As I understand it, Mea Culpa is an admission of guilt and an assumption of responsibility for doing bad things. Guilty as charged for causing unnecessary worry as to our whereabouts over the past couple of weeks. After visits from multiple cruisers on the dock, along with the heavy hitters from the marina it seemed prudent to make a phone call to pass the word we were OK.
I must admit; however, it was a bit astonishing to find out there are so many people following our passage. I will do better.
Needless to say, I do have a fairly legitimate excuse for going dark for such a long time. Perhaps not legitimate, but an excuse nonetheless. Some lay recall that early on the passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas I spilled a cup of coffee on the keyboard of my laptop, making writing tedious and difficult under the best of circumstances. For some reason not known to me a small portable keyboard, connected by Bluetooth did not work much of the time, so I eventually discovered what the “Ease of Access” settings were for. One of them is a nifty on screen keyboard. Nifty is perhaps the view of its inventor, some geek with a perverse sense of humor. I will describe its workings to further assuage my guilt for not writing and provide a sense of what some people describe as easy.
First you open the on-screen keyboard, found as mentioned under Settings; Ease of Access. It normally occupies about 1/3rd of the screen requiring resizing and or moving around the screen on a regular basis. Using it to type involves moving the cursor over the letter you want, then clicking the mouse pad with a certain amount of force (so the computer knows that you definitely want that letter), once the chosen letter appears on your document you move the cursor to the next letter of choice and repeat. You must be very careful in your selection and in making sure the letter you want appears in your document because erasing is a big task. The easiest way to correct a mistake is to use a combination backspace/delete key that attempts to be helpful. How is it helpful? It only allows you to delete a single letter at a time, pausing and requiring you to repeatedly hit the key (generally harder with each strike) until you get to the incorrect letter, at which time you can fix it.
The bottom line is I sort of went on strike, or perhaps a bit nuts, and refused to write anything until I could repair or replace my laptop. Also, Al Gore has not spent much time here extolling the virtues of his invention, the Internet. It exists, but in a primitive form and seems to be monopolized by the French Postal Service (much better than its US counterpart) and Vinny the local phone provider. In some locales, you can receive a signal, which remains on for a bit then does not. Still, a lesser challenge than writing with the equivalent of a quill pen and no ink.
To answer the obvious question, I am writing this on my brand-new laptop. It is an ASUS and appears to have everything I need, including blazing fast i7 Intel processors, a combination hard drive using both a solid state flash drive and a traditional one terabyte SATA drive. The local computer shop was able to do everything I needed in terms of converting it from French to English except to change the keyboard. It seems most European countries prefer the metric system and a non QWERTY keyboard. Since I type with one finger from each hand the location of the letters poses little difficulty. The interesting and somewhat challenging thing is symbols and punctuation are very different. It requires the Shift key to, type a . and if you do not use the number pad typing numbers also require the shift key. I am quickly getting used to it and it does make me feel worldly to master this European thing.
Yes this is still a blog about our sailing adventures, I simply needed to rationalize my silence before proceeding. I believe the last adventure had us tearing along at about eight kts. On passage between the atoll of Rangiroa and Tahiti. Aboard with Charlene and I were Charlene’s good friend Mary, whose great passion is diving so she had flown about 14 hours from Orlando to experience the South Pacific, and our terrific crew, Stine, the great Dane.
We had spent four days in Rangiroa mostly diving and snorkeling with the abundant wildlife, including sharks, rays, zillions of fish and a few turtles. The other main attraction there was the Pearl Farm. Yes they grow pearls of amazing quality and value, and yes there was a shopping spree or trip.
The sail to Tahiti turned into one of those rare nights with stars, the moon and no clouds. Calm seas and a good wind made the 225 NM passage literally fly by to the point we had to slow the boat way down the last several miles to wait for sunrise before entering the pass at Tahiti. Once there we took on fuel, the first time in over 4000 NM of sailing, picked up our mail from the US and spent the first night tied to a dock since leaving Panama. Early the next morning we sailed to Moorea, about ten miles across from Tahiti and the location for most scenic pictures (and movies) of the South Pacific.
That was the first time I had anchored in a lagoon with nothing but reef between us and the Pacific rollers. Outside you could see and hear the roar of the ocean waves crashing on the reef, inside it was smooth as glass and the water was crystal clear. Visibility under water was close to 100 feet. I did some boat chores and the ladies went in search of whales. Successfully. They went with a guide who also caught a good size Tuna, which he promptly filleted and served for lunch. Ocean to mouth in under 10 minutes probably counts as “fresh fish”.
Since Mary’s flight home was Wednesday we returned to Tahiti on Tuesday. It was sad to see Mary leave, she had been great fun to have aboard and we thoroughly enjoyed her visit. Equally sad was the departure of our great Dane. When Stine signed on in Panama she said she might go az far as Tahiti, reserving the right to get off earlier if she choose to. Several of her contemporaries are here in Tahiti and we suspect they are off doing young people things, which is good. It was an absolute pleasure to have her aboard for the passage from Panama to Tahiti and all in between. When she joined us, she had about 500 miles sailing experience, when she left she had crossed the Pacific Ocean and sailed over 5000 NM. She has become an accomplished sailor with a great deal of self-confidence and we are certain she will excel at whatever she chooses for her life. We wish her Fair Winds and Following Seas. More Later