06/17/2012, 09 54.441'S:139 06.224'W, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas
Ahh yess, my mother has been complaining about the lack of blog posts. Which means that she and you other readers have discovered that we are only blogging when there is nothing better to do! ItÂ's a shame, we log all our activities when there are none. So when we are doing something we donÂ't feel like getting on the computer. So a few tidbts for you pathetic souls out there staring at your computer screens.... And one photo (still not great internet access, so haven't been posting photos, though a couple of galapagos photos may have made it into our galapagos galley ... check in the gallery section....much more to come when we are able...)
Fatu Hiva, the southernmost Island in the Marquesas, was amazingly beautifulÂ--as weÂ've already mentioned. Our second stop was the Island of Hiva Oa. A Larger Island, and also very beautiful with tall sharp peaks jutting out of the oceanÂ--there are no barrier reefs here. It does from very deep to nearly shear walls of moutains jutting up. Very dramatic. This picture is of our anchorage off Hanavave on Fatu Hiva.
Hiva Oa is famous for the artist Gaugin. Creep of a human being, but famous artist nonetheless. We visited a museum dedicated to his life and art, and some Marquesan history. Herman Melville also wrote a book about the areaÂ--Typee. Its really pretty remote here. But the people are friendly and the environs are very cleanÂ--which is a noticeable difference from some of our recent Spanish speaking environs. The fruit is fantastic. The giant grapefruit (Pamplemousse) is sweeter than most oranges IÂ've ever eaten. And the bananas and mangoes are outstanding as well. Plus the baguettes are cheap, delicious, and ubiquitous. Most other things are pretty expensive. Our laundry was expensive, about $90, but we paid with 2 bottles of rum and $30. It is well worth stocking up on rum in PanamaÂ--it trades very well.
We are now sitting in Hanamoenoe Bay on the north west end of Tahuata. Gorgeous clear deep water. BIG manta rays. and by big I mean BIG. 12-15' and bigger wingspans. The bay is uninhabited--no lights at night. Though other parts of the island are inhabited. The beach is white sand, though many are black sand here in the marquesas. It is lined with coconut palms and lots of other fruit trees--limes, mangoes, bananas, pamplemousse.
We are here with our friends on Nakesa and Barracca, and there are two french boats in the bay too. We will snorkel a lot today!! The position you should see on the google earth map is of precisely where we are in this bay....
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06/11/2012, 09 48.171'S:139 01.871'W, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas
Second anchorage in Paradise :). We are now anchored near Atuona on the Island of Hiva Oa. Another gorgeous spot, with huge green volcanic peaks jutting up from the Pacific. Still not good internet acces, but I think that is why we are here in the first place!! We check in with the Gendarmerie this morning. Did a bit of shopping, and have had a nice nap after our overnight passage from Fatu Hiva. We've also spotted Barracca--a boat we met in the San Blas. So we are headed over there for a Sundowner now!!
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06/08/2012, Hanavave, Fatu Hiva, Marquesas
So we are tidying up a bit, then we'll head ashore to hunt for what is supposed to be a fantastic waterfall, some ancient petroglyphs, and maybe a stone tiki or two.
Amy also has an appointment this morning to do some trading for some fresh fruit. Apparently nail polish and lipstick are hot trading items this year.
This really is an amazing anchorage. Very steep mountains that come straight out of the water. Along with a number of natural stone pillars that you look through and past up into a high mountain and valley to the east that are up in the clouds.
Sorry no pictures for a while yet, as there is not internet service.
Also, thanks to all who keep leaving comments. We do get them and do appreciate hearing from you.
