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.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Day 30 and 31 – May 6 and 7, Friday and Saturday
We were still in position over the stern anchor when we awoke, the night’s activities were reported to the captain. We had coffee and all jumped into the little Pudknocker to row to shore to shop for groceries and see the sights. Judy, riding in the bow, was ejected from the dingy when it came to a sudden stop on the beach when we ran out of water, but no harm was done to her bod or gear. We walked around town and shopped up a little grocery storm - fresh baguettes, more beer, Dom’s special French cookies, some fruit and vegetables. As usual, everybody was helpful and friendly and happy to talk. We didn’t check in with the gendarme. We noticed that Shanti had drifted off of her stern anchor as we walked back to the beach, and had swung out into the harbor. Rowing out, one of the oarlocks broke so we paddled canoe style. Judy lost her sunglasses as we passed under the bow line of a boat that was bow tied to the dock, with the stern anchored out away from the dock. I went back with my fins and snorkel to look for her sunglasses next to the concrete wharf area where the freighter docks. I dove down 8 or 9 times and made passes along the bottom, but it was too dark and murky, there were abandoned steel cables laying on the bottom and making loops up into the water trying to catch me, it was about 20 feet deep, and there weren’t any landmarks that remained visible from dive to dive because of how murky the water was, so I returned to Shanti, defeated and empty handed rather than as a hero.
We upped anchor and headed for Nuka Hiva about 25 miles away. None of us were very impressed with this anchorage at Ua Pao, except for the spectacular geology, or maybe we are getting burned out on the Marquesas! Maybe we are longing for really super duper crystal clear water and the world’s greatest reefs and coral! The Marquesas are physically stunning and the people are so friendly and handsome and open to stopping and talking with us cruisers. The water is a bit cloudy compared to what we hope to find in Tahiti, and the coral isn’t as great as what we expect to see, though we did see some nice coral in a couple of spots. The Marquesan anchorages are all pretty decent and safe, at least for the mild weather we had with prevailing trade winds. Many of them were a touch rolley, and had a few annoying black flies and/or nonos on the beach, but none were worse than, oh, maybe a B average. My favorites, so far, were the scene of the beach bonfire and the William Yacht Club anchorage. Hapatoni wasn’t bad, either.
Our sail to Nuku Hiva was a mild beam reach kind of sail. We made 5 or 6 knots, with beam seas and winds, each crew member taking an hour watch at the helm as it is a 4 hour passage, more or less.
We dropped anchor in Nuku Hiva’s Taiohae Bay, at 8.54.59 S and 140.55.01 W, about 5 pm, in what could have been a crowd of 31 boats. It wasn’t a crowd, though, because the harbor is so big. The western edge is the calmest place to anchorage, but the furthest from the new dingy dock and cultural centers and grocery stores. The town is called Taiohae, same as the Bay, and it’s the capital city of the Marquesas. In 2007 the population of the entire island was about 2,600 people.
Boats are anchored all over the bay, some very close to the dinghy dock, which is a tall concrete wall with stainless ladders. There wasn’t much surf affecting the dinghy’s today, but rumor has it that there is on other days. There are sharks in the bay because fishermen clean their catch and throw the offal in, and rumor has it that people have been bit or killed. Dom keeps swimming out where we are anchored, figuring the sharks are all over by the fish cleaning station, a half mile away, waiting to be fed. The government, or somebody, built several large roof structures for local craftsmen to set up tables to display their art and sell fresh vegetables and fruit. Two grocery stores are along the water’s edge about a mile walk down the edge of the bay, with a third one rumored to be a bit up the hill with cheaper prices. We saw baguettes, hard liquor, frozen steaks and roasts and chickens and lamb and such, vegetables, pop, condiments, beer and wine, fishing gear, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and all sorts of other good stuff in these smallish stores. Local vodka and rum was about 2100 XPF. Jack Daniels was about $65 US, for a 600 or 650 ml bottle. Most of the American bourbon was in about 650 ml bottles and cost at least $65 and higher.
We had a crew meeting last night to discuss the broken rudder and our next destination. Emil ordered a rudder repair kit from Catalina, which should arrive here soon. I got the sense that Catalina wasn’t surprised by the type of breakage we were suffering from. If we get the rudder repaired, we are all excited to go to, and through, the Tuamotus. In the mid-1700s the French explorer Bouganville came through here and called the Tuamotus the “Dangerous Atolls”, as they are low lying coral atolls, swept by currents passing between, and accelerated by, the various atolls. If we don’t get the rudder fixed Dom and I want to skirt around the Tuamotus, which will add about 75 miles to the trip, just out of a superabundance of caution.
Dom, Judy and I walked about town today, looking at the local art and buying a few little things. You have to get the baguettes early, as most stores are sold out by noon or shortly thereafter. And, truly, running out of fresh baguettes is a very sad thing to have happen to a boat. So we were sad, as the whole town was sold out, not a baguette to be had anywhere. And people were walking around publicly displaying the baguettes they had bought just before we arrived!
Saturday:
Dom, Judy and I walked the town again, bought baguettes, hung out, and then came back aboard around two or so. It was a nice gentle day in the anchorage, not much swell, but sort of sweltering with not much wind. We all talked some more about the rudder and the route. Later we all went to shore and had dinner. Emil and I each had poisson cru, which was delicious. Dom and Judy had pizza, which they proclaimed was the best they had had in this island group. The restaurant is the main sit down one in the middle of town, with the brick pizza oven. I think there are only two or three restaurants total on Nuku Hiva, and that the other one or two are towards the west end of the bay, one being at the Pearl Hotel. My dish was 16000 XPF, and the canned Hinanos are 550 XPF. We bought a bottle of local rum (650 ml) for 21,000 XPF at the local store. The local booze is rum, which comes in 650 to 700 ml bottles, and goes for between 19000 and 25000 XPF.
Day 32 and 33 - May 8 and 9, Sunday and Monday
Sunday: We upped anchor about 7 am and scooted around the corner to Daniel’s Bay. Well, technically Baie Hakatea, which is a lobe of Baie de Taioa. Daniel’s Bay, Anse Hakaui, is the western lobe of Taioa. What a stunningly beautiful, perfect, picturesque anchorage. This may be the best one we have encountered in the Marquesas. It is set in an enormous amphitheater of seriously tall knife edged rock cliffs. What is rumored locally to be the third tallest waterfall in the world, Viapo Waterfall, is about a 2.5 hour hike from the anchorage. The total height of the cascade is over 2,000 feet, but the longest single drop is about 1,100, which means it is about the 199th tallest in the world. There is a lot of vertical here. The water in the anchorage was so perfectly pristine that we just jumped right in, more or less seconds after the anchor was down. The temperature was perfect, a touch of cool, but easy to stay in for an hour without swimming hard to stay warm. The water seemed really salty here, as it was very easy to just float on your back while looking up at the cliffs and clouds. Yes, clouds. I’ve got to add that it is a deliciously cool, cloud covered Seattle sort of rainy day, which to me with my aversion to direct sun exposure is perfect. The temperature is about 84, a bit warmer than Seattle, with a nice little breeze. This windward side of the island has been cloud covered for days. So far, the only flies on the boat are the little non biting black ones we brought from our last anchorage and they are gradually flying away.
Today, the guys with wind generators are making amps. The guys with solar panels have not had much luck for the past several days here on the windward, cloud covered, side of the island. I think you really need both. There isn’t as much sun here as there is in Mexico, so the panels can’t be counted on to completely carry the load for the boat. I’m not convinced that wind generators really make that much power, as we try to anchor where there is no wind, and we all prefer downwind sailing, but here they are spinning like mad today….okay, now, half an hour later, they have stopped spinning. They are now running sort of fitfully, as the wind waxes and wanes.
Emil got an email from Catalina confirming that they, based on the rudder photos we sent them, were shipping him an emergency rudder repair kit. He is now thinking of waiting on Nuku Hiva for the kit to arrive, maybe a week we’re guessing/hoping. We’ll see after he calls them tomorrow on the satphone to discuss what level of work the installation of the kit will require, and whether it is an in the water or on the hard type of repair. Rumor has it that there is a travel lift in the Tuamotus, but without much in the way of expert support or boat parts. The next one is in Papeete, and of course there isn’t one here in the Marquesas, nor have we seen any cranes big enough to lift a 42 foot sailboat, nor have I seen any sort of grid to park the boat on while the tide goes out. The pressure is off on the decision over what course to take, at least for a few days.
From his inflatable kayak Emil saw some black tipped reef sharks over on the south side of the bay, the side sort of against the ocean, and then saw some mantas over in Daniel’s lobe. There are a bunch of coral and boulders close to the surface over there on the south side along that shore, so don’t try to anchor close to it. When driving the Pudknocker around, I noticed the same rocks/coral close to the north side of the lobe we are anchored in, so it looks like a boat should stay towards the middle of the bay to anchor. Not sure what the bottom in the middle looks like. The rocks and coral I’ve seen reach straight up maybe 20 feet from the bottom so the depth finder reading can change really quickly. There are about 6 boats anchored here now, including some we have been bumping into from time to time, both here and in Mexico.
The inflatable kayak is really nice. It gets you exercise and a lot of very cool sightings. It provides easy beach access, and a place to be alone. Emil gave me his old one when we were still in Mexico, so now Freyja has one!
Without getting into an argument about minimalism versus materialism, after watching the boats here and exploring in Shanti, after appreciating the seriousness of an ocean crossing, and after living in a land of no boat parts and no boat supplies, my suggestion is that you make damn sure your boat is outfitted the way you want it to be so you can be independent and that you have plenty of spare parts. A really good water maker and enough electrical generation capacity to run it is a must, unless you don’t mind struggling for water and taking on water from risky sources, like the creek coming into the bay here. Some sort of rain water collection thing would be good. Good clean water in Mexico is easy to come by, almost taken for granted. Not so here. Fuel and propane stations are very far apart. Flying in parts from the states through Tahiti to a remote Marquesan Island is tough and time consuming. Buy lots and lots of tools for your boat. This isn’t Mexico, it is much more remote and underserviced. You can’t have your buddy hop into his car and drive a part down to Puerto Vallarta or something. All that said, I’ve met a couple of boats here that are surviving with almost nothing, in a very, very, minimalistic manner, and seemingly happy.
Monday:
We motored back to the main town, Taiohae, hung out, bought groceries, walked to the post office to mail post cards and use their cash machine, took care of internet related stuff such as email (there is a decent ‘for pay’ cloud covering the bay, but you need a good strong external antenna to really use it. Our laptops had some trouble reaching it without an external antenna.), banking, and the news including the follow up on bin Laden’s death. A Valiant 40 left the anchorage the same time we did, hoisted his sails in the 20+ knot breeze and 8 foot swells and just flew through the swells out to sea, looking like it was going south to Ua Pao. Much later we realized that he had tacked after about an hour or so and was gaining rapidly on us as we motored along. We entered the harbor literally at the same moment, Shanti having motored the whole way dead into the wind with no sails up, the Valiant having been under full sail in the 20+ knots of wind. It was a beautiful thing to see.
We spent the night on the hook, very close to the dingy dock. Power fishing boats were occasionally zooming by quite close to us during the night, rocking us with their wake. No bugs showed up all night, perhaps in part because of the nice maybe 10 knot wind that blew most of the night, at least off and on. None of us really like this anchorage, at least on the eastern side of the bay. The guys on the west side report a different, calmer and more sheltered, experience but are literally a mile or more from the dingy dock so have to burn lots of precious outboard fuel or go to shore on that side of the bay.
Day 34 and 35- May 10 and 11, Tuesday and Wednesday
Tuesday:
We upped anchor at 6:30 am and headed around the east and north sides of the island to Baie D’Anaho, “one of the calmest anchorages in the Marquesas” according to Charlie’s Charts, located in the NE corner of the island. We motor-bashed east, pretty much head on to the trade wind and waves, gradually coming out from under the clouds, until we turned the corner and started north when we unrolled the genoa. The swells were maybe 10 feet or so, with some wind waves. The geology of these islands continues to be spectacular.
As we were leaving Taiohae we heard “What Cha Gonna Do” come on the radio letting the fleet know that they had somehow lost their anchor when raising it this morning and needed help finding and retrieving it. It wasn’t clear if they lost both the anchor and chain or just the anchor, or how it happened. They were looking either for divers or for some sort of hook to drag along the bottom to snag it. The water is avout 40 feet deep there, dark and the cloud cover doesn’t help the vis. They had a GPS waypoint for the approximate location. Good luck to them. They are waiting for a rudder repair kit for one of their two rudders, as they lost one of their rudders on the crossing. (We heard later that they found their anchor, but not how they lost it.)
Emil hooked a very nice size dorado on the 15 fathom long handline I gave him (that I got from my pal Geoff in Hawaii), pulled it up to the boat, gaffed it, but somehow it got away. It was just the right size for 4 people for a couple of days and would have been our first dorado. Darn.
We are, or at least I am, just killing time now, waiting for the emergency rudder repair kit to arrive from Catalina, waiting until we can leave for Tahiti. I’m more interested in the sailing, I think, than lying around tropical beaches. We aren’t really sure of what is in the repair kit, of how it works or how it installs, as Catalina’s email was sketchy in details, and thus we can’t be sure if we can even install it here, or of how long the installation might take. I’ve got a mild case of cabin fever, feeling like I’ve spent enough time in the Marquesas and that it is doubtful that the rudder will get repaired in time for me to take part in the sail to Tahiti. My flight home is on the 29th. I want three or four days in Tahiti and Moorea to survey the anchorages and the lay of the land, with an eye to bringing Freyja here and maybe leaving her in Tahiti over the hurricane season. Also, I need to be in San Diego by June 3rd for my son Mike’s PhD (Chemistry) thesis defense and presumably his graduation ceremony. After that he is unemployed, which is a great reward for all those years in school!
Baie D’Anaho is a one of the better anchorages. It is very calm, very clean, peaceful, picturesque, and, importantly after the last couple of days, sunny. The water is nice for swimming and the breeze is blowing towards the shore so hopefully the bugs will stay away. There are a couple of cabins along the beach, but no town or stores. Judy is on shore looking for shells and beach walking. I went snorkeling and had a great time. There is a lot of coral, but the water at the head of the bay, where we anchored, didn’t have great vis – maybe 10 to 12 feet. It was nice and warm, but the coral and fish were hard to see. There was a manta swimming when we first anchored. On my snorkel expedition I saw a large turtle, maybe 3 to 4 feet across his shell, but I can’t be sure of his size as, again, the water was murky and he has high tailing it away from me. Dom saw a similar turtle while kayaking.
Dom and I were talking about the Marquesasan people. Both of us feel that there is a certain modesty here. Men don’t walk around with shirts open, there literally aren’t any bars or drinking establishments, there are religious types of crosses everywhere, there are no women made up or wearing high heels or looking tarty, not even the young ones, nobody drinks in public, not even a bunch of guys sitting around a tree. Of course, we have only seen a tiny slice of life here, but there are only 10,000 or so people in the entire nation.
