Passage to Marquesas: Day 23

23. Apr. 2015
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Author: Pete

Location: 09°50.255S’ 138°22.534W’

Date: 11:00 April 21 to 11:00 April 22

Day 23 at sea.

Woke to a gun metal gray sky today, 20 knots of wind from astern, with large rollers and chop. Made for a rocky ride. At one point our trolling line was aimed about twenty degrees up from our stern to an oncoming wave. Fishing uphill is never a good thing. Regardless, Tayrona is scooting along happily under a lone headsail, snatch block out to the side to open the sail. Now a bit clearer.
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Tried to get the boat presentable for port inspection today. Cleaned inside and out. It’s amazing how much girl hair gets evenly distributed around. Eew… The boat is, however, so much cleaner than it would be in three weeks at anchor with crew inadvertently dragging land dirt from shore on our shoes and bodies. Double eew… Sometimes there are benefits to being out at sea. The heavier seas made the task really fun. Lot of sloshing, and even a little nausea despite our weeks of training.

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I feel a little torn about our arrival. This passage was one of the highlights of the whole sailing trip that I’ve anticipated the most. Three weeks plus out on the open ocean, and now we’re nearing the end of it. I’m excited to hike the green hills of Hiva Oa, eat fresh fruit and a good burger, and get back into spear fishing shape. (It’s amazing that we only swam twice in three weeks aboard!) Strange as it sounds though, after 24 days without sight of land, with onions and carrots rolling away from you while you’re trying to cook, deprivation of fresh fruits and veggies, 2AM squally night watches, and never walking more than 10 meters at a time, I’m really sorry to see it over. Man that’s messed up.

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Sunrise, and landfall in six hours.

Passage to Marquesas: Day 22

21. Apr. 2015
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Author: Pete

Location: 09°54.877S 136°26.683W

Date: 11:00 April 20 to 11:00 April 21

Day 22 at sea.

The wind has filled back in, leaving us zipping along at 6.5 knots under full canvas in 14 knots of wind on a beam reach. Long period rollers come muscling through from the aft port quarter. We get a good push from them. The boat vibrates and hums happily as she reaches hull speed. Or hullS speed as it were.

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With our current weather outlook and estimated resulting speed we’re projecting making landfall Wednesday (4/22/15) in the morning. We have to bleed off some speed between now and then so we don’t arrive before sunup and find ourselves stuck twiddling our thumbs offshore until we have enough light to enter the port. Entering a foreign harbor in the night is tricky business, unless they are well marked or well known. To make things even MORE fun, the Marquesas are a French, and the European navigational beacon colors are SWITCHED! In the US, you keep the RED lights on your RIGHT hand side when you’re RETURNING from sea (going into a harbor). Red Right Returning. European lights are reversed! So there’s a green light in the Hiva Oa harbor that marks the breakwall at the mouth of the harbor and you have to keep it on your LEFT when you’re returning from sea! That’d make a crushing end to your three week passage if you didn’t know that shiny bit of information! Stand off until sunup!

Tonight Miranda and I furled the mainsail and are running along under a reefed headsail only. She decided the best time to do so was in a pouring rain squall. She had time to put on her rain jacket before waking me up, halfway into her shift. Being woken up with howling wind and rain I generally react by screaming out of bed and on deck before I’m really awake. Or clothed. I was out there in my underwear and a life jacket, no headlight, reefing by feel in the downpour. Soaked my undies right through. I had to change ’em before going back to bed. So glamorous this sailing life. It did slow the boat down to 4.5 knots. We will spend the last hours of our VERY long journey doing the sailing equivalent of a drunken, loitering amble, designed to bob and shuffle us along in the waves until we make the harbor at sun up. Neat.

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Many of our Tangaroa fleet are heading to Nuka Hiva, some 30 miles farther west. They’re planning to spend a lot longer in the Marquesas than we are, so they’ll have time to sail back windward to explore the island chain. Losers. How are you supposed to properly celebrate with flotilla if they don’t go to the right island? Regardless, we’re getting excited to see the islands on our horizon.

Passage to Marquesas: Day 21

20. Apr. 2015
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Author: Pete

Location: 07°54.559S
135°06.765W

Date: 11:00 April 19 to 11:00 April 20

Day 21. It’s been a full, unadulterated three weeks on the high seas.

We’re sailing west, but we haven’t been playing by the sunlight’s rules. To make our night watches easier, we’ve been keeping the Galapagos time, which is the same as Central time in the US. Our destination, the Marquesas, is 3 1/2 time zones away. So we’re very, very slowly giving ourselves jet lag. Er… boat lag, as it were. It’s most noticeable in the evening when we’re making dinner and the sun is setting at 9PM. That’s not unusual for sunset in Northern Michigan summer, but this far south the sun goes down more or less at 6:00 always. So we’ve been tucking to bed around 10:00, which is really 7:00 where we are. There are no lights, no other people, nothing to indicate that it’s not really late once the sun goes down. So we rack out.

Another indication of our westward progress is the changing propagation patterns for the radio stations we’re connecting with. We are 876 miles from Tuamotu Islands, 2400 miles from Hawaii, and 2700 miles from San Diego, which is receding. Under 300 miles now. Striking distance. We’re salivating over the sound of a long walk and fresh island fruit.

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There have been exceptional sunsets in the last days. The pinks and oranges of the horizon mix with the pinks and purples of the spinnaker. They blend together sometimes in the last light of the day until you can’t really tell the boundaries of the boat, the sea, and the sky.

It’s generally quiet on the boat, aside from the waves slapping on the hull, some rattle of the sails, and the chugging of the wind gen. It seems especially quiet at night when on watch alone at night. Everyone is tucked away in their berths. Your eyes adjust to the dark. It’s been many days since the moon hasn’t been up on my watch. Working under red headlight, bathing everything false color. I love it.