SV Estrellita 5.10b

Muchos Kudos

2012-05-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

For furler fixing help we would like to say a big thank you to Vicki aboard Southern Cross who was flying into Nuku Hiva and stuck spare parts for our furler into her luggage for us. Knowing that a friend was hand carrying the parts, rather than being at the mercy of various postal systems, made it easy for us to put that issue aside while we were still on passage and to enjoy ourselves without stress in our first few anchorages. But how did we order those parts? My Dad gets a huge thank you for reading my sketchy descriptions via radio email and then calling riggers all over Washington State, identifying which parts we actually needed, ordering those parts and getting them to Vicki before she boarded the plane. Thanks Dad.

SV Pandion let us use their amps, their sewing machine, their main salon and their thread in order to fix the sunbrella on our main furling jib which had come loose on passage rendering the sail unusable. Now we are back to having two headsails and it eases our minds to have a spare during a period of time when we will be making a lot of passages.

Finally, we got our stern anchor good and stuck in the soft suction-y mud of Atuona on Hiva Oa and three boats came to our rescue. Bruno and Yvonne on Momo attempted to free our anchor with their dinghy and then by putting our rode on their electric windlass. SV Uma tried some dinghy and hand maneuvers with Carol. Finally, Michael of Wondertime used his hookah rig to free the anchor which was embarrassingly easy when down at depth digging in the murky water with his hands. Luckily our anchor, while enormous, was very light (a Fortress) and he reappeared with it in his arms shortly after descending.

Thank you, thank you and may we spread the good will by helping others in the future.

Logbook: Hikeu and passage to the Tuamotus

2012-05-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

We went off the charts for one stop on the island of Ua Pou in the Marquesas. It is bay called Hikeu and Liz on Swell had recommended it as a chance to visit an uninhabited bay. We were excited to explore off the charts (on our charts, off the depth indicators into a solid gray area) and perhaps to have a valley to ourselves.

The bay was beautiful as she had described and had fruit, as she described, but unfortunately for us, between her visit and ours, development had commenced.

We left after one night on passage for the Tuamotus. We had weather wind for 48 hours of good wind, and then weird wind. You would think that after our passage from Mexico we would have waited? Nope. We were ready to go and although we will wait to stay safe, apparently we won’t wait just to be comfortable. 2 days of good sailing, a bit of being becalmed, then the front passed, and we sailed in clocking wind the rest of the way.

A passage that often takes 4 days took us just over 6 and we arrived in the Tuamotus at Kauehi at dawn. The atoll made a surprisingly crisp radar return before sunrise and we delayed our arrival until the morning slack. We mistimed the slack and ending up fighting an outgoing current but we chose a straight ahead, clear pass for our first and so all went smoothly.

It was interesting how this passage felt after having sailed from Mexico to the Marquesas. We weren’t complacent, but we were a lot more relaxed. We finished getting “ready” the first afternoon while underway. Very different than our last 6 day passage (Tofino to San Francisco).

Logbook: Hakatea (a.k.a. Daniel’s Bay)

2012-05-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

The anchorage at Hakatea is surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs – lovely – and has a friendly village to walk through on your way to a lush green valley with a waterfall which you must swim under (or hike over) boulders to access. We did the hike with Southern Cross and it was one of our favorite experiences in the Marquesas.

We were warned by the villagers that someone had their skull crushed in the day before by a falling coconut! I had always heard that more people die from falling coconuts than shark bites in the tropics and still don’t know if that is true. Also, another person said it is the first time they know of that happening in the area. Still, when we hiked by a pile of hard hats, we took advantage of them. Plus, helmets are dead sexy.

We took great video of the falls so I’ll save that for another post someday, somewhere when we have real internet.

The hike (and company) were fantastic and alone would have made the bay worthwhile but on our way back to the boat two different people tried to teach Carol how to husk a coconut. The story goes something like this: The four of us walk through the village and an industrious family who is interested in selling us fruit offers us some lemonade which we accept. Southern Cross has brought a hat as a gift which they had asked for on a previous encounter. They also feed us banana fritters (delicious – heck, they are fried, right?) and even after we decline a purchase offer a coconut husking lesson which Carol jumps on. After a number of pointers, Carol husks the coconut successfully.