Wednesday:
While swimming along the reef this morning I saw a 5 foot long black tipped reef shark below me. I was hovering at the top edge of a coral cliff, and the shark passed by down along the sandy base, about 10 or 15 feet away. I don’t think he saw me, as I wasn’t moving at all, just hovering. Wikipedia says there isn’t much chance of them biting you, especially if you are all the way in the water and not freaking out. The most common injury from these is ankle bites when wading in the shallows. There are no reports worldwide of anybody dying from a black tip shark attack. There are tons of beautiful tropical reef fish to watch.
We hiked up a 650 foot hill to a pass and then down into the next bay, to get to a famous restaurant, Chez Yvonne’s, for a famous meal. Unfortunately, she was closed to the extent that we could only have sandwiches. Either egg or fish, in a baguette. They were both excellent and juicy and really good. The timing for dinner would require that you have your boat in that bay, rather than in this one. The trail is too long, and is too much of a scramble to allow one to walk back in the dark after dinner. She serves breakfast and lunch between 7 am and 2, and then 6 to 7:30 for dinner. The hike was beautiful. Old stone ruins, dozens and dozens of fruit trees spilling their fruit onto the ground, including the ripe oranges we found (a variety with green skin and tasty orange colored segments inside). The trail really isn’t too tough, but there are some loose rocks. We found that our calf muscles and Achilles’ tendons were a bit tight after being on the boat so long. I wish I’d gotten the fish sandwich instead of the egg one as the bite I had of a fish one was much better than my egg one…..
We were amazed at how far out the tide had gone and how much rock and coral was exposed along the edge of the bay. Don’t anchor shallower than 35 to 40 feet or so, as it was less than 6 feet deep, and even dry in spots, for about half the distance to shore.
We were still in position over the stern anchor when we awoke, the night’s activities were reported to the captain. We had coffee and all jumped into the little Pudknocker to row to shore to shop for groceries and see the sights. Judy, riding in the bow, was ejected from the dingy when it came to a sudden stop on the beach when we ran out of water, but no harm was done to her bod or gear. We walked around town and shopped up a little grocery storm - fresh baguettes, more beer, Dom’s special French cookies, some fruit and vegetables. As usual, everybody was helpful and friendly and happy to talk. We didn’t check in with the gendarme. We noticed that Shanti had drifted off of her stern anchor as we walked back to the beach, and had swung out into the harbor. Rowing out, one of the oarlocks broke so we paddled canoe style. Judy lost her sunglasses as we passed under the bow line of a boat that was bow tied to the dock, with the stern anchored out away from the dock. I went back with my fins and snorkel to look for her sunglasses next to the concrete wharf area where the freighter docks. I dove down 8 or 9 times and made passes along the bottom, but it was too dark and murky, there were abandoned steel cables laying on the bottom and making loops up into the water trying to catch me, it was about 20 feet deep, and there weren’t any landmarks that remained visible from dive to dive because of how murky the water was, so I returned to Shanti, defeated and empty handed rather than as a hero.
We upped anchor and headed for Nuka Hiva about 25 miles away. None of us were very impressed with this anchorage at Ua Pao, except for the spectacular geology, or maybe we are getting burned out on the Marquesas! Maybe we are longing for really super duper crystal clear water and the world’s greatest reefs and coral! The Marquesas are physically stunning and the people are so friendly and handsome and open to stopping and talking with us cruisers. The water is a bit cloudy compared to what we hope to find in Tahiti, and the coral isn’t as great as what we expect to see, though we did see some nice coral in a couple of spots. The Marquesan anchorages are all pretty decent and safe, at least for the mild weather we had with prevailing trade winds. Many of them were a touch rolley, and had a few annoying black flies and/or nonos on the beach, but none were worse than, oh, maybe a B average. My favorites, so far, were the scene of the beach bonfire and the William Yacht Club anchorage. Hapatoni wasn’t bad, either.
Our sail to Nuku Hiva was a mild beam reach kind of sail. We made 5 or 6 knots, with beam seas and winds, each crew member taking an hour watch at the helm as it is a 4 hour passage, more or less.
We dropped anchor in Nuku Hiva’s Taiohae Bay, at 8.54.59 S and 140.55.01 W, about 5 pm, in what could have been a crowd of 31 boats. It wasn’t a crowd, though, because the harbor is so big. The western edge is the calmest place to anchorage, but the furthest from the new dingy dock and cultural centers and grocery stores. The town is called Taiohae, same as the Bay, and it’s the capital city of the Marquesas. In 2007 the population of the entire island was about 2,600 people.
Boats are anchored all over the bay, some very close to the dinghy dock, which is a tall concrete wall with stainless ladders. There wasn’t much surf affecting the dinghy’s today, but rumor has it that there is on other days. There are sharks in the bay because fishermen clean their catch and throw the offal in, and rumor has it that people have been bit or killed. Dom keeps swimming out where we are anchored, figuring the sharks are all over by the fish cleaning station, a half mile away, waiting to be fed. The government, or somebody, built several large roof structures for local craftsmen to set up tables to display their art and sell fresh vegetables and fruit. Two grocery stores are along the water’s edge about a mile walk down the edge of the bay, with a third one rumored to be a bit up the hill with cheaper prices. We saw baguettes, hard liquor, frozen steaks and roasts and chickens and lamb and such, vegetables, pop, condiments, beer and wine, fishing gear, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and all sorts of other good stuff in these smallish stores. Local vodka and rum was about 2100 XPF. Jack Daniels was about $65 US, for a 600 or 650 ml bottle. Most of the American bourbon was in about 650 ml bottles and cost at least $65 and higher.
We had a crew meeting last night to discuss the broken rudder and our next destination. Emil ordered a rudder repair kit from Catalina, which should arrive here soon. I got the sense that Catalina wasn’t surprised by the type of breakage we were suffering from. If we get the rudder repaired, we are all excited to go to, and through, the Tuamotus. In the mid-1700s the French explorer Bouganville came through here and called the Tuamotus the “Dangerous Atolls”, as they are low lying coral atolls, swept by currents passing between, and accelerated by, the various atolls. If we don’t get the rudder fixed Dom and I want to skirt around the Tuamotus, which will add about 75 miles to the trip, just out of a superabundance of caution.
Dom, Judy and I walked about town today, looking at the local art and buying a few little things. You have to get the baguettes early, as most stores are sold out by noon or shortly thereafter. And, truly, running out of fresh baguettes is a very sad thing to have happen to a boat. So we were sad, as the whole town was sold out, not a baguette to be had anywhere. And people were walking around publicly displaying the baguettes they had bought just before we arrived!
Saturday:
Dom, Judy and I walked the town again, bought baguettes, hung out, and then came back aboard around two or so. It was a nice gentle day in the anchorage, not much swell, but sort of sweltering with not much wind. We all talked some more about the rudder and the route. Later we all went to shore and had dinner. Emil and I each had poisson cru, which was delicious. Dom and Judy had pizza, which they proclaimed was the best they had had in this island group. The restaurant is the main sit down one in the middle of town, with the brick pizza oven. I think there are only two or three restaurants total on Nuku Hiva, and that the other one or two are towards the west end of the bay, one being at the Pearl Hotel. My dish was 16000 XPF, and the canned Hinanos are 550 XPF. We bought a bottle of local rum (650 ml) for 21,000 XPF at the local store. The local booze is rum, which comes in 650 to 700 ml bottles, and goes for between 19000 and 25000 XPF.
Day 32 and 33 - May 8 and 9, Sunday and Monday
Sunday: We upped anchor about 7 am and scooted around the corner to Daniel’s Bay. Well, technically Baie Hakatea, which is a lobe of Baie de Taioa. Daniel’s Bay, Anse Hakaui, is the western lobe of Taioa. What a stunningly beautiful, perfect, picturesque anchorage. This may be the best one we have encountered in the Marquesas. It is set in an enormous amphitheater of seriously tall knife edged rock cliffs. What is rumored locally to be the third tallest waterfall in the world, Viapo Waterfall, is about a 2.5 hour hike from the anchorage. The total height of the cascade is over 2,000 feet, but the longest single drop is about 1,100, which means it is about the 199th tallest in the world. There is a lot of vertical here. The water in the anchorage was so perfectly pristine that we just jumped right in, more or less seconds after the anchor was down. The temperature was perfect, a touch of cool, but easy to stay in for an hour without swimming hard to stay warm. The water seemed really salty here, as it was very easy to just float on your back while looking up at the cliffs and clouds. Yes, clouds. I’ve got to add that it is a deliciously cool, cloud covered Seattle sort of rainy day, which to me with my aversion to direct sun exposure is perfect. The temperature is about 84, a bit warmer than Seattle, with a nice little breeze. This windward side of the island has been cloud covered for days. So far, the only flies on the boat are the little non biting black ones we brought from our last anchorage and they are gradually flying away.
Today, the guys with wind generators are making amps. The guys with solar panels have not had much luck for the past several days here on the windward, cloud covered, side of the island. I think you really need both. There isn’t as much sun here as there is in Mexico, so the panels can’t be counted on to completely carry the load for the boat. I’m not convinced that wind generators really make that much power, as we try to anchor where there is no wind, and we all prefer downwind sailing, but here they are spinning like mad today….okay, now, half an hour later, they have stopped spinning. They are now running sort of fitfully, as the wind waxes and wanes.
Emil got an email from Catalina confirming that they, based on the rudder photos we sent them, were shipping him an emergency rudder repair kit. He is now thinking of waiting on Nuku Hiva for the kit to arrive, maybe a week we’re guessing/hoping. We’ll see after he calls them tomorrow on the satphone to discuss what level of work the installation of the kit will require, and whether it is an in the water or on the hard type of repair. Rumor has it that there is a travel lift in the Tuamotus, but without much in the way of expert support or boat parts. The next one is in Papeete, and of course there isn’t one here in the Marquesas, nor have we seen any cranes big enough to lift a 42 foot sailboat, nor have I seen any sort of grid to park the boat on while the tide goes out. The pressure is off on the decision over what course to take, at least for a few days.
From his inflatable kayak Emil saw some black tipped reef sharks over on the south side of the bay, the side sort of against the ocean, and then saw some mantas over in Daniel’s lobe. There are a bunch of coral and boulders close to the surface over there on the south side along that shore, so don’t try to anchor close to it. When driving the Pudknocker around, I noticed the same rocks/coral close to the north side of the lobe we are anchored in, so it looks like a boat should stay towards the middle of the bay to anchor. Not sure what the bottom in the middle looks like. The rocks and coral I’ve seen reach straight up maybe 20 feet from the bottom so the depth finder reading can change really quickly. There are about 6 boats anchored here now, including some we have been bumping into from time to time, both here and in Mexico.
The inflatable kayak is really nice. It gets you exercise and a lot of very cool sightings. It provides easy beach access, and a place to be alone. Emil gave me his old one when we were still in Mexico, so now Freyja has one!
Without getting into an argument about minimalism versus materialism, after watching the boats here and exploring in Shanti, after appreciating the seriousness of an ocean crossing, and after living in a land of no boat parts and no boat supplies, my suggestion is that you make damn sure your boat is outfitted the way you want it to be so you can be independent and that you have plenty of spare parts. A really good water maker and enough electrical generation capacity to run it is a must, unless you don’t mind struggling for water and taking on water from risky sources, like the creek coming into the bay here. Some sort of rain water collection thing would be good. Good clean water in Mexico is easy to come by, almost taken for granted. Not so here. Fuel and propane stations are very far apart. Flying in parts from the states through Tahiti to a remote Marquesan Island is tough and time consuming. Buy lots and lots of tools for your boat. This isn’t Mexico, it is much more remote and underserviced. You can’t have your buddy hop into his car and drive a part down to Puerto Vallarta or something. All that said, I’ve met a couple of boats here that are surviving with almost nothing, in a very, very, minimalistic manner, and seemingly happy.
Monday:
We motored back to the main town, Taiohae, hung out, bought groceries, walked to the post office to mail post cards and use their cash machine, took care of internet related stuff such as email (there is a decent ‘for pay’ cloud covering the bay, but you need a good strong external antenna to really use it. Our laptops had some trouble reaching it without an external antenna.), banking, and the news including the follow up on bin Laden’s death. A Valiant 40 left the anchorage the same time we did, hoisted his sails in the 20+ knot breeze and 8 foot swells and just flew through the swells out to sea, looking like it was going south to Ua Pao. Much later we realized that he had tacked after about an hour or so and was gaining rapidly on us as we motored along. We entered the harbor literally at the same moment, Shanti having motored the whole way dead into the wind with no sails up, the Valiant having been under full sail in the 20+ knots of wind. It was a beautiful thing to see.
We spent the night on the hook, very close to the dingy dock. Power fishing boats were occasionally zooming by quite close to us during the night, rocking us with their wake. No bugs showed up all night, perhaps in part because of the nice maybe 10 knot wind that blew most of the night, at least off and on. None of us really like this anchorage, at least on the eastern side of the bay. The guys on the west side report a different, calmer and more sheltered, experience but are literally a mile or more from the dingy dock so have to burn lots of precious outboard fuel or go to shore on that side of the bay.
Day 34 and 35- May 10 and 11, Tuesday and Wednesday
Tuesday:
We upped anchor at 6:30 am and headed around the east and north sides of the island to Baie D’Anaho, “one of the calmest anchorages in the Marquesas” according to Charlie’s Charts, located in the NE corner of the island. We motor-bashed east, pretty much head on to the trade wind and waves, gradually coming out from under the clouds, until we turned the corner and started north when we unrolled the genoa. The swells were maybe 10 feet or so, with some wind waves. The geology of these islands continues to be spectacular.
As we were leaving Taiohae we heard “What Cha Gonna Do” come on the radio letting the fleet know that they had somehow lost their anchor when raising it this morning and needed help finding and retrieving it. It wasn’t clear if they lost both the anchor and chain or just the anchor, or how it happened. They were looking either for divers or for some sort of hook to drag along the bottom to snag it. The water is avout 40 feet deep there, dark and the cloud cover doesn’t help the vis. They had a GPS waypoint for the approximate location. Good luck to them. They are waiting for a rudder repair kit for one of their two rudders, as they lost one of their rudders on the crossing. (We heard later that they found their anchor, but not how they lost it.)
Emil hooked a very nice size dorado on the 15 fathom long handline I gave him (that I got from my pal Geoff in Hawaii), pulled it up to the boat, gaffed it, but somehow it got away. It was just the right size for 4 people for a couple of days and would have been our first dorado. Darn.
