Kathy's Weekly Recap Log (or as Casey calls it: The boring stuff) DAY 22: Wed, May 28 Seas: 7-9 ft, rolly seas Wind: SE by day, E by night, 12-20 knots Sails: Reefed jib and double-reefed main Power: Generator- hrs, engine-1231-1224=7hrs Water: None made Miles traveled at 8am: 291-168=123 mi Meal: Mac and cheese, leftovers Mood of captain and crew: Tired, but Casey still managed to finish reading another book: The Secret Valley. School: None Other: Adventure is continually creaking and groaning as it slices through the open seas. We get use to each particular sound so that when a new one arises, we all know. Sean and I were below and Tara was in the cockpit when we heard the dreaded unfamiliar noise. Sean and I immediately looked at each other and I said, "that was a new noise." Just as Tara yelled, "the sail is ripping!" We ran up on deck and saw that our mainsail was ripping in half, between the first and second reef points. The tear started at the back of the sail and was half-way across. Sean quickly pulled in our jib as I started the engine and headed to wind so we could lower the main. Since the tear was below the second reef point, we put in the second reef and left the sail up. The jury is still out on what made the sail rip. We'd been sailing with a single-reefed main in 25 knot winds during the night, but it was only blowing 13 knots when the sail ripped. Perhaps we tightened the reef line too tight and it pulled the sail apart at the seam. Or the accidental jibe the night before may have weakened it. Or it could have been any other number of things. Thankfully the sail tear happened during the day. Darkness adds a whole other dimension of problems when something goes wrong.

As the sun went down, Tara and I quickly finished our scrabble game before it got too dark to see. As we finished putting the game pieces in a bag, a green light falling through the sky caught my eye. I turned in time to see the light fall in an arch, down through a thin cloud layer, and then below the horizon. Being away from all light pollution, I've seen plenty of falling stars on this trip. The light I saw was not like any of the falling stars I've seen. I yelled to Sean and Casey, who were below watching Magnum P.I. that I thought it might have been a flair. Sean sent out a hail on our VHF for any boats in our vicinity, but there was no response. He then looked up flairs in two books and both said that distress flairs were red and recognition flairs were white. The books didn't mention green flairs. We were pretty sure that what I saw was not a flair, but e went ahead and tacked toward where the light had been just in case there were other signals. After an hour and several more hails on the VHF, we tacked back to our original course. I'm still not convinced that I saw a falling star, but it seems the most likely explanation. I saw a bird for the first time since a few days out of Galapagos. Movie: Sean and Casey: Star Trek The Next Generation and a Magnum P.I. Tara and I sat in the cockpit and played Scrabble.

DAY 23: Thu, May 29 Seas: 8-10 ft, short-frequency, rolly seas Wind: E, 12-20 knots Sails: Jib and double-reefed main Power: Generator- hrs, engine-1248-1231=17hrs Water: Made 75 gallons Miles traveled at 8am: 168-128=40 mi Meal: Casey made Panda Express Mandarin Chicken Mood of captain and crew: Tired, but Casey still managed to finish reading another book: The Riddles of Epsilon. School: None Other: What is a boom brake you ask? Well, ours is a boom break. It's suppose to keep the main sail from accidentally jibing. Ours has been breaking for quite some time and has now finished breaking. It hangs limply from the boom because the metal bracket that holds it in place is bent and most of the screws that hold the bracket have stripped out of the boom. So now we don't use the boom brake.

We've been in really humid areas, but the air is now getting dryer. Today is the first day in the past year and a half that my lips starting to get chapped. Guess I'll have to dig around and find some two-year-old chapstick. One of my digital kitchen timers that's been broken for the past 6 months because of moisture just started working again today. It's finally had a chance to dry out! We all showered today. Movie: Casey and Sean watched Magnum P.I. and Tara and I watched Monk