We decide we want to try again and so we pick up a coconut when we are not far from our dinghy. As we are walking to our dinghy we meet some water taxi dudes* who jokingly tell us that they are customs and we must show our papers. We show the coconut and tell them this is our document. They find this amusing and ask us if we can husk the coconut and we say “kind of”.

They bust out their machete, hack off a stick, sharpen it, and show Carol how to husk a coconut with the stick propped between rocks. With a few blows from the stick they split the coconut in half. Then they sit on the stick with the husk as padding and shred half of the coconut into the other half with the pointy stick.

Carol trades for some fish and while they are on the boat completing the transaction, the guy tells Carol to grab some salt and a bowl. He hacks off a new piece of fish and takes it back to the beach. He chops up the fish and limes and salts it in the bowl.

While he is doing this the other guy has taken some long tough fibers from the inside of the husk and they take the grated coconut and squeeze it through the fibers to create coconut milk.

Several smaller sticks are sharpened into chopsticks and voila – we all eat poisson cru by the trailside.

Again, I took video which will have to wait. This was an amazing experience – the kind I want to collect.

* For those of you who heard the bizarre headlines about cannibals eating a sailor in the S Pacific (no evidence of cannibalism, just murder), these water taxi dudes had ferried a boatload of police officers, investigators and other related people to investigate this crime which had occurred in the vicinity of Hakatea. Depending on who you believe, a German boater and a Marquesan man went goat hunting and there was (or was not) drugs, was (or was not) sexual activity between the men that (was or was not) consensual after which the Marquesan killed the German and (did or did not) sexually assault the German’s female companion who was still on the boat. The story going around the cruising world is that the German was killed by the Marquesan and lured the woman off the boat to go find him and assaulted her. The story as told by the Marquesan taxi dudes is that the German got the Marquesan really high on something he wasn’t used to, tied him up and assaulted him and when he got free the Marquesan dude freaked out and killed the German (with no explanation about the woman).

Logbook: Taiohae

2012-05-21T15:19:00.001-07:00

We are at a brief (paid) internet stop at Fakarava atoll and catching up on a few posts.

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We stopped at two anchorages on Nuku Hiva: Taiohae and Hakatea.

Taiohae is the main town and is where we dealt with resupplying and also with making our repairs to our furler bearing and our jib. We also had a chance to meet Pandion and to hang out with the crew of Southern Cross. The town itself is more spread out than Atuona which we slightly preferred.

The most fun we had while in Taiohae was a drive around the island with Southern Cross and their two crew members from the passage who needed to make an afternoon flight out of the island’s airport. Mark did a most excellent job of white knuckle driving.

The drive was filled with gorgeous views, previews of bays we could visit and a hairy bit of driving on a steep sided, sometimes washed out road with interesting signage. We had a delicious lunch of goat at Yvonne’s while en route.

A tropical apprenticeship

2012-05-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

We haven't had internet since we left Taiohae in the Marquesas so we will be posting SSB-to-blog until we do. I've written a number of photo posts for when we find wifi. Currently we are in Fakarava atoll in the Tuamotus and having a great time.

We've fallen in with a group of people who, for the most part, have spent multiple seasons in the South Pacific and we are learning a lot of fun things from them and on our own about our new environment.

We have learned:
-- How to walk the reef at night looking for lobster and snails.
-- How to drift snorkel.
-- How to catch a coconut crab, although we still haven't eaten one.
-- To be more comfortable in the water with black tipped, white tipped and grey reef sharks.
-- How to make bread on sticks over a fire.
-- That we like the taste of marbled grouper but that parrotfish make good poisson cru.
-- How to cut open an immature coconut tree and collect heart of palm (delicious and crunchy).
-- Some coral head and reef navigation and anchoring skills although we have much to learn.
-- That if you ask around you will often find more provisions and supplies available than the guidebooks say.
-- To bring our own dishes to potlucks on the beach (duh).
-- That we have (so far) spent much less money here than we did in Mexico because all of our play is free, stores are few and far between and eating out means potlucks and fellow cruisers' boats.