We are, or at least I am, just killing time now, waiting for the emergency rudder repair kit to arrive from Catalina, waiting until we can leave for Tahiti. I’m more interested in the sailing, I think, than lying around tropical beaches. We aren’t really sure of what is in the repair kit, of how it works or how it installs, as Catalina’s email was sketchy in details, and thus we can’t be sure if we can even install it here, or of how long the installation might take. I’ve got a mild case of cabin fever, feeling like I’ve spent enough time in the Marquesas and that it is doubtful that the rudder will get repaired in time for me to take part in the sail to Tahiti. My flight home is on the 29th. I want three or four days in Tahiti and Moorea to survey the anchorages and the lay of the land, with an eye to bringing Freyja here and maybe leaving her in Tahiti over the hurricane season. Also, I need to be in San Diego by June 3rd for my son Mike’s PhD (Chemistry) thesis defense and presumably his graduation ceremony. After that he is unemployed, which is a great reward for all those years in school!
Baie D’Anaho is a one of the better anchorages. It is very calm, very clean, peaceful, picturesque, and, importantly after the last couple of days, sunny. The water is nice for swimming and the breeze is blowing towards the shore so hopefully the bugs will stay away. There are a couple of cabins along the beach, but no town or stores. Judy is on shore looking for shells and beach walking. I went snorkeling and had a great time. There is a lot of coral, but the water at the head of the bay, where we anchored, didn’t have great vis – maybe 10 to 12 feet. It was nice and warm, but the coral and fish were hard to see. There was a manta swimming when we first anchored. On my snorkel expedition I saw a large turtle, maybe 3 to 4 feet across his shell, but I can’t be sure of his size as, again, the water was murky and he has high tailing it away from me. Dom saw a similar turtle while kayaking.
Dom and I were talking about the Marquesasan people. Both of us feel that there is a certain modesty here. Men don’t walk around with shirts open, there literally aren’t any bars or drinking establishments, there are religious types of crosses everywhere, there are no women made up or wearing high heels or looking tarty, not even the young ones, nobody drinks in public, not even a bunch of guys sitting around a tree. Of course, we have only seen a tiny slice of life here, but there are only 10,000 or so people in the entire nation.
Wednesday:
While swimming along the reef this morning I saw a 5 foot long black tipped reef shark below me. I was hovering at the top edge of a coral cliff, and the shark passed by down along the sandy base, about 10 or 15 feet away. I don’t think he saw me, as I wasn’t moving at all, just hovering. Wikipedia says there isn’t much chance of them biting you, especially if you are all the way in the water and not freaking out. The most common injury from these is ankle bites when wading in the shallows. There are no reports worldwide of anybody dying from a black tip shark attack. There are tons of beautiful tropical reef fish to watch.
We hiked up a 650 foot hill to a pass and then down into the next bay, to get to a famous restaurant, Chez Yvonne’s, for a famous meal. Unfortunately, she was closed to the extent that we could only have sandwiches. Either egg or fish, in a baguette. They were both excellent and juicy and really good. The timing for dinner would require that you have your boat in that bay, rather than in this one. The trail is too long, and is too much of a scramble to allow one to walk back in the dark after dinner. She serves breakfast and lunch between 7 am and 2, and then 6 to 7:30 for dinner. The hike was beautiful. Old stone ruins, dozens and dozens of fruit trees spilling their fruit onto the ground, including the ripe oranges we found (a variety with green skin and tasty orange colored segments inside). The trail really isn’t too tough, but there are some loose rocks. We found that our calf muscles and Achilles’ tendons were a bit tight after being on the boat so long. I wish I’d gotten the fish sandwich instead of the egg one as the bite I had of a fish one was much better than my egg one…..
We were amazed at how far out the tide had gone and how much rock and coral was exposed along the edge of the bay. Don’t anchor shallower than 35 to 40 feet or so, as it was less than 6 feet deep, and even dry in spots, for about half the distance to shore.
Day 22 and 23 - April 28 and 29, Thursday and Friday
Judy, Dominique and I spent part of the day in Mary Jo’s car for hire taking her $200 half-day tour of some highlights. We saw some old ruins at Taaoa, the Smiling Tiki after a muddy hike, some interesting petroglyphs, and Hana Iapa, commonly known by cruisers as William’s Bay, which has a big rock in the bay called Cabeza Negro, a bay on the other side of the mountain. A lot of interesting scenery, beautiful flowers, wild fruit trees, vanilla, flowers, wild hot peppers, wild lime trees, and tons of beautiful trees. All in all, it was a very worthwhile tour. It let us see parts of the island we couldn’t see from the water. It is always fun how the altitude and vegetation changes as you go up in altitude.
The population of Hiva Oa is only about 2,600 people. There were 20,000 to 30,000 people on Hiva Oa before Europeans came with their diseases. I got a strong sense, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, that to a certain extent the people on Hiva Oa are caretaking the past. I suspect but don’t know that the kids, who are required to go to Tahiti for high school and college, may not all come back. Our guide, Mary Jo, said families are very small these days. There was a lot of land and not very many people. There almost was a feeling of being in a park. Also, there were so many new cars and almost no old cars. I can’t figure out where the money comes from. The sailboaters can’t really bring in that much in the few months they are there. Copra? Does France somehow fund or partially fund the life style on the island? The island was so neat and clean and well groomed and landscaped. I liked it and the people a lot. We didn’t encounter any speeding teenagers on the road – either they are in school in Tahiti or they are afraid that one of their hundreds of aunts or uncles would see them and bust them. Also, where do they find spouses, what about the gene pool? With only 2,600 people on the island they have to be related to a lot of each other. The people are very handsome and very friendly. Everybody speaks French or maybe Marquesan, with a few people speaking some English. There is a good cash machine right in the middle of the tiny little town. It cost 1,000 XPF for a ride to the Pearl from downtown, and about 600 XPF for a ride to the anchorage. A lot of the shellback (I just have to throw that word in) sailors were walking the couple of miles back and forth between the anchorage and the town, carrying groceries and umbrellas, dealing with the rain and the sun and heat and getting some exercise. We would just call Mary Jo, using the world phone that Verizon gave Judy for free for this trip, and she would come and get us for the above said prices. The Marquesas Islands are very Yang, Tahiti very yin. Hiva Oa, at least the wet windward side we spent most of our time on, is dominated by sharp and dark and brooding rocky ridges. The ridges are tall and vertical, and the shadows are heavy in the valleys. It rained several times a day, nice and warm and no big deal. It is the rainy season. I didn’t see any fishing fleets, or much sign that fishing is a big deal on Hiva Oa. There were only a few boats in the harbor and none of them really looked like fishing pangas or the trailer launched fishing boats in Hawaii, or like any other style of serious subsistence or commercial fishing platforms.
We spent another night in the Pearl. Ahhhh it felt so good. What a great friendly, comfortable place, and, yes, with a wonderful continental breakfast and very Marquesan feeling in the lobby, with art and carvings and cool stuff. Friday night there was a local group including guitar, ukulele, drums and a singer performing Marquesan music the lobby. It is a bit expensive, but what the hell, I just sailed across 2,900 miles of open ocean. There were a lot of chickens running around the island. We saw some cocks fighting along the path to the restaurant. One of the workers for the hotel came out, grabbed a wild free range hen that had been running around and took her to the kitchen. Our tour guide had told us earlier that people just grab a chicken when they want one.
Day 24 and 25 - April 30 May 1, Saturday and Sunday
We left Atuona today around noon and headed for the next island south, Tahuata. We anchored in Hanamoenoa Bay and jumped in to the clear beautiful warm turquoise water. I promptly dropped my nice new snorkel in 40 feet of water, and it was gone. I’d forgotten to hook up that little do-hickey that holds the snorkel to the mask. The water was great, the beach was great, and it felt great to take a nap in the cockpit afterwards. Emil went up the mast in this calm anchorage to retrieve the halyard that got lost up there, and when done with that he made a mighty, and very impressive, Tarzan leap off the lower spreaders into the water. I was chicken or something, so didn’t copy him. He’s my age, too.
We spent Saturday night in Hanamoenoa Bay along with 6 or 7 other boats. I spent a peaceful but slightly windy night sleeping in the cockpit. The Aranui 3, the big freighter that was in Atuona Bay when we first got there, showed up and dropped anchor. They shut down the engine but kept their big bright lights on all night, like a bright little city. About dawn they pulled their anchor and left.
Just after first light we realized we were surrounded by manta rays, about 3 to 5 feet across, filter feeding around our boat. They were swimming slowly along, with their enormous mouths wide open, eating their breakfast of little organisms. Since they had no teeth and short tails, maybe only a foot long, it seemed that it would be safe to swim with them, which we did. Dom got some great close up video with his camera in its underwater box. That kept us busy for hours. Then we had breakfast and coffee and swam some more. Then we had lunch and swam some more. Emil’s inflatable sea kayak is a wonderful thing to have, it stows in a little package, but really paddles well. There was some beach walking and shell gathering, too, today, but the shore bugs were ferocious. Sunday night a bunch of us boaters went into shore at dark and had a beachwood bon fire and BBQ. We all talked and swapped stories for hours. Our passage was one of the easier passages. A lot of the other boats had more weather or more serious problems. There was a Passport 47 with a modified stern – it had had a sugar scoop stern added on. The owner had lived in Fall City, my home town, for 10 years but we had never met! We spent Sunday night in the anchorage and did some more manta ray swimming the next morning. We saw Barracuda leaping through the air, too. The snorkeling was great, but not yet the crystal clear water we’re searching for.
Day 26 and 27 - May 2 and 3, Monday and Tuesday
We spent Sunday night in the anchorage and did some more manta ray swimming Monday morning. The mantas are cute and cuddly looking, sort of intelligent in a weird cartoon like way. You want to adopt one, take him home, show him to mom and beg to keep him as a pet so he could follow you around with his wing tips up and his big mouth open. We saw 3 foot long Barracuda leaping through the air, too, covering 6 to 8 feet from takeoff to landing point. The snorkeling here was great, better than Mexico, I guess mainly because the water is clearer. It still isn’t really transparent, like a bottle of vodka or something, but a lot closer. The vis is maybe 30 or 40 feet at this anchorage.
We rolled out the headsail a bit and headed south down the coast a couple of miles to Vaitahu. We wandered around the village a bit, shopped the two grocery stores but didn’t come out with much besides Hinano beer, and were quite impressed by the church. It is very nicely done in term of fitting the site and being appropriate for a Marquesan Island, made from beautiful wood and stone. Everybody is friendly and speaks French but not much English. We had to physically lift the dingy up onto the concrete parking lot area to get it out of the surge around the quay, but the landing itself was only mildly tricky – just no place to leave the dingy in the water without it getting rubbed apart on the concrete, hence the hoisting. The things that I’m calling quays are basically massively enormous concrete structures that rise up well out of the water. They are old and rough and possibly abrasive. Maybe they were made in WWII, I don’t really know but they look at least that old.
We headed south again to the next little bays, passing the most beautiful, stunning, verdant vertical cliffs which had big groves of coconut trees on the lower slopes. We went to Hapatoni first, then to Hanatefau. After anchoring in Hapatoni, Emil and Dom went into town to shop for carvings and art. Dom went wild and bought a bunch of cool warrior wear type of carved necklaces. Supposedly in these remote villages they are still carved out of human bones from some long ago battles, so they are pretty authentic. We upped anchor and moved a mile or so north to Hanatefau, where we settled down for the night about 100 feet off the beach, with another boat, Two Amigos, anchored 80 yards away. Emil climbed a coconut tree and got three nice nuts, we swam and snorkeled in the boulder and coral. Another boat come in, anchoring in between us and Two Amigos instead of south of us in the open half mile of perfect anchorage. The new boat’s crew (it’s been bow to all evening, so I don’t know the name yet) went up the mast to drop the tangled and ripped head sail. The poor guy on the manual mast mounted winch got quite a work out, quickly being reduced to quarter turns of the winch handle, then resting, then another quarter turn. We had a beautiful dinner, wine, conversation, and went off to read and sleep.
Anchoring in Hanamoenoa was pretty straight forward, sand at 40 feet or so, some coral/rocks. While snorkeling later we could see somebody’s anchor chain abandoned on the bottom, presumably with the anchor attached. I suppose that if I was doing it again I would have gone in to 25 feet or so, so the swim to shore wouldn’t have been a half mile long and so I could see where to drop the anchor on a sandy patch. Anchoring in shallower water also gives you a better shot at unsnagging it if it gets snagged. Anchoring at Hanatefau and Hapatoni is riskier, though, as there are a lot of boulders and giant rocks (boat size) on which to snag your anchor. The water isn’t quite clear enough to see the bottom at the 45 or 50 feet depth at which we anchored. My sense is that it would be really smart to have scuba on board so that you can free your anchor. Or else, carry about 10 anchors and a couple extra drums of chain, eh? Hmmmmm.
Judy and I had been out snorkeling and came back to the boat about an hour or so before dark. As I climbed back onto the boat I looked up and saw a guy in a military uniform looking down at me. I said “bonjour”, of course. We had seen a French Navy ship motoring by an hour or so ago, heading south. They turned north and went out of sight, then snuck back down the coast to hide just behind the closest point to the north, where they launched their RIB and snuck up on us. Turns out they were at least nominally customs dudes, on a tour out of Tahiti, patrolling the islands in a very military looking 60 foot mini battleship. We showed them our passports and check in documents, they were friendly, smiled, chit chatted a bit and left. No searching of the boat, no bribes, no bad vibes. And, while they were decked out in uniforms with cool arm patches and those big heavy cop belts full of mean looking junk, they were barefoot! We hope our Italian friend from the bonfire, Roberto, is okay. He is 2 and a half years into a very low budget around the world journey that he started in Bali and is close to completing. He never checks in to any countries, he says. (A week or so later we ran into Aseolius, a boat that had been in the anchorage with us and Roberto, and they told us that somehow Roberto was boarded but left alone and not busted.)
At dinner we decided that this was pretty much a Perfect Monday, in a sort of ultimate sense. Not just a Perfect Monday like you went to work, got a raise, had a great lunch date and then got the project done on time for the boss. No, a Perfect Monday as in how many times in your life do you swim with manta rays and tropical fish off the leeward shore of a beautiful Marquesan Island that you sailed across the Pacific ocean to get to?
Tuesday morning we upped anchor and motor sailed back to Hiva Oa. The plan had been to make it to Paumau, to look at the largest tiki in the Marquesas, but the wind didn’t cooperate. As expected, the east wind in the channel between Tahuata and Hiva Oa gave us some good speed as we crossed the channel from southish to northish. Once behind Hiva Oa the wind died until we reached the north end of the west end, when the trade winds hit us head on, slowing our progress and raising the seas into which we were bashing under motor alone. It became obvious that we weren’t going to make it to Puamau, so we pulled into Hana Iapa, commonly known by cruisers as William’s Bay, and dropped anchor in about 40 feet, can’t see the bottom. Dolphins guided us in. We are anchored at 09.42.871 S and 139.00.851 W. My charting program’s basic world chart shows us up on land, about 250 yards from our actual position. I don’t have the actual charts for this area. Emil’s Raymarine C80 with the Navionics chip shows us right where we actually are, properly out in the harbor.