DAY 24: Fri, May 30 Seas: 8-10 ft, short-frequency, rolly seas Wind: E, 8-14 knots Sails: Double-reefed main Power: Generator- hrs, engine-1256-1248=8hrs Water: None made Miles traveled at 8am: 40-0=40 mi Meal: Egg, cheese, and ham sandwiches Mood of captain and crew: Excited. When Tara woke up to the sight of land, she said, "it feels like Christmas!" Sean seems to also be cheered by the sight of land and his depression seems to be quickly fading. Casey seemed unimpressed and said she didn't really want to go to shore until the next day. I was eager to get to shore to walk on solid land. School: None Other: We limped into port at Atuona at Hiva Oa with two ripped sails, a broken boom brake, and a missing running light. Sean's happy that this is all that went wrong and, looking at it from a cost perspective, will probably be less expensive to fix than the things that broke on previous passages. When we arrived in the crowded and surgery anchorage, a sailboat hailed us to let us know where a good anchoring spot was that another boat had just left that day. As we set our anchor, the nice cruisers on Astra launched their dinghy to help us set our stern anchor and to invite us to dinner on their boat the next night. We got a good anchor spot, closest to the dinghy dock and furthest from the waves that make their way into the small bay. The only negative is that we're also the closest (about 15 yards away) to a 200-foot rusty barge that has "Danger Explosif" painted on the side. We're hoping that in French, these words mean "totally harmless barge, park as close as you like."

I called the yacht services agency that some of the other boats used to check them into the country. Sandra said, in her very French accent, that she'd meet us at the pier in ? hour. We launched our dinghy and motored the few hundred feet to the concrete dinghy pier, where we're suppose to stern anchor so the surge won't smack our dinghy against the concrete and barnacles. We didn't really know how to do this seemingly tricky maneuver, but the water was calm at the moment so it worked out o.k. The crummy little pier and visitor's shack were beautifully decorated with fresh flowers and palm branches. Although we initially thought they'd prepared this for our arrival, we soon found out that a cruise ship was arriving the next day.

Sandra gave us a list of services and prices. For the official clearances, bond exemption letter, duty free fuel formalities, and 90-day visa extensions, our total price was 68,200 C.F.P. (some kind of French francs). She told us the exchange rate is about 72 CFP to 1 USD, so I did a quick calculation to find that our price was about $950.

Although Sandra only spoke French and broken English, I kept speaking to her in Spanish. Since I didn't know French, my mind kept throwing the only foreign language I knew out of my mouth when I spoke. It was the oddest thing. I couldn't stop and it started to get embarrassing.

Since we don't speak French, Sean had been adamant about using an agent to clear into the country, but $950 is a lot of money. I gave him "the look" and he reluctantly agreed to let me handle our checkin as long as he didn't have to talk or be involved at all. He would just stand behind me and sign his "captain" signature on the forms. Sandra told us she had several other services that she personally provided, including laundry. Sean immediately said, "Great! We have lots of laundry." Sandra was all too eager. That's when I asked the price; 410cfp=$5.70 per kilo. The most we've paid for laundry service on our trip has been $2 per kilo. At Sandra's price, our laundry bill would be well over $100. I told her, I needed to get our boat in order before I did the laundry, to buy some time to check out prices in town. Sandra said she also has internet service at her home. Sean said, "Great! We really need internet service, and lots of it." Sandra again looked eager. I asked the price; 800cfp=$11 per hour. The most we've paid to date is $2. It was at this point I concluded that either the islands are going to be really expensive, or Sandra's charging a premium over the businesses in town. I thanked Sandra for coming to give us the info and told her we'd call her the next day to let her know which services we would use. I knew Sean just wanted to get checked into the country, get his clothes washed and spend a few hours on the Internet. He'd been 24 days at sea and didn't care how much he had to pay. But I did.

We talked to two other cruiser couples at the pier and found that a 2-mile taxi ride to town cost $14. We walked to the tiny town to find a restaurant. None were open. We had to coax Casey to come to town with us because she just wanted to stay on the boat, so she complained during most of the walk and the closed restaurants almost put her over the edge.

We went into the first market we saw to buy bottles of water. We were the only ones in the store. There was one refrigerator with cold drinks and the rest of the small store contained dry goods. I spotted some cans of chips on the shelf and lifted one to show Casey. The top of the can was covered with a thick layer of dust. The cashier said something to me in French and made hand gestures to inform me that I shouldn't buy them, they were not good. Having no local currency, I paid for the four bottles of water with a $20 bill. The clerk looked a little confused and then typed 2,000 into the cash register and gave me the change it said on the display. This didn't seem right to me, but I didn't have a calculator to try to figure it out. It's always disorienting for the first day or two when we encounter a new currency, especially one that is 72 to 1. We sat on a bench outside the store while I looked at the change. The currency has beautiful Polynesian art on it. I tried to wrap my brain around the exchange rate to see if I got the right change back. I was confused. It seemed to me that the cashier gave me too much money back.