We have run out of most fresh supplies and are down to onions, potatoes and the sprouts we make in jars so we will be heading to the town on the N side of this atoll soon. Then our current plan is to move to Toau.

How expensive is French Polynesia?

2012-05-07T01:00:00.001-07:00

At the risk of revealing our eating habits in public, I thought I would share some of our actual costs so you can decide for yourself.

Below is the result of two separate shopping trips to Magasin Larson in Taiohae on Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas in April 2012. Prices are listed in Polynesian Francs (CFP). I always calculate our exchange including ATM fees which made our rate 1 Canadian dollar = 87 Polynesian Francs. I haven't looked at the USD/CAD exchange recently. Last time I looked we were somewhere in the ballpark of parity. If someone wants to google and post the current CFP-USD exchange here that would probably be helpful.

At the time that we were shopping, we were well stocked with fruit that was given to us and we still had some veggies from Mexico. Also, we were still loaded with non-perishable staples (and booze) from Mexico so we didn't need any rice or pasta or canned goods.

2 baguettes 66 each
2 bags for baguettes 20 each
2 small containers of UHT whipping cream 268 each
7 liters of UHT milk 142 each
4 steaks 845 total
10 Frozen hamburger patties 1095 total
2 packages hollandaise sauce 130 each
6 packages three peppers sauce 190 each
Brie 569
Another brie 656
1 large can cassoulet 569
7 small tins of pate 240 each
9 bars of dark chocolate 250 each
4 boxes of coconut cookies 125 each
1 box of lemon cookies 160
2 large cans spaghetti sauce 266 each
2 large cans tropical fruit cocktail 191 each
1 large Hinano beer 270
Beer bottle deposit 60
1 Strawberry soda syrup 580
3 packages of rice noodles 255 each
8 small blocks of pseudo cheddar 192 each
Dried mushrooms (100g) 550
Strawberry mentos 100
1 cold Fanta soda 145
1 chocolate syrup 525

Tax 722

Total 16869 (~193 dollars)

Kauehi

2012-05-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

We are anchored in our first atoll and it is everything we imagined it would be.

Because it is our first, we have no baseline for comparison and in a way I am glad for that because we sit here convinced that we are in the most beautiful spot in the world...and when we go somewhere more beautiful, it will have the same effect on us.

White sand (coral bits) beach. Palm trees. Surf crashing on the outside of the motu and flat water inside. The boat sits still and flat in water so clear we can see our anchor 47 feet below. A turtle circles our boat. Small black tip sharks swim patterns around the coral heads in the shallow water as we peek our heads into the water with masks, still seated in the kayak. A pearl farmer visits and tells us when the supply ship is coming to the village a few miles away. We alternate playing, lazing about recovering from our passage and doing small boat tasks. A full moon glistens on the anchorage and keeps the sand shining white at night.

Estrellita is happily anchored all alone in the SE corner of Kauehi in the Tuamotus.

Marquesan flora

2012-04-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me when we were walking in Puamau that the seemingly lush tropical plants I had seen in Americanadia were pale, stunted cousins of the real thing. Here are a few shots I’ve taken of the tropical flora:

Customs visits Estrellita in paradise

2012-04-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Customs made the rounds at the anchorage of Taiohae on Nuku Hiva and we were vessel number one. They were mainly concerned with alcohol, pets, drugs, plants,firearms and tobacco. We only had alcohol and we had declared it on our form when we cleared into the country and so it was an inconvenient but not particularly stressful experience carried out by a group of nice agents.

They dug out every container of booze and put it into piles: a pile of wine, a pile of beer and a pile of alcohol. Then they verified the amounts with our form and told us they would have to seal the extra. After some negotiation, they agreed that we could use one of our duffle bags for the seal and they agreed, because we had been honest and exact, to leave us with substantially more unsealed booze than is allotted. They sealed 20 bottles of wine in the duffle.They left us with all of our beer, all of our liquor, 8 bottles of wine and a big mess to clean up.

We arrived in French Polynesia with more than the allotted amount of booze, knowing that they could choose to seal the amount in excess. It is also possible to pay duty on it but we were quoted 3500CFP (about 40USD/bottle) for wine and so declined. If they board us again and the seal is broken, or presumably if there are fewer than 20 bottles in the duffle, we will have “a big problem”. Otherwise, no harm, no foul.

