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.
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.
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.
Look. I’m as happy as the next guy that you made it, so…congratulations. That being said, I’m still deeply troubled something that you wrote a few blogs ago…celebrating 2.5 weeks without power. I have had trouble sleeping knowing that that thought is out there, sort of like when my son told me that Jar Jar was his favorite Star Wars character. You are Americans. Act like it for once. Let those engines roar, use as much power as you want, and sometimes even more just because it’s more convenient for you. If you can damage the environment to make it happen, even better – especially if it’s a foreign environment, and doubly especially if it’s the French environment. Just to ease my mind and be able to rest even a little, I’ve left extra lights on, run an empty dishwasher a bunch of times, and driven my car to the park across the street, but it’s exhausting doing the work of 5 people, so you people on Tayrona need to start pulling your own weight again. Also, I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but even when you reach the Marquesas, you’re still in the middle of the freaking ocean. This seems important. Mostly, though, congrats!