied strongly to pass on the window and take a few days to just relax. It is tough when my Dave and Bill from Visions of Johanna get together. It's go-go-go all the time!!

We have had a nice round of dinners and happy hours around the anchorage. Dave celebrated his birthday, and all of our group gathered for pizza and birthday cake. (Thanks, Sue, from Infini, for making the cake!!) We haven't remembered to take our camera often, but Dave caught this great picture of a few of the 'girls' during one happy hour in which we had a book swap.

Our friends on Aliisa finally arrived. They left Peru just about the same time we left the Galapagos, but it took them nearly a month longer to get here. They had better luck (or more fortitude) at Easter Island and managed to stay for 2 weeks.

Lauri and Anina are on the last leg of a 6 year circumnavigation. They hope to be in Cairns, Australia by September, where Lauri started from. You can see his adventures on his website at Aliisa.net.

The pizza parlor in town is only open Fri-Sat-Sun, so Saturday after Aliisa got in, we all went in for pizza. It was good--better than South American pizza, but we just about choked when we did the math and found they cost about $11 each for what was essentially a personal-sized pizza.

Now the weather has moved in, and we've got forecasts for 20-35 knot winds over the next 5 days as fronts and highs and lows roll past us.

We are actively looking for a weather window for the next jump--up to the Tuamotus. We have had nearly an unending succession of Lows roll past, bringing mostly NW-ly winds.

It is 450 miles NW to the Hao atoll. Though there are many islands and atolls between here and there, all are either islands with no real anchorage, or a closed atoll, with no pass big enough for a sailboat. We need a 5-day weather window, and looking at the GRIB files, it looks like the first possible departure date is May 4th or 5th.

Fresh Baguettes and Internet, Who Could Ask For More?

2010-04-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

We are enjoying being back in civilization, with fresh baguettes available daily, and internet to keep up with our friends and family.

Sherry Enjoys a Baguette with her Morning Internet
That thing on the plate is 1/4 of a fresh pamplemousse (French Polynesian grapefruit).

A Visit to a Pearl Farm

2010-04-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

We had an opportunity to visit a pearl farm here in the Gambiers. They supposedly produce the best 'black pearls' here of all of French Polynesia.

There is no tourism industry here in Gambiers, so no one is really set up for tours. However, if you ask the right person, they will give you a short look around. Bill from Visions of Johanna set up this trip with Benoit at his pearl farm about a 20 minute walk out of town.

A Typical Pearl Farm Building
The first thing we learned is that the pearl farming work is usually done at a little building on stilts built over the water. We had thought those quaint little houses on the water were for living in, but it turns out to be a convenient way to deal with the pearl activities without stinking up the town. And easier for the coming and going of the oysters, etc. People commute to work from town everyday in launches with outboard motors.

A Typical Pearl Farm Launch
They loaded all 9 of us up in the launch and took us out to their building. Benoit's son gave us a nice explanation of the process.

Benoit's Son Explains the Process to Us

The first step in the pearl farming process is get oysters of the right size and development and implant both a seed pearl and a tiny chip of oyster shell into the gonads. The Japanese perfected this technique and some pearl farmers still use skilled Japanese workers to do this, though the French Polynesians are also learning how to do it.

Then they tie the oysters into racks and take them out in strings to their open water 'farm'. In the Gambiers, you can see many pearl farm bouys scattered around the open parts of the lagoon.

Periodically, they must retrieve the racks and clean the oysters, as clean oysters are happy oysters, and produce better pearls.

Some pearl-producing oysters are recycled, seeded again, after producing a good pearl. Others are saved for their shells. You can also eat the oyster muscle (similar to a scallop).

The hope was, at a pearl farm, that not only would we get some insight into pearl farming, but also be able to buy some pearls at a discount. Alas, it seems that all their production is controlled and they are not supposed to sell their pearls from the farm. There is a nice shop in town that has individual pearls and pearls in settings (rings, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces).

On our walk back from the pearl farm, someone invited us into their yard for free 'pampelmousse' (large sweet grapefruit grown on the island). We gathered all that we could carry!

Hiking Mount Duff

2010-04-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

One of the cruiser things to do here in Mangareva is to hike to the top of Mt. Duff. Without much information about where EXACTLY the path to Mt. Duff was, we set out on the road out of town.