After what I said yesterday about anchoring shallow, I was given cause to rethink that advice or at least some tension was injected into it. After we jumped in with our snorkels and swam towards shore, we came to a shelf where the bay quickly shallowed up to around 25 feet. The vis was good enough to let us see that the bottom was quite covered with the most beautiful complex large coral structures. Anchoring in 25 feet would have torn the hell out of this coral. It may be that even in 40 feet we are killing coral. For a boat casually passing through these islands, it is hard to know which harbors have coral structures and which just have anchor grabbing rocks. We had a great time snorkeling here, though every time a cloud came over the sun the vis and color diminished considerably. This would be a good place for some shallow scuba puttering around, if the day was sunny. I like this anchorage, on the leeward side of the island. We have little to no swell and hardly any flies. It is marked out in the entrance to the bay by a big rock known as the Black Head. Looking out at it from the anchorage it really does look like a head, not so much on the way in. There are very interesting geological structures around here. Layer after built up layer of lava, the cool, ropey stuff, is exposed in the cliffs along the edge of the island. It lays horizontally, with each layer on top of the previous one, with vertical tubes or pipes visible every so often where one (that is, one who last paid attention to geology in college forty years ago) imagines lava ran up and out to create a new layer, but then which maybe drained out when the underlying reservoir of lava drained away. Even though this is more the dry leeward side of the island, there was a nice waterfall leaping out into the ocean just a few miles west of this anchorage, with green vegetation visible along its route down the cliff, watered by the wind caused spray.
Judy and Emil went for a walk in town. Dom went kayaking and snorkeling, I snorkeled and blogged. They returned with a couple of bags of vegetables and William. William is the same guy that greeted us here on the side of the road when we were on the car tour last week, with Mary Jo driving. He is a real character, about 60 years old, Marquesan, no tattoos, lives here, has a small fruit orchard and vegetable garden, and works copra. Also, he runs William Yacht Club and actively seeks out and befriends cruisers – a cruiserphile, you could say. He has a wall with boat cards and a log book to sign into. He came aboard and we traded him a half bottle of whiskey and a big handful of ibuprofen for the bags of fruit and vegetables. He was intelligent, fun to talk to, had pretty good English and is happy to talk about Marquesan life and culture. I kept filling his glass with more whiskey as we talked, and, of course, to be sociable, mine too. William mentioned that the government (France) pays him a pension of 14,000 XPF per month (about $150 US a month). He wants us to take him fishing or to Puamau, or to Ua Pao, or just about anywhere we are going. In different circumstances I’d take him up on it, but it isn’t my boat and ……
Day 28 and 29 - May 4 and 5, Wednesday and Thursday
Today the plan is to up anchor and beat our way up to Puamau for some tiki inspection work. Charlie’s Charts says that the anchorage is very rolly and exposed, so after inspecting the site and conditions we may head for the next island, Ua Pau, or come back here, depending on the timing, the wind, etc. It’s about 75 miles to Ua Pao, probably relatively downwind.
“There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet – except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground, you are part of Nature! Your heart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are around you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you stretch your arms to them.” Thanks for that to Jerome K. Jerome when he was talking about three men in a boat.
The weather is still mixed fluffy, low, cumulus clouds and sun. As we sail along the leeward side of the island we can see the tops of the rain clouds stacked up on its windward side as they slowly, drained of most of their moisture, creep over the tops of the mountains, free again to speed on their way across the Pacific gathering moisture until perchance meeting another island.
We beat our way upwind to Paumau. Rounding the first big cape was an interesting study in cape effect, which works the same way here as in the states or Mexico. The cape concentrates and focuses and accelerates the wind, and if you are beating your way into it, you pay the price. We anchored over towards the jetty. Gigi was anchored out in the middle of the bay. After observation, we felt we were much less affected by the swell than Gigi, an Island Packet 440. We hooked up with Paul and Karen on Gigi and all went to shore in Emi’s dingy, The Pudknocker, as Gigi’s outboard was not working. It took two trips to get us all offloaded at the jetty, as The Pudknocker is only 7 or 8 feet long. It is smallish, with a 3.5 HP engine, but that paid off when it came time to bodily lift it out of the water up onto the jetty. There was no way to leave it in the water, as the surge would have torn it up along the concrete jetty. It is light and small enough that a couple or three people can just lift it up and put it on the jetty, which we have done several times on this trip. Deciding on the best dingy size is tough. The Pudknocker is tiny and underpowered, but very light, easy to stow, easy to get onto a jetty, and doesn’t take up so much room on deck. Freyja’s 10’ 6”, 15 HP, dingy is so much nicer except when it comes to stowing on the deck and lifting it out of the water and keeping its thirsty engine supplied with gas. So far on this trip, I’d rather have Emil’s. Mine is better for Mexico, and maybe better in big lagoons downwind from here where you might need some speed and power. We’ll see.
The ruins at Paumau were an easy walk, about 20 to 30 minutes, from the jetty, slightly uphill. We paid our 300 XFP admission fee apiece at a little tiny store. The ruins are smaller and more peaceful and feminine than the ruins we saw out of Atuona. Very pretty, well worth the walk. The tiki’s all seemed very old and were covered with moss and lichen. We picked some star fruit on the walk back from a tree on the side of the road, a tree which had dropped most of its fruit on the ground to rot. There so many different varieties of ripe fruit on the trees we were walking by. We had very tasty breadfruit fries for breakfast. The people are so very friendly everywhere we have gone, happy to stop, talk, smile, interact. We saw 4 subsistence, 2 man, fishing boats head out around dark, all bigger than canoes, all with outboards, all with an outrigger, all seeming to be deploying handlines as they went. I think that if you showed up here with a Mexican panga that they’d have an outrigger on it in about 15 minutes.
We spent the night on the hook at Paumau, and had the anchor up by 4:45 am. I think Gigi left earlier that night, to beat their way around the eastern tip of Hiva Oa, on their way south and thus upwind to Fata Hiva. We’re having a nice downwind sail to the north at 6+ knots to the island of Ua Pao (sounds like WaPow), the four of us standing nice easy 2 hour watches, hand steering. Hand steering seems to be a lot easier on our rudder. The autopilot (when it was working) would hit the rudder really hard and fast to correct the course, while the helmsman lets the boat sort of have its way and correct itself, which is a lot softer on the rudder. I suppose for a long ocean cruise one should set the autopilot’s sensitivity to slow and low, or cruise mode, instead of highly sensitive and fast reacting as one might have it for racing.
So far, in talking to the boats we have met here, autopilot failure is the most common serious problem. We were in the Atuona anchorage with 19 boats and 4 had failed autopilots. We have subsequently run into a couple more boats suffering from autopilot failures. One boat, Endorphine, actually re-soldered a failed connection on an autopilot circuit board successfully while underway! I noticed that the webbing holding Shanti’s mainsail headboard to the slugs that fit into the mast slot was about 90% chaffed through, so Emil repaired that yesterday with some new sail webbing I had brought along in my sail repair travel kit. The Catalina headboard was not very impressive – the slots that the webbing fits through were stamped out of the aluminum and Catalina hadn’t rounded the resulting knifelike edges. Many of the other mainsail mast slugs were suffering from failing webbing connections, too, but not bad enough to repair yesterday. Several do need repairs fairly urgently.
Gigi reported that they got hit by several 40 knot squalls in the Zone, and that generally they had a rough trip. Other boats also report trips with considerably more wind and weather than we had. I think we got lucky for the puddle jump – sort of like Goldilocks getting the just right porridge. I hope our luck holds. And that we get to tonight’s anchorage before dark. We did leave an hour before dawn so there was a bit of compromise there. I’m reminded of the saying that airplane pilots have – “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.”
Gigi reported that they had good luck fishing on the puddle jump, and, that like Shanti, they had decided fishing poles were worthless and that a dragline or two was the only way to go while on a passage. There might be some fishing poles that are heavy duty enough to haul in the fish while sailing at 6 knots, or some sailors nerdy enough to want to take down their sails and let the boat dance in the swells so they can play the fish on their pole, but if you want to haul in the meat while gently making way, and avoid a Chinese fire drill getting the sails down and the boat slowed, get or make a couple of drag lines.
To make a drag line you need 150 feet or so of 200 pound test tuna cord, three b-i-g swivels, some beefy strong big surgical tubing, maybe 10 to 20 feet of 100 pound test or so, and 4 feet or so of 200 pound test, nylon leader. If the surgical tubing is say 4 feet long, cram maybe 6 or 7 feet of tuna cord into it, tie each end of that internal tuna cord to a swivel, zip tie the tubing to each swivel with strong beefy zip ties, so the tuna cord is sandwiched inside of it. Then tie the long tuna cord to one of the swivels sticking out of the tubing, and on the other end of the tubing tie about three or six feet of 200 pound leader to the swivel and then make a loop in the other end for putting over a cleat. The tubing should be able to stretch out quite a bit but it won’t break because the internal tuna cord gets tight - this acts as a shock absorber when your fish hits; so figure out how much of a shock absorber you want and build the tubing thing accordingly. Likewise, the loop of leader that you flip over the cleat should be sized for your boat’s cleat. You don’t want to catch too big of a fish, so your leader shouldn’t be too strong, but on the other hand lures are expensive. I really like fish in the 10 to 20 pound range, not bigger unless it is just before you come into an anchorage and you want fish to share…..
Gunkholing around the Marquesas is pretty nice. There are good anchorages for the weather we have had, which has been your basic trade wind weather, no storms or weather events so far. There are plenty of places to drop the anchor and be comfortable and out of the swell, plenty of little places to buy beer, dried pasta, fruits and vegetables, juice, wine, etc., some good walks or hikes on land, nice swimming, good shelling, pleasant temperatures, beautiful geology and vegetation, and nice people. A couple of places on shore had mosquitos and nonos, so bring bug spray. We’ve had a few pesky but not biting black flies on board at several anchorages. All in all, it is very benign and pleasant sailing. So far, we haven’t seen anything like the bright lights of the city, though – the opportunities for fine dining and shopping for designer fashions and nightlife and cosmopolitan culture are non-existent here. For the most part local life seems to be up at first light or first rooster crow, whichever is earlier, and to sleep by dark or soon after.
Part way to Ua Pao a short dozen of dolphins came up to our bow to play, sticking around for maybe half an hour. We all spent some time on the bow watching them, and Dom getting video. They were brown backed, and dark underneath, no signs of any white, black or gray. A couple looked like juveniles, as they were a good bit smaller than the main group.
Hopefully, nobody was watching us anchor in Ua Pao at around 4:45 pm. We entered the main harbor and dropped the bow anchor just fine. The stern anchor, however, was determined to fight its own deployment. Emil jumped into his dingy with the stern anchor and started to row it out, not attached to the boat yet. Then he noticed that Shanti was drifting away from the desired location, so he came back and had us hold the dingy painter while he rowed furiously trying to pull all 26,000 pounds of Shanti towards the desired location, against the wind and current, assisted only by the little tiny plastic oars of the Pudknocker. It wasn’t working very well, we decided after 5 or 10 minutes of observation, so we put Shanti into gear and tried to nudge her back and forth into alignment. It sort of worked despite the prop walk cooperating with the wind and current in opposition to our desires. Then, Emil prepared to deploy the stern anchor after which he would row the anchor rode to Shanti and affix it to a cleat. Shockingly, the anchor rode wasn’t affixed to the anchor! And the shackles were the wrong size, despite just having used the stern anchor a couple of anchorages ago. And the shackles were frozen shut. So Shanti drifted out of position again while Emil fought to shackle the rode to the anchor. Finally we handed him some pliers and he was able to make one of the shackles work. He tried to tow Shanti back into position and we used the engine and rudder again to help. He tossed the anchor out of the dingy and started rowing madly back to Shanti to give us the bitter end of his rode. We were all stunned when all of a sudden he stopped about 20 feet away from Shanti and said “The anchor rode is too short to reach the boat. It is only 50 feet long.” Dom was in his swimming suit ready to go, so I said, “Dom, go get the dingy painter and bring it back here.” which he did, despite Emil wacking him accidently with the oar a couple of times. I then pulled Shanti to the dingy by the painter and then grabbed the anchor rode and pulled Shanti closer to the anchor. Whew. What a circus. But, like all circuses, it was fun and exciting and we all had a good laugh at our own expense!
It is a decent anchorage, not much swell when we were there. You have to park behind the wharf in case the freighter, the Aranui 3, comes in.
We stayed aboard and had chicken fajitas for dinner (frozen chicken from Costco in Mexico), then went to sleep as it had been a very long day after getting up at 4:45 am. I’ve been sleeping in the cockpit to take advantage of the slight breeze, the fresh air and the stars. About midnight I heard some sharp cracking noises from the rudder, like it makes when we are sailing. It turned out that the floating anchor rode used on Shanti for stern anchoring had wrapped around the rudder and was jerking on it when the boat moved in the small swells. I was going to wake Emil and suggest that he dive to free the rudder, but Dom came up and just jumped right into the dark waters. 10 minutes of work and we had it free. I pulled some more of the floating line in, until we were tight between the bow and stern anchors. We were pretty up and down on the stern anchor, but I figured we would be okay until morning and that then Emil could get a longer non-floating rode and re-deploy the stern anchor. I hadn’t felt like jumping into the dark opaque waters and was pretty impressed with Dom’s fortitude and gung ho attitude. More than once on this trip, actually.
Judy, Dominique and I spent part of the day in Mary Jo’s car for hire taking her $200 half-day tour of some highlights. We saw some old ruins at Taaoa, the Smiling Tiki after a muddy hike, some interesting petroglyphs, and Hana Iapa, commonly known by cruisers as William’s Bay, which has a big rock in the bay called Cabeza Negro, a bay on the other side of the mountain. A lot of interesting scenery, beautiful flowers, wild fruit trees, vanilla, flowers, wild hot peppers, wild lime trees, and tons of beautiful trees. All in all, it was a very worthwhile tour. It let us see parts of the island we couldn’t see from the water. It is always fun how the altitude and vegetation changes as you go up in altitude.
