Well, that little sail from New Zealand to Fiji aboard Charisma was a bit more than we all bargained for. We were expecting (hoping and wishing) for an 8-10 day passage. It ended up being a 13 day slog and my second longest passage to date.


An exciting night at sea!

We updated Charisma's blog almost every day while underway, but with the trip behind me now, I thought I would put some of my own thoughts down on paper, while I still remember the highlights, and low points. (And post some pictures here in case some of you didn't follow their blog).

Just waving goodbye to John the day we motored out of the marina was extremely difficult. I had been having some second thoughts about doing this little venture (a few weeks prior, over a couple shots of tequila onboard Charisma, it had sounded like a grand idea!), but the closer the day came, the more misgivings I was having about going. You know how some people think other people are crazy for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane? Well, this is kind of how that felt - only I was the crazy person. I was stepping off a perfectly solid concrete dock on a bright sunny day, and stepping aboard a 37 foot sailboat with only 1 head, 1 engine, and 75 gallons of fuel (Orcinius has 3 heads, 2 engines and carries 250 gallons of fuel - Oh yeah, and did I mention, we don't heal?). So this is not the kind of sailing I had become accustom to over the past couple of years. We are Cat-people now, and not ashamed of it. What was I getting myself into? But I made a commitment to Bob and Ann, and I was going to stick with it.


The Bucket Brigade in Action!

I'd have to say there were 3 major low points for me on this journey. The first being Ann's announcement on the second day that the head was no longer functioning. (All I can say is thank God I was not the last one to use it!) So the first thought that ran through my mind was how am I going to avoid having to go "number 2" until Bob gets it fixed. It's all about timing - and volume. I knew immediately that I was going to be in minimal intake mode in order to achieve minimum output to the max extent possible. Not that I eat much while at sea anyway, but this just made it that much easier to avoid breakfast, and to not eat anything much fancier than a cracker or two for lunch. So my second lowest point happened the following day when, after Bob did an assessment of the troubled toilet, he announced that he was not going to be able to fix it until after we arrived in Fiji. Whoa!!! Time out!! This is not what I signed up for! Take me home now! It was one thing to carry the blue bucket half full of your bodily fluids through the salon and up the companionway - with the boat lurching and bucking with every wave - and usually with a captive audience on each side of the cockpit doors. It's a whole other ball game trying to discreetly carry your bucket full of pooh along through the bucking gauntlet, trying to keep one hand for the bucket, and one for the boat. I tried my best to time it while at least 1 crewmate was asleep in their bunk, but alas my digestive system had its own time schedule. But then it's amazing what you can become accustomed to, and by the fourth or fifth day it became the 'same old same old' as the person emerging from the head would just announce "blue bucket coming through" and you either got out of the way, or called down from the cockpit "hand it up - port side", and you indifferently grabbed your buddies bucket and did the dump. Nothing to it.


Ann way ready to be way done!

Each of us seemed to experience a low point or two during the trip just because of the lousy weather and the slow progress, but thankfully we seemed to not all three have the blues all at once. My third major low point was the Wednesday night prior to our arrival. We had been at it for 10 days and we were supposed to be in Fiji by now - throwing back a cold beer and hanging out with the locals. But here we were, still over 300 miles from Savusavu, and we were still looking at weather files predicting heavy winds and high seas, and I had not slept well for quite a few days. There was also the definite possibility that we might not even make Savusavu by the weekend as the winds were suppose to gradually clock around and be directly out of the north - exactly the direction we wanted to go. That evening, Ann had gallantly made a nice dinner of scrambled eggs on toast - I have no idea how she managed to make that happen in the galley with all the crazy movement on the boat. But I hardly ate 3 bites of it. I just wanted to lay down, go to sleep, and wake up with sunshine and palm trees swaying on shore. Luckily, Ann and I were tag teaming our watch from 9pm to 3am, so she let me go below after dinner and as I was so exhausted, I finally got a few hours of decent sleep which made all the difference. I was back on track by midnight and feeling much better.


Playing some Banana Grams!