I actually stopped and asked directions. One of the storekeepers in town that speaks English drew me a sketch map that helped us get on the right road. But his sketch was rough and turned out to not be quite accurate. He showed a path coming off the left side of a curve in the road, and that was accurate, it was WHICH curve that was the problem.

While Bill and Sue explored the path on the first curve with a path that we came to, I stood out on the side of the road and waited for someone to drive by. We had been passed by several pickups and motorcycles on the walk up, but of course when I WANTED a car to come, none did. Finally some guy came by on a motor scooter and I got him to stop. In my horrible (almost non-existent) French I asked where the path to Mt. Duff was, and we were able to communicate enough that I knew THAT path wasn't it. He indicated (sign language) that it was just ahead on the next curve.

There it was, properly marked with a sign that said Mt. Duff.

Once on the right path, it was actually a very pleasant walk thru a pine forest--a nice improved path for the tourists. We were joined by a skinny friendly dog of German Shepherd descent who was having a good time romping along with us.

We got to a Y in the path, with 2 signs in Polynesian, one pointing one way and one pointing the other. Neither said Mt. Duff! (this is a British name). If we had actually known when we started WHICH peak was Mt. Duff, it would have been easier. Our dog friend wanted to go to the right. We almost followed him. But Bill said the path to the left looked a little more worn. Hmmm... follow the dog who lives here or the cruiser who doesn't?? We followed Bill and went left.

After the Y in the path, we started scrambling up, still in pine forest. The slippery pine needles made the going tricky. In a few spots, there were lines between trees with knots in them, placed to help us go up and down the steep slope. At the very end, we got above the tree-line, and the path switched to wading through high grass. By this time, Bill was way ahead of us, out of sight, and Jo and Sue and I kept telling each other that there were no snakes in Paradise. (ha ha)

We finally made it to the top and climbed up on the rock outcropping. Wow, wow, WOW! What a view! We could see 50 miles in every direction. Out to the surrounding reef and well beyond. It was a beautiful clear day and we got some great shots of the clear water below.

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At 4/18/2010 4:04 PM (utc) our position was 23°09.61'S 135°02.27'W

Exploring Motu Puaumu

2010-04-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures from around Puaumu... (the Polynesians pronounce every vowel, so this is pronounced Poo-ah-ooh-moo)

We went on a dinghy expedition to the neighboring motu.

The crews from Soggy Paws, Visions, Infini, and Steel Band
in 'safari mode'
Sue and Jo enjoying the beach
Sherry found what we at first thought was a scallop, but which turns out to be a Black Pearl Oyster. They were found individually just laying around in the sand near a coral head. Like a scallop, we ate only the meaty muscle. It was good.

When we finally went ashore on the Puaumu motu, we found an abandoned house, and some pigs and chickens. They came running up when we came to the beach, looking for food. We found out the next day that someone comes from the 'mainland' every few days to feed them coconuts.

Reef Walking at Night for Lobster

2010-04-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

Pascal from Steel Band is a 'hunter/gatherer' of the first kind. When we asked him where the best place was to get something to eat on the reef, he told us we probably won't find any lobster while snorkeling. And unfortunately, spearfishing is very risky here...ciguatera is very prevalent in Gambiers and those big fat grouper looking at us from under every coral head could be lethal.

Apparently, the way to find lobster here in the Pacific is to walk on the reef for them at night. The best time to do this, according to Pascal, is on a rising tide on a new moon (when it is darkest out and the buggers can't see you coming). The lobster are supposed to be coming up onto the reef top to feed around that time.

OK, well, we are not generally night people. It is safest to be back aboard when it gets to be dark, and we are usually not ready with dinner until 7:30 or 8pm. However, this sounded like a lark, and Visions was up for it too. We had an early dinner and withheld the drinks til after our adventure.

We gathered on the east end of the beach at Puaumu at 7pm, armed with sturdy tennis shoes, bright flashlights, gloves, and mesh bags. Dave also brought his Keys 'tickle stick' and net, which turned out to be useful. Pascal said we should be walking along the top of the reef (old dead reef) a couple of meters just inshore from the breakers. You just spot them with your flashlight and pick them up. How cool is that?

Gram from Visions and Pascal from Steel Band tromped off down the reef pretty quickly. Bill and Jo and Dave and I were much more tentative. Dave had to go back to the dinghy for something, and while he was gone, Jo found a smallish slipper lobster and Bill bagged him. When Dave came back, he already had 2 more.