Tara and I went to the ATM to get local currency and then to a small grocery store while Sean and Casey sat on a bench to rest. We chose the largest of the 3 grocery stores and were shocked at the prices. A medium-sized jar of Skippy peanut butter was $10; a standard-sized box of Frosted Flakes was $10; and alcohol, we were told, is the most expensive in the world here. The locals didn't seem to notice the high price of alcohol because it looked like that was all they were buying (and lots of it!). One already drunk guy used the few English words that he knew to flirt with us while he bought more beer. We only had a few minutes in the store, but I tried to find the lower-priced foods that the locals would eat. Rice seemed to be average-priced and baguette prices are subsidized by the government. I'll have to investigate more on another shopping trip.

When we got back to the boat, we were all tired from the unfamiliar walking activity and Casey had 2 large blisters on her feet from her flipflops. But everyone was excited that we had fresh eggs and baguettes, so I made egg sandwiches for dinner.

That night, I used a calculator to see how much the bottles of water cost. It seems that the cashier gave me a 100 to 1 exchange rate for the $20 bill, so we got the water plus $24 back in change. I think we owe the store $8.

My children think it's the oddest thing, but it seems that some of you actually liked to read the "boring stuff" that I've been writing for our crossing. I'm willing to continue to post a weekly update now that we're in the Marquesas as long as people are interested. I'll monitor readers comments to judge interest, so if you're reading, please let me know once in a while if you want me to continue. Also, if there's another category you'd like for me to include (like how many rolls of toilet paper we use each week), let me know.

Sat, May 31 Weather: overcast most of the day with a few light sprinkles Meal: Jeremy and Sally from Astra, and their two crew: Ashley, and George, had us over for dinner, where Sally prepared a wonderful meal of roast beef, carrots, potatoes, cheese sauced broccoli, gravy, yorkshire pudding (which we found was not pudding at all), and great company. We felt like royalty. School: Math, science, and history only Other: Sean and I got up at 6:30am so we could take showers and then get checked into the country. The time here is 3.5 hours later than in Galapagos, so since we set our clocks back just last night, it felt like 10am to us. We went up on deck and saw a huge cruise ship anchored just outside the breakwater. Already, the ship's staff was setting up a tent, chairs, and beverages at the pier, their pickup/drop off spot for guests, who pay $5,000 each for the cheap rooms - just for a week in the islands. When the cruise ships arrive at any of our anchorages, I remember why our boat, even though it seems expensive many times, is such a bargain. And we get to experience so much more than the cruise ships can offer.

After breakfast, the French coast guard came to Adventure for an inspection. The girls were especially excited because they said that officials always come to our boat when Sean and I are gone. They were both nervous that the officials would come as soon as we left for the village.

The primary questions the coasties asked were: Do you have any alcohol on board? (yes, 2 bottles of wine. Looking skeptical, the interrogator said, "is that all?" Yes, we're not heavy drinkers and are trying to teach our kids to be responsible. He agreed that this was a very good thing, but highly unusual. Do you have any firearms? (No.) Do you have any drugs? (No. And I guessed that in all the years of them asking this question, not a single person has said "Yes"). They were especially interested in the 2 bottles of wine and wanted to see them. We went below to our cabin, still messy from our crossing, and I showed them the 2 bottles. They didn't look at anything else. No opening drawers or doors to look for contraband. They just wanted to see the wine.

After they left, Astra called us to make sure we'd be around in the afternoon to help pull Strummer, a disabled sailboat, into the harbor with our dinghies. They were just arriving from Galapagos and had lost their engine's forward gears.

