Earl of Tasmania

Out of Bora Bora on to Tonga with a stay at the island nation of Niue.
Bora bora was fantastic and it was sad to leave. made many friends and had a wonderful time.
The sail to Niue was the most dificult so far. for two and a half days we had sustained winds of over 30 with gusts over 50. the waves were huge, over 20 feet at times.
Niue was a great place to stop and recover. 1200 miles from Bora and 250 from tonga.
explored sea caves and met some new friends at the niue yacht club.
now in tonga, taking care of tassies needs and doing laundry and making plans to explore.

Sitting at the bar having a cold Hinano. Cold beer has been quite the treat, after the 10 day passage from Aneho bay to Bora Bora, without autopilot, as it went caput directly after departing. And will be sitting at the Mai Kai resteraunt bar sipping the beer of Tahiti for a couple more weeks as I wait for a new autopilot to arrive from home . Such suffering stuck in bora bora for a month waiting, with
Tassie on a mooring and me eating fantastic French food,every day. Not so bad .

Here i am sitting in the post office updating my blog. in nuku hiva , french polynesia and what a long fantastic trip its been. A 21 day crossing from vallarta to hiva oa was mind boggling. i dont have the time now to go into everything as the internet here is spotty at best. Tassi has been better than good, only minor breakages with DIY fixes. squalls were challanging and we had good wind all the way . the food held up well and some of the menus were very interesting, Couscous with parmason andmarinated sundried tomatoes was a 5star dinner, with the last of the red wine. oh yes cocktail hour usualy consisted if what i call an offshore gimlet, Juice of two limes and a shot of anything; Ta Ta for now more to come when the connection is better, maybe in bora bora a couple of weeks from now. SeaYaSoon, TC

Officially out of mexico , but still in la cruz. As tomorrow through monday are federal holidays in mexico i have been granted permition to leave today , but i wont be physcally be departing till first light saturday, not thursday, no rush. All my provisioning is finished, boat is ready, and the weather forcast is better for getting away from the coast saturday and sunday and than 2,800 miles to paradise # 2 .
The youtube of the race start taken from the gopro camera that was attached to the backstay on Blue will be available for viewing manana. Sorry no gore , but i heard that I look fabulous, surely to go viral.
Hiva Oa Soon !

Great day today riding the bus all over town getting my errands done so I can head west !!
The boat is all fixed and ready.
Formalities for leaving the country are in process.
Need to do my provisioning for the crossing over the next couple of days.
And the weather forcast looks perfect for a thursday 3/28 departure.
I love this place, I love the people, It will be hard to move , but move on we must.
ps: got great pictures of mikes xrays when i visited him today
, and yes his recovery after surgery is going well.
TaTa for now.

