Kathy's Weekly Recap Log 16-22
26 July 2008 | Papeete, Tahiti
Kathy
Wed, July 16
Weather: Clear and sunny
Meal: Pinto bean soup
School: Full day of school
Movie: Ghost Busters
Other: We are anchored next to a derelict boat that has miles of barnacles on her bottom and birds nesting on her topsides. She has been a constant reminder of what all boats become if left unattended. For the past few days I've been noticing that Adventure is looking a bit run down. Rust is making progress on all her stainless steel and her fiberglass sides are dull. Casey and I have been working on cleaning the inside and I've been dropping hints to Sean about the need for maintenance on the outside. Since I haven't gotten any action, I voiced my concerns to him this morning. They were a little too abrupt and weren't received very well. After a while of active discussion, Sean left in the dinghy to visit another boat. When he returned he started cleaning the stainless steel. I was slow to make up with him because I didn't want to kill his momentum...
I helped Tara study for her final two science tests. She did great (A's on both tests, even the final one that covered every chapter in the book!) and is now done with all her subjects except math and history. Casey only has math left. Since Casey is almost done with school, she used her time today to clean the boat. She really wants to have our friends from Astra over for dinner and is doing her part to make it happen. Casey and I dinghied to the Aquarium (the small motu by the entrance channel) to see if the tour boats were feeding the sharks; they weren't. We did see a 14 inch diameter pink jelly fish with really long tentacles. It stood out dramatically from the turquoise-colored water. We then went to the store to pick up our baguette order.
To prepare for our fajita dinner for Astra tomorrow night, I made Mexican beans and cooked a roast. We'll be sailing with them to the other side of the lagoon tomorrow (a 3-4 hour trip) and won't be able to cook on the way.
Thu, July 17
Weather: Clear and sunny, a few sprinkles at night
Meal: Beef fajitas, beans, Spanish rice, banana pudding
School: No school
Movie: None
Other: Casey and I went to the store to pick up our large bread order (5 baguettes) to last us a few days. There are no stores on the side of the atoll we are going to. Casey was especially excited because we found two boxes of Fruit Loops in the store.
We were supposed to leave for the blue lagoon around 10:30am, when Charlie (Jeremy and Sally's visiting son) would be done with his scuba class. The girls and I wanted to bathe before we left, but Sean wanted to put the dinghy up on our deck and get ready to go first. Once everything was in order, we barely had enough time to jump into the ocean and wash. I was brushing my wet hair as I took the helm and we pulled anchor. We followed Astra along the shoreline toward town, where we planned to anchor, get a few jerry cans of fuel, and then sail across the lagoon. About half way to town, Jeremy called us on the VHF and said the gas station would probably be closed by the time we got there. We decided to go directly to the Blue Lagoon. We soon found that the direct route was blocked by miles of fishing nets. To get a clear path through the nets, we had to motor back past our original anchorage until we came to the main channel. Ashley climbed Astra's mast and stood on the spreaders so he could more easily spot and direct us away from reef dangers. Once at the other side of the lagoon, we looked for a shallow, sandy spot to anchor. Our forward-scan sonar showed coral heads all around us, but wasn't precise enough to help us pick our way through them. I turned the wheel hard to port when we went from 40 feet to 9 feet deep. We'd just crossed over a huge coral head. Although my lookouts (Sean and the girls) were on the bow, they hadn't alerted me to the danger. Sean said it was because he could tell the coral was deeper than our keel (right...). When both boats had anchored, we were close in toward shore and Astra was far out from it. Astra ended up reanchoring closer to us. They said we were brave for coming so close to shore, which we were use to doing in the Sea of Cortez, where there are all-sand bottoms. But it made me think that we probably shouldn't be quite so daring in these reef areas. We could clearly see a big brown reef just to the side of our keel. I was nervous. Sean said it was deep enough. Never the less, we quickly launched our dinghy and measured the depth with our hand-sounder. It's amazing how shallow a reef looks in eighteen feet of crystal-clear water...
Most cruising boats won't come here. Although we're inside the atoll, there is a 20-mile fetch, so waves have a chance to build and it's a bit bumpy. We had checked into taking a tour to the Blue Lagoon so we wouldn't have to bring Adventure and spend the night in the choppy water, but the price for a day-trip was 10,400cfp per person ($140 each).
