Passage to Niue: Day 9

27. Jul. 2015
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Niue, Passages
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2 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: 19°10.971S’ 169°53.712W’

Date: July 27, 2015

Day 9 at sea.

Land Ho! Geeze, I wasn’t this excited to make landfall even after our 23-day passage to the Marquesas. We had WAY more helps steering on that one. This was a pretty rough passage on us; hand steering required us to be out in the wind and spray, and actively steering is surprisingly taxing. We’d do three or four hour shifts and then fall in exhausted heaps into the berth while the other changed from PJ’s into salty deck clothes to take over, and find a good podcast to keep awake and focused on the compass. We wore scopolamine patches and ate little. Even when exhausted, trying to sleep with the boat’s ridiculous motion was difficult.

The boat motion, owing to her cat-like nature, was sometimes fluid and sometimes comically awkward. At times when we got crossing wave trains she seemed to almost crawl like an animal with tethered limbs, a flying squirrel or sea lion. Each corner of the boat pitched up at a different time, threatening to buck the skipper off the helm were we not attached. Then we’d get a long period, large swell from directly aft and Tayrona would ride that thing like a school bus down a sledding hill. We’d make 5 knots going uphill, then 11 knots going downhill. Very exciting, and easier than the quadruped shuffle until the swell sets changed again for the worse, back and forth.

On occasion the stars would come out and we could steer a course using them. It’s much easier if you can aim for something on the horizon. For the most part we would cower under the Bimini and side covers following the compass. My eyes hurt after a few days of it. It’s also COLD! Sitting still in sixty degrees with 25 knots of wind for four hours made us layer up with everything we had aboard. Sissies…

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Watches blurred together, but this morning the sky cleared, though the wind and seas didn’t abate, and then there on the horizon was Niue. Swells slammed into the southern craggy coast, erupting in huge plumes of spray. Niue, also called The Rock of Polynesia, is 10 miles in diameter and the world’s largest coral island. Just offshore 1/4 mile the sea is 6000 feet deep, a stone throw from shore it’s 100 feet deep, then one or two paces from the cliff the reef is ankle deep. It’s like a skyscraper with the top floor sticking out of the water.

We sailed downwind, wing-wing past the coral cliffs heading north to the western bay near the ‘town’ of Alofi. Sailing wing-wing is annoying; one sail is always flagging, you have to be really attentive to the whole thing. I’m not sure why I waited until salvation was in sight, but I’m blaming the lack of sleep for my intricately woven string of blasphemies and oaths that erupted out of me like lurid confetti out of a party popper. I must have ranted and raved for a good half-hour about the idiocy of the whole idea of sailing. Eventually the tide of explicatives ebbed and we moored just off Alofi in 100 feet of calm, flat water.

We took hot showers aboard, made real food, and cleaned the boat up. There was so much salt encrusting everything it felt like the decks had carpeting. The sun was setting low in the west, throwing orange hues, when we heard a mighty “PHHHHHHHHHT” from right next to the boat. We scampered over to the starboard rail in time to see the massive black rolling back of a humpback whale not ten feet from our transom. They were bigger than the boat and loitered around blowing plumes of spray (and snot, I presume) into the air; the orange sunset reflected off their backs. I’m sure it was the sea gods telling me to shut my big yapper and quit griping. I quickly retracted my hastily spoken words and Miranda decided to stay aboard too. Welcome to Niue.

Passage to Tuamotus Archipelago

11. May. 2015
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French Polynesia, Passages
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: Passage from Marquesas to Tuamotus

Date: May 6 – 10

May 6th we spent all day prepping the boat and the crew to make the crossing from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus, also known as the Dangerous Archipelago. Once we got the bug to shove off it everyone jumped in, provisioning fresh produce, hauling water and diesel, cooking some meals for the passage, and getting the boat into fighting shape for the open sea. It came down to a flurry of activity just at dusk, I hauled the stern anchor out of the Hiva Oa mud, fired up Wendy and Belinda, and ran the gauntlet of boats anchored fore and aft. We pulled past the breakwall and into the safety of open water just as night fell. With enough light left in the air we motorsailed past the hooked southern tip of Hiva Oa and into the channel north of Tiahuata. We had some pasta in the dark and uncomfortable rolling, then turned south to 200 degrees and aimed for the Tuamotus. The wind was finicky for the first hour or so as we passed the wind shadow of Tahuata, but stabilized once we were clear to the south, though the beam-on seas made rough going. Everyone fell back into their programmed schedules for watch. On my watch the moon was bright enough to give you a tan in the perfectly clear night. Good to be back at sea.

