Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Heading for Socorro Island, then Hawaii
This week of March 20th, 2013, I'm doing the final preparations for leaving on a single handed sail to Hawaii. I've spent the winter here in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle getting the boat ready for some blue water sailing. New standing rigging, 2 new 185 watt solar panels on a new arch hooked up to a Blue Sky 3024i controller, the water maker is working like a champ after laying dormant for FIVE (5) years without being run or re-pickled. Everybody was betting money I had ruined the membranes through five years of criminal neglect, but I got lucky. It hasn't really been needed in Mexico, as Freyja carries over 100 gallons in two 50 g. tanks and it seems to last for a month or so. You can buy 20 5 gallon bottles of distilled water for maybe 18 to 20 pesos a bottle, or pull into a marina for a few days of some town fun and stock up on water, too.
The plan is to leave around April Fool's Day in a two boat convoy with Double Diamond, a Lagoon 44, crewed by my pals Jeff and Melody. They're heading for the S. Pacific, but we're both shaping an initial course to Socorro Island where we plan to hang out for a day or three. Maybe we'll have a few other boats with us, we'll see.
Lots of Puddle Jumpers are waiting in Banderas Bay for a weather window - the gurus are suggesting waiting for a week or so as a fairly large and intense 995 low pressure event is taking place almost right on top of Hawaii and throwing off weather all over the eastern Pacific. There are a lot of big mean waves heading south and east from the area of Hawaii, so my not being ready to go for a week or so is working out.
I'm trying to figure out how much chocolate to bring. I need more coffee beans, some beer, peanut butter, tortillas (we bought 40 packs of 10 for our trip to the Marquesas, for 3 guys. We didn't eat them all and they were still good several months after we bought them, according to Emil!) Another food I'm going to try is sprouted beans, like garbanzos, lentils, pintos, etc. Supposedly sprouting converts the starch to protein or something, plus they are good for salads and stuff. Oh, yeah, a bunch of fruit and veges. And 5 or 6 dozen eggs. Cheese seems to last really well on ocean voyages. Canned tuna lasts pretty well. Tequila and rum, they don't seem to last as long. Granola. Boxes of soy milk last forever. Boxes of fruit juice so I don't get scurvy and so the rum tastes better. Apples. Oranges. Half and half for the coffee, enough to freeze some, as it will churn to butter if there is much wave action, so better to freeze so small containers of it. Jamaica, fresh dried, for sun tea. A nice cigar for the half way point, or as soon thereafter as the weather is right. Maybe some other stuff, too. Costco raw chicken thighs in those packs they sell, to freeze. I'm not going to be baking bread or making brownies. I'm thinking more of a sort of bachelor diet for this trip. Maybe a couple of those Costco frozen lasagnas or similar stuff, cut up into ziplock bags and frozen into meal size packs! just thought of that last one. Hmmm. Frozen apple pie chunks? Frozen french bread chunks? (I do have a large freezer and those huge solar panels to power it!). And now that I'm thinking frozen - Ta Dahhh! Ice cream!
More later. (Not sure why my paragraphs aren't separated in the final post.)
Monday, February 11, 2013
Well, today was a very good day. I fired up Freyja at around 8:30 this morning and headed out into Banderas Bay to run my PUR PowerSurvivor 80 II (nka Katadyn) [MROD 80-II-2 (Modular)] water maker for the first time in the 5 years that I’ve owned the boat. For a week or two (not full time :) ) I'd been studying the manual and opening the compartment with all the machinery and plumbing and trying to decipher the hoses and valves. So I was ready. All the pundits and spectators on the dock (including, actually, me myself) were very skeptical about it working after its being criminally ignored for at least 5 years. The two membranes that the high pressure pump pushes the water through on this PUR Powersurvivor 80 II cost almost $400 each, and might have been ruined by being ignored for so long. You are supposed to run biocide through them (called pickling) every so often, but opinions differ on how often. I found the big guru wise man of my kind of water maker, Gary Albers, who had posted the book he wrote about them on the internet. He seemed to say that with an initial proper pickling they should last “for years” if no new water was introduced into them, though he did recommend more frequent pickling than ever 5 years.
With my fingers crossed, after I was a mile out into the Bay, away from any oil or chemical pollution, I turned it on. The first test was, of course, whether it would even turn on! It did. Test #2 was whether it would produce 3 gallons of water an hour. It did! An hour later, I had about 12 liters, which is close enough for water makers. The next test was to taste some of the last water out of it, so I put the hose into a glass and watched it start to fill with beautiful crystal clear reverse osmosis water. It smelled like, well, like nothing, it didn't smell! That was a good sign. And then, it tasted like really good pure fresh water. Hooray!
So, for the final test, I went back to the dock and had a pal bring his electronic TDS meter over to test for total dissolved solids, including salt. The reading was 420, which is well within spec for a very healthy couple of $400 apiece water maker membranes! Another hooray! According to the guru, I should get at least another couple of years of use out of them, if I use them properly, and apparently longer if I pickle them.
Life is also good on another front. Since getting my two 185 watt Kyocera solar panels hooked up to my Blue Sky 3024i Controller I haven't had to plug into the shore power now for maybe 3 weeks. The batteries are full at the end of each charging day (about 5 pm when the sun gets so low that the panels go to sleep). I was seeing 23.7 amps today because I was running the inverter to run the vacuum cleaner to blow the water out of Bill's TDS meter that I sorta accidentally got water inside of assuming, natch, that it would be water proof. That is a lot of power! I’m averaging making about 90 to 105 amps a day. I’m making ice and keeping my big old original Passport 40 refrigerator and freezer as cold as I want to. The lights are mostly LED now, both inside and outside the boat, so they don’t use much power. I’m charging computers, watching movies, etc. The days have been pretty sunny or totally sunny, so I’ll see what happens with cloud cover, and also with the autopilot going 24/7, and various nav instruments and radar being used on and off day and night for a few weeks. I might have to motor a bit to charge the batteries, but I’m hoping not! The state of the art Blue Sky 3024i MPPT charge controller really can do some magic to the high voltage the panels are putting out. The emptier the batteries, the more amps it cranks out.
So, today I'm happy with my water maker Fool's Luck!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Day 36 and 37 - May 12 and 13, Thursday and Friday
Thursday:
Swam, walked the beach, read, swam, ate, swam, watched the clouds, dozed, read, ate. Life is good. There are a lot of tropical brightly colored fish and some really neat coral formations. This is a great anchorage, and for Marquesan anchorages I’d give it 5 stars, out of 5 possible.
Friday:
We upped anchor at about 8 am, after spending 3 nights and two full days here in D’Anaho Bay. First, the stern anchor came up. I’d swum out to look at it yesterday afternoon and had seen that the chain was wrapped around multiple coral outcroppings, clear up to the rope portion of it. I told Emil the directions of the wrappings this morning and we were able to wind it off using the dingy as a lifting platform. Then the bow anchor came up smoothly, though we could feel it scrapping on coral as it came up. I dove on the boat right before we started the engine. While the depth finder was reading 35 feet, about 10 feet to the port side of us the water depth was about 10 feet, as we were almost on the edge of the coral ledge. Good thing we had the stern anchor out! It was low tide, though, so the 10 feet wasn’t terribly shocking, except that it was so close to our port side. We’ve seen several boats have trouble getting their anchor and chain freed from coral or rocks, but they all succeeded.