We proceeded out to where Pascal said we should be--it was more difficult--deeper, rockier, and some wave action. After 10 minutes of nothing, we went back inshore a little where we'd found the other slipper lobster, and eventually found a total of 7 of them. It was slightly easier to bag them with the net and tickle stick, but it was not that hard to just grab them with a gloved hand.

Meanwhile, Pascal and Gram came back from way down the reef, with a stone crab and a good sized lobster.

We had had enough, and had at least something to show for our efforts. We ate Lobster Penne and Lobster Alfredo for dinner the next night, and it sure beat 'old frozen chicken (again)'!

Ahhhhhh!!

2010-04-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

THIS is what we traveled 5,000 miles for!!

We left Rikitea harbor yesterday morning to go out to the outer reef and hang out for a few days. Bill on Visions of Johanna had gotten some waypoints from a French boat (Steel Band aka Asterix) for going up into the 'unsurveyed' part of the atoll. And we could see a light wind period coming up, for a few days.

So about mid-day, us and Infini and Visions and Steel Band all headed out of the harbor, east to the edge of the reef, and north along the reef. We left first and ended up in the lead. It turned out to be a 'no-brainer' for us (we don't need no stinkin' waypoints!)--the water is really clear and easy to read. It is mostly very deep--60-80 feet. There are brown spots that are submerged coral heads at about 20 feet.

There is a solid reef all along the eastern side of the Gambiers atoll, with periodic 'motus'... little sand/coral islands. A few have palm trees... they look JUST like that Windows background with the sailboat and the island.

When we arrived at the island that Steel Band had put an anchor waypoint on, we worked our way into shallow water. It turned out to be a little harder than we anticipated to find a good anchor spot. There are too many very shallow coral heads. We picked the largest open area and dropped our anchor in what we hoped was the middle. The depth was only 10 feet, nice sand, so we didn't need a lot of scope. When Visions and Infini arrived, they didn't like the shallow coral-studded area and went back out into deeper water.

See the Coral Head off Our Stern!
Ooops... we forgot to factor in the weather. All we had taken note of was wind SPEED when we looked at the forecast. It turned out that the reason the wind is dropping off is because of an approaching front. Last night the wind backed about 180 degrees. It left us sweating how close we were to a specific coral head. Just at dusk we had the foresight to swim out a second anchor to help keep us centered--we ended up hanging on that anchor all night long.

Fortunately, this 'front' was VERY mild. We had one rain shower and clocked 20 knots, but it didn't last long. Though the wind was most of the night coming from across the atoll, it was under 10 knots and so not a problem. Now, 24 hours after we arrived, it has back on around to the SE, and we are now hanging behind the reef again.

We are still getting used to this 'upside-down' weather. The cold fronts come from the south. And when they approach, the wind goes NE-N-NW-W and then blows cold air from the South after the front passes. Weird. And there is no Herb/Southbound II or Chris Parker here to explain the weather to us. Once we get a little further west and north, there are more nets and some weather gurus, but especially in this part of the Pacific, it's just us and the GRIB files. We are finally in the French Polynesia weather area. But the weather we can get from Saildocs is sparse, for only 'today and tomorrow', and in French. Here's yesterday's forecast for our area:

GAMBIER
SECTEUR EST 11/16KT MOLLISSANT 07/10KT A MI-ECHEANCE PUIS REVENANT AU SECTEUR SUD-OUEST EN FIN DE PERIODE, RAFALES 25/30KT SOUS GRAINS, MER AGITEE DEVENANT PEU AGITEE, AVERSES EPARSES OU GRAINS ISOLES.

Yep.

Anyway, where we are is just GORGEOUS. Sand beaches, palm trees, aquamarine water, beautiful coral, warm water, sunshine. It doesn't get any better than this.
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At 4/10/2010 5:48 AM (utc) our position was 23°01.09'S 134°55.21'W

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Rikitea Harbor, Mangareva

2010-04-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

We are in Rikitea Harbor, on Mangareva Island, in the Gambiers group of islands, in French Polynesia. We are glad to be back in the tropics. (This image is from a postcard)

We have a little bit of internet, but it is VERY VERY slow. We are asking all our friends to please please please DO NOT send us any attachments, or those cutsie email forwards.

We love hearing the news from back home and very much welcome emails, but we just can't take any big emails. Someone today sent me a 9MB email that would have taken us an hour to download (and we are paying by the minute for all our internet these days).