May 7th, our first full day at sea, brought two meter rolling swell coming in on our beam annoyingly topped with chop in 14-20 knots of wind. We’re making good time towards Tuamotus, but are tediously regaining our sea legs. They come so slow and go so fast! Mostly the crew just caught up on podcasts and sleep from our first restless night on the rough seas. Quantity never fully outweighs quality on the sleep front though. We had prepared soup and stir-fry before leaving which was a lifesaver when everyone is hungry but no one has the stomach to cook. Throughout the day we saw red forms of big fish scooting under the surface next to the boat, and I saw two tuna jump high out of the water chasing prey. Didn’t think we’d be up for cleaning a flopping, bleeding fish with the current sea state, so we didn’t give chase.

May 8th, day two at sea. The weather during the day has been pleasant, blue skies, no squalls, 13 knots of wind from astern, and following 2 meter rollers, less chop than before. Happy campers. Lighter winds and more favorable, following seas today made for a much more comfortable sail. We’re trying to time our arrival at Raroia, an atoll in the Tuamotus Archipelago, so it coincides with slack tide. Atolls are generally rings of coral with a deep lagoon inside, only some of which have a pass, or an opening from the deep sea into the calm shelter of the interior lagoon. Raroia has such a pass, but entering and exiting the little channel between the coral islands is only possible when the tide is slack, neither going in, nor out. Since we don’t want to be waiting outside the pass twiddling our aquatic thumbs waiting for the green light to enter, we’re trying to slow the boat down to get there at the right time. Right now we’re sailing downwind under the mainsail alone.

Caught a fish today, but didn’t get it to the boat before it broke the hook off and zoomed away. Not even sure what kind it was, but for certain it was 9-10 feet long and a million pounds, just like all the others that get away, right Sheldon?

Another day whisked away toward the horizon. Listening to BBC World Service News on the SSB, its static-riddled signal cutting in and out makes me feel our distance from land, tiny spits of islands not included. As our friend Greg pointed out, “Even when you get there, you’re still in the middle of the Pacific Ocean!” Quite so. It’s dark now and I wonder what we look like to the dolphins or passing jets, not that we’ve seen many in the skies over the Pacific. Everyone is still up after dinner, and the boat is lit like a Christmas tree. In all this dark before the moonrise we are the outlier. It’s nice to have the light, but when we’re back to only the tricolor and moonlight I feel much more at home.

Tonight we just made a fifteen degree turn to port, now heading more south to skirt Tepoto and Napuka, two passless spits of atolls in a small chain aptly named the Disappointment Isles. We gave then a 20 mile berth, and could just see them on radar as we made the turn. 126 miles to go for Raroia.

May 9th, day three on the passage brought gray skies, abeam seas, and variable winds. We ran under a reefed main and jib for most of the day, alternating wing-wing and broad reach. Trimming the sails all day in response to the fickle wind and back-winding sails was annoying, along with the renewed chop coming in broadside and rolling the boat around. Heedless, Miranda made some great homemade bread in the oven for chicken salad sandwiches, and I made a pot of chili for dinner with biscuits. We have more grapefruit and mandarins than we know what to do with. I think my mouth is dissolving from the citric acid. Hard times. We certainly aren’t starving.

We were hoping to have fish for dinner though! Had a strike on a nine-inch blue and white squid lure. The hook must have set fine, the reel started screaming away. Once we grabbed the line (with appropriately gloved hands) and tried to hand line the big guy in, he ran and broke the line almost immediately. I need to start using cable or something. I put on a new leader and threw in Stumpy, a beat up pink squid who is missing half his legs from strikes, but no one seemed interested in ‘alternately-abled cephalopods’ for dinner.

Sailing into the dark tonight. Coming up for watch at 2AM Miranda shows me we’ve made it! Land Ho! At least on radar. The radar screen is lit up disconcertingly with surface contacts which have slowly engulfed us as we sail deeper into the low island chain of the Tuamotus Archipelago. It’s a brilliant night though, with flooding moonlight and few clouds. Great visibility should see us through until morning, when we hope to arrive around 8AM, an hour early for slack tide in the pass at Raroia. It’s no reason to slack on watch duty, so I’m heading back outside to keep my eye on the incoming horizon. More to come from Tayrona.