We all went snorkeling around the outside of the Blue Lagoon (which is a small lagoon inside the huge Rangiroa lagoon). The visibility is crystal clear and the coral and fish are amazing. There were even 4-foot black-tipped reef sharks swimming around us.
Astra came over for a wonderful dinner. I had cut a big roast into fajitas and we ate it all. I forgot how much 3 growing twenty-something year old men can eat! I don't know how Sally keeps enough food on the table for them. Her other son is joining them in a couple of days, so there will then be five men and her on board! She's been trying to make a deal with Sean to trade places with him so we'll have one all-girl boat and one all-boy boat. We all like the sound of that, but Sean's holding out because he thinks we'll run the girl boat up on a reef. Sally brought 4 eggs for us, quite a generous thing to do knowing we may not have eggs again for another week or so. After Astra left, we huddled around the eggs and debated about what we should make with them. I started out by saying we could just make a small portion of scrambled eggs for each of us and forget about baking something yummy. That sparked a lively debate. We got out the cook books to see what we could make with the four eggs. We finally narrowed it down to one batch of brownies and one batch of chocolate chip cookies, both requiring two eggs.
Fri, July 18
Weather: Rain squalls on and off all day and night
Meal: Pinto beans and Mexican rice
School: No school
Movie: Young Indiana Jones
Other: Sean and I woke up early and went to scout out possible entrances to the Blue Lagoon. About a mile away, we saw a few mooring balls in a calm, shallow area just outside the Blue Lagoon. This must be where tour boats drop off passengers. We raised our propeller to its highest setting and motored a bit further through the coral and sand and tied to a ball in one foot of water. We walked a short distance to the inside of the lagoon and then saw a huge squall coming toward our anchored boat. We decided to go back to Adventure to wait out the storm, pack a picnic lunch, and then return with everyone. After about an hour, we called Astra and told them we were going for the lagoon even though another squall was coming. They said they'd meet us there in a few minutes. The sea was getting quite big, but about a mile from Adventure the outer edge of the Blue Lagoon reef dampened it down to a smooth surface. Sean slowly motored into the one-foot deep water, a couple of 3-foot black-tipped reef sharks circled around our dinghy. The shallowness of the water really took away from our sense of being scared. We stepped into the water and walked 20 yards to the shore and were now looking into the beautiful smaller lagoon. Just before Astra arrived in the lagoon, a huge squall hit. We stood under cover of a picnic table shack built for the tourists that pay $140 for the half-day Blue Lagoon trip. When Astra arrived, the girls set out for a walk in the rain while the boys talked and tried to play a game of cricket with a palm branch and a small coconut. Inside the lagoon, sharks flourished. We were scared at first as they swam around us when we were waist-deep in water. But as the water shallowed, we were o.k. The sun beat the rain away and began to bake our un-protected skin (we'd left the sunblock in the dinghy). I kneeled down in the water to get photos of the shark fins sticking out of the water and was quickly surrounded by about 20 sharks. Sean watched from the beach and said I was seemed a bit too brave. They were only 2-3 feet long. I was more nervous about where their parents might be...
The lagoon was beautiful and we had a nice picnic lunch on the beach in between rain squalls. On the way back to our boats, some of us wanted to do a quick snorkel dive. The squalls had churned the water up so there were large swell and the clarity was not as good as the day before.
The swell had grown so much that Adventure's stern was pounding up and down by about 4 feet, making it extremely difficult to get our dinghy motor up onto the swim step and then onto its mounting bracket. We packed the dinghy on deck and, about 2pm, headed back to our safe anchorage on the other side of Rangiroa. With Ashley pointing out coral heads from the spreader, we followed Astra through the dangers. Once in the middle, we made a b-line toward the anchorage while Astra went a few miles to starboard. They were following their GPS track back to avoid the fishing buoys we'd encountered the previous day. We forgot about the buoys and were trying for the shortest distance so we could get to the anchorage before dark. Jeremy called on the VHF and reminded us of the buoys. We hadn't seen any yet, so we proceeded on the fastest route. Squalls were building all around us. A catamaran was behind us and closing fast. It was one of the charter boats. We figured that if the cat was heading in the same direction as us, then we must be clear of the buoys. That's when we saw them, a huge field as far as they eye could see of buoys. Some were bright orange and others were camouflaged with dark and blue colors. I yelled for Sean to turn the boat around. We were now heading toward the cat. I hailed them on the radio and asked if they were going through the field. They said that the balls weren't strung together as far as they knew and they were going for it. We were nervous and decided to try to see if we were close to the end of the field. We motored a ways and couldn't see the end of it. We would get to the anchorage in the dark if we didn't pass through. Seeing the cat negotiate through, we turned and entered. Casey and I sat on the bow and called for Sean to turn 5 degrees to port, 10 degrees to starboard, 10 degrees to port. Just as we thought we were through, another bunch of buoys appeared. The field seemed endless. Casey said that trying to get through the field was like a video game. The end finally came and we struggled to get to the anchorage before a squall hit us. I could see the line of a squall moving along the water to our starboard side and yelled for Tara to close the hatches. I quickly changed from my dress to a swimming suit, just as the rain came down. We dropped the anchor 20 minutes later.
