Fueling

Today we replenished our fuel supply. We used an agent here in French Polynesia and pre-purchased our estimated fuel needs in advance (a month ago) as the station here needed to be sure to have enough fuel on hand for us, Oso Blanco and the usual other boats/vehicles that need fuel here. The fuel dock is a large concrete slab, much like a commercial ship tie up, and we had to go stern in, anchor the bow and tie lines from each corner of the stern to the concrete slab to steady the boat. The swell was pretty large this morning and the wind was very stiff. The fuel hose was passed to us by a rope and the process began. The fuel guys were very nice and in no time we were finished - 3 hours and 8600 liters later. Feels good to be full.

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Nuku Hiva

We have moved on from Hiva Oa to the island of Nuku Hiva. We wanted to move anchorage from the main bay at Atuona on Hiva Oa to the north side of the island, and the bays did look inviting, if you were on land, but the white caps breaking on the shore lead us to believe that it would be pretty rough to anchor, so we moved on. We motored on to Nuku Hiva and arrived last evening at 10:00 pm in the dark. It is a nice large bay and the sea conditions are very calm compared to where we have been so far. We gave the boat a quick splash this morning then headed into town to explore. Nice little town and we will be back again for more adventures tomorrow. It is so nice not to be wobbling back and forth at anchor.

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We're Here!!

We arrived at the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquises the morning of April 17, 2010. We caught the fragrance of the trees just as the land began to loom from the clouds at dawn. We were chasing rain clouds in along our route but couldn't catch them, we were hoping for a fresh water wash before we anchored up - No luck. The harbor here is very small and was full of sail boats, so Oso Blanco and ourselves planted anchor just outside the breakwater in good holding mud. A good hold is necessary as the swell comes right on in. Oso B. has a stern anchor out with their flopper stoppers and is fairing better in the rocking than we are without a stern anchor(have to get one A.S.A.P.). Our floppers have suffered too as the first night both retrieval lines jumped off of the blades, hummm? wonder how we will pull them back in? then we lost the port blade on the second night and fouled the starboard one. No problem, we straightened out the foul and we will dive down and find the lost one, we are only in 40 feet of water. We sent John and Russell off to do a tour of the island and Glen and I did the dive. Long story short - the visibility was absolutely zero, minus zero in fact so we cannot find the flopper blade. We are single floppered now, which helps, but not much, with the swell. So we will fall out of bed again tonight and hopefully future anchorages will prove smoother. Enough whinning.

Anchors down and both boat's crews raced to put dingys in the water to finally feel solid ground under their feet. And how sweet it was. We met Sandra on land, she is our customs representative here, the main office opened on Monday. Sandra filled us in on some of the sights and gave us a ride into town, about 3 km, so we could have a look around. We all enjoyed stretching our legs so much, that after a brief look around - all shops closed at noon and a lovely lunch that somebody else cooked for us, we all walked back to the dingy dock and our boats. Sandra made a reservation for all of us at a family run restaurant named Alex's (his home)for dinner. So 6:00 pm found us all back on the dingy dock waiting for Alex to pick us up and take us for dinner. He and his family provided a lovely meal of traditional dishes and we boat people soaked up the attention and pampering. French is very necessary for smooth communication, but we are getting by with our high school versions and a Fr/Eng dictionary. We constantly find ourselves saying Si when we should be saying Oui, but slowly we will work out of Spanish mode and into French mode. The town is quaint and clean, everything a person needs is just an "ask" away. Glen and I and John went to Mass on Sunday morning. Of course we couldn't understand the service, but the singing was absolutely stunning, like attending the finest concert. We just had to thank God for getting us here safely.
We washed the boat Sunday. Whew, what a job! Salt and soot all over and bobbing back and forth in the swell, but we all put on our sun tanning attitudes and enjoyed splashing ourselves as well as the boat with water. Can't ask for a nicer place to have to do a bit of hard labor. We had a leisurely meal on the boat in order to enjoy the results of our hard work, not to mention the refreshments that we used to congratulate ourselves with, for the crossing and the job well done.

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Destination Count Down

We only have 300 miles left!! Woo Hoo! We are all starting to plan like little kids what we are going to do once we get off of the boat on to solid ground. The last two days have been pretty sloppy seas and we've all been ping ponging off of the walls in the passageways and doing fancy dance steps to keep up right in the open spaces. Cooking requires octopus arms as everything has to be held on to so it doesn't slide across the counter tops on to the floor. Yes this includes cooking pots - and yes that built in pot holder that I said I didn't need would be very handy right now. Who Knew?? The winds have been 15 to 20 knots. Our Airmar weather station thinks the winds are 7 knots, but the flag is right sideways, so we are assuming the Airmar is mistaken. With the winds so high and the seas so big, we can't keep the doors open to the cabin as we fill the interior of the boat with salt spray - too much fun to clean up. So the doors are closed and the air con is on until we get landed. This decision was aided by the fact that we calculate we will have an abundance of fuel on our arrival so can spare the extra needed to run the generator 24 hr/day. We are expecting to arrive in Hiva Oa on the morning of April 17 and if that is the case, then the trip will have taken us 16 days as initially planned. Our position is 6 15.220 S and 134 59.721 W, we are slogging along at 7.6 knots, the sun is shinning - it's 29.7 degrees. Time for me to head out for my umbrella drink holding practice (I'll use a beer as my prop) and my "total relaxation pose" workout.