The population of Hiva Oa is only about 2,600 people. There were 20,000 to 30,000 people on Hiva Oa before Europeans came with their diseases. I got a strong sense, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, that to a certain extent the people on Hiva Oa are caretaking the past. I suspect but don’t know that the kids, who are required to go to Tahiti for high school and college, may not all come back. Our guide, Mary Jo, said families are very small these days. There was a lot of land and not very many people. There almost was a feeling of being in a park. Also, there were so many new cars and almost no old cars. I can’t figure out where the money comes from. The sailboaters can’t really bring in that much in the few months they are there. Copra? Does France somehow fund or partially fund the life style on the island? The island was so neat and clean and well groomed and landscaped. I liked it and the people a lot. We didn’t encounter any speeding teenagers on the road – either they are in school in Tahiti or they are afraid that one of their hundreds of aunts or uncles would see them and bust them. Also, where do they find spouses, what about the gene pool? With only 2,600 people on the island they have to be related to a lot of each other. The people are very handsome and very friendly. Everybody speaks French or maybe Marquesan, with a few people speaking some English. There is a good cash machine right in the middle of the tiny little town. It cost 1,000 XPF for a ride to the Pearl from downtown, and about 600 XPF for a ride to the anchorage. A lot of the shellback (I just have to throw that word in) sailors were walking the couple of miles back and forth between the anchorage and the town, carrying groceries and umbrellas, dealing with the rain and the sun and heat and getting some exercise. We would just call Mary Jo, using the world phone that Verizon gave Judy for free for this trip, and she would come and get us for the above said prices. The Marquesas Islands are very Yang, Tahiti very yin. Hiva Oa, at least the wet windward side we spent most of our time on, is dominated by sharp and dark and brooding rocky ridges. The ridges are tall and vertical, and the shadows are heavy in the valleys. It rained several times a day, nice and warm and no big deal. It is the rainy season. I didn’t see any fishing fleets, or much sign that fishing is a big deal on Hiva Oa. There were only a few boats in the harbor and none of them really looked like fishing pangas or the trailer launched fishing boats in Hawaii, or like any other style of serious subsistence or commercial fishing platforms.
We spent another night in the Pearl. Ahhhh it felt so good. What a great friendly, comfortable place, and, yes, with a wonderful continental breakfast and very Marquesan feeling in the lobby, with art and carvings and cool stuff. Friday night there was a local group including guitar, ukulele, drums and a singer performing Marquesan music the lobby. It is a bit expensive, but what the hell, I just sailed across 2,900 miles of open ocean. There were a lot of chickens running around the island. We saw some cocks fighting along the path to the restaurant. One of the workers for the hotel came out, grabbed a wild free range hen that had been running around and took her to the kitchen. Our tour guide had told us earlier that people just grab a chicken when they want one.
Day 24 and 25 - April 30 May 1, Saturday and Sunday
We left Atuona today around noon and headed for the next island south, Tahuata. We anchored in Hanamoenoa Bay and jumped in to the clear beautiful warm turquoise water. I promptly dropped my nice new snorkel in 40 feet of water, and it was gone. I’d forgotten to hook up that little do-hickey that holds the snorkel to the mask. The water was great, the beach was great, and it felt great to take a nap in the cockpit afterwards. Emil went up the mast in this calm anchorage to retrieve the halyard that got lost up there, and when done with that he made a mighty, and very impressive, Tarzan leap off the lower spreaders into the water. I was chicken or something, so didn’t copy him. He’s my age, too.
We spent Saturday night in Hanamoenoa Bay along with 6 or 7 other boats. I spent a peaceful but slightly windy night sleeping in the cockpit. The Aranui 3, the big freighter that was in Atuona Bay when we first got there, showed up and dropped anchor. They shut down the engine but kept their big bright lights on all night, like a bright little city. About dawn they pulled their anchor and left.
Just after first light we realized we were surrounded by manta rays, about 3 to 5 feet across, filter feeding around our boat. They were swimming slowly along, with their enormous mouths wide open, eating their breakfast of little organisms. Since they had no teeth and short tails, maybe only a foot long, it seemed that it would be safe to swim with them, which we did. Dom got some great close up video with his camera in its underwater box. That kept us busy for hours. Then we had breakfast and coffee and swam some more. Then we had lunch and swam some more. Emil’s inflatable sea kayak is a wonderful thing to have, it stows in a little package, but really paddles well. There was some beach walking and shell gathering, too, today, but the shore bugs were ferocious. Sunday night a bunch of us boaters went into shore at dark and had a beachwood bon fire and BBQ. We all talked and swapped stories for hours. Our passage was one of the easier passages. A lot of the other boats had more weather or more serious problems. There was a Passport 47 with a modified stern – it had had a sugar scoop stern added on. The owner had lived in Fall City, my home town, for 10 years but we had never met! We spent Sunday night in the anchorage and did some more manta ray swimming the next morning. We saw Barracuda leaping through the air, too. The snorkeling was great, but not yet the crystal clear water we’re searching for.
Day 26 and 27 - May 2 and 3, Monday and Tuesday
We spent Sunday night in the anchorage and did some more manta ray swimming Monday morning. The mantas are cute and cuddly looking, sort of intelligent in a weird cartoon like way. You want to adopt one, take him home, show him to mom and beg to keep him as a pet so he could follow you around with his wing tips up and his big mouth open. We saw 3 foot long Barracuda leaping through the air, too, covering 6 to 8 feet from takeoff to landing point. The snorkeling here was great, better than Mexico, I guess mainly because the water is clearer. It still isn’t really transparent, like a bottle of vodka or something, but a lot closer. The vis is maybe 30 or 40 feet at this anchorage.
We rolled out the headsail a bit and headed south down the coast a couple of miles to Vaitahu. We wandered around the village a bit, shopped the two grocery stores but didn’t come out with much besides Hinano beer, and were quite impressed by the church. It is very nicely done in term of fitting the site and being appropriate for a Marquesan Island, made from beautiful wood and stone. Everybody is friendly and speaks French but not much English. We had to physically lift the dingy up onto the concrete parking lot area to get it out of the surge around the quay, but the landing itself was only mildly tricky – just no place to leave the dingy in the water without it getting rubbed apart on the concrete, hence the hoisting. The things that I’m calling quays are basically massively enormous concrete structures that rise up well out of the water. They are old and rough and possibly abrasive. Maybe they were made in WWII, I don’t really know but they look at least that old.
We headed south again to the next little bays, passing the most beautiful, stunning, verdant vertical cliffs which had big groves of coconut trees on the lower slopes. We went to Hapatoni first, then to Hanatefau. After anchoring in Hapatoni, Emil and Dom went into town to shop for carvings and art. Dom went wild and bought a bunch of cool warrior wear type of carved necklaces. Supposedly in these remote villages they are still carved out of human bones from some long ago battles, so they are pretty authentic. We upped anchor and moved a mile or so north to Hanatefau, where we settled down for the night about 100 feet off the beach, with another boat, Two Amigos, anchored 80 yards away. Emil climbed a coconut tree and got three nice nuts, we swam and snorkeled in the boulder and coral. Another boat come in, anchoring in between us and Two Amigos instead of south of us in the open half mile of perfect anchorage. The new boat’s crew (it’s been bow to all evening, so I don’t know the name yet) went up the mast to drop the tangled and ripped head sail. The poor guy on the manual mast mounted winch got quite a work out, quickly being reduced to quarter turns of the winch handle, then resting, then another quarter turn. We had a beautiful dinner, wine, conversation, and went off to read and sleep.
Anchoring in Hanamoenoa was pretty straight forward, sand at 40 feet or so, some coral/rocks. While snorkeling later we could see somebody’s anchor chain abandoned on the bottom, presumably with the anchor attached. I suppose that if I was doing it again I would have gone in to 25 feet or so, so the swim to shore wouldn’t have been a half mile long and so I could see where to drop the anchor on a sandy patch. Anchoring in shallower water also gives you a better shot at unsnagging it if it gets snagged. Anchoring at Hanatefau and Hapatoni is riskier, though, as there are a lot of boulders and giant rocks (boat size) on which to snag your anchor. The water isn’t quite clear enough to see the bottom at the 45 or 50 feet depth at which we anchored. My sense is that it would be really smart to have scuba on board so that you can free your anchor. Or else, carry about 10 anchors and a couple extra drums of chain, eh? Hmmmmm.
Judy and I had been out snorkeling and came back to the boat about an hour or so before dark. As I climbed back onto the boat I looked up and saw a guy in a military uniform looking down at me. I said “bonjour”, of course. We had seen a French Navy ship motoring by an hour or so ago, heading south. They turned north and went out of sight, then snuck back down the coast to hide just behind the closest point to the north, where they launched their RIB and snuck up on us. Turns out they were at least nominally customs dudes, on a tour out of Tahiti, patrolling the islands in a very military looking 60 foot mini battleship. We showed them our passports and check in documents, they were friendly, smiled, chit chatted a bit and left. No searching of the boat, no bribes, no bad vibes. And, while they were decked out in uniforms with cool arm patches and those big heavy cop belts full of mean looking junk, they were barefoot! We hope our Italian friend from the bonfire, Roberto, is okay. He is 2 and a half years into a very low budget around the world journey that he started in Bali and is close to completing. He never checks in to any countries, he says. (A week or so later we ran into Aseolius, a boat that had been in the anchorage with us and Roberto, and they told us that somehow Roberto was boarded but left alone and not busted.)
At dinner we decided that this was pretty much a Perfect Monday, in a sort of ultimate sense. Not just a Perfect Monday like you went to work, got a raise, had a great lunch date and then got the project done on time for the boss. No, a Perfect Monday as in how many times in your life do you swim with manta rays and tropical fish off the leeward shore of a beautiful Marquesan Island that you sailed across the Pacific ocean to get to?
Tuesday morning we upped anchor and motor sailed back to Hiva Oa. The plan had been to make it to Paumau, to look at the largest tiki in the Marquesas, but the wind didn’t cooperate. As expected, the east wind in the channel between Tahuata and Hiva Oa gave us some good speed as we crossed the channel from southish to northish. Once behind Hiva Oa the wind died until we reached the north end of the west end, when the trade winds hit us head on, slowing our progress and raising the seas into which we were bashing under motor alone. It became obvious that we weren’t going to make it to Puamau, so we pulled into Hana Iapa, commonly known by cruisers as William’s Bay, and dropped anchor in about 40 feet, can’t see the bottom. Dolphins guided us in. We are anchored at 09.42.871 S and 139.00.851 W. My charting program’s basic world chart shows us up on land, about 250 yards from our actual position. I don’t have the actual charts for this area. Emil’s Raymarine C80 with the Navionics chip shows us right where we actually are, properly out in the harbor.
After what I said yesterday about anchoring shallow, I was given cause to rethink that advice or at least some tension was injected into it. After we jumped in with our snorkels and swam towards shore, we came to a shelf where the bay quickly shallowed up to around 25 feet. The vis was good enough to let us see that the bottom was quite covered with the most beautiful complex large coral structures. Anchoring in 25 feet would have torn the hell out of this coral. It may be that even in 40 feet we are killing coral. For a boat casually passing through these islands, it is hard to know which harbors have coral structures and which just have anchor grabbing rocks. We had a great time snorkeling here, though every time a cloud came over the sun the vis and color diminished considerably. This would be a good place for some shallow scuba puttering around, if the day was sunny. I like this anchorage, on the leeward side of the island. We have little to no swell and hardly any flies. It is marked out in the entrance to the bay by a big rock known as the Black Head. Looking out at it from the anchorage it really does look like a head, not so much on the way in. There are very interesting geological structures around here. Layer after built up layer of lava, the cool, ropey stuff, is exposed in the cliffs along the edge of the island. It lays horizontally, with each layer on top of the previous one, with vertical tubes or pipes visible every so often where one (that is, one who last paid attention to geology in college forty years ago) imagines lava ran up and out to create a new layer, but then which maybe drained out when the underlying reservoir of lava drained away. Even though this is more the dry leeward side of the island, there was a nice waterfall leaping out into the ocean just a few miles west of this anchorage, with green vegetation visible along its route down the cliff, watered by the wind caused spray.
Judy and Emil went for a walk in town. Dom went kayaking and snorkeling, I snorkeled and blogged. They returned with a couple of bags of vegetables and William. William is the same guy that greeted us here on the side of the road when we were on the car tour last week, with Mary Jo driving. He is a real character, about 60 years old, Marquesan, no tattoos, lives here, has a small fruit orchard and vegetable garden, and works copra. Also, he runs William Yacht Club and actively seeks out and befriends cruisers – a cruiserphile, you could say. He has a wall with boat cards and a log book to sign into. He came aboard and we traded him a half bottle of whiskey and a big handful of ibuprofen for the bags of fruit and vegetables. He was intelligent, fun to talk to, had pretty good English and is happy to talk about Marquesan life and culture. I kept filling his glass with more whiskey as we talked, and, of course, to be sociable, mine too. William mentioned that the government (France) pays him a pension of 14,000 XPF per month (about $150 US a month). He wants us to take him fishing or to Puamau, or to Ua Pao, or just about anywhere we are going. In different circumstances I’d take him up on it, but it isn’t my boat and ……
Day 28 and 29 - May 4 and 5, Wednesday and Thursday
Today the plan is to up anchor and beat our way up to Puamau for some tiki inspection work. Charlie’s Charts says that the anchorage is very rolly and exposed, so after inspecting the site and conditions we may head for the next island, Ua Pau, or come back here, depending on the timing, the wind, etc. It’s about 75 miles to Ua Pao, probably relatively downwind.
“There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet – except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground, you are part of Nature! Your heart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are around you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you stretch your arms to them.” Thanks for that to Jerome K. Jerome when he was talking about three men in a boat.
The weather is still mixed fluffy, low, cumulus clouds and sun. As we sail along the leeward side of the island we can see the tops of the rain clouds stacked up on its windward side as they slowly, drained of most of their moisture, creep over the tops of the mountains, free again to speed on their way across the Pacific gathering moisture until perchance meeting another island.
We beat our way upwind to Paumau. Rounding the first big cape was an interesting study in cape effect, which works the same way here as in the states or Mexico. The cape concentrates and focuses and accelerates the wind, and if you are beating your way into it, you pay the price. We anchored over towards the jetty. Gigi was anchored out in the middle of the bay. After observation, we felt we were much less affected by the swell than Gigi, an Island Packet 440. We hooked up with Paul and Karen on Gigi and all went to shore in Emi’s dingy, The Pudknocker, as Gigi’s outboard was not working. It took two trips to get us all offloaded at the jetty, as The Pudknocker is only 7 or 8 feet long. It is smallish, with a 3.5 HP engine, but that paid off when it came time to bodily lift it out of the water up onto the jetty. There was no way to leave it in the water, as the surge would have torn it up along the concrete jetty. It is light and small enough that a couple or three people can just lift it up and put it on the jetty, which we have done several times on this trip. Deciding on the best dingy size is tough. The Pudknocker is tiny and underpowered, but very light, easy to stow, easy to get onto a jetty, and doesn’t take up so much room on deck. Freyja’s 10’ 6”, 15 HP, dingy is so much nicer except when it comes to stowing on the deck and lifting it out of the water and keeping its thirsty engine supplied with gas. So far on this trip, I’d rather have Emil’s. Mine is better for Mexico, and maybe better in big lagoons downwind from here where you might need some speed and power. We’ll see.
