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.

 

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.

 

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.

Sunrise, and landfall in six hours.

 

 

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.

 

Author: Pete

Location: 09°20.505S 132° 03.359W

Date: 11:00 April 18 to 11:00 April 19

 

Day 20 at sea.

At this very moment we are 400 miles from Hiva Oa. The wind stayed low today, but constant today, going our way. Put up the spinnaker and ran downwind like a leaf on a pond. A really heavy leaf on a really, really big pond. Without much else to do on watch tonight, I crunched the numbers. If the boat was a leaf the size of your hand, a pond the size of our Galapagos-Marquesas passage would be 54 miles long. Go math!

 

Made a pretty good split pea and ham soup today for dinner. It has been easy to cook with the recent light seas. Or maybe we’re just getting used to the motion. I suppose after 20 days, you’d hope we’d get used to it. I’m afraid that after this trip we will all find ourselves propped next to solid objects when we stand still anywhere, as we are obliged to do on the boat. Try it. Sit, kneel, or lean any time you stop moving, and grab onto things for support as you walk around your house. It’s the behavior of a drunk man. We really perambulate like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Depth sounder reads last recorded depth once it can’t see the bottom anymore. It shows you that it can’t see the bottom anymore by blinking. So usually, the depth meter gives a blinking readout somewhere between 90 and 120 meters (~300 ft), where the sonar effectively lost the bottom. This transducer is not a fish finder. It’s only meant to read the bottom. We’ve sailed over schools of fish, dolphins, and frothy, wave whipped water, with no discernible change in the depth readout. Once in a while something spooky happens. The depth sounder will jump from 90 meters, to 3 meters, as if something was swimming under the boat. Something big. And it’s only there for a second, passing, and then is gone. But the depth sounder records the last position it saw the bottom, or something so big it appeared to be the bottom. Something 3 meters… some 10 feet under the boat. It’s blinking like that right now… Eventually we switch it off to reset it, but it’s a creepy feeling to see that happen.

Making contact through the Manihi station in the Tuamotu islands, French Polynesia. Bodes well for our progress. Clear night. Fabulous stars. Light wind and seas. All quiet and good aboard.