We beat our way east and south under motor until we were part way down the eastern coast, when we rolled out the headsail. We motored with the headsail up all the way back to Taiohae. We arrived and anchored in Taiohae Bay. A beautiful b-i-g sailboat named Bliss was in the Bay. It has a single mast and 5 sets of spreaders. The rest of Shanti’s crew went to shore to drop off laundry, to look for tattoo artists, to shop for a few groceries, and to check for the delivery of the rudder repair part. I stayed on the boat to catch up on email and the news. The repair part isn’t here yet.
Because of the days passing, I’m getting more worried about the timing of getting the part delivered, installed, and me sailing to Tahiti, having some time there, and then getting to San Diego on time. We hope that installing the emergency repair kit will be a matter of just a few hours, with the boat in the water - build a sling to hold the rudder up, take the top end bearings apart, let the rudder drop a couple of inches, slap on the repair kit, hoist the rudder back up, badda bing, badda bang, we’re off! I’m thinking about pulling the plug on sailing to Tahiti on Tuesday the 17th or so, partially because, as I’ve told Emil, I want a couple or three days in Tahiti to interview marinas for places to leave Freyja when I bring her here. I’m not sure of my future cruising plans on Freyja, but one of my ideas is that I’d like to keep her here for a year or two. If we left here on Shanti on the 18th for Tahiti, with no stops, we would probably get there within 7 days, maybe less, maybe more. Emil thinks we can get there in 5 days, which we might be able to do if everything worked perfectly – 150 miles per day times 5 is 750, which is about the distance if you cut through the Tuamotus. We didn’t average 150 miles a day on the way here, though. I’ll feel bad for Emil if Judy and I get off Shanti here, as without the autopilot getting to Tahiti will be tougher. I’m not sure what Dom will do, as his time is getting short, on the one hand, but he loves a good challenge, too.
We’re having dinner tonight at the Pearl Hotel. They will pick us up at the dingy dock, and return us, I think for free! Yup, the ride was free and on time. Dinner was great, the half price happy hour (Friday only) cocktails were a bit small but good, and desert was fine. It came to about 4500 per person, with tip. Dom says the tip thing here is to just leave a small amount to show respect – tipping here isn’t about buying a service. He left 1000 on our 18000 bill.
Day 38 and 39 - May 14 and 15, Saturday and Sunday
Saturday:
I slept in the cockpit last night, as usual. The night was very comfortable, no bugs, not much motion. Dom got up and rowed to shore around 5 am or so, to meet up with a local tattoo artist who was supposed to be there. The artist didn’t show up, but Dom discovered that the pier was completely full of parked cars and stuffed with people attending a very active fisherman’s morning market. He found out the fish market on the pier goes from about 4:30 am to about 6 am, at least on Saturday and probably every day except maybe Sunday. He bought a pound of very nice fish for 500. There are other food vendors there, too, as he came back with some fabulous donuts. The fish being sold are those that the local fisherman caught during the night. Sounds like a real party there on the dock at 4:30 am!
He has been searching for local tattoo guys ever since we got to Taiohae, but they are elusive. They are in Tahiti, or out of town, or will be back tomorrow, but in any event they don’t make themselves easy to find, or at least haven’t during our stay.
Emil found out today that the part we are waiting for won’t be here until maybe the 21st, which is too late for me. So we decided to abandon the part and head for Tahiti tomorrow, Sunday.
Judy and I went to shore for a walk about. There is a crepes mobile kitchen parked in the parking lot next to where the dingy ties up, and a couple of other really good little restaurants. The crepes are very delicious and not to be missed, nor is the poison cru on the other side of the parking lot. We ran into our friends from Endorphin at the quay and walked towards town with them. The weekend only roasted chicken/hamburger mobile van was there. We stopped so I could order the hot roast chicken that I foolishly hadn’t gotten last weekend and had been dreaming of ever since. We sat by the van at a shady picnic table and I enjoyed my chicken and cold Orangina pop while Judy ate a nice burger. Gil, from Endorphin, mentioned another boat, Reality, that also had a broken rudder and which last week completed the passage to Tahiti, skirting the north end of the Tuamotus instead of passing through them. Reality, Gil said, had to improvise by attaching planks to the outside stern to support turning blocks, drill holes in its rudder, attach lines to the rudder leading to the cockpit via turning blocks and then use the lines to steer.
We upped anchor about three or so and headed for Daniel’s Bay so we can swim. Emil heard more information about the part while Judy and I were in town picking up laundry, buying the rotisserie chicken for 1500, and letting Dom work on his diary. Now the part might show up on the 18th, which is more or less my cutoff day for there not being enough time to make the sail. What a bind! I don’t want to leave Emil here with just Dom for crew, especially with no autopilot. All of us want to sail the boat to Tahiti, for the adventure, for the sail, to help with the hand steering.
The guy from Gigi came by tonight, in Daniel’s Bay, about sundown to chat. They are Australians, nice people, and he entertained us for a while with stories of his sailing adventures there. It sounds pretty robust. He has a friend named, I think, Daniel (or something) Ford who has a large website named or about Kimberly Tours. Kimberly is an area on the north west-ish coast of Australia that, Gigi said, is incredibly beautiful and remote and large and very worth sailing in. I’m remembering that the Kimberly region might also be a center for diamond mining.
Sunday:
I woke up on my cockpit bunk about 6 am today, and lazily started watching the other boats, trying to spot their names or to see what their crew was doing. The crew on a 32 or 34 foot sloop named Mystic, with a bearded young man and a very attractive young lady, was busy. I watched him pull up the mainsail by hand. Then the woman went forward and pulled up at least 100 feet of anchor chain by hand, no windlass, and then she pulled the anchor aboard and stowed it. She went to the mast and pulled up the Yankee and they sailed right out of the Bay at about an eighth of a knot in the two or three knots of breeze. No signs of a motor running, no exhaust or water, no engine sounds as they passed close to Shanti. It was a nice display of seamanship and teamwork. And confidence. I need to practice sailing on and off my anchor, and in little rocky bays without my engine turned on.
Emil left in the kayak to hike to the waterfall. I’m going swimming, now that I’ve had my coffee. Ah, yes, the swimming was good. The black flies are back in the boat, just flying around and landing, no biting. The cockroaches are still here, despite our strenuous cleaning and the baiting/poisoning program we have been engaging in. Emil came back bursting with peace and love and relaxation and just sort of generally high on the beauty and location and the plants and birds and bees and waterfall and so on. He said the hike was mostly flat, bug free, about an hour long, that the trail was one of the most beautiful he had been on anywhere on the planet, and that the pool was perfect for swimming. It sounded like we had gotten a lot of bad information about the difficulty of this hike. Just goes to show, don’t believe rumors. Find out for yourself, eh? Also, he revealed that today was his birthday. Dom made a beautiful hand drawn card for him, we baked cookies, had pasta, and generally had a nice peaceful evening. Dom and I hung around the boat, reading and writing. Judy hiked the beach with Emil looking for shells. We noticed the guy on Duetto going back and forth all day in his dingy, ferrying empty water jugs to the other lobe of the bay and returning to his boat to dump them, full of water, into his tank. Apparently the water spigot there is working again, or maybe he was getting creek water. I love Shanti’s water maker. There is a local guy who lives there by the creek who likes to trade fresh fruit and stuff for anything that the boaters have to offer, from t shirts to hooks to whatever. Plus, he likes the social interaction, I suspect.