The ruins at Paumau were an easy walk, about 20 to 30 minutes, from the jetty, slightly uphill. We paid our 300 XFP admission fee apiece at a little tiny store. The ruins are smaller and more peaceful and feminine than the ruins we saw out of Atuona. Very pretty, well worth the walk. The tiki’s all seemed very old and were covered with moss and lichen. We picked some star fruit on the walk back from a tree on the side of the road, a tree which had dropped most of its fruit on the ground to rot. There so many different varieties of ripe fruit on the trees we were walking by. We had very tasty breadfruit fries for breakfast. The people are so very friendly everywhere we have gone, happy to stop, talk, smile, interact. We saw 4 subsistence, 2 man, fishing boats head out around dark, all bigger than canoes, all with outboards, all with an outrigger, all seeming to be deploying handlines as they went. I think that if you showed up here with a Mexican panga that they’d have an outrigger on it in about 15 minutes.
We spent the night on the hook at Paumau, and had the anchor up by 4:45 am. I think Gigi left earlier that night, to beat their way around the eastern tip of Hiva Oa, on their way south and thus upwind to Fata Hiva. We’re having a nice downwind sail to the north at 6+ knots to the island of Ua Pao (sounds like WaPow), the four of us standing nice easy 2 hour watches, hand steering. Hand steering seems to be a lot easier on our rudder. The autopilot (when it was working) would hit the rudder really hard and fast to correct the course, while the helmsman lets the boat sort of have its way and correct itself, which is a lot softer on the rudder. I suppose for a long ocean cruise one should set the autopilot’s sensitivity to slow and low, or cruise mode, instead of highly sensitive and fast reacting as one might have it for racing.
So far, in talking to the boats we have met here, autopilot failure is the most common serious problem. We were in the Atuona anchorage with 19 boats and 4 had failed autopilots. We have subsequently run into a couple more boats suffering from autopilot failures. One boat, Endorphine, actually re-soldered a failed connection on an autopilot circuit board successfully while underway! I noticed that the webbing holding Shanti’s mainsail headboard to the slugs that fit into the mast slot was about 90% chaffed through, so Emil repaired that yesterday with some new sail webbing I had brought along in my sail repair travel kit. The Catalina headboard was not very impressive – the slots that the webbing fits through were stamped out of the aluminum and Catalina hadn’t rounded the resulting knifelike edges. Many of the other mainsail mast slugs were suffering from failing webbing connections, too, but not bad enough to repair yesterday. Several do need repairs fairly urgently.
Gigi reported that they got hit by several 40 knot squalls in the Zone, and that generally they had a rough trip. Other boats also report trips with considerably more wind and weather than we had. I think we got lucky for the puddle jump – sort of like Goldilocks getting the just right porridge. I hope our luck holds. And that we get to tonight’s anchorage before dark. We did leave an hour before dawn so there was a bit of compromise there. I’m reminded of the saying that airplane pilots have – “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.”
Gigi reported that they had good luck fishing on the puddle jump, and, that like Shanti, they had decided fishing poles were worthless and that a dragline or two was the only way to go while on a passage. There might be some fishing poles that are heavy duty enough to haul in the fish while sailing at 6 knots, or some sailors nerdy enough to want to take down their sails and let the boat dance in the swells so they can play the fish on their pole, but if you want to haul in the meat while gently making way, and avoid a Chinese fire drill getting the sails down and the boat slowed, get or make a couple of drag lines.
To make a drag line you need 150 feet or so of 200 pound test tuna cord, three b-i-g swivels, some beefy strong big surgical tubing, maybe 10 to 20 feet of 100 pound test or so, and 4 feet or so of 200 pound test, nylon leader. If the surgical tubing is say 4 feet long, cram maybe 6 or 7 feet of tuna cord into it, tie each end of that internal tuna cord to a swivel, zip tie the tubing to each swivel with strong beefy zip ties, so the tuna cord is sandwiched inside of it. Then tie the long tuna cord to one of the swivels sticking out of the tubing, and on the other end of the tubing tie about three or six feet of 200 pound leader to the swivel and then make a loop in the other end for putting over a cleat. The tubing should be able to stretch out quite a bit but it won’t break because the internal tuna cord gets tight - this acts as a shock absorber when your fish hits; so figure out how much of a shock absorber you want and build the tubing thing accordingly. Likewise, the loop of leader that you flip over the cleat should be sized for your boat’s cleat. You don’t want to catch too big of a fish, so your leader shouldn’t be too strong, but on the other hand lures are expensive. I really like fish in the 10 to 20 pound range, not bigger unless it is just before you come into an anchorage and you want fish to share…..
Gunkholing around the Marquesas is pretty nice. There are good anchorages for the weather we have had, which has been your basic trade wind weather, no storms or weather events so far. There are plenty of places to drop the anchor and be comfortable and out of the swell, plenty of little places to buy beer, dried pasta, fruits and vegetables, juice, wine, etc., some good walks or hikes on land, nice swimming, good shelling, pleasant temperatures, beautiful geology and vegetation, and nice people. A couple of places on shore had mosquitos and nonos, so bring bug spray. We’ve had a few pesky but not biting black flies on board at several anchorages. All in all, it is very benign and pleasant sailing. So far, we haven’t seen anything like the bright lights of the city, though – the opportunities for fine dining and shopping for designer fashions and nightlife and cosmopolitan culture are non-existent here. For the most part local life seems to be up at first light or first rooster crow, whichever is earlier, and to sleep by dark or soon after.
Part way to Ua Pao a short dozen of dolphins came up to our bow to play, sticking around for maybe half an hour. We all spent some time on the bow watching them, and Dom getting video. They were brown backed, and dark underneath, no signs of any white, black or gray. A couple looked like juveniles, as they were a good bit smaller than the main group.
Hopefully, nobody was watching us anchor in Ua Pao at around 4:45 pm. We entered the main harbor and dropped the bow anchor just fine. The stern anchor, however, was determined to fight its own deployment. Emil jumped into his dingy with the stern anchor and started to row it out, not attached to the boat yet. Then he noticed that Shanti was drifting away from the desired location, so he came back and had us hold the dingy painter while he rowed furiously trying to pull all 26,000 pounds of Shanti towards the desired location, against the wind and current, assisted only by the little tiny plastic oars of the Pudknocker. It wasn’t working very well, we decided after 5 or 10 minutes of observation, so we put Shanti into gear and tried to nudge her back and forth into alignment. It sort of worked despite the prop walk cooperating with the wind and current in opposition to our desires. Then, Emil prepared to deploy the stern anchor after which he would row the anchor rode to Shanti and affix it to a cleat. Shockingly, the anchor rode wasn’t affixed to the anchor! And the shackles were the wrong size, despite just having used the stern anchor a couple of anchorages ago. And the shackles were frozen shut. So Shanti drifted out of position again while Emil fought to shackle the rode to the anchor. Finally we handed him some pliers and he was able to make one of the shackles work. He tried to tow Shanti back into position and we used the engine and rudder again to help. He tossed the anchor out of the dingy and started rowing madly back to Shanti to give us the bitter end of his rode. We were all stunned when all of a sudden he stopped about 20 feet away from Shanti and said “The anchor rode is too short to reach the boat. It is only 50 feet long.” Dom was in his swimming suit ready to go, so I said, “Dom, go get the dingy painter and bring it back here.” which he did, despite Emil wacking him accidently with the oar a couple of times. I then pulled Shanti to the dingy by the painter and then grabbed the anchor rode and pulled Shanti closer to the anchor. Whew. What a circus. But, like all circuses, it was fun and exciting and we all had a good laugh at our own expense!
It is a decent anchorage, not much swell when we were there. You have to park behind the wharf in case the freighter, the Aranui 3, comes in.
We stayed aboard and had chicken fajitas for dinner (frozen chicken from Costco in Mexico), then went to sleep as it had been a very long day after getting up at 4:45 am. I’ve been sleeping in the cockpit to take advantage of the slight breeze, the fresh air and the stars. About midnight I heard some sharp cracking noises from the rudder, like it makes when we are sailing. It turned out that the floating anchor rode used on Shanti for stern anchoring had wrapped around the rudder and was jerking on it when the boat moved in the small swells. I was going to wake Emil and suggest that he dive to free the rudder, but Dom came up and just jumped right into the dark waters. 10 minutes of work and we had it free. I pulled some more of the floating line in, until we were tight between the bow and stern anchors. We were pretty up and down on the stern anchor, but I figured we would be okay until morning and that then Emil could get a longer non-floating rode and re-deploy the stern anchor. I hadn’t felt like jumping into the dark opaque waters and was pretty impressed with Dom’s fortitude and gung ho attitude. More than once on this trip, actually.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Mexico to the Marquesas - Days 16 - 21
Day 16 - April 22, Friday
We’re meandering along at around 4 knots, or a bit less, in 7 to 9 knots of NE wind. Jimmy Cornell says we should be benefitting from the 1 knot Southern Equatorial current setting to the west. The boat is moving around a bit due to the NE waves hitting our stern port quarter, but not in any really uncomfortable way. So far on this mostly downwind trip we haven’t experienced any particularly bad sea states or boat rolling or rocking, but perhaps what is bad is a personal thing. It does seem hard to call waves generated by no more than 12 to 14 knots of wind, or even the 20 we had for a few days, particularly aggravating, even if you are getting bounced around a bit. After all, this is an ocean passage and you have to expect some motion. It is definitely not the same as being on Puget Sound.
Hopefully, for the benefit of our failing rudder, the sea state will remain as it is for the remainder of our trip. If the winds kick up from a direction that tosses the stern around it may hasten the disintegration of the fiberglass pan that holds the upper end of the rudder post in position. It is the pan itself that has failed, we discovered after getting down in the lazerettes and really inspecting it. The upper rudder bearing assembly bolts onto the pan and is held in place and stable by the pan. Nice reasonable winds from another direction that doesn’t result in wave action tossing the stern would be most welcome, so we’re talking to the wind gods, and I’m talking to Freyja in particular!
I can’t remember which day it was, but at some point Emil patiently traced all the connections and figured out that the connection of the satphone cradle antenna cord to the external antenna was no good right where the cord entered and connected to the external antenna. The installation at Marine Services was bad, they had pinched the cord and the pinch caused the cord to pull out of its termination hardware. Once he got that fixed the satphone cradle worked fine for emailing and weather downloading.
For many days now we’ve been standing our night watches in shorts and t-shirts, or perhaps with a very light long sleeve thing over our t-shirt. It is really nice and warm at night, and the moon is still doing its thing. So far we haven’t had any really great starry nights, before or after the moon, as there has been moisture in the atmosphere and a star obscuring haze around the horizon. We haven’t seen any ships or boats since leaving Mexican waters behind, except for one radar image I saw one night about 20 miles out from us and that was off the screen within about 10 minutes.
Our fresh vegetables and fruit are pretty much gone, except for a bit of lettuce that has been refrigerated all along and some carrots and beets. The harder the vegetable the better they seem to keep. I think potatoes would still be good, but we have eaten all we brought. It turns out that Dominique likes oven baked French fries and enjoys making them for us! We ate the last of the sprouts today. I’m going to get a sprout growing thing going on Freyja, especially for longer passages. They are good and tasty and fresh, and can be grown as you go.
About one or so we decided to fly the asymmetrical. Emil drug it up to the foredeck, got all the lines out, and we started hoisting it up on its halyard. Just as it reached the top of the mast the snap shackle released for some reason and the sail came down, in its ATN snuffer bag, and landed on the deck. The spinnaker halyard was lost at the top of the mast. Emil promptly got out his home made bosun’s chair. We came into the wind and lowered the mainsail, only to find that the main halyard was badly frayed about a foot from the shackle. He cut the end off, tied a bowline to the shackle, attached his bosun’s chair and up the mast he went on the electric winch, clinging to the mast with arms and legs as he went up. However, the boat was pitching and rolling so violently with no sails up that about ¾ of the way up he couldn’t hold on and started getting violently and dangerously slammed and tossed around. We quickly lowered him down, left the spinnaker halyard up at the mast top and decided to forget flying the asymmetrical sail. While all that was going on, I was steering the boat and noticing that the steering was locking up at various angles with the auto pilot in the off mode. The wheel would just freeze solid so I couldn’t turn it at all. We can’t see anything jammed up down in the area of the steering quadrant, but we're wondering if it’s related to the failing rudder perhaps torqueing the steering mechanism and jamming up the autopilot. The steering seems to work with the autopilot on, though, so once again we are headed downwind to the Marquesas. We are on an angle of sail that doesn’t cause snapping of the rudder post, and are motor sailing to pick up a couple of knots. We're going as fast as we can without audible signals from the rudder telling us that we are killing it.
The mainsail halyard chafe was instructive, as was the roller furler chafe. We had no idea it was happening. It might have taken only a few minutes to happen, maybe when reefing or un-reefing, or maybe it took days. It tells me that you have to develop a habit of inspecting your rigging on a daily basis when cruising. When shaking out the reef in the mainsail, drop it all the way and check the halyard. The daily basis thing probably isn’t going to happen, realistically, but then at least frequently. Suppose the main halyard had broken and fallen down inside the mast?
Data entry for day 16, ending the April 22 to April 23, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (764 - 645) = 119
Wind Speed: 11 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.6 knots
Wave Height/State: 3 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell
Sail Plan: 100% main, 70% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 2 magnetic, 231 GPS
Barometer: 1012
Temp: 84 degrees F.
Humidity: 84%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 645
Location: 03.01.635, 130.18.468
Day 17 - April 23, Saturday
Since last night we’ve been sailing along with about 11 knots of NE breeze gradually changing to E, making 5 knots or a little better. We’re heading SE to Hiva Oa, so the winds and seas are behind us at a broad reach or run type of angle. The course has to be tweaked to take pressure off the rudder – a few degrees one way or the other will change the way the stern is taking the waves and increase or decrease the rudder cracking and popping sounds and amount of play visible at the top of the rudder post. The more off course we are, the longer the trip, but the less stressful it is on us.
Too much headsail while going downwind results in it flogging at these wind speeds and with the size of the wind waves and swells. If the wind picks up, the whole 140% sail flies fine, but it is too heavy a weight of cloth for these conditions. The halyard for the asymmetrical is still up at the top of the mast. There is so much swing in the mast as the boat rolls around that it is dangerous to go up there for something that isn’t mission critical. It would be nice to have a couple of spare halyards rigged for whatever eventualities cause you to need one – chaff, accident, whatever. It would be nice to have a spare halyard for the main, too, or at least a messenger string somehow rigged so you could pull a new main halyard up if the need arose.
The amount of wear and tear on the boat in these pretty benign conditions is amazing, and I can only imagine what it would be like if conditions were stronger for a period of days. The twisting, banging, rolling, stretching, etc., 24/7, really tests the quality of construction of the boat and of all the gear on it. Anything that can rub and wear will quickly do so.