Logbook: Puamau

2012-04-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

We stopped at two bays on the North side of Hiva Oa. We spent just one night at the beautiful Hanatekuua. This is a place to return to for certain if we are ever back in these islands. A pod? flock? of manta rays were feeding in the bay and we jumped in the kayak with the one snorkel mask we could grab quickly and took turns paddling into position and plunking our head underwater to watch the rays underwater. Beautiful. One had a wing span half as big as our kayak and their gaping, scoop-like white mouths glowed blue-white underwater.

We had a pressing appointment with some spare part for our furler arriving in Nuku Hiva and so we left the next morning for a day hook at Puamau – an archeological site I was hot to visit. Let’s just say that landing our kayak was one of the more dangerous things we’ve done in the last few months and that includes an ocean passage. We ended up avoiding the concrete landing with its 6’ surge and surfed the kayak through breaking waves onto the sand beach. Then, after we hiked to the site we portaged the kayak a half mile to the concrete landing because we knew we couldn’t get out through the waves – particularly because Carol had a fresh tattoo and was not allowed to swim. We dropped the kayak into the water, Carol jumped in during a high point in the surge and then I held the kayak with a rope for a few more cycles before I was able to jump in on a high point. Carol then paddled like mad while I held on and we escaped the concrete.

Well, it was worth it. Here is what we saw at Puamau:

Carol’s Marquesan tattoo

2012-04-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

We went to Vaitahu specifically to get a tattoo for Carol. Fati (a.k.a. Felix) is a renown tattoo artist in the Marquesas who essentially is behind the renaissance of traditional tattooing on these islands. Apparently sometimes he will tattoo you right when you arrive, sometimes you wait a few days, sometimes he decides you are a pain and he sends you away. We didn’t know that and just showed up. Right in front of us, he sketched out a design and we loved it and Carol said “yes please” and it was done right there, right then. Cost was 15000CFP or about $175USD.

You might remember that Carol was tagged by a sting ray in Long Beach, California and he chose to get a manta ray on the leg that he was stung. We took some great video of that experience and someday when we have higher quality internet it is in the pile of videos I’ll upload. For now, here it is still fresh and healing:

Tomorrow there is a post about Puamau, an archeological site, and notice how this mouth looks like the mouth on the horizontal tiki.

Logbook: Atuona

2012-04-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Aranui is the huge ship pictured in front of our boat and I think it is stalking us. It keeps arriving in harbors after we’ve anchored, sometimes dropping its enormous anchor and chain in the middle of the night scaring us crapless out of bed to find out what monstrosity is making that racket. It is the lifeblood of the Marquesas bringing…almost everything to the islands.

Atuona is a cute town with a crowded anchorage – crowded because it is a place where you can check in. There is a dinghy dock of sorts and an outdoor shower with unlimited slightly cold water (truly wonderful) right by the dock.

The landscape is still dramatic even though the anchorage is a bit chaotic and the town is a 2k walk on a road where everyone seems to stop to pick up people. We walked all of the way only once and the other times were picked up by drivers and given a ride even though we didn’t actively hitchhike.

We arrived in Atuona with four goals: clear into the country, get some local currency, and to leave with clean laundry and a big bag of baguettes, pain chocolat and croissants. We were foiled on the pain chocolat front – none available – but we left with the rest of the baked goods and all of the other errands.

The check in process was painless. We had an agent because we didn’t want to go through the process of paying (easy) and retrieving (less easy) the bond that you have to pay. We filled out a single form, no cash exchanged hands, and we left with a single piece of paper. MUCH less expensive than Mexico.

Images from the Marquesas

2012-04-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Logbook: Hanamoenoa & Vaitahu

2012-04-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

The island of Tahuata has a number of gorgeous anchorages. We only visited two: one for the natural beauty and one for a tattoo.

Hanamoena looks like a movie set. Or rather, movie sets try to look like Hanamoena. Beautiful sand beach, a backdrop of cliffs, waves crashing on shore and on the black volcanic rocks on either side of the bay, lush green tropical forest with coconut trees wafting in the breeze.