Day 40 and 41 - May 16 and 17, Monday and Tuesday
Monday:
Today we woke up, had coffee and breakfast, and all climbed into the dingy to hike to the waterfall. The total time for the hike was about 4.5 hours, which included maybe an hour swimming in the beautiful pool at the base of the waterfall. We beached the dingy and carried it up above the high water mark. Luckily the Pudknocker is small and light. Emil claims the name of his dingy is from the Top Gun movie and is a term for a plane with a really really tiny engine. I thought I heard mention of pudknockers in the Right Stuff movie. Anyhow, the trail rises very gently from the beach to the falls. Part of it is packed earth, and a lot of it is rocky, with both partially buried and loose rocks. It crosses back and forth over the river several times and has several mildly muddy sections, but all in all it is pretty easy. The ease of the river crossings probably depends on if it has been raining. We took a piece of line with us, as an aid for the crossings, and found hiking sticks in the woods. The river probably rises and falls quickly as it rains and dries. Wear shoes that can get wet and give good traction. It is an easy hike, but it does take maybe an hour and a half to two hours to get up to the falls, so bring water and a snack. It is mostly shady, as the trail winds through what appears to be old growth jungle. We didn’t have any bug problems but were lathered up with insect repellant. Dom has some sort of organic stuff from Badger called Anti-Bug Balm. It smells good and works well. I used Badger on my upper body, DEET on my legs. Both worked well, so it will be Badger Anti-Bug Balm all the way next time. www.badgerbalm.com
We got to the falls and Dom and I carefully entered the pool, watching for hidden rocks. The pool looked clean and was deliciously cool after the hike, but the water is opaque. We also figured that the water falling almost 2,000 or 1,000, whatever it is, feet would probably go a long way towards sterilizing it. There were some big rocks between us and the falls, hiding the base of the falls, so we climbed over them and swam into a second, hidden, pool. I had to swim backwards as I approached the falls, as the falling water was displacing air and making a wind that blew heavily towards us, carrying so much water that it was hard to breath. I found a nice little niche behind the water fall and stayed there for a couple of minutes, enjoying the power of the falls and the coolness of the water. After passing back through the cascade of falling water I swam into the big half cave off to my left. I spent a few more minutes in the cave and then went back to the main shore where our packs were. Judy and Emil then made it into the second pool and under the falls, too. There are signs and warnings about the danger of falling rocks. I suppose that if one fell a thousand feet from the top and hit you, it would kill you. Oh, well. We watched for a while before getting into the first pool and didn’t see any falling, so figured the odds were on our side. I have to confess that, at first glance, the rocks guarding the second pool, and the second pool itself and the actual water hitting it, are all a bit imposing, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to climb the rocks and enter the second pool. Then I asked myself “what would my kids do?” and instantly knew that I had to make it all the way to under the falls, so that the little guys, (Scott, Zack, Mike, Sean, and Duncan) couldn’t show me up someday.
The hike down was faster and easier and still cool and shady. Walking the trail you are continually passing serious stone walls, big stone square mounds, stone lined pathways, some little tikis and huge amounts of ripe fruit just dropping to the ground with nobody to eat it. There is a very strong feeling that a lot of people used to live here. Some of the stone pathways are hundreds of yards long and it must have taken large gangs of men (slaves?) many months to collect the stones and build them. You can tell that an entire civilization has passed away, and that the current locals are either caretakers or are building anew, depending on your point of view. There is a group of houses by the beach. A lady named Monette sells fruit, or gives it to you but it is nice to give her something back. She offers to cook dinner if you want it. We passed on that as we were planning on immediately upping anchor and returning to Taiohae, hoping that the repair kit had arrived (it hadn’t). She and her husband are probably 70 years old, healthy and robust, and very very sweet and nice. Or maybe they are 50 but have worked hard physically, and haven’t had western medical care, all their lives.
The river is the biggest we have seen in the Marquesas. It has carved out a nice little fertile valley, with a flat, farmable, bottom maybe several hundred yards wide. The locals have created a beautiful garden spot here, full of fruit trees and flowering bushes and shrubs planted. You could tell from the playfulness of it that they hadn’t planted just for food, but also for the joy of it. It was all immaculately tended, very idyllic and garden of eden-ish. The cliffs on both sides tower straight up for over a thousand feet. Wild goats, that you can watch from the boat, roam the cliffs. Wild pigs roam the woods, eating fruit and what not. We never did see a wild pig, during the entire time we were in the Marquesas.
The swells were hitting the beach, so we put Judy and Emil in the dingy, started the engine in neutral, and Dom and I pushed the dingy out until Emil had enough depth to gun it through the swells, though the Pudknocker doesn’t really “gun”. It just whines louder and goes a tiny bit faster. Dom and I then swam out to the point that separates the two lobes of the bay, by which time Emil was back so we hopped into the dingy. I had a baggy long sleeved shirt and baggy shorts and Tevas on (American style), so swimming was not efficient for me. Dom was in his usual racy French outfit, naked except for his tiny little swimming suit (but thankfully it was bigger than a European style speedo) and red lensed prescription glasses, so was having no problems swimming.
We got back to the boat, I showered the salt off on the stern platform and whipped the crew up some tortillas filled with Kirkland brand canned chicken breast and mayo, had a cup of espresso and drove the boat out of the harbor. Dom took over as I was falling asleep at the wheel. Hiking, swimming, hot coffee and the sun on my back do that to me. And, anyhow, it was his turn to drive, not mine!
Dropped anchor in Taiohae Bay, read for a while and then headed in to the only sit down restaurant in town, other than the nice expensive one at the Pearl Hotel. We had an okay pizza and a really nice salad Nicesoise. This restaurant is nice, and is across the street from the water about a block past the two grocery stores, going away from the dingy dock. The night was windless and hot and humid. The atmospheric pressure is 1018, because of a giant high pressure zone sitting southeast of here. We noticed that there were no trades blowing yesterday, and no swell, as we motored back to this bay. The air is a bit uncomfortably stagnant, hot and humid.
Tuesday:
This morning we had an infestation of tiny little flying ants, arriving over the windless, stifling bay. An hour later a little breeze popped up and the pressure dropped from 1018 to 1016 and we had a puff of breeze and a tiny little sprinkle of rain. Everybody is covered with mosquito bites, whether from the hike or from being in this bay last night we don’t know. I suspect last night, as we all lathered up with bug stuff for the hike. I don’t like this bay. Not enough breeze, too much sun, nasty looking dirty water, lots of bugs, and we’ve seen a lot of sharks around the dock. We watched the sharks fight over the carcasses of the fishermen’s catches, as they cleaned their fish and threw the offal in to the water. Not the nice friendly black tipped reef sharks, but bigger, meaner looking all gray ones. And they don’t fight nicely for the scraps but drive at them at full power and furiously fight each other for them. Taiohae Bay, though, is where the town is, the diesel, and all the support services. Daniel’s Bay, which is really handy, is right around the corner and is surrounded by vertical peaks which provide more shade, and it has clean water, no services, and no sharks so far.