The crew is starting to talk about what day we will get to Atuona, the principal city on Hiva Oa, and the place where we will check into the country. With just over 600 miles to go we can start guessing our arrival day. We are guessing that our arrival will be on Thursday or Friday, or maybe Saturday. Apparently, if you get there after 5 pm on Friday you are supposed to stay on your boat in quarantine until Monday morning when customs and immigration open back up, which really isn’t a pleasant prospect. Maybe the other puddle jumpers will have compassion and stop by in their dingys with baguettes and ice cold local beers. And, if we have an after 5 pm Friday arrival, there will be the pressure to get off the boat anyhow, disrespecting the local laws and customs…..and maybe running into Monday morning’s immigration officer at the bar on Saturday night….
We have left the beautiful equatorial clouds behind and sailed into a zone with slightly more mundane clouds. The equatorial clouds were so energetic, so towering, each one trying to outdo the other in terms of height and complexity and sculptured patterns.
The very large stash of beautiful exotic cheeses that we have in the bottom of the refrigerator is slowing emerging. They are so delicious and in perfect shape. I had a nice piece of toasted Orowheat bread with a thick slice of a beautiful blue cheese on it for breakfast, with a few drops of olive oil added to the toast. It was washed down with our beautiful French Pressed dark roasted Nayarit coffee. The cous cous that we bought two large containers of at Costco is a big hit, too, as you can cook a pot full and have it ready to go cold. It works as a filling for burritos, with eggs, with salad, with fresh fish stirred in, it’s a great tasty filler.
I was pulling my handline in last night around 8, just as my watch was starting and, lo, there was a little 5 or 6 pound tuna on the line. He had the most beautiful electric blue colors. He must have been dragging for a while so didn’t fight much as I brought him to hand. We are still standing watch in t-shirts and shorts, unless because of a lot of wind we need a windbreaker. The t-shirt is more to keep the sun off than for warmth. We had a nice salad last night. The lettuce in the refer is still going strong.
Data entry for day 17, ending the April 23 to April 24, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (645 - 505) = 140
Wind Speed: 20 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7.2 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind waves/swells close together
Sail Plan: 1st reef main, 30% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 223 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 84 degrees F.
Humidity: 87%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 505
Location: 04.24.710, 132.12.042
Day 18 - April 24, Sunday
Twenty knots of wind, Force 5 on the Beaufort scale. Every once in a while a wave sprays into the cockpit. Luckily the temperature is right up there so we are warm even in this wind. We had a lot of new noises from the steering system last night. We think that the torqueing rudder shaft is damaging the autopilot, maybe getting the autopilot ram out of alignment. The whole thing is working really hard. We were prancing along pretty overpowered at 8+ knots last night before we got it together to reef the sails. The first reef doesn’t seem to take much area out of this Catalina stock mainsail.
Data entry for day 18, ending the April 24 to April 25, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (505 - 350) = 155
Wind Speed: 20 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7.1 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind waves/swells
Sail Plan: Two reefs in main, 30% unfurled
Course: 200 magnetic, 2 GPS
Barometer: 1015
Temp: 88 degrees F.
Humidity: 92%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 350
Location: 05.50.027, 134.23.557
Day 19 - April 25, Monday
We sailed along all night with 20 knots or so of wind, which lasted well into this morning. The moon is still doing its thing, though there is a concave curve to it. There was a lot of discussion about the sea state. We are out in the ocean, there is only twenty knots of wind blowing, there is about 3,000 miles of fetch, the waves are all from the same direction, and we are slightly close hauled. It wasn’t really bad at all compared to what’s possible with the other moods of the ocean. It was a bit more of a rough ride than you find in Puget Sound, I suppose. We are smelling the barn and anxious to get to it.
Data entry for day 19, ending the April 25 to April 26, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (350 - 208) = 142
Wind Speed: 6.0 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 16 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind/swells
Sail Plan: 2nd reef in main, 50% unfurled genoa
Course: 2 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 85%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 208
Location: 07.31.480, 136.03.853
Day 20 - April 26, Tuesday
Last night and today we have had multiple autopilot failures of various natures. Sometimes the boat starts spinning around in circles, sometimes it just starts wandering, but either way when you turn the autopilot off the helm is locked up rigidly, and you can’t steer the boat at all, the wheel just won’t move one inch. We have rebooted the autopilot, turned off all power at the breaker panel, and tried other software tricks but it won’t release the helm. So far we have been able to get it working again by turning the autopilot back on. The first time it happened yesterday evening we were stuck heading for Antarctica at 6 knots for an hour or so, which was an odd feeling if you let your paranoid fantasies play out. It is losing its mind more and more frequently, changing from once or twice a day to every 20 minutes to every 10 minutes. Tomorrow afternoon, which is hopefully our last daytime at sea, we will pull the pin connecting the autopilot ram to the rudder post. That should let us steer by hand overnight and the next morning. We expect to make landfall in the middle of the night very early Thursday morning, so will have to have hand steering to tack back and forth off shore and for entering the harbor. The autopilot is a Raymarine ST6002G, the stock, Catalina chosen, unit for this boat.
We called Raymarine technical support this morning. There was about a 10 minute wait on hold on the Satphone, which is a bit expensive. They are suggesting that the clutch is failing and sticking, which in turn prevents the autopilot from letting go of the helm when we go to standby mode or power off mode. Their closest dealer and service facility is in Hawaii.
We have, for the past couple of days, had a nice steady 15 to 20 knot breeze out of the S to SE. The S part is a bit surprising, as the GRIB files all show the wind from the E. Also, our Raymarine C80 shows a 2.5 knot current setting to the SSE, which is counterintuitive to me, given the steady and powerful trades blowing just the opposite direction. If true, though, it might explain the slightly lumpy nature of the seas – wind against current. The cloud cover is a sort of plebian set of small and not very active looking cumulus clouds, sort of low. Sea haze on the horizon at nights, and the stars were at least 50% obscured last night on my watch. We’re seeing lots of 4 to 6 inch long flying fish, but not finding them on deck.
This evening we disconnected the autopilot ram from the rudder post, instead of waiting until tomorrow. The Raymarine ST6002G completely failed us. We were turning in random complete circles, or holding course for the south pole, or basically heading where ever it felt like sending us. The wheel came free as soon as the ram was disconnected and as a side benefit the rudder is much quieter. We’re thinking that manual steering is much softer than autopilot steering, as the helmsman lets the wheel have a bit of natural motion as opposed to the rigid control of the autopilot. The human puts a little extra “give” in the system. This makes me suspect that a windvane steering system would likewise be easier on the rudder assembly, whether it is like my Fleming (which uses lines to the helm to control the ship’s rudder) or a hydrovane type that has its own rudder.
I raised Blue Moon on the VHF today. It was nice to hear another boat after all these days of silence. They were just a few miles from us, and were also heading for Atuona. I miss the SSB/ham connection, and would never want to be at sea again without it. While the satphone is nice to call family and sailing support people (Raymarine, etc.), actually quite invaluable, the radio connects you to the real players in the sailing community - the actual sailors out in the ocean sailing along with you. With the radio you make new friends and keep in touch with old ones, and you are connected to events important to you – weather, check in procedures, other boats in distress that you might help, the upcoming rendezvous at a certain anchorage or island….. The other negative about the satphone is the astounding cost of regular operations. I can’t believe the cost per minute of phone calls and the shockingly large amount of airtime minutes you are charged for downloading weather on top of the basic flat fee charged for each weather chart. The ham radio may cost a bit more initially if you just walk into a retail store and ask for a full package including installation, but after that it is essentially free. There are some good values in used radio gear on craigslist or at QRZ.com. If you are handy you can do a lot of the installation work yourself and save money there too. The satphone is mostly an expensive luxury, but that said it does add a layer of safety and convenience, plus you can call your mom and wish her happy birthday. Very nice to have both! Hands down, no question, get the radio first. If I was in a life raft, I’d want a satphone with me.
Data entry for day 20, ending the April 26 to April 27, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (208 - 78 ) = 130
Wind Speed: 18 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.6 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind/swell waves
Sail Plan: 2nd reef main, 80% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 220 magnetic, 234 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 86%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 78
Location: 08.59.714, 137.42.337
Day 21 - April 27, Wednesday
We arrived offshore of Atuona harbor at maybe 3 or 4 am, so we sailed around randomly in light breezes in the dark, waiting for daylight to enter the harbor. There was another sailboat doing the same thing. They had their tricolor on, but it must have been an old one as the colors weren’t visible and it looked more like an anchor light. I couldn’t tell the red side from the green side from the white stern light. The moon had set, and I was steering. It was so dark that all I could see of this boat was its white looking tricolor. For some reason, that very white-ish tricolor gave me no depth perception and I couldn’t tell how far away it was. They finally came on the radio and said that as we were motor sailing (we had our steaming light on) that they had the right of way and I’d better turn as they were really close. Sure enough, they emerged from the gloom just 50 yards away on a collision course. So I turned away. I prefer sidelights and a stern light when close in to shore, as they are easier to see and allow one to better judge the location of the boat displaying them.
We dropped anchor about 7 or 8 this morning. There were 19 other sailboats anchored ahead of us, and the big local interisland freighter/passenger ship, Aranui 3, was also tied up at the pier unloading general cargo. This is a fairly tight little anchorage with 19 boats in it, and with the freighter forcing us all to stay behind a line marked with two yellow Xs. Emil scouted out a nice hole to park in towards the beach and the jetty side, vacated moments before by a departing catamaran. We dropped the bow anchor, and then the stern anchor to match the prevailing anchoring technique at this anchorage. Sometimes at night a wind comes down the valley and really messes with the boats and the stern anchor is used to keep everybody from banging into each other.
We all jumped into the dingy and headed to shore to check in. The dingy dock is rough and abrasive. A lot of the dingys used stern anchors to hold themselves off of the concrete quay. My girlfriend Judy was waiting on the dock. She had flown to the Marquesas to join us on Shanti for the trip to Tahiti. Judy had met Sandra, the check in agent who contracts with our agent Cindy in Tahiti to handle the Marquesas end of the check in, several days before and made friends with her, so Judy and Sandra were waiting with Sandra’s car at the dingy pier to take us to the gendarme to check in. Checking in was easy, nobody came to the boat for a custom’s inspection, nor to any of the other boats as far as I’ve heard. We hung out at Snack Make Make for some Hino Tahitian beers, which were cold and excellent and 5% alcohol. Not having eaten for about 24 hours, I had a delicious but not very fancy omelet, too, which cost 20,000 XPF. The same omelet would have been maybe $6 at home. What a pleasure to sit on land and eat food somebody else made and from ingredients that weren’t on the boat! And, oh, was the icy cold beer ever good……
Judy had taken a room in the beautiful Pearl Hotel, overlooking the harbor, so after the beers and omelet she and I headed straight for it while Emil and Dominique went somewhere, maybe back to the boat or to wherever sailors go who don’t have an awesome hotel suite waiting for them. After being up all night, and after the several very relaxing Hino’s I had, I fell fast asleep on the great big king size bed, with the A/C on a gentle mild not too cold temperature. Well, first I took a beautiful shower in the beautiful open air enormous hardwood and stone shower stall that had an endless supply of soap and water available, and then spent a few minutes more looking out over the sailboats in the harbor and into the jagged dark brooding knife edged mountains of Hiva Oa. Oh, did that big bed feel good as I slipped off to a blissful sleep………… The Pearl is nice. The rooms are actually individual cabins, set in beautiful landscaped grounds….
We’re meandering along at around 4 knots, or a bit less, in 7 to 9 knots of NE wind. Jimmy Cornell says we should be benefitting from the 1 knot Southern Equatorial current setting to the west. The boat is moving around a bit due to the NE waves hitting our stern port quarter, but not in any really uncomfortable way. So far on this mostly downwind trip we haven’t experienced any particularly bad sea states or boat rolling or rocking, but perhaps what is bad is a personal thing. It does seem hard to call waves generated by no more than 12 to 14 knots of wind, or even the 20 we had for a few days, particularly aggravating, even if you are getting bounced around a bit. After all, this is an ocean passage and you have to expect some motion. It is definitely not the same as being on Puget Sound.
Hopefully, for the benefit of our failing rudder, the sea state will remain as it is for the remainder of our trip. If the winds kick up from a direction that tosses the stern around it may hasten the disintegration of the fiberglass pan that holds the upper end of the rudder post in position. It is the pan itself that has failed, we discovered after getting down in the lazerettes and really inspecting it. The upper rudder bearing assembly bolts onto the pan and is held in place and stable by the pan. Nice reasonable winds from another direction that doesn’t result in wave action tossing the stern would be most welcome, so we’re talking to the wind gods, and I’m talking to Freyja in particular!
I can’t remember which day it was, but at some point Emil patiently traced all the connections and figured out that the connection of the satphone cradle antenna cord to the external antenna was no good right where the cord entered and connected to the external antenna. The installation at Marine Services was bad, they had pinched the cord and the pinch caused the cord to pull out of its termination hardware. Once he got that fixed the satphone cradle worked fine for emailing and weather downloading.
For many days now we’ve been standing our night watches in shorts and t-shirts, or perhaps with a very light long sleeve thing over our t-shirt. It is really nice and warm at night, and the moon is still doing its thing. So far we haven’t had any really great starry nights, before or after the moon, as there has been moisture in the atmosphere and a star obscuring haze around the horizon. We haven’t seen any ships or boats since leaving Mexican waters behind, except for one radar image I saw one night about 20 miles out from us and that was off the screen within about 10 minutes.
Our fresh vegetables and fruit are pretty much gone, except for a bit of lettuce that has been refrigerated all along and some carrots and beets. The harder the vegetable the better they seem to keep. I think potatoes would still be good, but we have eaten all we brought. It turns out that Dominique likes oven baked French fries and enjoys making them for us! We ate the last of the sprouts today. I’m going to get a sprout growing thing going on Freyja, especially for longer passages. They are good and tasty and fresh, and can be grown as you go.
About one or so we decided to fly the asymmetrical. Emil drug it up to the foredeck, got all the lines out, and we started hoisting it up on its halyard. Just as it reached the top of the mast the snap shackle released for some reason and the sail came down, in its ATN snuffer bag, and landed on the deck. The spinnaker halyard was lost at the top of the mast. Emil promptly got out his home made bosun’s chair. We came into the wind and lowered the mainsail, only to find that the main halyard was badly frayed about a foot from the shackle. He cut the end off, tied a bowline to the shackle, attached his bosun’s chair and up the mast he went on the electric winch, clinging to the mast with arms and legs as he went up. However, the boat was pitching and rolling so violently with no sails up that about ¾ of the way up he couldn’t hold on and started getting violently and dangerously slammed and tossed around. We quickly lowered him down, left the spinnaker halyard up at the mast top and decided to forget flying the asymmetrical sail. While all that was going on, I was steering the boat and noticing that the steering was locking up at various angles with the auto pilot in the off mode. The wheel would just freeze solid so I couldn’t turn it at all. We can’t see anything jammed up down in the area of the steering quadrant, but we're wondering if it’s related to the failing rudder perhaps torqueing the steering mechanism and jamming up the autopilot. The steering seems to work with the autopilot on, though, so once again we are headed downwind to the Marquesas. We are on an angle of sail that doesn’t cause snapping of the rudder post, and are motor sailing to pick up a couple of knots. We're going as fast as we can without audible signals from the rudder telling us that we are killing it.