We got checked in with the Gendarmerie. It took us 15 minutes and a 70-cent stamp (to mail our paperwork to Papeete).

A supply ship came in yesterday, so we spent most of yesterday and part of today getting everyone topped off with diesel. We bought 6 55-gallon drums of fuel for 3 boats, and then pooled all our jugs and dinghies to ferry the jugs back and forth. What a process! And it 'only' cost $5.50/gallon. Our share was almost $500!! We are very thankful in these capers, for our ECSA siphon hose!!! Hopefully it is the last diesel we'll have to buy before we leave the Marquesas for Hawaii in September.

The wind is supposed to drop off starting this afternoon, so we are planning to go out somewhere to the edge of the reef behind a 'motu' (small island on the edge of the reef) and hang out and go snorkeling, etc, for a few days.

Arrive a Polynesie Francais

2010-04-06T13:03:00.001-07:00

We crossed the reef at the SE Pass this morning just at daybreak... in a squall. It was interesting for a few minutes (too much sail, wind, rain while crossing an unknown reef!). We were still wing-on-wing and so couldn't 'wave off' easily. But we knew the pass was wide and we had no problems.

We anchored in the lee of Akamaru island for about an hour, to get things sorted out, have breakfast, and wait for Infini. While we were there, a guy came up in a skiff, introduced himself, welcomed us to Mangareva, and presented us with a few huge 'pampelmouse'. These are the Polynesia version of grapefruit. Very tasty! Anchorage position: 23-11.289 S 134-55.466 W.

An hour later, having navigated across the lagoon using the very accurate CM93 charts in Maxsea, we dropped anchor in 45 feet in Rikitea harbor. Anchorage position: 23°06.91'S 134°58.05'W

We will clean up, have lunch, launch the dinghy, and go ashore this afternoon to the Gendarmeria to present our paperwork.

We are now on French Polynesia time, which is -9 from UTC, and -5 from EDT.

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Great Sailing Day

2010-04-05T19:56:00.001-07:00

The wind has remained steady all day at 12-15 kts from 080 degrees. We have the same sailplan as yesterday (haven't touched a thing in 24 hours)... slightly reefed main, vanged to port, genoa poled to starboard, and the staysail down the middle. Sweet!

Another nice sunny day in the tradewinds.

Tomorrow: French Polynesia at last!
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At 4/6/2010 2:53 AM (utc) our position was 23°41.33'S 133°48.37'W

Sailing Downwind for French Polynesia

2010-04-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

We left Pitcairn at sunset yesterday, in just a breath of wind. Most of the night we were doing 1.5-3 knots.

But this morning, as forecast, the wind came up to about 10 knots. We've been having a nice sail all day with a wing-on-wing configuration. We have the genoa poled out to windward, the main vanged to leeward, and the staysail sheeted tight in the middle. This is a great downwind configuration--very balanced, so it is easy on the autopilot or windvane. And the staysail provides a little roll control.

The wind has built slowly during the day, so now we have more like 12 knots. We are making about 5.5 knots directly for Mangareva.

We have about 195 miles to go. ETA at the SE pass at Mangareva is early Tuesday morning. We are REALLY REALLY looking forward to a nice calm anchorage. We have been underway or in dicey anchorages since March 2.
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At 4/5/2010 2:43 AM (utc) our position was 24°18.03'S 131°35.31'W

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Goodbye Pitcairn Island

2010-04-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

Our second day on Pitcairn was as full and rewarding as the first one.

It started early with a call from Infini on VHF as they were (finally) approaching the island. We guided them in to a good anchoring spot.

At 9:30, Brenda Christian and 'Radio Dave' Brown were out in the skiff to collect us and Infini. We went with them to Brenda's house, and enjoyed more warm bread and Pitcairn honey at Brenda and Mike's, while Infini filled out their paperwork.

We organized lunch at Betty Christian's Cafe, with Dave's help, and then set off with Brenda and Mike on 2 quads for the quick tour of the island. We had already seen a couple of the sights yesterday with Bruce, but were happy to go again. Brenda encouraged us to make the hike down to 'Down Rope' and see the Polynesian glphys carved in the rock face. It was a near vertical scramble down and back up, but worth it for the look at the glyphs and a chance to beachcomb a little. We visited Ship Landing Point and St. Paul's again, this time with Infini. More pictures!! Sue and I actually followed Brenda way out on the 'nose' of Ship Landing Point (see photo when posted, which Bruce took from his house below). We also went to 'Highest Point', which has the famous signpost showing how far it is to everywhere important. More pictures!!