Sat, July 19
Weather: Clear and sunny
Meal: Ham and cheese panini
School: Partial day of school
Movie: Myth busters
Other: Astra came by in the morning to get our two gasoline jerry cans so they could fill them for us. They pull Astra's anchor and motored in the village 7 miles away. Sean and I went to the near-by grocery store to put in baguette orders for both Astra and us for the 3pm delivery. Unfortunately, it was Saturday and there was no second bread delivery and the morning bread delivery was gone. We called Astra on the VHF and they bought the bread in the larger village store, which still didn't have eggs. We were surprised to find that the small store we were at had gotten a delivery of eggs. We bought some for both boats.
We went back to Adventure, took a nap, and then went snorkeling at the Aquarium, the side of a little island in the Rangiroa atoll that had millions of brightly colored fish and colored corals. We even saw a 4-foot eel swimming along the sandy bottom and into a coral head. On the way back to Adventure, we stopped by Astra, who had returned from the village. Their oldest son, Oliver, had flown in at 8am that morning, so now they had both their sons on board, along with George and Ashley as crew. They gave us our fuel, tomatoes, lettuce, coffee and baguettes. The Astra boys were just going snorkeling at the Aquarium as we went back to Adventure. We showered and put on fresh clothes and then headed back to Astra with money and eggs. Oliver had brought a few bottles of champaign for Sally, so she popped a cork and poured us both a glass to celebrate both her sons being with her. Not to waste the good stuff on the unrefined, she offered Sean and Jeremy a beer. Casey was excited to get a Sprite to drink. Tara had stayed on Adventure to do something on her computer. The four Astra boys returned from snorkeling, bringing a wave of energy on board with them. It was now almost 7pm and dinner hadn't even been started, so we headed back to Adventure.
Sun, July 20
Weather: Clear and sunny
Meal: Chicken in cream of mushroom and celery sauce and rice
School: No school
Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean
Other: We awoke early so we could have our anchor up by 5:15am. We were traveling with Astra to another motu called Tikehau. As we pulled up chain we looked over and saw Astra pulling theirs as well. The plan was working perfectly and needed to so we could get through the pass before it got rough. Just then, our windlass ground to an abrupt halt. The chain was stuck on a rock or coral. We tried many maneuvers to get the chain up, but it was stuck fast. We called Astra and told them to go without us. We'd follow as soon as we could. They said they'd come to help us instead. They motored close and Ashley jumped on board Adventure. Ashley and Sean worked on getting the chain up, but it still wouldn't come. It was starting to get light and we knew our chance to get through the pass was quickly passing. Astra came back by and Jeremy jumped into the water with his snorkel gear on. He swam over and told Ashley he'd be more likely to get to the bottom 35 feet below. Ashley jumped in and tried to get the chain up, but needed a scuba tank. Astra came back with a scuba tank and Ashley was finally able to unwrap the chain that was around and under a huge rock. We gunned the motor to the pass entrance, hoping we could still get through. Astra, the faster boat, went first and we followed. With a 3 knot current flowing out of the atoll and crashing into oncoming current made huge waves that we had to motor through. It was a rough passage, but we made it. We heard later that two other boats saw us going out and, thinking we knew what we were doing, went through about an hour later. They were not happy. Once out of the pass, the seas weren't too bad and we had 15-20 knot winds on our stern. We put up our triple-reefed main (because it's still torn to shreds below the third reef line) and our jib, but kept the motor on so we could make water. Our water tanks have been nearly empty for the past few weeks, so we really wanted to get them full on this passage.