We talked about schedules again, and I reminded Emil I want/need to be in Tahiti by the 25th or 26th, so I have time to search for marinas and just have a couple of days of R&R there. We just downloaded weather. The wind on the route is dropping to 5 knots for three or four days, and then increasing to one full feather on the wind arrows, all because of the big 1023 high pressure zone off to the SE. Also, the swell is coming up from due south, which means little wind and bashing into the swell for most of the trip, which means a relatively slow trip, which means that combined with the part not being here and maybe still needing a day, or two, for installation, I’m not going to be making it as we are out of enough days on the calendar to make it all work. Of course, the GRIB files could be wrong.
The freighter Taporo 9 is pulling into the bay this morning, which is preventing Emil’s trip in the dingy to the fuel dock. The Taporo should be gone by tomorrow, based on watching the Aranui 3’s arrivals and departures. Yup, the Taporo left this afternoon and then after dark the Aranui 3 entered and anchored in the bay.
Dominique found out today that a taxi to the airport is US $60 per person, which seems like a small price to pay for passage out of here! Not that it is so bad, but just that I’m tired of hanging around waiting for parts, knowing that there isn’t enough time to sail to Tahiti and that my son’s graduation is coming up on the 3rd of June. Remember, we left Nuevo Vallarta on April 7th. We still aren’t sure about the availability or cost of seats to Tahiti. When we all leave Emil is going to be in a bind, with the broken autopilot and broken rudder. Sailing to Tahiti with no autopilot will be tough, unless he can get some new crew, or unless Dom sticks with Shanti. Emil has been volunteering for a week now that he knows time is running out on our ability to stay on board. There is no marina here, and we haven’t seen any secure heavy duty mooring balls, so anchoring out is the only option.
Day 42 and 43 - May 18 and 19, Wednesday and Thursday
Wednesday:
The Aranui 3 is at the dock this morning, offloading cargo. We had a misty sort of rain night last night, with maybe 5 knots of breeze. Depending on which way the boat was swinging on its anchor a bit of mist would pass under the bimini and fall into the cockpit. My sleeping berth in the cockpit got a bit damp, but after I pulled a couple of big towels over myself my blanket stayed dry.
Dom is hoping that his tattoo guy will be available this morning, so Dom, Judy and I went to shore at 8 am to hunt him down. Sure enough, he was hanging out at Yacht Services, which is run by a French gal and which is located right by the dinghy quay across from that crepes and omlette truck. The French gal had helped Dom coordinate with the tattoo guy. They talked for a bit and then Dom and Judy took off for his house. I walked down the street to the Air Tahiti office to find out about flying to Papeete. They had seats for two or three people on Saturday or Wednesday, for about 33,000 per person. I slapped a 24 hour free hold on three seats for Saturday. At this point I wasn’t sure if Dom wanted to fly out, or of when the part would come in, or of how long it would take to install it, so just wanted to cover the bases for 24 hours. Back at the dingy dock, after buying a whole frozen chicken at the magasin and some tomatoes and fresh corn on the cob at the produce stand, I sat down at the poisson cru tent on the quay and ordered a bowl for 500. The rumor is that it is the best on the island. I’m not in a position to judge as I’ve only had it once before, but it was very good. It is made basically of raw fish, coconut liquid, lime juice and onions. After it marinates for a while, you eat the little chunks of fish at room temperature. Yummy! And a really nice sized portion. Just 150 feet away, under one of the big roofs, is a farm fresh produce stand and a restaurant.
I went back to the boat to hang out ad wait until Dom and Judy texted that they were ready to be picked up. Emil wants to take the dingy and the jerry cans to the diesel dock, but the Aranui 3’s presence and its unloading activity on the wharf complicates things. Shanti’s tanks are full, the jerry cans are empty. As soon as the Aranui left, Emil headed over to the fuel dock, with the dingy full of empty yellow jerrycans. The attendant told him that he was closed between noon and two, which is pretty much de riguer here in the Marquesas. Just before 2 the French warship anchored in the bay here upped anchor, idled over to the fuel dock and took up the space, so no fuel for us today.
Judy texted me around 2:30, so I headed in to the enormous, solid concrete, quay, wending my way between 15 or 20 anchored out monohulls and catamarans, most with interesting stories and many of whom we have seen before, either coming down the US coastline, in Mexico, or here in the Islands.
Dom was sporting a new very bold, black, tattoo that looked very Marquesan, and which covered his left calf muscle from below his knee down to his Achilles tendon. They don’t use color in tattoos in the Islands. Mahekua, the tattoo artist, turned out to be a very shy, traditional sort of person, steeped in the lore of the Marquesan tattooing traditions, which was exactly what Dom was looking for, of course. Mahekua says he doesn’t advertise and isn’t interesting in having an official commercial business as a tattoo artist. My sense is that Dom sort of drew him out by befriending the French lady who runs Yacht Services and several of the locals who hang out there. After a week of Dom hanging out and stopping by they got to know him, and to understand his depth and sincerity, and to trust that he was perhaps worthy of being introduced to Mahekua. Or maybe I’m imagining all that and Mahekua was just out of town and finally got back. Anyhow, Mahekua had a modern tattoo gun, rubber gloves, antiseptic practices, etc. They went to Mahekua’s house and discussed the possibilities. Mahekua sort of interviewed Dom to find out who he was, what his character was, and what tattoos would be appropriate from Mahekua’s point of view. It took between 4 to 5 hours from arrival at his house to the time of leaving it. Dom had to lay on the hard kitchen table while the tattoo was installed on his leg.
Thursday:
We had another quiet night on the anchor. It was comfortable, with a tiny breeze, no bugs, and just a couple of little 5 minute rainfalls. I had a small white tarp that I pulled over myself when it rained, to keep my blanket dry, which was much better than using towels.
There is a another big mega-yacht type of sailboat here, called Drumbeg. It’s flying one of the British Empire flags, a small union jack sort of thing where the stars are in our flag, with the big blue part of the flag covered with three moving legs in a propeller shape. We were guessing that maybe the secret royal honeymoon couple was aboard, especially after the French navy ship P689 anchored near it. P689 is a serious looking little bruiser, maybe 80 to a 100 feet long, low slung, navy gray, with a potent foredeck gun or cannon and lots of antennas.
I’ve got Emil’s little white tarp, like a blue tarp but white, clothes pinned up to keep out the rain that is blowing through. I’m going to get a couple of appropriate sized little tarps like this for Freyja, or maybe pieces of sunbrella or canvas or something, to stop rain and to act as sun screens on the sides of the bimini. When you are at anchor, with all your cushions and blankets and comfort gear and computers and books all spread out around the cockpit, the bright harsh powerful tropical sun shining in is a nuisance. Likewise, rain blowing in on that stuff is no good. I’ve got light gray shade cloth screens that attach to Freyja’s bimini to block the sun, but rain can be blown through them and sometimes the sun is strong enough to still be a bother. Solid ones do block the cooling breeze, though.
Another thing that is really useful is a bunch of really powerful clothes pins. I don’t mean ones like your mom used to use outdoors, but bigger, stronger, more expensive, well built ones, with big snappy springs, that won’t let big towels and clothes blow off the lifelines when the wind kicks up all of a sudden or when you are on shore.