Another great lunch at Betty's Cafe. Dave loved the huge smorgasbord. I loved sharing lunch with such a variety of people, including Tom and Betty Christian, both direct descendents of the mutineers, and their daughter. There were also a couple of the passengers from the 50' sailboat Southern Cross, who makes passenger trips to Pitcairn from Mangareva.

After lunch, Infini went to see the museum, post office, and town area, and Dr. Bruce came to collect us again and we set off for the other end of the island. We stopped at John Adams grave (the only marked grave for a male member of the mutineers). John Adams was the last surviving male mutineer, and converted the rest of the islanders to Christianity, after learning how to read from the Bible. The whole 'on Pitcairn' part of the mutiny is a fascinating story. If you're interested in reading the whole saga, look for a copy of the Bounty Trilogy. It details the pre-mutiny, the mutiny, life on the island, and life on Captain Bligh's longboat after being set adrift from the Bounty.

Then Bruce took us out toward 'Tedside' and (???)'s Ridge. The ridge gave us a great lookout over the town and the boats at anchor. The attractions of Tedside are 'Mrs T', a Galapagos tortoise who roams there--originally brought by Irving Johnson on one of his circumnavigations, and a blowhole. The blowhole is caused by big waves forcing themselves thru lava tubes.

We had a nice cup of tea with Bruce and his wife, and then Bruce ran us back to the landing area.

We had asked if there were fruits and veggies available on the island. We ended up with literally 20 lbs of bananas, some ripe and some not, and a great deal of fresh garden veggies including cucumbers, sweet potatoes, passion fruit, carrots, corn, a pumpkin etc. Several people had donated to our pile on the quayside, but again, special thanks to Carol, Brenda, 'Radio Dave' the banana man, and Bruce & his wife. Anyone want a banana??

We had been on the fence all day about whether to leave in the evening or not. Each islander we met asked how long we were staying, and we'd waffle every time. Each of the cruisers were facing the same question and all were waffling as well. The islanders were pooh-poohing the forecast we had of big swell coming.

But when we got back to the landing area and saw the anchorage, our minds were made up "Let's get the heck out of here.". Brenda took us back to the boats, thru the surf, and we had our anchor up within an hour. Infini at first had said they were staying, but after an hour aboard at the anchorage, they also decided to leave. The only boat left at sunset was Zephyrus, who were firmly committed to staying, no matter what.

We loved Pitcairn. We loved the island, and thoroughly enjoyed the people. Would have loved to have stayed longer. Would love to come back some time.

But we are now 15 hours into a 55 hour passage to Mangareva, Gambiers. This is the SE tip of 'French Polynesia'. Since we did so much motoring to get to Pitcairn, we turned the engine off as soon as we cleared Pitcairn, and drifted along at 2 knots most of the night. But now the wind is a good 10-12 knots and we are making good time toward Mangareva. ETA Tuesday morning sometime.
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At 4/4/2010 6:10 PM (utc) our position was 24°30.19'S 130°54.85'W

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A Full Day at Pitcairn Island

2010-04-02T23:41:00.000-07:00

We dropped anchor at 10am local time. We are now officially on Pacific Time, 8 hours behind UTC.

We had called ahead on VHF channel 16 and made contact with Dave Brown, whom we'd been talking with on the Ham Radio for a couple of weeks. And we also talked to Brenda, who is in charge of handling the 'formalities' at Pitcairn.

Soon after we had the anchor down, Brenda and Geoff, the local policeman, were alongside in their 'canoe'. This turned out to be a good sized skiff with an outboard motor on it. We were ready for them, and quickly jumped aboard. Even in this benign weather period, there is a pretty good roll in the anchorage, so the skiffs don't tarry alongside very long.

They brought us in to the landing area, through a swell that could become a surf zone when the waves get higher. There is a quayside, and then they pull the boats up a long ramp to get them above the tidal zone. (pictures to follow later).

Ashore, we were met by the young guy responsible for the Agricultural inspection. We had to fill out a short questionaire, and he inspected the apples we brought ashore, but otherwise this was pretty painless.