We went into the forest and collected a bag of limes, some grapefruit and hacked open our first coconut. We spent a morning snorkeling on the south side of the bay from our kayak.

Vaitahu on the other hand is quite a different place. The bay is less interesting but the town was cute and most importantly had the famous tattooist – Fati – known for his Marquesan designs, his inspiration and creativity, and the fact that he turns some people away because he doesn’t like their vibe which, of course, makes you feel special when he decides to tattoo you.

Carol got a tattoo but I’m going to show you that in a different post…sorry.

While in Vaitahu we visited the inside of the church which is made from a lot of local wood and is quite beautiful inside. The stones are discarded ballast from old trading ships and the Mary-Jesus combo inside is refreshingly brown.

I also love how everything – churches, houses - is open to the outside. There is a roof for the rain, and walls, but not all of the walls are designed to go all of the way to the roof.

Logbook: Fatu Hiva

2012-04-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

The image of Fatu Hiva is burned into the collective consciousness of cruisers. It is a dream landfall of many and I’ve seen the image in books and on blogs. I have to say that it is as beautiful in person as it is in images. Certainly it is different. It is smaller than I imagined and although I knew from the guidebooks that there was a small town I hadn’t thought of the town when dreaming. It is even more verdant than the pictures and pictures cannot convey the smell of rain, sea and flowers that permeate the anchorage.

We were there at the change of seasons and rain showers swept over the mountains into the anchorage several times a day rinsing the boat and killing the heat.

We hiked to a waterfall, after finding the trail, past a pack of dogs and through a rainstorm to arrive at the waterfall completely soaked. Awesome. During our hike both of our pairs of flip flops were stolen from our kayak which, considering we escaped Mexico unburgled, only to experience theft in French Polynesia was odd and not awesome. A woman we spoke with said the kids steal and she was surprised our kayak paddle was still there. *sigh*

We spent a few days lounging around in the anchorage absorbing the scenery. The ARC World Rally of boats was in the area and they drifted in and out of the anchorage at their faster pace while we were there.

We went out in the kayak and slowly paddled around during several sunsets.

Gooseneck barnacles

2012-04-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is what our freshly waxed hull looked like upon arrival in the Marquesas:

Gooseneck barnacles grew on our hull during our passage, making us steadily slower in the water as the weeks went by. We had been given the tip to trail a line from the nose of the boat on each side every few days and that reduced the number of barnacles that we had from the nose to somewhere amidships where the rope stopped making contact with our hull. We also “flossed” our hull by taking a line from both sides of the bow and see-sawing it back and forth until we reached the keel and then trying to get it between the keel and the sail drive and the sail drive and the rudder. Fairly easy to do at anchor, very difficult to do underway.

The good news is that they die on their own when you arrive in port. For whatever reason, they are a bluewater only phenomenon.

We cleaned the ones on the waterline as soon as we made landfall (ok, the next day) to avoid the white circles they leave when they fall off. But otherwise, we had to dive down and leverage off a few normal barnacles and we had some slime to rub off, but for the most part the hull was clean all on its own a few days after arrival. Impressively weird.

Fun fact: the word for the “normal” barnacles in French translate to “Chinese hats”.

A Month of Comments

2012-04-17T04:00:00.000-07:00

It was a real treat to download our email in Hiva Oa and see all of the comments left on our blog or emailed directly to us. We read them together in a single sitting. Thank you to everyone for your support.

Our internet is too scarce to reply to comments directly so I decided to go through the comments while offline and write a response post.

Is the grass greener on the other side? Literally, yes. The Marquesas are much greener than Baja California Mexico although we expect the Tuamotus to be much less green. Figuratively, it is too early to tell. Right now we are in the honeymoon stage of arriving in a country. Everything is new and shiny and fantastic. It will take a while for the warts to show and for us to form a more balanced opinion.

Do you pole out your tack or clew on the asymm spinnaker? We pole out the clew. Our tack is on an ATN Tacker around the furler. I am curious to know how poling out the tack would work?

So you're saying bluewater sailing is like blues dancing? I *hope* there is less danger of chafe in blues dancing and our boat has more cheese (but it is real cheese).