I called Sandra on channel 11 to tell her we wanted to use the agency just to get a duty-free fuel letter, which allows us to purchase fuel at $4.67/gallon, rather than the $7/gallon that the Marquessans have to pay. Her price sheet listed this service at $97, so it's worth getting if you need more than 40 gallons of fuel. She explained that the agency only provides their services as a complete package, so we'd have to pay the full $950. After speaking with her for some time to try to understand and telling her we wanted to use her internet service, she said she'd come to pick us up at the pier. She drove us about 5 miles to her home, which is close to the base of a huge volcanic cliff wall covered with green foliage. The surreal kind of backdrop you'd see in a King Kong movie. Sandra called her boss, Laurent, in Tahiti and he explained to me that it was an all or nothing deal. I told him that we didn't need his "bond exemption letter", which he charges $100 per person for. The government here requires that non-EU cruisers post a bond for each person on board in the amount of a one-way airline ticket from Tahiti to your home country. This can be done through the bank (which I heard, but did not verify, would cost us about $140 each), through a bond exemption letter (which only the agent can do and costs $97 each), or by actually purchasing an airline ticket. I knew I could save at least $400 buy simply purchasing fully refundable airline tickets from Tahiti to Los Angeles and then canceling the tickets in 3 months when we check out of the country. I agreed to use the agency for all the other services, but Laurent wouldn't budge. I used Sandra's internet service to Skype Air Tahiti Nui (877-824-4846) and reserved 4 one-way, fully refundable tickets from Papetee to Los Angeles for $2,002.60 each. I'll read the fine print that they are emailing to me tomorrow to make sure there's no catch and then make my purchase. Sean is warming to the idea of doing the country checkin/out without the agent now.

That afternoon, I realized that I had to fix my oven so I could make a dessert for our dinner with Astra. I wiped down the oven sensors, which didn't help. I then got some fine-grain sandpaper and lightly sanded the metal sensors. I tried the oven again and, yes! The oven lit. I quickly made some brownies and slid them into the oven just before we were hailed to come help with the rescue.

A catamaran that was passing through gave Strummer a tow to the breakwater, where we and 3 other dinghies took over and pulled her safely into the anchorage.

Taking advantage of the sun that peeked through the clouds to dry my clothes that got drenched from the "rescue", I helped Casey hang a hammock above the deck. We then went to Aster for a lovely meal.

George is a young high-school math teacher in England and I was excited to discuss my theory that there should be a mathematical equation to find out if turning a certain number of degrees away from ones course to gain more speed is worth it or not. George told me that they on Astra had in-depth discussions on this very topic and that he figured, if all other factors remained constant, the calculation is speed times the cosine of the degrees off course). If this number is greater than the speed you would go if you stayed on course, then the tack off course is worth making. Tara is learning sine and cosine in math, so I'm going to put her in charge of using this formula to get us to our destinations faster. This is going to be great!

Jeremy told us that the four of them had gone to one of the town's three restaurants for a starter, 4 hamburgers and 5 beers two days before and the bill was $200. To top it off, they said the food wasn't even very good. So it sounds like we'll be eating almost exclusively on the boats. I see lots of dinner parties in our near future.

When we left Astra tonight, Casey noticed a huge cockroach on our dinghy. I flicked it off and wondered how it had gotten there. We have had maybe 10 very small roaches in Adventure our entire 19-month trip. Then I remembered that roaches can fly. We boarded Adventure and, when Tara turned on the cabin light she started screaming and then Casey joined in. In my haste to get below to see what the commotion was about, I slipped down the last three steps of the entry-way and wrenched my arm as I clung to the hand hold. The popping sounds that I heard make me think it's going to hurt for a while. The screaming was about several other roaches that were scurrying around looking for a dark crevasse to hide in. Casey made me check her entire cabin for bugs, including lifting her mattress up so she could look under it. We may need to put up our screens to see if we can curb the roach's interest in our boat. Tara, Casey, and I all got one mosquito bite since we've been here, but the dreaded no-se-ums have not appeared yet.

Sun, June 1 Weather: overcast most of the day with a few heavy rain periods Meal: Cajun fish (the wahoo Sean caught), saffron rice, green beans, and a heavenly poor man's apple cake that Casey made School: None Other: I had trouble sleeping last night because my right upper arm was aching. Sean dropped the girls, me, and one-third of our dirty laundry from the past month at sea off at the dock so we could do some laundry in a bucket using the faucet by the pier. We set up our two buckets, one for sudsing and one for rinsing and started to wash the first load. A light rain started and then a downpour. We ran to the only shelter nearby, the closed visitor's center shack, and sat under the roof of the porch for a half hour and watched it rain. Just as it quit raining, a truck pulled up. Out hopped three teen-aged boys and a young man, who conversed with us in limited English as the boys giggled. The man said the high school doug-out canoe rowing teams were coming to practice. For the next two hours, Tara and Casey had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to wash their most delicate clothes at a faucet in front of an entire (girls and boys) high school rowing team. A whole months-worth of underwear for four people is not a pretty sight. What a character-building experience! We came back to Adventure and I realized I didn't have enough clothes pins to hang all the clothes we just washed on the line I stung through our cockpit. The major problem was the 41 pairs of underwear (not sure why they're called "pairs" because one doesn't use two at a time). I finally decided to string them through two life lines and let them dangle off the side of the boat.the side, of course, that faces the pier.