Today is the do or die day for the part to arrive. FedEx’s tracking number website says it was supposed to get to the island last night at 5. The airport is a two or three hour drive away, on the other side of the island. Take a look at the road on Google Earth. I have to pay for my air tickets to Papeete by 4 today, or let the hold expire. Emil was trying to get his Ocens’ email to work, and asking Dom to help get some big files downloaded via webmail instead of satphone mail. Yesterday he emailed Catalina asking them to send the instructions. Having the instructions would, of course, help in understanding how much time the repair process would take and whether it was even feasible to do it here in Nuku Hiva, and ultimately if we needed to stick around or could have flown out sooner. Frustrating. I’m glad I was here for Dom’s tattoo, though!
So, today Judy and I bought tickets to fly to Papeete, leaving on Saturday afternoon.
Day 44 and 45 - May 20 and 21, Friday and Saturday
Friday:
Well, sure enough, the repair kit arrived today, at the house of Emil’s agent. I can’t remember her name, but she helps cruisers with checking in, receiving mail, and such. The repair turned out to be pretty straightforward. We tied a strong canvas bag under the rudder to hold it up and ran two lines from the bag, one to each genoa winch to keep the bag tight. We dropped the rudder about a foot and slid the repair part over the top of the rudder post, and then slid the new upper rudder bearing over that and pulled the rudder back up. The rudder bearing is bolted to the support pan. The pan is attached to and hangs down under the solid rigid floor assembly. The rudder bearing attaches to it by six bolts that pass through the bearing, and through the pan and which are held there by nuts attached under the pan. The pan was disintegrating and cracking. The new repair kit part fits under the pan and had bolt holes that matched the holes in the pan and in the upper bearing which sits on top of the pan and under the floor, and basically reinforced the broken pan. We got the bolts all lined up and the nuts started, then squirted in the two part glue, as per the instructions. The instructions said we had 15 to 20 minutes before the glue set up. Well, it set up in about two minutes, so the nuts weren’t tightened all the way up and it became impossible to completely seat the new repair part up against the pan. Hopefully the glue will be strong enough to span the gap between the repair part and the pan. Disappointing, to say the least, but we all felt that it might now possibly be stronger and better than it had been. As a note, the rudder didn’t try to fall out of the boat, and actually seemed sort of light and floaty, and easy to move up and down, even when the lines to the winches were slackened. We may not have needed the bag under the rudder. Later somebody mentioned that this type of glue goes off really quickly when it is hot and humid, something not mentioned in Catalina’s instructions or printed on the tubes themselves.
Saturday:
Well, today is the 21st. Judy and I packed up and met our taxi at the dock. Dom is staying aboard and will sail to Tahiti with Emil, hand steering all the way. The drive over the island, over the plateau on top, down through the semi desert on the other side, was spectacular. It’s worth renting a car just to do this drive. The airplane had two propellers. There is a little snack bar at the airport. Also, if you have heavy bags, check them as freight, rather than as checked bags. You will save hundreds of dollars. They go on the same airplane, and are ready to pick up in Tahiti when you get off the plane there. This freight versus checked bag thing is quirky, but it does save hundreds of US dollars.
What a wonderful trip we had, what a great experience. I’m thankful that Emil asked me to crew, and that Dominique came along and I got to meet him and sail with him.
Thursday:
Swam, walked the beach, read, swam, ate, swam, watched the clouds, dozed, read, ate. Life is good. There are a lot of tropical brightly colored fish and some really neat coral formations. This is a great anchorage, and for Marquesan anchorages I’d give it 5 stars, out of 5 possible.
Friday:
We upped anchor at about 8 am, after spending 3 nights and two full days here in D’Anaho Bay. First, the stern anchor came up. I’d swum out to look at it yesterday afternoon and had seen that the chain was wrapped around multiple coral outcroppings, clear up to the rope portion of it. I told Emil the directions of the wrappings this morning and we were able to wind it off using the dingy as a lifting platform. Then the bow anchor came up smoothly, though we could feel it scrapping on coral as it came up. I dove on the boat right before we started the engine. While the depth finder was reading 35 feet, about 10 feet to the port side of us the water depth was about 10 feet, as we were almost on the edge of the coral ledge. Good thing we had the stern anchor out! It was low tide, though, so the 10 feet wasn’t terribly shocking, except that it was so close to our port side. We’ve seen several boats have trouble getting their anchor and chain freed from coral or rocks, but they all succeeded.
We beat our way east and south under motor until we were part way down the eastern coast, when we rolled out the headsail. We motored with the headsail up all the way back to Taiohae. We arrived and anchored in Taiohae Bay. A beautiful b-i-g sailboat named Bliss was in the Bay. It has a single mast and 5 sets of spreaders. The rest of Shanti’s crew went to shore to drop off laundry, to look for tattoo artists, to shop for a few groceries, and to check for the delivery of the rudder repair part. I stayed on the boat to catch up on email and the news. The repair part isn’t here yet.
Because of the days passing, I’m getting more worried about the timing of getting the part delivered, installed, and me sailing to Tahiti, having some time there, and then getting to San Diego on time. We hope that installing the emergency repair kit will be a matter of just a few hours, with the boat in the water - build a sling to hold the rudder up, take the top end bearings apart, let the rudder drop a couple of inches, slap on the repair kit, hoist the rudder back up, badda bing, badda bang, we’re off! I’m thinking about pulling the plug on sailing to Tahiti on Tuesday the 17th or so, partially because, as I’ve told Emil, I want a couple or three days in Tahiti to interview marinas for places to leave Freyja when I bring her here. I’m not sure of my future cruising plans on Freyja, but one of my ideas is that I’d like to keep her here for a year or two. If we left here on Shanti on the 18th for Tahiti, with no stops, we would probably get there within 7 days, maybe less, maybe more. Emil thinks we can get there in 5 days, which we might be able to do if everything worked perfectly – 150 miles per day times 5 is 750, which is about the distance if you cut through the Tuamotus. We didn’t average 150 miles a day on the way here, though. I’ll feel bad for Emil if Judy and I get off Shanti here, as without the autopilot getting to Tahiti will be tougher. I’m not sure what Dom will do, as his time is getting short, on the one hand, but he loves a good challenge, too.
We’re having dinner tonight at the Pearl Hotel. They will pick us up at the dingy dock, and return us, I think for free! Yup, the ride was free and on time. Dinner was great, the half price happy hour (Friday only) cocktails were a bit small but good, and desert was fine. It came to about 4500 per person, with tip. Dom says the tip thing here is to just leave a small amount to show respect – tipping here isn’t about buying a service. He left 1000 on our 18000 bill.
Day 38 and 39 - May 14 and 15, Saturday and Sunday
Saturday:
I slept in the cockpit last night, as usual. The night was very comfortable, no bugs, not much motion. Dom got up and rowed to shore around 5 am or so, to meet up with a local tattoo artist who was supposed to be there. The artist didn’t show up, but Dom discovered that the pier was completely full of parked cars and stuffed with people attending a very active fisherman’s morning market. He found out the fish market on the pier goes from about 4:30 am to about 6 am, at least on Saturday and probably every day except maybe Sunday. He bought a pound of very nice fish for 500. There are other food vendors there, too, as he came back with some fabulous donuts. The fish being sold are those that the local fisherman caught during the night. Sounds like a real party there on the dock at 4:30 am!