RE: Naked yet? A picture would help. Oh it definitely would but you don’t get one ;)

3 people on a passage gives you so much more sleep. Yes, but then you have to wear clothes!

How are we still posting? We use our SSB radio with a pactor modem to send text emails. I configured blogger to allow email-to-blog and so I can send an email to blogger which ends up being posted on the blog. We were waaaay out of wifi/3G range. Also, remember that I am always writing posts and when I get into wifi range I usually upload a bunch of posts with pictures. BUT rather than have the posts all go up at once I schedule them for one a day or one every other day. This means that the posts are likely to be weeks behind where we actually are right now. If you want to know where we are right now, see the note on our lat-long below.

Wedges. To everyone who suggested various ways of wedging yourself so you can sleep during the roll. Thank you. I plan on trying them out in the future. We used pillows semi-successfully.

Boobies. We did eventually lose the boobies. I can’t remember how far offshore we were but they stopped trying to land on the boat. We still saw birds but these were seabirds that weren’t interested in our boat although they would occasionally check out our lures.

Can you put your location (lat-long) on your posts? We’re updating our position as we move on our map (check on the blog on the upper right for “where are we now”. Or you can always go to winlink.org or shiptrak.org directly and look us up with the callsign VA7LIV.

We are leaving the land of wifi again but we’ll get your comments on our next internet binge. Thanks for the interaction!

Dripping with fruit

2012-04-13T17:56:00.000-07:00

We have a banana stalk hanging from our boat. TROPICAL BABY!

So far we haven’t traded for fruit. We’ve either had it given to us by other cruisers or we’ve been in uninhabited places and picked what we could eat.

When we first arrived another boat that was loaded down with fruit after visiting a remote bay gave us 6 pamplemousse, a guava, a papaya, a stalk of bananas and a grocery bag of limes. I’ve been using our lime press from Mexico to squeeze limes by the half dozen for drinks.

We’ve grabbed our own coconuts and our own polynesian grapefruit. Husking and cracking a coconut is a skill we are still acquiring but with enough brute force we had a tasty snack. In one bay we found a bunch of untended lime trees and restocked.

French Polynesia

2012-04-11T17:56:00.001-07:00

At anchor you can smell wet loamy earth and the perfume of flowers. You hear the wind in the palm trees, the roosters crowing at all hours and the roar of ocean swell on rocky shoreline. Everywhere you look you see the brown-green of earth, the white-and-blue of the sky or the blue-green of the tropical water.

The heat sears us from the sky, reflects off of the water for a milder but no less burning angle, radiates from all flat surfaces and surrounds us n the damp air when the wind stops. We spend our days wet: wet from sweat, wet from swimming and snorkeling, wet from the fast, intense rain showers that sweep overhead several times a day. After 4 winters in British Columbia, we smile while we bake and grin while we sweat.

We’ve settled into a routine of a spurt of activity in the morning, followed by a long period of avoiding movement in the afternoon. We sit in the cockpit sweating, moving our panels to reduce the sun, and letting our eyes feast on the scenery. We swim off of the back of the boat or use our halyards to do rope swings.

As the sun loses its fierce heat, or as the clouds roll in, we do boat tasks or life tasks. In the evening we watch the sun set, listen to the radio nets as we sip our cold drinks and start deciding whether we can stand the heat of cooking. As night falls the heat subsides to a comfortable level and we watch a bit of TV or read or watch the stars and then retreat to our cool v-berth for sleep.

Landfall

2012-04-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

We made it. We sailed our home to the South Pacific.

We are safely at anchor after 26 days and 19 hours. We spent 643 hours under sail and 6.3 hours under motor (3 hours getting out of the Cabo wind shadow, .6 avoiding electrical activity in squalls, 2.3 while becalmed only 50 miles from landfall and .4 into the bay to anchor).

We broke the lower bearing in our furler and fixed it temporarily with rubber hose from our sun shower. We chafed through one bit of old rope we used as a retention line, just in case, on our windvane rudder. We lost the sunbrella stitching on the foot of our jib and we changed headsails on the furler at sea to our genoa. Other than general wear and tear, no other failures.