We had Rob, a young single-hander on Aries Tor, over for dinner tonight. He's been here for a while and visited 3 anchorages on the nearby island. He said it's crystal-clear water and isolated. We can't wait to go. When we were washing our clothes, I saw Sandra from the agency at the pier and she told me the businesses in town are closed after 11am on Sundays, so we couldn't go to buy provisions today. I pulled some fish from the freezer for dinner and seasoned it with a cajun spice rub. It tasted great. Casey even ate almost a whole piece of fish. This is an exciting new development. Casey at fish-and we didn't bribe or force her to do it!!!!

Mon, June 2 Weather: overcast most of the day with heavy rain periods throughout the night Meal: It was a free-for-all with mac and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, lots of fresh baguettes School: Full day of school done Other: Sean and I set out (again) to get checked into the country, along with 4 people from two other boats. As we walked the mile and a half to town, a man in a truck stopped and gave me a bag of about 50 lemons. The locals have lots of fruit trees (grapefruit, papaya, lemons, banana, breadfruit, etc.) to keep their food costs down. It appears that a lot of the fruit trees grow wild here. When we arrived at the post office to purchase our 90-day visa stamps, there was just one clerk waiting on what looked like the entire village. I pulled off a ticket, number 66. The red LED sign indicated that they were serving number 34.

We decided to walk to the gendarmerie to do the rest of our check-in procedure. The gendarmerie told us the children must be present to check in. We found the bakery and bought 4 baguettes and a huge loaf of bread, right out of the oven and then to the grocery store. We bought a few groceries and then sat outside the store and ate baguettes and cheese and drink grape juice. We walked back to the post office, where we met up with a few of the other cruisers. The post office is only one of two places to get internet service. I pulled a service ticket out and was pleased to find my number was only two away from the one displayed on the red LED. One of the cruisers that was leaving said she had to wait for 90 minutes just to buy stamps for her post cards. 2 people were served, a French guy cut in front of me, and then it was my turn. I bought 90-day visas for the four of us for 3,000 CFP ($40) each. I was the last person served before the post office closed for a half-hour lunch break. A little defeated, we walked the mile and a half back to the pier, having not checked into the country. Sean was nice enough not to mention that, had we used the yacht services agency, we'd be checked in by now.

The girls were in heaven when they saw the groceries we brought back. Tara tore into a baguette like she was opening a Christmas gift and Casey started grading the $8.50, 6-oz chunk of cheddar cheese to add to her mac and cheese. Movie: Sean watched a football TV series by himself and then we all read our books.

Tue, June 3 Weather: Heavy rain throughout the day Meal: Leftover Cajun fish, rice, baguette School: No school Other: Sean and I set out (again) to get checked into the country, but this time we brought Tara and Casey. At Sandra's house, I purchased our plane tickets and printed out our itinerary to give to the gendarmerie as our bond. Sandra dropped us off at the gendarmerie and he checked us into the country. The only additional cost was the price of a postage stamp to mail our check in form to Tahiti. So the total cost to check into the Marquesas for a 3-month stay was 3,000 cfp ($40) each for visa and a postage stamp. I'll get a full refund on the airline tickets, so the bond won't cost us anything. When it was all done, Sean was glad that we had checked ourselves in, rather than pay an agent to do it for $850. The only bummer is that we couldn't get the duty-free fuel letter, so we'll have to pay $7 per gallon, rather than $4.67.

We found an open restaurant, where Tara and I split a burger and fries and Casey and Sean split ham and cheese Panini. We walked to the store, but it was just closing (at noon). After a mile and a half walk in intermittent rain, we got back to Adventure in time to load jerry cans into dinghy, borrow a few more from other cruisers, and then fill them up at the gas station. To get fuel, we had to Med-moor our dinghy to the concrete steps that cascaded into the surging bay, where a man handed us the diesel nozzle to fill our seven cans in the dinghy. For gasoline, Sean had to carry our three cans to the pump where the cars got fuel. Movie: Into the Wild (had to skip lots of inappropriate scenes)