Making Ready for the Marquesas

30. Mar. 2015
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Galapagos
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: Isabela, Galapagos

Date: March 29, 2015

Spent the last couple of days mostly prepping for the push to the Marquesas. It’s a long way, some 3000 miles, but should be fairly comfortable at this time of year. We just need to provision up!

I put in a new thermostat on the port engine. Its fuel consumption is a little higher than the starboard. Wendy is always running in Belinda’s shadow. I know it runs a lot cooler than it should, so it sounded like a thermostat problem. We’ll see how it performs. In our 85 hours of motoring since our last tank top up, the port tank used 20 gallons of diesel and the starboard only 13. Maybe we were just going in circles.

I also got the gas generator up and running. It’s been a saga, starting with tearing it apart in the Bahamas, bringing it to a mechanic in Cartagena, and then several hours wiring and rewiring the output through a German battery charger. Finally got all the systems to cooperate and we can charge at ~13 amps. There’s only been a few times where we really needed it to charge batteries instead of running the diesels. We may need it more on this passage as the following winds won’t run the wind generator as efficiently. Felix also opened up the towing generator and cleaned up the guts. I rewired its inputs and maybe we’ll get some juice out of him as well.

We were invited by friends to join a loose group of boats that were heading out about the same time we are interested in leaving. We got together on Wavelength, our friends Mark and Eileen’s boat to discuss plans with the other captains and crew. So we will be one boat out of five leaving within a few days of each other. We have a radio net set up, so we’ll be in contact with each other every day via SSB radio. We’ll also be emailing our position updates to the blog as we go via the radio as well. It’s too slow for pictures, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

Our flotilla consists of:

Tayrona – Midwest – Pete, Miranda, Liza, Felix

Wavelength – Vancouver – Mark and Eileen

Talula Ruby – England – Paul, Andi, Pedro, Scott, Carl

Centime – Maine – Dennis and Heidi

Endorphine – Scotland – Colin, Izi, and Terry

We’re the only cat in the bunch, but the sailors on the other boats have oceans of experience and really nice boats, so I’m sure we’ll be the ones trying to keep up! So we’re pretty excited about that. It’s nice to have safety in numbers. We will also try to be in contact via radio with the Pacific Puddle Jump, an organization that keeps track of the boats crossing the Pacific every year.

Our friends Dirk and Gretchen pulled in a few days ago from their Panama to Galapagos crossing. They’re legit sailors on a gorgeous wooden ketch, no refrigeration, rowing dinghy. They’re the real deal. They waited in Las Perlas off Panama for a week for good wind and made it across in six days, albeit they did have a day’s head start leaving from the islands and not Panama City. We got together on our boat for dinner and drinks and related stories of our crossings and the goings on of the Galapagos. They’ll be following us to the Marquesas, just not for a few weeks.

We took on 50 gallons of diesel and 5 of gasoline in our jerry jugs. It’s not straight forward on the Galapagos. Diesel at the gas station is subsidized and costs about $2/gallon, which is illegal for non-Ecuadoreans to purchase. Thus, you have to send if paperwork with an agent (ours is J.C. Desoto), wait four days, and then get your fuel, at $4/gallon. Not the end of the world, but definitely a rigamarole.

Fresh produce is flown in on Saturdays at noon to the Galapagos. It only hits the market on Isabela at 5:00. So in we went to pick out our haul of fruit and veggies for the push. We didn’t find pineapples in the prolific abundance that we did in the Panama City market. We still made out alright though.

In all the preparatory steps to get out of here and back onto the high seas we did sneak in some time to do some more snorkeling. Had a pass by a white tipped reef shark, played with a sea lion, swooping and spinning underwater. I couldn’t keep up with him, but it was sure fun to play. Then we chased a penguin down with the dinghy on the way home!

Now just a few odds and ends to wrap up before we head out! Sounds like tomorrow (Monday) we’ll be shoving off in the morning. We will likely be in the Marquesas anywhere from April 17th to April 30th! We’ll keep you posted!