We used 6.2 engine hours for battery charging and while in light air we hauled our Honda 2000 generator on deck twice and charged the batteries that way. All other energy was provided by our solar panels.

We still have a good range of produce (oranges, lemons, limes, apples, leeks, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes and potatoes) but no fresh meat, only long life meats (e.g., salami and bacon) and canned meat. During the passage, because we had so much light air, we baked pies (both savory - salmon/potato - and sweet - fresh apple and canned blueberry), lasagna, brownies, coffee cake, and one round of fresh bread.

Our bodies are tired, sun touched and sweaty but other than a minor thumb strain for Livia and a bit of a sore back for Carol, we are good to go.

Time to clean up the boat, rest and then start exploring our new backyard.

ITCZ Strategy

2012-04-02T03:19:00.000-07:00

"Go this way. (points) Very fast. If something gets in your way (dramatic pause) TURN." - From the movie Better Off Dead.

While doing our research for this passage it seemed that there were two main approaches:
1) Sail the rhumb line
2) Sail more Westerly than the rhumb, taking advantage of the NE trades, at some point between 125W and 130W cross the ITCZ by heading directly South until we reached the SE trades and then point our bow at the Marquesas.

As major ocean crossing newbies, we took the expert advice and opted for #2. All of the while in the back of my head was a disturbing bit that I read from Don Anderson in which he said that while he advocates #2, and that while having a strategy is good, that crossing the ITCZ is a bit of a crapshoot for two main reasons:
1) The ITCZ can move hundreds of miles in a 24 hour period and often does.
2) No one can predict its movements.

These are two very good reasons why two boats leaving within hours of each other (but traveling at different speeds) can have very different passages. The ITCZ is a slippery bugger, and as we can attest, it can bloat up like a puffer fisher and become a big diffuse wind and convection blob without a coherent zone as its namesake suggests.

How can we attest that? Well, we kept feeling like we were in and out of a watered down ITCZ. We had sudden increases in heat, humidity, and convection and light flukey wind that came and went - for 10 days and many miles. We had already noticed that on our weather downloads the ITCZ was being represented in multiple sections rather than one continuous line and those sections were separated by hundreds of miles, both N and S of the Equator. This made us suspicious enough to read the footnotes on the text weather forecast which told us that "the convection activity was not sufficiently concentrated to make a reliable statement about the location of the ITCZ".

Woah. Not only does it move, and we can't predict its movements, sometimes we don't even know where it is RIGHT NOW.

We left very early in the 2012 season and perhaps that influenced our experience. One weather guy backcasted* that "sometimes the ITCZ does this at the vernal equinox". Or maybe it had nothing to do with time of year and was just one of the many weird things the ITCZ can do at any point.

"She moves, in mysterious ways." - U2

*Backcasting, while interesting, has a definite hindsight is 20-20 feel about it.

10 days of under 10 knots

2012-03-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

The wind left us on March 20 and returned today March 30.

We had under 10 knots of true wind, aft of the beam, usually on a run, for 10 days with the exceptions of a few squalls that boosted the wind and a few glorious 30 minute sections of more than 10.

This means that we had between 6-8 knots of apparent wind most of the time, with mostly 6-8 foot swells, usually coming from two directions but sometimes three. Carol and I watched a wave go one direction, hit a second and turn, and then hit a third and turn again, essentially making a u-turn. No wonder it is a weird motion in the boat.

We were becalmed at least twice that I can remember for periods of 5 or so hours each. We have had only one night of being surrounded by lightening which we used .6 engine hours to get out of. Most of the squalls have had rain only or maybe a bit of wind.

We have tried almost every combination of sails we own in our attempts to keep the boat moving in light air and changeable medium seas. The only things I can say we have learned are:

- Reefing is not just for strong wind. It reduces the load on the rig when the swells cause the sails to pop in light air.
- Our pole is our friend. We have our spinnaker pole up most of the time and we need to get our used whisker pole operational so we can have two.
- Our preventer is our friend. We switched from the midships preventer to the foreward block and it makes a big difference.
- A triple reefed main and a poled out asymm spinnaker is a great thing to try when we know the sails are going to pop. The triple reefed main doesn't shock load the rigging and ditto on the spinnaker as compared to a white sail. It doesn't stop the popping, just the sanity disturbing, gear beating jolting that goes with it.
- Keep trying different things. There is often something that will work at least reasonably well for the odd combination of swells and wind we are in. Our sails will still pop, but they will pop less, and we will move enough to retain steerage with the windvane.