He has been searching for local tattoo guys ever since we got to Taiohae, but they are elusive. They are in Tahiti, or out of town, or will be back tomorrow, but in any event they don’t make themselves easy to find, or at least haven’t during our stay.
Emil found out today that the part we are waiting for won’t be here until maybe the 21st, which is too late for me. So we decided to abandon the part and head for Tahiti tomorrow, Sunday.
Judy and I went to shore for a walk about. There is a crepes mobile kitchen parked in the parking lot next to where the dingy ties up, and a couple of other really good little restaurants. The crepes are very delicious and not to be missed, nor is the poison cru on the other side of the parking lot. We ran into our friends from Endorphin at the quay and walked towards town with them. The weekend only roasted chicken/hamburger mobile van was there. We stopped so I could order the hot roast chicken that I foolishly hadn’t gotten last weekend and had been dreaming of ever since. We sat by the van at a shady picnic table and I enjoyed my chicken and cold Orangina pop while Judy ate a nice burger. Gil, from Endorphin, mentioned another boat, Reality, that also had a broken rudder and which last week completed the passage to Tahiti, skirting the north end of the Tuamotus instead of passing through them. Reality, Gil said, had to improvise by attaching planks to the outside stern to support turning blocks, drill holes in its rudder, attach lines to the rudder leading to the cockpit via turning blocks and then use the lines to steer.
We upped anchor about three or so and headed for Daniel’s Bay so we can swim. Emil heard more information about the part while Judy and I were in town picking up laundry, buying the rotisserie chicken for 1500, and letting Dom work on his diary. Now the part might show up on the 18th, which is more or less my cutoff day for there not being enough time to make the sail. What a bind! I don’t want to leave Emil here with just Dom for crew, especially with no autopilot. All of us want to sail the boat to Tahiti, for the adventure, for the sail, to help with the hand steering.
The guy from Gigi came by tonight, in Daniel’s Bay, about sundown to chat. They are Australians, nice people, and he entertained us for a while with stories of his sailing adventures there. It sounds pretty robust. He has a friend named, I think, Daniel (or something) Ford who has a large website named or about Kimberly Tours. Kimberly is an area on the north west-ish coast of Australia that, Gigi said, is incredibly beautiful and remote and large and very worth sailing in. I’m remembering that the Kimberly region might also be a center for diamond mining.
Sunday:
I woke up on my cockpit bunk about 6 am today, and lazily started watching the other boats, trying to spot their names or to see what their crew was doing. The crew on a 32 or 34 foot sloop named Mystic, with a bearded young man and a very attractive young lady, was busy. I watched him pull up the mainsail by hand. Then the woman went forward and pulled up at least 100 feet of anchor chain by hand, no windlass, and then she pulled the anchor aboard and stowed it. She went to the mast and pulled up the Yankee and they sailed right out of the Bay at about an eighth of a knot in the two or three knots of breeze. No signs of a motor running, no exhaust or water, no engine sounds as they passed close to Shanti. It was a nice display of seamanship and teamwork. And confidence. I need to practice sailing on and off my anchor, and in little rocky bays without my engine turned on.
Emil left in the kayak to hike to the waterfall. I’m going swimming, now that I’ve had my coffee. Ah, yes, the swimming was good. The black flies are back in the boat, just flying around and landing, no biting. The cockroaches are still here, despite our strenuous cleaning and the baiting/poisoning program we have been engaging in. Emil came back bursting with peace and love and relaxation and just sort of generally high on the beauty and location and the plants and birds and bees and waterfall and so on. He said the hike was mostly flat, bug free, about an hour long, that the trail was one of the most beautiful he had been on anywhere on the planet, and that the pool was perfect for swimming. It sounded like we had gotten a lot of bad information about the difficulty of this hike. Just goes to show, don’t believe rumors. Find out for yourself, eh? Also, he revealed that today was his birthday. Dom made a beautiful hand drawn card for him, we baked cookies, had pasta, and generally had a nice peaceful evening. Dom and I hung around the boat, reading and writing. Judy hiked the beach with Emil looking for shells. We noticed the guy on Duetto going back and forth all day in his dingy, ferrying empty water jugs to the other lobe of the bay and returning to his boat to dump them, full of water, into his tank. Apparently the water spigot there is working again, or maybe he was getting creek water. I love Shanti’s water maker. There is a local guy who lives there by the creek who likes to trade fresh fruit and stuff for anything that the boaters have to offer, from t shirts to hooks to whatever. Plus, he likes the social interaction, I suspect.
Day 40 and 41 - May 16 and 17, Monday and Tuesday
Monday:
Today we woke up, had coffee and breakfast, and all climbed into the dingy to hike to the waterfall. The total time for the hike was about 4.5 hours, which included maybe an hour swimming in the beautiful pool at the base of the waterfall. We beached the dingy and carried it up above the high water mark. Luckily the Pudknocker is small and light. Emil claims the name of his dingy is from the Top Gun movie and is a term for a plane with a really really tiny engine. I thought I heard mention of pudknockers in the Right Stuff movie. Anyhow, the trail rises very gently from the beach to the falls. Part of it is packed earth, and a lot of it is rocky, with both partially buried and loose rocks. It crosses back and forth over the river several times and has several mildly muddy sections, but all in all it is pretty easy. The ease of the river crossings probably depends on if it has been raining. We took a piece of line with us, as an aid for the crossings, and found hiking sticks in the woods. The river probably rises and falls quickly as it rains and dries. Wear shoes that can get wet and give good traction. It is an easy hike, but it does take maybe an hour and a half to two hours to get up to the falls, so bring water and a snack. It is mostly shady, as the trail winds through what appears to be old growth jungle. We didn’t have any bug problems but were lathered up with insect repellant. Dom has some sort of organic stuff from Badger called Anti-Bug Balm. It smells good and works well. I used Badger on my upper body, DEET on my legs. Both worked well, so it will be Badger Anti-Bug Balm all the way next time. www.badgerbalm.com
We got to the falls and Dom and I carefully entered the pool, watching for hidden rocks. The pool looked clean and was deliciously cool after the hike, but the water is opaque. We also figured that the water falling almost 2,000 or 1,000, whatever it is, feet would probably go a long way towards sterilizing it. There were some big rocks between us and the falls, hiding the base of the falls, so we climbed over them and swam into a second, hidden, pool. I had to swim backwards as I approached the falls, as the falling water was displacing air and making a wind that blew heavily towards us, carrying so much water that it was hard to breath. I found a nice little niche behind the water fall and stayed there for a couple of minutes, enjoying the power of the falls and the coolness of the water. After passing back through the cascade of falling water I swam into the big half cave off to my left. I spent a few more minutes in the cave and then went back to the main shore where our packs were. Judy and Emil then made it into the second pool and under the falls, too. There are signs and warnings about the danger of falling rocks. I suppose that if one fell a thousand feet from the top and hit you, it would kill you. Oh, well. We watched for a while before getting into the first pool and didn’t see any falling, so figured the odds were on our side. I have to confess that, at first glance, the rocks guarding the second pool, and the second pool itself and the actual water hitting it, are all a bit imposing, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to climb the rocks and enter the second pool. Then I asked myself “what would my kids do?” and instantly knew that I had to make it all the way to under the falls, so that the little guys, (Scott, Zack, Mike, Sean, and Duncan) couldn’t show me up someday.