Ever since I went snorkeling outside the Blue Lagoon, my sinuses and ears have been sore and my left eye is swelling on the lower lid. I napped yesterday and felt like I could have slept forever. On our 9-hour passage today, I couldn't stay awake in the cockpit, so Sean let me go below to sleep. I'm not usually a napper, so I know my body is fighting something.
The pass at Tikehau was calm compared to what we'd been through. Ashley climbed Astra's mast to look for dangers, so we followed them in. There was a 2-3 knot current against us and it looked like a rushing river flowing out of the atoll. We passed the sand bar, just 12 feet below our keel and then into the deep water inside the atoll. The channel to the village, 8 miles away, was well-marked with red poles, sitting on top of sea-level coral heads. We anchored in 35 feet of water over sand. The village was small, a few hundred people, but had developed a large concrete wharf and a couple of hangar-type buildings next to it.
We roamed the town on foot. The guys from Astra heard some villagers playing instruments and walked to the back of the house where they were. We saw them sit on the grass so they could listen to the music. The rest of us kept walking and eventually saw long arrows flying through the air ahead of us. There were about 20 or 30 people, some playing bocce ball and others throwing spears at a coconut that was stuck high in the air with a metal pole. We sat and watched for a while and then walked some more. We went to the store to see what they had and bought a few things. Back at the dock, the girls decided to go listen to the music that some of the Astra crew was listening to a few houses down the beach. Sean took me back to Adventure so I could start cooking dinner.
Mon, July 21
Weather: Overcast
Meal: Left over chicken and rice
School: No school
Movie: None
Other: Sean and I went to the village in the morning so I could see the doctor for an eye infection. He gave me some eye drops, told me to wear sunglasses, stay out of the sun, and not to go in the water for a week. Hopefully the medicine and sunglasses will work, because it will be very difficult to follow the rest of his advice.
We pulled anchor and motored a few miles to a beautiful beach by an exclusive, over-the-water bungalow hotel. We snorkeled around and walked along a small island that is part of the atoll. After lunch, we pulled anchor and headed 11 miles to Bird Island, located inside the atoll. Sally and I have had our hearts set on seeing red-footed boobies and this may be our last chance. Bird Island is one of the few places to see these birds. Most sailboats don't come into the atoll this far because of the dangerous coral that sticks up in random, uncharted places throughout the atoll. But we were fortunate enough to be following a boat that has a deeper keel than ours and Ashley keeping watch from the middle of their mast. The beach area of the island was sharp coral and the interior was covered by medium-height shade trees and some palm trees. The first thing we noticed were large crabs crawling all through the island. I was wondering how the boobies could protect their eggs and chicks from the crabs. On other islands where we saw boobies, they nested on the ground. We looked up and saw a newborn chick in a tree in the crook of a branch. We thought it had fallen out of its nest and was stuck there, but we found several others in the same precarious positions. These were chicks of the smaller white birds. We also saw black birds lying on eggs in nests in the trees. Finally, we saw boobies up high in the trees in nests. We strained our eyes to see if they had red feet, and could just barely see that they were red. If the light hit a flying boobie just right, we could also see a flash of red. I took photos, but wasn't happy with the lack of red showing. Jeremy surprised a boobie that was standing on the pathway and it threw up a bunch of squid. So we learned a lot about the red-footed boobie: they have red feet, they nest in trees, and they eat squid.
Tue, July 22
Weather: Overcast, squalls all around - but not over us
Meal: Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans
School: No school
Movie: Young Indiana Jones
Other: Sally and I were little disappointed about not seeing a full-standing boobie, so we decided to go back in the morning and try again. We also wanted to go to a religious community called Little Eden, where they grow fresh veggies and have a pearl farm. Oliver hadn't visited a pearl farm yet, so wanted to also go. It was several miles away, so we decided to take our larger dinghy. Jeremy was anxious to pull anchor and get back to the entrance of the atoll before the evening, when the sun's glare would prevent us from seeing the coral under the water. He said we could have two hours before they would pull anchor. I picked Sally up at 7am and we went to Bird Island. We wandered around until we saw some nesting boobies. I took some more photos. Still no obvious red feet. We knew we didn't have much time, so headed back toward the dinghy. And then it happened...perched on a tree branch in front of us was a red-footed boobie in full view. His red feet glittered in the early-morning sunlight. I took pictures as he patiently posed for us. I dared a few steps closer and he held his ground. It was wonderful. He finally flew away and we went back to Astra to pick up Oliver to search for Little Eden.