Lots to write about since departing Bahia tortugas . A seven day sail to Bahia de bandaras , the bay that has Puerto Vallarta to the south and la Cruz to the north. The sail loft which was chosen to repair the main sail was PV sailing in la Cruz and that is where are we made our first land fall .
Departing tortugas on a sunny warm Tuesday morning( 3/12)we made are way out of the bay and attempted to hoist the main with my temporary fix. That did not work so good . It did not go up smoothly , getting stuck several times , and thinking that it might be even more difficult to get it down in a hurry ,if I needed to night, it might be even more difficult, so I decided to bring it back down to the boom and sail with only a head sail on this leg to PV . The boat worked quite well using just a big genoa and we moved along quite nicely.
Along the way we saw whales moving on by several times and as always our faithful companions, dolphins
And we spoke to the Queen , Queen Elizabeth !
Yes , sailing solo for days on end does mess with your mind, but really we did talk to the Queen on the VHF radio!
Tassie has an AIS receiver on board. That is an Automatic Identification system that all commercial vessels are required to carry and it sends a signal to my ais receiver which identifies the ship and shows me where they are and there speed plus where they are heading.
Well 0100 on 3/14 we had an ais target coming up fast from behind. I clicked on the target to I D the ship and behold her name was queen Elizabeth , the thousand foot cruise ship. Of course I had to raise her on the radio and have a chat with the queen . they were also on there way around the planet there next port of call was also to be pto vallarta .
Midnight 3/17 we passed within 4 miles of cabo san lucas. pretty tough not to stop, but on to vallarta we went.
I wake up tuesday morning 3/19 with tres Marias, not hallucinating, these are the names of 3 islands 50miles north west of Punta Mita , the northern most point of banderas bay.
Just before midnight we enter the bay, 7 1/2 days since leaving Bahia Tortugas. now just 8 miles Marina la Cruz.
Well the wind died and we fired up the engine , but getting close to la cruz i decided not to take the risk of coming into a strange marina at 2am, after over 7 days sailing alone, so we turned the engine off and floated about the bay till sun rise.
Arrival at marina la cruz was pleasant, the harbor master was there to pick up my dock lines and the marina is pristine.
After putting the boat away and cleaning her, I checked into the marina office, showered and got the main sail on a dock cart and up to the loft, up a gravel road, down a dirt road, up a hill and and there was pvsailng a great house with a full sail loft in the back with a 180 degree harbor view.
Mike and Eddy could not have been any nicer. they started the repair right away and Mike invited me to race the next day on the J160"Blue", an amazing yacht.
Next up port captians office. well come to find out we can not do customs or immigration in la cruz , we must go 5 miles down the bay to marina nuevo vallarta. Manana.
Thursday. We motor down to nuevo at sunrise and speak to the port captian. he says first I need to speek to Jaun the marina manager to make an appointment, Jaun will be in office in 1 hora, at 900am. We wait.
At 930 Jaun shows up and he emails customs and immigration for us and makes an appointment to meet on boat at 1030. We wait.
Race starts at 1230 with out me.
1245pm customs reaches boat does his paperwork but said i still need to get a permit for the boat at the Banjercito in Puerto Vallarta, a 30 minute taxi ride away and bring the permit to the airport customs office.
Next the immigration official does his thing , but i need to go to the bank to pay for his service, because he can not accept money, and than deliver the reciept to his office. This is a 15 minute ride, but at least the immigration guy gave me a ride, and before we left the port we did get checked inwith the port captian. YEH we are officialy in mexico, legally.
200pm done with immigration and now on to Banjercito.
I give my docs to the banjercito teller and she says they need to email mexico city before issuing my permit. we wait. 300 they close,come back manana they say. I go back to the boat, and wait.
Friday i choose to wait till monday to finish the permit proceess and go back to la cruz for a fun day of racing on Blue.
A fantastic boat , fun crew, and a perfect day for a sail,l sunny warm and 15- 20knots of breeze.
And then.............the start. A couple of manuevers and , we are weather boat a couple boat lengths from the start, and a hunter 54 starts to take us up, at the moment plenty of room, and then.....right at the line she take us up again, but we have no room as we are right at the commitee boat. Our driver trys to avoid an imminent collision , and mike from pv sailing our tacticion slips and falls and one leg gets stuck in the port toe rail chock ( usually ment for dock lines ) and the right leg goes over and gets crushed between the hunter and our boat. I was the starboard jib trimmer and i see the whole bloody mess, and i mean bloody!! Compound fracture Tibia, a fountian of crimson half way between ankle and knee. I'm the first one down to Mike, bring his hips around and his leg back on to the boat, one hand over the wound , one under for support, applying pressure to stop the bleeding while supporting the bones that are moving about between may hands, I call for a towel, fortunatly Blue has very nice linens on board, and a skrew driver to try and remove the toe rail and release mikes left leg which is jammed at the ankle in the chock, a 5 inch gash across the top of his foot, eliptacle shaped, an inch wide at the center, quite a good view of the inner part of the foot. Mike asked to be transfered to another boat so we can continue racing, Ya Right ! No way we can get him off the boat, we need to get to the nearest marina. Mike, while in more pain the i could ever imagine, is on his phone checking the tide to see if we can get into marina nuevo vallarta, Blue has a 9 foot keel, no way, tide to low , we must go 40 minutes further to marina vallarta. Mike realizing that his left ankle is going to swell, moves it around till he gets it free.( Later we find out his ankle is broken in three places !! ) One of the other crew member is now applying pressure to the left foot to stop the bleeding and we move mike very carefully to the starboard aft quarter so we can access the lazerette that has the dock lines and fenders, all while i am holding the bones together and stopping the bleeding. We are both laid out in the back of the boat on Blue's Hotel quality pillows, and Mike is on the phone with an orthapedic surgeon he knows , and organizing the ambulance and what hospital to take him to, and calling his wife and calling the race commitee, WITH TWO BROKEN LEGS !
We get him to the fuel dock where the ambulance is waiting and off to the hospital he goes sirens wailing.
What a race ! craziest one ever for me. Those safety at sea seminars paid off, as ive never had to deal with compound fractures before, my first aid memories all kicked in. And there was a Doctor on board , an anethesiologist, whom provided mike with pain killers and antibiotics that he had in his bag. And fortunatly saying we did all the right first aid and did not need to intervene.
Well Mike got a steel plate and six skrews in his left leg and a rod in his right, he will surly be doing the samba in 2014, as he is toughest person i have ever met. I got the fealing back in my left arm, after holding his wound together for almost an hour, and his blood washed off me and the deck.
Oh, the race commitee called us over early, we were disqualified.
And so it goes, a fine sail, a repaired main, the mexican formalities, and a wild time on a fine yacht.
What next ??