The hike down was faster and easier and still cool and shady. Walking the trail you are continually passing serious stone walls, big stone square mounds, stone lined pathways, some little tikis and huge amounts of ripe fruit just dropping to the ground with nobody to eat it. There is a very strong feeling that a lot of people used to live here. Some of the stone pathways are hundreds of yards long and it must have taken large gangs of men (slaves?) many months to collect the stones and build them. You can tell that an entire civilization has passed away, and that the current locals are either caretakers or are building anew, depending on your point of view. There is a group of houses by the beach. A lady named Monette sells fruit, or gives it to you but it is nice to give her something back. She offers to cook dinner if you want it. We passed on that as we were planning on immediately upping anchor and returning to Taiohae, hoping that the repair kit had arrived (it hadn’t). She and her husband are probably 70 years old, healthy and robust, and very very sweet and nice. Or maybe they are 50 but have worked hard physically, and haven’t had western medical care, all their lives.
The river is the biggest we have seen in the Marquesas. It has carved out a nice little fertile valley, with a flat, farmable, bottom maybe several hundred yards wide. The locals have created a beautiful garden spot here, full of fruit trees and flowering bushes and shrubs planted. You could tell from the playfulness of it that they hadn’t planted just for food, but also for the joy of it. It was all immaculately tended, very idyllic and garden of eden-ish. The cliffs on both sides tower straight up for over a thousand feet. Wild goats, that you can watch from the boat, roam the cliffs. Wild pigs roam the woods, eating fruit and what not. We never did see a wild pig, during the entire time we were in the Marquesas.
The swells were hitting the beach, so we put Judy and Emil in the dingy, started the engine in neutral, and Dom and I pushed the dingy out until Emil had enough depth to gun it through the swells, though the Pudknocker doesn’t really “gun”. It just whines louder and goes a tiny bit faster. Dom and I then swam out to the point that separates the two lobes of the bay, by which time Emil was back so we hopped into the dingy. I had a baggy long sleeved shirt and baggy shorts and Tevas on (American style), so swimming was not efficient for me. Dom was in his usual racy French outfit, naked except for his tiny little swimming suit (but thankfully it was bigger than a European style speedo) and red lensed prescription glasses, so was having no problems swimming.
We got back to the boat, I showered the salt off on the stern platform and whipped the crew up some tortillas filled with Kirkland brand canned chicken breast and mayo, had a cup of espresso and drove the boat out of the harbor. Dom took over as I was falling asleep at the wheel. Hiking, swimming, hot coffee and the sun on my back do that to me. And, anyhow, it was his turn to drive, not mine!
Dropped anchor in Taiohae Bay, read for a while and then headed in to the only sit down restaurant in town, other than the nice expensive one at the Pearl Hotel. We had an okay pizza and a really nice salad Nicesoise. This restaurant is nice, and is across the street from the water about a block past the two grocery stores, going away from the dingy dock. The night was windless and hot and humid. The atmospheric pressure is 1018, because of a giant high pressure zone sitting southeast of here. We noticed that there were no trades blowing yesterday, and no swell, as we motored back to this bay. The air is a bit uncomfortably stagnant, hot and humid.
Tuesday:
This morning we had an infestation of tiny little flying ants, arriving over the windless, stifling bay. An hour later a little breeze popped up and the pressure dropped from 1018 to 1016 and we had a puff of breeze and a tiny little sprinkle of rain. Everybody is covered with mosquito bites, whether from the hike or from being in this bay last night we don’t know. I suspect last night, as we all lathered up with bug stuff for the hike. I don’t like this bay. Not enough breeze, too much sun, nasty looking dirty water, lots of bugs, and we’ve seen a lot of sharks around the dock. We watched the sharks fight over the carcasses of the fishermen’s catches, as they cleaned their fish and threw the offal in to the water. Not the nice friendly black tipped reef sharks, but bigger, meaner looking all gray ones. And they don’t fight nicely for the scraps but drive at them at full power and furiously fight each other for them. Taiohae Bay, though, is where the town is, the diesel, and all the support services. Daniel’s Bay, which is really handy, is right around the corner and is surrounded by vertical peaks which provide more shade, and it has clean water, no services, and no sharks so far.
We talked about schedules again, and I reminded Emil I want/need to be in Tahiti by the 25th or 26th, so I have time to search for marinas and just have a couple of days of R&R there. We just downloaded weather. The wind on the route is dropping to 5 knots for three or four days, and then increasing to one full feather on the wind arrows, all because of the big 1023 high pressure zone off to the SE. Also, the swell is coming up from due south, which means little wind and bashing into the swell for most of the trip, which means a relatively slow trip, which means that combined with the part not being here and maybe still needing a day, or two, for installation, I’m not going to be making it as we are out of enough days on the calendar to make it all work. Of course, the GRIB files could be wrong.
The freighter Taporo 9 is pulling into the bay this morning, which is preventing Emil’s trip in the dingy to the fuel dock. The Taporo should be gone by tomorrow, based on watching the Aranui 3’s arrivals and departures. Yup, the Taporo left this afternoon and then after dark the Aranui 3 entered and anchored in the bay.
Dominique found out today that a taxi to the airport is US $60 per person, which seems like a small price to pay for passage out of here! Not that it is so bad, but just that I’m tired of hanging around waiting for parts, knowing that there isn’t enough time to sail to Tahiti and that my son’s graduation is coming up on the 3rd of June. Remember, we left Nuevo Vallarta on April 7th. We still aren’t sure about the availability or cost of seats to Tahiti. When we all leave Emil is going to be in a bind, with the broken autopilot and broken rudder. Sailing to Tahiti with no autopilot will be tough, unless he can get some new crew, or unless Dom sticks with Shanti. Emil has been volunteering for a week now that he knows time is running out on our ability to stay on board. There is no marina here, and we haven’t seen any secure heavy duty mooring balls, so anchoring out is the only option.
Day 42 and 43 - May 18 and 19, Wednesday and Thursday
Wednesday:
The Aranui 3 is at the dock this morning, offloading cargo. We had a misty sort of rain night last night, with maybe 5 knots of breeze. Depending on which way the boat was swinging on its anchor a bit of mist would pass under the bimini and fall into the cockpit. My sleeping berth in the cockpit got a bit damp, but after I pulled a couple of big towels over myself my blanket stayed dry.
Dom is hoping that his tattoo guy will be available this morning, so Dom, Judy and I went to shore at 8 am to hunt him down. Sure enough, he was hanging out at Yacht Services, which is run by a French gal and which is located right by the dinghy quay across from that crepes and omlette truck. The French gal had helped Dom coordinate with the tattoo guy. They talked for a bit and then Dom and Judy took off for his house. I walked down the street to the Air Tahiti office to find out about flying to Papeete. They had seats for two or three people on Saturday or Wednesday, for about 33,000 per person. I slapped a 24 hour free hold on three seats for Saturday. At this point I wasn’t sure if Dom wanted to fly out, or of when the part would come in, or of how long it would take to install it, so just wanted to cover the bases for 24 hours. Back at the dingy dock, after buying a whole frozen chicken at the magasin and some tomatoes and fresh corn on the cob at the produce stand, I sat down at the poisson cru tent on the quay and ordered a bowl for 500. The rumor is that it is the best on the island. I’m not in a position to judge as I’ve only had it once before, but it was very good. It is made basically of raw fish, coconut liquid, lime juice and onions. After it marinates for a while, you eat the little chunks of fish at room temperature. Yummy! And a really nice sized portion. Just 150 feet away, under one of the big roofs, is a farm fresh produce stand and a restaurant.