The charts didn't show where Little Eden was, so Jeremy searched through some guide books and then gave us his best guess as to the lat/long. We spend an hour searching for it and then stopped where we saw four men sawing palm tree trunks down the middle. They told us Little Eden was about 5 miles away, which was too far for us to get to in the dinghy in the time we had left. We radioed to the guys where Little Eden is located and returned to the boats. As we approached Bird Island, we saw both Astra and Adventure had pulled their anchors and were heading slowly away. I pulled up to Astra for Sally and Oliver to board and then tied off to Adventure. We then found out that our boats were headed to Little Eden. Jeremy decided we could go to Little Eden and then we'd still have time to get half-way to the atoll's entrance, where we could anchor for the night. After dodging coral heads and a mooring ball oyster field, we anchored near some buildings on poles over the water. As we pulled our dinghies to the dock, we were greeted in English by a Polynesian man. There was a large platform that gang-ways running across is with large gaps open to the water. Lines for oysters hung down from the gang-ways. Once we walked across the gang-ways, we saw a couple of bins with a limited supply of fresh veggies (green beans, lettuce, egg plant, and green bell peppers) packed in bags. The man said that they were to sell in the village for 500cfp each. Sally and I bought three bags each. We walked to the end of the decking and looked into two large pens that contained large fish, including 5 or 6 sharks. The largest was about 10 feet long and very thick. A woman joined us and told us her name was Jessica. She would give us a tour of Little Eden. She said the sharks are nurse sharks and were last fed a week ago. Since the fish are for looking at rather than eating, the pens are actually an aquarium. She said we could swim with the sharks if we wanted to. The Astra boys got their snorkel gear, slid in a large aluminum ladder and got into the aquarium. The larger sharks avoided them, but several smaller ones were curious. Tara had her swim suit on and decided to join them. She was able to touch one of the sharks and said it was awesome. When they were done, Jessica took us on a tour of Little Eden, showing us where the two families (10 people) live, the large kitchen and dining room and open-walled church that serves/seats about 100 people when members of their church come for retreats and to provide labor for their garden, oyster farm, and copra production, chicken coup where they get eggs and fertilizer, pig pen where they get meat and fertilizer that balances the PH in the soil, and finally the gift shop where they sell some of their pearls. Their religion is called New Testament Church and they have an 85-year-old Chinese prophet that comes to visit Little Eden once a year. Jessica said that they have a huge celebration when he comes. She said they are Christians, but I'm a bit confused about the prophet part...
As we were leaving, Jessica asked if the kids could come to see our boats. We were pressed for time, but said it would be o.k. if they could come quickly. We went back to our boats to tidy up and they arrived a few minutes later in their speed boat. 4 kids and 3 adults came on board and looked around. They spoke some English so we could talk with them. We gave the kids some play sunglasses and then I gave them pirate hats, eye patches, and black moustaches so we could dress up like pirates and take pictures. The three older kids had digital cameras, so lots of photos were taken. They visited Astra and then we pulled anchor to find a safe anchorage as storm clouds build around us and the winds picked up. We'd left later than we should have and the clouds prevented a good view of what lay under the water. We think our boat briefly scraped a coral head because we heard a thump and grating sound. It wasn't bad enough for Sean to want to dive to look at it. After trying to tuck in behind a reef and finding a mine-field of coral heads, we found a sandy place to anchor that wasn't as protected from the building waves. Rain squalls passed us on both sides, but a sliver of blue sky stayed over our boats. We'd been trying to have a beach party for the past two nights, but didn't have the right conditions. Since this would be our last chance before heading to Tahiti, the Astra boys defied the weather and dinghied to the peach-colored sand beach to build a bon fire. We thought for sure we'd get a downpour, but it turned out to be a wonderful evening by the fire. We caught huge hermit crabs to see whose could get out of a pit the fastest. Ashley's crab stayed curled up in its shell the entire time. Mine was the biggest and fastest. Jessica had told us how they catch lobster on the outer reef, so some of the group went out to find some even though the moon cycle wasn't right for good lobstering. They found lots of small eels, but no lobster.