The mainsail halyard chafe was instructive, as was the roller furler chafe. We had no idea it was happening. It might have taken only a few minutes to happen, maybe when reefing or un-reefing, or maybe it took days. It tells me that you have to develop a habit of inspecting your rigging on a daily basis when cruising. When shaking out the reef in the mainsail, drop it all the way and check the halyard. The daily basis thing probably isn’t going to happen, realistically, but then at least frequently. Suppose the main halyard had broken and fallen down inside the mast?
Data entry for day 16, ending the April 22 to April 23, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (764 - 645) = 119
Wind Speed: 11 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 5.6 knots
Wave Height/State: 3 foot wind waves, 5 foot swell
Sail Plan: 100% main, 70% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 2 magnetic, 231 GPS
Barometer: 1012
Temp: 84 degrees F.
Humidity: 84%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 645
Location: 03.01.635, 130.18.468
Day 17 - April 23, Saturday
Since last night we’ve been sailing along with about 11 knots of NE breeze gradually changing to E, making 5 knots or a little better. We’re heading SE to Hiva Oa, so the winds and seas are behind us at a broad reach or run type of angle. The course has to be tweaked to take pressure off the rudder – a few degrees one way or the other will change the way the stern is taking the waves and increase or decrease the rudder cracking and popping sounds and amount of play visible at the top of the rudder post. The more off course we are, the longer the trip, but the less stressful it is on us.
Too much headsail while going downwind results in it flogging at these wind speeds and with the size of the wind waves and swells. If the wind picks up, the whole 140% sail flies fine, but it is too heavy a weight of cloth for these conditions. The halyard for the asymmetrical is still up at the top of the mast. There is so much swing in the mast as the boat rolls around that it is dangerous to go up there for something that isn’t mission critical. It would be nice to have a couple of spare halyards rigged for whatever eventualities cause you to need one – chaff, accident, whatever. It would be nice to have a spare halyard for the main, too, or at least a messenger string somehow rigged so you could pull a new main halyard up if the need arose.
The amount of wear and tear on the boat in these pretty benign conditions is amazing, and I can only imagine what it would be like if conditions were stronger for a period of days. The twisting, banging, rolling, stretching, etc., 24/7, really tests the quality of construction of the boat and of all the gear on it. Anything that can rub and wear will quickly do so.
The crew is starting to talk about what day we will get to Atuona, the principal city on Hiva Oa, and the place where we will check into the country. With just over 600 miles to go we can start guessing our arrival day. We are guessing that our arrival will be on Thursday or Friday, or maybe Saturday. Apparently, if you get there after 5 pm on Friday you are supposed to stay on your boat in quarantine until Monday morning when customs and immigration open back up, which really isn’t a pleasant prospect. Maybe the other puddle jumpers will have compassion and stop by in their dingys with baguettes and ice cold local beers. And, if we have an after 5 pm Friday arrival, there will be the pressure to get off the boat anyhow, disrespecting the local laws and customs…..and maybe running into Monday morning’s immigration officer at the bar on Saturday night….
We have left the beautiful equatorial clouds behind and sailed into a zone with slightly more mundane clouds. The equatorial clouds were so energetic, so towering, each one trying to outdo the other in terms of height and complexity and sculptured patterns.
The very large stash of beautiful exotic cheeses that we have in the bottom of the refrigerator is slowing emerging. They are so delicious and in perfect shape. I had a nice piece of toasted Orowheat bread with a thick slice of a beautiful blue cheese on it for breakfast, with a few drops of olive oil added to the toast. It was washed down with our beautiful French Pressed dark roasted Nayarit coffee. The cous cous that we bought two large containers of at Costco is a big hit, too, as you can cook a pot full and have it ready to go cold. It works as a filling for burritos, with eggs, with salad, with fresh fish stirred in, it’s a great tasty filler.
I was pulling my handline in last night around 8, just as my watch was starting and, lo, there was a little 5 or 6 pound tuna on the line. He had the most beautiful electric blue colors. He must have been dragging for a while so didn’t fight much as I brought him to hand. We are still standing watch in t-shirts and shorts, unless because of a lot of wind we need a windbreaker. The t-shirt is more to keep the sun off than for warmth. We had a nice salad last night. The lettuce in the refer is still going strong.
Data entry for day 17, ending the April 23 to April 24, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (645 - 505) = 140
Wind Speed: 20 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7.2 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind waves/swells close together
Sail Plan: 1st reef main, 30% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 223 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1014
Temp: 84 degrees F.
Humidity: 87%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 505
Location: 04.24.710, 132.12.042
Day 18 - April 24, Sunday
Twenty knots of wind, Force 5 on the Beaufort scale. Every once in a while a wave sprays into the cockpit. Luckily the temperature is right up there so we are warm even in this wind. We had a lot of new noises from the steering system last night. We think that the torqueing rudder shaft is damaging the autopilot, maybe getting the autopilot ram out of alignment. The whole thing is working really hard. We were prancing along pretty overpowered at 8+ knots last night before we got it together to reef the sails. The first reef doesn’t seem to take much area out of this Catalina stock mainsail.
Data entry for day 18, ending the April 24 to April 25, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (505 - 350) = 155
Wind Speed: 20 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 7.1 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind waves/swells
Sail Plan: Two reefs in main, 30% unfurled
Course: 200 magnetic, 2 GPS
Barometer: 1015
Temp: 88 degrees F.
Humidity: 92%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 350
Location: 05.50.027, 134.23.557
Day 19 - April 25, Monday
We sailed along all night with 20 knots or so of wind, which lasted well into this morning. The moon is still doing its thing, though there is a concave curve to it. There was a lot of discussion about the sea state. We are out in the ocean, there is only twenty knots of wind blowing, there is about 3,000 miles of fetch, the waves are all from the same direction, and we are slightly close hauled. It wasn’t really bad at all compared to what’s possible with the other moods of the ocean. It was a bit more of a rough ride than you find in Puget Sound, I suppose. We are smelling the barn and anxious to get to it.
Data entry for day 19, ending the April 25 to April 26, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (350 - 208) = 142
Wind Speed: 6.0 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 16 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind/swells
Sail Plan: 2nd reef in main, 50% unfurled genoa
Course: 2 magnetic, 230 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 85%
My Handheld GPS distance to waypoint/Hiva Oa: 208
Location: 07.31.480, 136.03.853
Day 20 - April 26, Tuesday
Last night and today we have had multiple autopilot failures of various natures. Sometimes the boat starts spinning around in circles, sometimes it just starts wandering, but either way when you turn the autopilot off the helm is locked up rigidly, and you can’t steer the boat at all, the wheel just won’t move one inch. We have rebooted the autopilot, turned off all power at the breaker panel, and tried other software tricks but it won’t release the helm. So far we have been able to get it working again by turning the autopilot back on. The first time it happened yesterday evening we were stuck heading for Antarctica at 6 knots for an hour or so, which was an odd feeling if you let your paranoid fantasies play out. It is losing its mind more and more frequently, changing from once or twice a day to every 20 minutes to every 10 minutes. Tomorrow afternoon, which is hopefully our last daytime at sea, we will pull the pin connecting the autopilot ram to the rudder post. That should let us steer by hand overnight and the next morning. We expect to make landfall in the middle of the night very early Thursday morning, so will have to have hand steering to tack back and forth off shore and for entering the harbor. The autopilot is a Raymarine ST6002G, the stock, Catalina chosen, unit for this boat.
We called Raymarine technical support this morning. There was about a 10 minute wait on hold on the Satphone, which is a bit expensive. They are suggesting that the clutch is failing and sticking, which in turn prevents the autopilot from letting go of the helm when we go to standby mode or power off mode. Their closest dealer and service facility is in Hawaii.
We have, for the past couple of days, had a nice steady 15 to 20 knot breeze out of the S to SE. The S part is a bit surprising, as the GRIB files all show the wind from the E. Also, our Raymarine C80 shows a 2.5 knot current setting to the SSE, which is counterintuitive to me, given the steady and powerful trades blowing just the opposite direction. If true, though, it might explain the slightly lumpy nature of the seas – wind against current. The cloud cover is a sort of plebian set of small and not very active looking cumulus clouds, sort of low. Sea haze on the horizon at nights, and the stars were at least 50% obscured last night on my watch. We’re seeing lots of 4 to 6 inch long flying fish, but not finding them on deck.
This evening we disconnected the autopilot ram from the rudder post, instead of waiting until tomorrow. The Raymarine ST6002G completely failed us. We were turning in random complete circles, or holding course for the south pole, or basically heading where ever it felt like sending us. The wheel came free as soon as the ram was disconnected and as a side benefit the rudder is much quieter. We’re thinking that manual steering is much softer than autopilot steering, as the helmsman lets the wheel have a bit of natural motion as opposed to the rigid control of the autopilot. The human puts a little extra “give” in the system. This makes me suspect that a windvane steering system would likewise be easier on the rudder assembly, whether it is like my Fleming (which uses lines to the helm to control the ship’s rudder) or a hydrovane type that has its own rudder.
I raised Blue Moon on the VHF today. It was nice to hear another boat after all these days of silence. They were just a few miles from us, and were also heading for Atuona. I miss the SSB/ham connection, and would never want to be at sea again without it. While the satphone is nice to call family and sailing support people (Raymarine, etc.), actually quite invaluable, the radio connects you to the real players in the sailing community - the actual sailors out in the ocean sailing along with you. With the radio you make new friends and keep in touch with old ones, and you are connected to events important to you – weather, check in procedures, other boats in distress that you might help, the upcoming rendezvous at a certain anchorage or island….. The other negative about the satphone is the astounding cost of regular operations. I can’t believe the cost per minute of phone calls and the shockingly large amount of airtime minutes you are charged for downloading weather on top of the basic flat fee charged for each weather chart. The ham radio may cost a bit more initially if you just walk into a retail store and ask for a full package including installation, but after that it is essentially free. There are some good values in used radio gear on craigslist or at QRZ.com. If you are handy you can do a lot of the installation work yourself and save money there too. The satphone is mostly an expensive luxury, but that said it does add a layer of safety and convenience, plus you can call your mom and wish her happy birthday. Very nice to have both! Hands down, no question, get the radio first. If I was in a life raft, I’d want a satphone with me.
Data entry for day 20, ending the April 26 to April 27, 1pm to 1pm, 24 hour period:
24 hour Mileage towards waypoint: (208 - 78 ) = 130
Wind Speed: 18 knots (True)
Boat Speed at time of log entry: 6.6 knots
Wave Height/State: 8 foot wind/swell waves
Sail Plan: 2nd reef main, 80% unfurled of the 140% genoa
Course: 220 magnetic, 234 GPS
Barometer: 1013
Temp: 83 degrees F.
Humidity: 86%
My Handheld GPS distance to Hiva Oa: 78
Location: 08.59.714, 137.42.337
Day 21 - April 27, Wednesday
We arrived offshore of Atuona harbor at maybe 3 or 4 am, so we sailed around randomly in light breezes in the dark, waiting for daylight to enter the harbor. There was another sailboat doing the same thing. They had their tricolor on, but it must have been an old one as the colors weren’t visible and it looked more like an anchor light. I couldn’t tell the red side from the green side from the white stern light. The moon had set, and I was steering. It was so dark that all I could see of this boat was its white looking tricolor. For some reason, that very white-ish tricolor gave me no depth perception and I couldn’t tell how far away it was. They finally came on the radio and said that as we were motor sailing (we had our steaming light on) that they had the right of way and I’d better turn as they were really close. Sure enough, they emerged from the gloom just 50 yards away on a collision course. So I turned away. I prefer sidelights and a stern light when close in to shore, as they are easier to see and allow one to better judge the location of the boat displaying them.
We dropped anchor about 7 or 8 this morning. There were 19 other sailboats anchored ahead of us, and the big local interisland freighter/passenger ship, Aranui 3, was also tied up at the pier unloading general cargo. This is a fairly tight little anchorage with 19 boats in it, and with the freighter forcing us all to stay behind a line marked with two yellow Xs. Emil scouted out a nice hole to park in towards the beach and the jetty side, vacated moments before by a departing catamaran. We dropped the bow anchor, and then the stern anchor to match the prevailing anchoring technique at this anchorage. Sometimes at night a wind comes down the valley and really messes with the boats and the stern anchor is used to keep everybody from banging into each other.
We all jumped into the dingy and headed to shore to check in. The dingy dock is rough and abrasive. A lot of the dingys used stern anchors to hold themselves off of the concrete quay. My girlfriend Judy was waiting on the dock. She had flown to the Marquesas to join us on Shanti for the trip to Tahiti. Judy had met Sandra, the check in agent who contracts with our agent Cindy in Tahiti to handle the Marquesas end of the check in, several days before and made friends with her, so Judy and Sandra were waiting with Sandra’s car at the dingy pier to take us to the gendarme to check in. Checking in was easy, nobody came to the boat for a custom’s inspection, nor to any of the other boats as far as I’ve heard. We hung out at Snack Make Make for some Hino Tahitian beers, which were cold and excellent and 5% alcohol. Not having eaten for about 24 hours, I had a delicious but not very fancy omelet, too, which cost 20,000 XPF. The same omelet would have been maybe $6 at home. What a pleasure to sit on land and eat food somebody else made and from ingredients that weren’t on the boat! And, oh, was the icy cold beer ever good……
Judy had taken a room in the beautiful Pearl Hotel, overlooking the harbor, so after the beers and omelet she and I headed straight for it while Emil and Dominique went somewhere, maybe back to the boat or to wherever sailors go who don’t have an awesome hotel suite waiting for them. After being up all night, and after the several very relaxing Hino’s I had, I fell fast asleep on the great big king size bed, with the A/C on a gentle mild not too cold temperature. Well, first I took a beautiful shower in the beautiful open air enormous hardwood and stone shower stall that had an endless supply of soap and water available, and then spent a few minutes more looking out over the sailboats in the harbor and into the jagged dark brooding knife edged mountains of Hiva Oa. Oh, did that big bed feel good as I slipped off to a blissful sleep………… The Pearl is nice. The rooms are actually individual cabins, set in beautiful landscaped grounds….
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