I went back to the boat to hang out ad wait until Dom and Judy texted that they were ready to be picked up. Emil wants to take the dingy and the jerry cans to the diesel dock, but the Aranui 3’s presence and its unloading activity on the wharf complicates things. Shanti’s tanks are full, the jerry cans are empty. As soon as the Aranui left, Emil headed over to the fuel dock, with the dingy full of empty yellow jerrycans. The attendant told him that he was closed between noon and two, which is pretty much de riguer here in the Marquesas. Just before 2 the French warship anchored in the bay here upped anchor, idled over to the fuel dock and took up the space, so no fuel for us today.
Judy texted me around 2:30, so I headed in to the enormous, solid concrete, quay, wending my way between 15 or 20 anchored out monohulls and catamarans, most with interesting stories and many of whom we have seen before, either coming down the US coastline, in Mexico, or here in the Islands.
Dom was sporting a new very bold, black, tattoo that looked very Marquesan, and which covered his left calf muscle from below his knee down to his Achilles tendon. They don’t use color in tattoos in the Islands. Mahekua, the tattoo artist, turned out to be a very shy, traditional sort of person, steeped in the lore of the Marquesan tattooing traditions, which was exactly what Dom was looking for, of course. Mahekua says he doesn’t advertise and isn’t interesting in having an official commercial business as a tattoo artist. My sense is that Dom sort of drew him out by befriending the French lady who runs Yacht Services and several of the locals who hang out there. After a week of Dom hanging out and stopping by they got to know him, and to understand his depth and sincerity, and to trust that he was perhaps worthy of being introduced to Mahekua. Or maybe I’m imagining all that and Mahekua was just out of town and finally got back. Anyhow, Mahekua had a modern tattoo gun, rubber gloves, antiseptic practices, etc. They went to Mahekua’s house and discussed the possibilities. Mahekua sort of interviewed Dom to find out who he was, what his character was, and what tattoos would be appropriate from Mahekua’s point of view. It took between 4 to 5 hours from arrival at his house to the time of leaving it. Dom had to lay on the hard kitchen table while the tattoo was installed on his leg.
Thursday:
We had another quiet night on the anchor. It was comfortable, with a tiny breeze, no bugs, and just a couple of little 5 minute rainfalls. I had a small white tarp that I pulled over myself when it rained, to keep my blanket dry, which was much better than using towels.
There is a another big mega-yacht type of sailboat here, called Drumbeg. It’s flying one of the British Empire flags, a small union jack sort of thing where the stars are in our flag, with the big blue part of the flag covered with three moving legs in a propeller shape. We were guessing that maybe the secret royal honeymoon couple was aboard, especially after the French navy ship P689 anchored near it. P689 is a serious looking little bruiser, maybe 80 to a 100 feet long, low slung, navy gray, with a potent foredeck gun or cannon and lots of antennas.
I’ve got Emil’s little white tarp, like a blue tarp but white, clothes pinned up to keep out the rain that is blowing through. I’m going to get a couple of appropriate sized little tarps like this for Freyja, or maybe pieces of sunbrella or canvas or something, to stop rain and to act as sun screens on the sides of the bimini. When you are at anchor, with all your cushions and blankets and comfort gear and computers and books all spread out around the cockpit, the bright harsh powerful tropical sun shining in is a nuisance. Likewise, rain blowing in on that stuff is no good. I’ve got light gray shade cloth screens that attach to Freyja’s bimini to block the sun, but rain can be blown through them and sometimes the sun is strong enough to still be a bother. Solid ones do block the cooling breeze, though.
Another thing that is really useful is a bunch of really powerful clothes pins. I don’t mean ones like your mom used to use outdoors, but bigger, stronger, more expensive, well built ones, with big snappy springs, that won’t let big towels and clothes blow off the lifelines when the wind kicks up all of a sudden or when you are on shore.
Today is the do or die day for the part to arrive. FedEx’s tracking number website says it was supposed to get to the island last night at 5. The airport is a two or three hour drive away, on the other side of the island. Take a look at the road on Google Earth. I have to pay for my air tickets to Papeete by 4 today, or let the hold expire. Emil was trying to get his Ocens’ email to work, and asking Dom to help get some big files downloaded via webmail instead of satphone mail. Yesterday he emailed Catalina asking them to send the instructions. Having the instructions would, of course, help in understanding how much time the repair process would take and whether it was even feasible to do it here in Nuku Hiva, and ultimately if we needed to stick around or could have flown out sooner. Frustrating. I’m glad I was here for Dom’s tattoo, though!
So, today Judy and I bought tickets to fly to Papeete, leaving on Saturday afternoon.
Day 44 and 45 - May 20 and 21, Friday and Saturday
Friday:
Well, sure enough, the repair kit arrived today, at the house of Emil’s agent. I can’t remember her name, but she helps cruisers with checking in, receiving mail, and such. The repair turned out to be pretty straightforward. We tied a strong canvas bag under the rudder to hold it up and ran two lines from the bag, one to each genoa winch to keep the bag tight. We dropped the rudder about a foot and slid the repair part over the top of the rudder post, and then slid the new upper rudder bearing over that and pulled the rudder back up. The rudder bearing is bolted to the support pan. The pan is attached to and hangs down under the solid rigid floor assembly. The rudder bearing attaches to it by six bolts that pass through the bearing, and through the pan and which are held there by nuts attached under the pan. The pan was disintegrating and cracking. The new repair kit part fits under the pan and had bolt holes that matched the holes in the pan and in the upper bearing which sits on top of the pan and under the floor, and basically reinforced the broken pan. We got the bolts all lined up and the nuts started, then squirted in the two part glue, as per the instructions. The instructions said we had 15 to 20 minutes before the glue set up. Well, it set up in about two minutes, so the nuts weren’t tightened all the way up and it became impossible to completely seat the new repair part up against the pan. Hopefully the glue will be strong enough to span the gap between the repair part and the pan. Disappointing, to say the least, but we all felt that it might now possibly be stronger and better than it had been. As a note, the rudder didn’t try to fall out of the boat, and actually seemed sort of light and floaty, and easy to move up and down, even when the lines to the winches were slackened. We may not have needed the bag under the rudder. Later somebody mentioned that this type of glue goes off really quickly when it is hot and humid, something not mentioned in Catalina’s instructions or printed on the tubes themselves.
Saturday:
Well, today is the 21st. Judy and I packed up and met our taxi at the dock. Dom is staying aboard and will sail to Tahiti with Emil, hand steering all the way. The drive over the island, over the plateau on top, down through the semi desert on the other side, was spectacular. It’s worth renting a car just to do this drive. The airplane had two propellers. There is a little snack bar at the airport. Also, if you have heavy bags, check them as freight, rather than as checked bags. You will save hundreds of dollars. They go on the same airplane, and are ready to pick up in Tahiti when you get off the plane there. This freight versus checked bag thing is quirky, but it does save hundreds of US dollars.
What a wonderful trip we had, what a great experience. I’m thankful that Emil asked me to crew, and that Dominique came along and I got to meet him and sail with him.
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