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Equator Party

We are in the Southern Hemisphere now!!! Yesterday at roughly 7:30 pm by the clocks we are running on, we crossed 0 latitude. Traditionally you are to have a celebration of this - it is as good an excuse as any - so we did. We had costumes for all of the crew, we were Tahitians - all of the same tribe. We cracked open a bottle of Champagne to share between ourselves and with King Neptune. We asked him to grant us continued good passage. And we had a photo shoot of ourselves (of course) and of the GPS screen to show the 0 00.000 latitude read out. We actually crossed the equator three times in a effort to get the photo as close to all zeros as possible. but the water was too full of swell and the best we got from all three cameras was 0 00.002 N . Our champagne bottle wouldn't cooperate for the photo shoot either, the cork would not pop, all three men trying to do the honors, so Russell finally had to pull out his pocket pliers and yank the cork out.

For the last 48 hrs we have had great current push from behind sending us up to 8.5 knots speed. The fuel burn has subsided such that we should have enough to reach our destination and have a 25% reserve. The weather is cooperating very nicely with temps of 28 deg and high humidity day and night requiring us to run the air conditioning in order to sleep. The seas are very nice, a long spaced 6-8 ft swell with a 2-3 ft sea on top. Looks like we will have these nice conditions right into Hiva Oa. We have 710 miles left to go and should arrive on the morning of Apr 17. We could however use one of those squalls to wash off the boat right now as it is totally covered with salt. Our current position is 01 34.370 S and 129 59.520 W. All of the fresh vegis and fruit have hung in there nicely, and we have been able to cook great meals with the nice sea conditions. It is good that we are well stocked with beer and wine and we will leave it at that!

We have had an electronics glitch. Our auto pilot lost heading information, causing our boat to make a hard right, as it turned back to the start point. This in turn caused our partner boat Oso Blanco to freak out as we came on to collision course with the only other boat in the near vicinity. Not to mention the craziness going on inside our boat while we tried to get the boat back on track. Happily this all happened during the day light. Oso Blanco called wanting to know if they should put the bumpers out! It seems that it was only a temp. satellite loss as everything has been operating fine since.

John and Russell are currently arguing over a card game and their friendship seems to be coming to an end!

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Day Number Nine

We had a pretty lumpy night last night as we had swell coming from the south and the north, creating very confused seas, as well we had 20 or better knots of wind from another direction, for more effect. Our seasoned crew members sleeping in the front of the boat both came up whining about uncomfortable sleeps(I guess we need to make them more margaritas before bed time!). One of our crew guys is mimicking a lobster now as he did not heed warnings about how strong the sun is out here. But we are finding these guys from B.C. tend to not listen very well. We celebrated our half way mark last night with a bottle of wine after our fine dinner of curried prawns and grilled mushrooms. Our speed is down a bit right now as we are pushing into a pretty stiff current, but in one more day it will have turned around and will be pushing from behind. Our position is 4.51.384 N and 123.09.701 W We have been running in and out of rain, this is because of un-organized squalls creating high winds for brief periods and then creates bigger waves. There is a zone that is called the ITCZ zone that roughly runs 4 to 6 deg either side of the equator and can be quite unstable with these squalls. But surprisingly, all in all the seas have been quite smooth being that we are in the middle of the ocean.. Our amusement has turned to watching for floating debris - and as you might expect there is a fair bit. We did spot a fishing boat out here last night- and almost missed the fact because of all the squalls on the radar, good thing he had his lights on!

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Half way Point

Today we will reach our half way point - 1350 miles. Luckily things are pretty boring out here. We prayed for a non event and so far it is working out that way. Got up to 22 knots of wind yesterday and we have been running in and out of little rain squalls, this is actually nice as it has rinsed all of the salt off of the boat so we feel pretty clean again. The humidity is crazy out here, like being in a constant steam shower, everything is wet. Our location is 6.22.730 N and 121.32.105 W , in a few more days we will be at the equator - another exciting moment in time. Yesterday, the sun was shinning so nicely in the morning, that we all went out and sat on the front of the boat - soaking it up. The boat is on auto pilot and drives itself, we just have to make sure that nothing gets in it's way and we had pretty good visibility from our front row seats. Another diversion to fill time is to put electonic marks on the squalls as they show up on the radar - this tells us the direction they are traveling and the speed - some of them travel at 50 plus knots/hr - thought you would like to know. Lots of books are being read and movies watched - life is very relaxed. I'll report next on equator day. TTFN

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