We are about 400 miles from landfall. We have had only minor gear failures (more on that later) that we were able to fix or temporarily fix at sea. We're eating very well (fresh bread and lasagna yesterday) and resting well. Our watermaker is granting us daily showers. The landfall is starting to feel real and we are allowing ourselves the emotional luxury of starting to think about it - not yet allowing ourselves to count days, but we are counting down the miles.

Greetings from Down Under

2012-03-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Southern Hemisphere is totally different. Fish swim upside down. I'm sure that the water in our Lavac is swirling the other way except that we have to shut the lid to pump water through it so I can't tell for sure. And Carol and I both feel like we might fall off the boat now that gravity has reversed.

OK, so, in reality this patch of ocean looks, not surprisingly, exactly like the patch of ocean before it.

For the non-boaters, there is a maritime tradition that until you cross the equator (in a boat) you are a pollywog/tadpole who is dirty and not worthy of Neptune and must be cleansed (read: hazed) in some manner prior to crossing after which you become a shellback.

Carol was already a shellback having crossed in a motor vessel many times. He also crossed many times while piloting an aircraft which, although cool, doesn't count for the maritime tradition.

I was a pollywog and as we approached the equator, Davy Jones boarded our vessel. You might be surprised to learn that Davy Jones looks suspiciously like my husband with a tropical print shirt on his head and an eye patch. Who knew?

The ceremony, with parts redacted for National Security, went something like this:
1) ----------------- (redacted because of pact with Neptune)
2) ----------------- (redacted because not PG-13)
3) We climbed down the swim ladder steps, with a rope tied to our wrist, and took turns letting the movement of our boat drag us through the water as we held onto the swim ladder, racing back on deck when our fear of shark bites overcame us.
4) Finally, we opened a bottle of Driftwood Ale we have carried with us from Victoria, some canned smoked salmon that was caught and canned by our friends aboard SV Shannon, a celebratory email from SV Eagle, and opened an extremely touching care package created by my parents which included a certificate for our equator crossing to be filled out, tasty treats and notes from my family.

The equator is just over 2/3 of the way between Baja Mexico and the Marquesas. All is well aboard.

In which the wind machine shuts down

2012-03-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

I thought I would tell you a story with numbers -- a story about our progress toward the Marquesas.

When someone gives you their daily mileage you have to ask what exactly they are measuring. On this trip we have been dropping a waypoint every day at about 2pm and measuring the direct distance between waypoints. This means we overestimate compared to a miles-made-good measurement and underestimate compared to a distance-sailed measurement.

We just finished our 17th (!) 24 hour run and the story of the wind on this passage so far goes like this:
130nm
112
112
99
103
112
137
119
130
126
115
118
110
86
75
68
51 (00 50N, 129 09W)

The last 51nm is an average of 2.1 knots SOG over a 24 hour period. There is a radio net for the Pacific Puddle Jump and there are reports of light wind from boats just off the coast of Mexico all of the way to a boat ahead of us at 5S, 132W.

Will we ever cross the equator? Stay tuned...

FAQ: Naked yet?

2012-03-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

There is a direct relationship between our proximity to the equator and the nudity references in emails we are receiving from friends.

They started popping up occasionally, usually obliquely in emails even before we left, surged as we crossed below 10N into single digits of latitude and now that we are at 1N have reached new records.

The references range from sly comments about the likelihood of decreased laundry and increased sex therapy, to people expressing their own fervent desires to be naked in the middle of the ocean, to good friends asking us point blank "Are you naked all of the time now?".

*Clearly* - yes. Well, at least mostly.

Issues one might fail to consider in one's idealized visions of bluewater sailing are: tropical sunshine reflected off the sea, salty cockpit induced chafe and trying to wear a PFD naked if you have boobs.

(This one is for you Marv. We love you.)