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06/07/2012, 10 27.893'S:138 40.060'W, Hanavave, Fatu Hiva, Marquesas
We are at anchor. Caught a Giant Bull Mahi on the north end of the Island as we were coming in. Kind of a fiasco. We couldn't get the fish in because it was too big, and was continuing to take line. So we had to slow the boat down. First we reeled in the screecher. Not enough. Then I tried to gybe the main, since we didn't have much room to turn the other direction because of our proximity to the island. After we gybed, we tried to just round up into the wind, but a good size wave, timed with a few good gusts, ended up with the boat going backward and before you know it, we broke the main sheet -- the 20000lb plus breaking stength safety line on the broken harken block popped!!!!! I think I'm switching brands of blocks. The thing nearly tore my arm off. I have a massive bruise on my left arm from flying wreckage. The boom whipped around and I thought we were going to take out a shroud and lose the mast. But the other main sheet held. The whole time we are still battling the fish. Finally landed the sucker, and he was a long as I am tall, and weighed maybe 70lbs (our scale only goes up to 50lbs). So we have enough fish to feed a small village. We are already handing it out to others in the anchorage.
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06/07/2012, 10 13.078'S:138 14.201'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
Land Ho! We can see Fatu Hiva as of about 6:30 am this morning. We are about 6 hours out. Position is as of 16:49z. SOG 5.8kts. COG 253mag.
Can't smell it this time--the wind is blowing the wrong direction for that.
We had another block break this morning. I'm starting to not like Harken blocks. This time it was the block frame on a Harken Black Magic 75 series--it broke open and let the snap shackle free. I think I'm going to have to double up those safety lines that I have running through the block. This block is part of our main sheet system. A several hundred dollar bit of junk....
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06/06/2012, Galapagos to Marquesas
Mmmmm. Amy baked some delicious bread! We also just sailed past another sail boat. Tiesha II (phonetically...) came within about 100 yds of us. Its always weird to come so close to another small craft way out in the middle of no where. And here we thought we were the only people doing this.... Mental note, find something more original to do....
Still clipping along at about 7.5 kts. Making some water. Maybe do a bit of tidying up before we get in. The boat is in serious need of some cleaning.
For those of you planning a similar trip: Get Dyneema chafe sleeve from west marine. Many feet of it! Magic stuff. It is really just like having only the outer braid of a double braid rope--but made out of really slippery dyneema. We've found many places where a sheet might rub on rigging or superstructure, or even another sheet, so you slide a few feet of this over the line and into the appropriate position. Chafe--Gone!!! For example, the way our preventer is rigged, our screecher sheet rubs right against it. Slide some of the chafe sleeve into place on the screecher sheet and the wear from any chafing is gone. This stuff is really durable and really slippery. Just gets a slight fuzzing up with wear. It will also work well on dock lines or anchor lines/snubbers etc. It only seems to come in a couple of sizes that are a bit small, but it will fit over larger diameter lines pretty easily... Another example, we rigged our jib sheet around a shroud so that it w ould hold the jib open when well off the wind. Nearly chafed through the jib sheet in a day. I cut of that end of the sheet, slipped on some chafe sleeve, and re-tied on the sheet. Zero chafe after many many days of the exact same rubbing.
Also, now that we have had a high quality tylaska shackle shatter on us, we have made soft ties of all running rigging to the boat. That is, instead of clipping stainless shackles to stainless fittings like pad eyes, I have made loops of line at all attachment points and attach the shackles to the loops instead. This avoids some of the shock loading. Plus I have also run a back up line through the center of each block on the running rigging (for example a main sheet block) to the boat attachment point (typically pad eyes for us). so if the shack fails, or the loop that the shackle is clipped to fails, the back up line is there to catch the load before sending the block whizzing across the boat at skull shattering speed. Lose an attachment point on a sheet or a traveller and you could send your boom into your shrouds and lose your rig.... The shackle that failed on us was on our main sheet. Fortunately we have a weird double mainsheet set up--and no traveller, so the windward sheet failed and the leeward sheet caught the boom before it smashed into the shrouds. note that this happened in only 10 or 12 knots of wind, it wasn't a failure due to an undersized shackle--if anything it was well oversized. But shock loading, for example when the main fills in a sloppy sea, just popped the stainless where we had stainless connected to stainless. Hopefully the soft connections will prevent this. Another interesting bit of data on this front...I had a spare block to use when the tylaska shackle failed--with a standard snap shackle (a large harken snap shackle on a 75 series black magic block). The first thing I did was to run the sheet through it and attach it to the pad eye, with a safety line tied through the center of the block and through the pad eye--the damn snap shackle popped open within an hour of being set up. Another shock load--and mind you, not a bad shock load. I thought this must be a freak accident, so I just reattached the shackle. Mind you these are big harken snap shackles. It popped open again. Good thing I had the safety lines in place which caught the block each time. It was then that I made up the soft attachment points and the shackle has not popped open now after a couple weeks of heavy downwind trade winds use.....