Then Geoff and Brenda loaded us and the crew from Zephyrus, who had arrived the night before, onto their 'quads' and whisked us up to Brenda's house to complete the paperwork. The main mode of transportation on Pitcairn is a 'quad'--the 4-wheeled ATV. They are perfect for the dirt roads and hill country at Pitcairn. Everyone has a platform on the back that will accommodate 2 passengers (hanging on for dear life).

Brenda and Mike Christian's house is up on a hill overlooking Bounty Bay. They have a killer view, and today was a beautiful sunny day. The sea below was crystal clear and very tranquil. While Brenda fed us hot bread fresh out of her oven, and lathered with Pitcairn honey, we filled out paperwork, got our passports stamped, and got a briefing on all the things to do on the island. She made arrangements for us to go to Betty's Cafe for lunch (you must call ahead).

The islanders were all abuzz with the fact that there were 5 sailboats at one time in the bay. Someone said they thought that was a record! (in addition to us and Visions of Johanna, we also had the British boat Zephyrus and the Canadians on Pursuit IV, and a charter sailboat out from Mangareva named Southern Cross.

While down on the wharf, Bill from Visions introduced us to Bruce, who is the doctor on the island. Bruce is an Australian who has contracted for a year to be the resident doctor. Bruce has only been at Pitcairn for a month, but is already in love with the island. The islanders provide the visiting doctor with a house and 2 quads, and a nice clinic from which to operate.

Bruce had kindly offered to show us a few places on his quad after lunch. So we climbed onto the back and roared off up into the hills. We stopped at Ship Lookout and took pictures of the sailboats in Bounty Bay. We stopped at 'Down Rope', which, after a steep hike down the hillside, it's possible to see some ancient Polynesian rock carvings. We didn't actually hike down, but we did take a picture down the hill. And then we went to St. Paul's Pool, where we hiked down to the pool and watched the southerly swell crash and spill over into the pool.

Everywhere we went, there was lush vegetation and absolutely stunning views of the island and the ocean. It felt like you could see 100 miles in any direction.

After our tour, Bruce dropped us off at the town square about 4:30 pm. Brenda had arranged for the Post Office and the Museum to be open for an hour or so, just for us. We bought a fantastic array of Pitcairn stamps at the Post Office (about $60 worth, a set for us and one for Infini--just in case they are unable to get to the Post Office). And then we went into the little museum. It was small, but full of fascinating bits of Pitcairn history.

We lucked out in being at Pitcairn when the islanders were having their about-every-3-weeks Friday night social get-together. It's a big potluck in the town square, and just about everyone on the island attends. For this occasion, a traveling Christian musician from India named Benny Prasad was going to perform in the church after supper. We had a really nice typical potluck supper, and got to just sit and chat with many of the islanders.

Benny's story is that God told him that he was going to send him to every sovereign country in the world to play music and spread the word of God. He is only 15 countries short of visiting every country in the world. It's an amazing story and he's a very interesting young man. You can read more about Benny at www.bennyprasad.com

Somewhere between the potluck and Benny's performance, we went with Dave (VP6DB) up to his house and his ham shack, and did a quick check-in with the Pacific Seafarer's Net, to confirm our 'safe arrival' at Pitcairn.

We really enjoyed listening to Benny on his unique 'bongo guitar' in the church.--Nice acoustical guitar music, with a few of Benny's stories about his travels interspersed. Then we went with Dave and the other cruisers down to Christian's Cafe, a nice cafe/bar, where we had a couple of beers. By this time, Dave and I were absolutely dead on our feet, so we begged off and got Dave and Brenda to ferry us back to the boat.

What a full day! What an amazing day! I think we've met fully half of the islanders. What a friendly and interesting bunch of people. We could easily spend a couple of weeks here, if there was a safe anchorage to do so. I am so sad that weather will force us away before we've really had time to enjoy the island fully.

Tomorrow, we expect Infini to arrive early in the morning--we talked to them tonight and they were only 50 miles out. We hope to get a full day ashore tomorrow and do some more exploring. But the swell is expected to pick up starting tomorrow afternoon--so we're not sure how long after that we'll be able to stay.
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At 4/3/2010 6:35 AM (utc) our position was 25°03.98'S 130°05.69'W

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Anchor Down in Bounty Bay, Pitcairn Island

2010-04-02T11:08:00.001-07:00

Another rolly anchorage!! More later...
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At 4/2/2010 6:03 PM (utc) our position was 25°03.99'S 130°05.69'W

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