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06/06/2012, 9 25.953'S:136 11.903'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
Position is as of 2043z. SOG 7.1k. COG 243 mag. We are about 160 miles from port. All is well.
Happy 20th Anniversary Amy. Did you ever believe when I talked about this before we were married, that we would actually do it?
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I'm in awe of y'all.
Most of the world has no idea.
06/05/2012, 8 57.843'S:133 47.258'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
Position is as of 2140z. SOG 4.4. COG 255mag. The wind has died and just as we are getting so close. We may have to break out the Spinnaker. (or the iron genny).
We are presently 300nm from port. We are melting in the equatorial sun, but otherwise all is well.
Today we are going to see if we can see the transit of Venus. The phenomenon apparently begins today around 2200z.
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06/05/2012, Galapagos to Marquesas
I thought that I should give my impressions of the the passage and a little update on how we're doing. It also gives me something to do at 1:00AM. The days have flown by but yet the passage seems never ending. Arthur says he's a bit bored but I find that there's not enough hours in the day to do everything that I want to do. Sleeping takes up prime daytime but then again watches take up prime sleeping time. I think having one extra adult for a night shift would make this a totally different passage.
Provisions have been holding up well in some things and not so well in others. We have plenty of meat in the freezer. Catching fish anytime we want it helps stretch that. What I would kill for is a banana. Those were gone the first week when my green ones ripened on day 2. I tried to save a watermellon for the second week, but when we got to it it had liquified -much to our dismay. I did not buy enough apples or potatoes. I have 5 potatoes that I've been hoarding and will roast tomorrow, and I have 2 hard green pears that I will spilt for an afternoon treat tomorrow and that will be it for the fresh fruit. I still have carrots and a few onions, one very wilted green pepper to keep my last wilted stalk of celery company, and lots of green oranges that are so sour that noone can eat them. I also have a big pumpkin that no one seems to like. I put it in soup and I roasted it but no one but me likes it. I forgot that I have three tomatoes that have finally ripened. I bett er use them tomorrow before they go bad.
The kids are doing well. We are craking the whip to make them keep up on their math and writing everyday. Rivers finished her history and science books for the year. Stephen has been dragging his feet when it comes to schoolwork. We took a break from the books while we were in the Galapagos and now he doesn't want to start back up. The boat motion also makes it hard to study but it doesn't stop him from devouring two large book series. He's finished the 10 book Arthur Pendragon series and is into book 6 of the Alex Rider series (thank you s/v Liberty and Jill for the books). We have limited electricity because the autopilot and navigation electronics use so much, so the kids can't watch movies and play the computer all day.
Tomorrow is Arthur and my 20th wedding anniversary. Maybe I'll bake a pumpkin pie to celebrate.
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06/04/2012, 8 28.367'S:131 29.463'W, Galapagos to Marquesas
We are getting there bit by bit. We are starting our 17th day out today. Before this, my longest passage had been 17 days, and that was back in 1987 on a very slow windless trip from the British Virgin Islands to the Annapolils, MD. Amy, Stephen and Rivers longest passage had been 7 days 5 hours from Panama City, Panama to Academy Bay, Santa Cruz, Galapagos, Ecuador.
Position is as of 2140z. SOG 6.5kts. COG 252 mag. Saw what looked like a couple of boats on radar last night. But no visual sightings.
We've slowed down a bit and are going wing on wing again. Which is actually a fairly comfortable point of sail for us. Waves nearly directly behind us, and we don't get much roll obviously since we are on a cat. It is a bit warm though...
Wind speed is in the mid teens. Seas are 2-3 meters.
All is well.
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