But don't get me wrong, the trip wasn't all misery and suffering - we had a lot of fun together, and I witnessed a few things that literally amazed me! There is one night that will always remain in my mind; it was also the night we had our biggest seas. It was the same night that I was really down in the dumps and hit the bunk early for a few hours. Ann had been keeping watch from the confines of the companionway as it was still pretty cold outside and every once in awhile we'd take a big fat wet wave in the cockpit. After I woke up around midnight, I took Ann's place in the companionway, and popped my head outside to see what was going on. Once I stuck my head up, I couldn't stop staring. The seas were huge, and the moon was backlighting them from the east, making them stark black against the moonlit sky. The seas, as predicted were easily 20 feet high, but not breaking, and just marching their way across the ocean. It was quite eerie, watching them black against the backlit sky. We were like a fly on the wall, and they just let us be as they passed us by. I was worried that we might be taking the seas at the wrong angle, too much on the beam. So we decided to get Bob out of bed and let him have a look. He also stuck his head out the companionway - once he took a look and decided we were doing just fine, he then couldn't stop staring. He was probably up there for almost half an hour - just watching. It was mesmerizing. As Bob described it "these waves are absolutely majestic"! That's exactly what we were witnessing, huge majestic waves marching across the sea backlit by an incredible half-moon. Amazing.


Ah yes - the traditional Evening Charisma!

The highlight of each evening was the traditional Charisma sundowner. No matter how nasty it got topside, or down below, we never once veered from this time honored tradition - hurray! Some days it took both Bob and Ann together to do their gymnastics below in order for a successful rendition of the Charisma to come to fruition. But just like the blue bucket, we never spilled a drop. Everything has their priorities.

I also learned to live by headlamp after dark. As long as I could find my headlamp before the lights went out - I was in good shape. And it was actually kind of fun, and a new challenge, finding my way around the boat with the dim red light glowing above my forehead.

And that windvane monitor - that was amazing! I had never been on a boat that used one before, so when I first checked it out on Charisma while we were getting underway, I had my doubts. There were no wires attached to it, no switches or buttons, no visual display, no electricity?? How the heck was it supposed to steer the boat? We use an auto-pilot onboard Orcinius to steer the boat - lots of wires, buttons, a display, and it sucks a lot of electricity. Well this little monitor held its own, and took everything the seas could throw at it. Even when we were taking some big waves flying into the cockpit, it just kept plugging away, pointing its little paddle into the wind and keeping us on course. Very cool!


Nice photo ladies!

Ann and I also shared a lot of good laughs, and a few scary moments throughout the trip. Using Bob's GoPro, we filmed a documentary of how to empty the blue bucket while on a port tack. We still have some editing to do on the footage, so that is yet to be forthcoming. We played a lot of Bananagrams, Angry Birds, and Guess The Code with our handy iPads. Ann and I had our nightly rituals - ginger cookies at 11pm, chocolate at midnight and again at 1am, flossing at 2am, and then staggered teeth brushing before Bob came on watch at 3. Unless, of course, all hell was breaking loose and we were just hanging on for dear life behind the wheel in near-gale force winds! We finally figured out it was better to get Bob out of bed sooner rather than later when things on the boat seemed to be getting out of hand. And finally, Ann and I swapped a lot of stories and learned a lot about each other over the course of spending many hours on watch together. What was interesting, the more I learned about Ann, the more I learned about myself. That was the best part of the entire trip - doing lots of female bonding and turning the scary stuff into great adventure and fun memories.


Life aboard Charisma Underway

As for bigger boat vs smaller boat, everything has its pluses and minuses. I know that John was probably thinking that I was going to really appreciate all the amenities on Orcinius after so called "roughing it" on Charisma. But I already knew that I have it really good on Orcinius, I didn't need to get on any other boat to appreciate that. I did learn that Charisma is a terrific boat in heavy seas, she handles them quite well. We experienced minimal "bashing" into the big ones, and slid safely off the steep ones. And we didn't want for anything while underway (except, of course, a second head). Even though there wasn't much room to roam down below, we didn't need much space to have our creature comforts. I had my Bailey's in my coffee each morning, and my bunk was a comfie settee with a lee-cloth to hold me in. And closer is definitely better when you're trying to get from one end of the boat to the other when all things are rockin. So while I'm not ready to switch back to a monohull, Charisma performed just fine under these trying conditions and I wouldn't hesitate to venture anywhere with her - as long as it lasts less than 13 days!


Great friends after having a great adventure!

So Ann kept asking me why did I do this - volunteer to do one of the most long and uncomfortable (if not down-right miserable) passages we cruisers will encounter. It certainly wasn't on my bucket list of things to do - I didn't want to be another casualty of "When Bucket Lists Go Bad for Boomers". But somehow this journey was calling me, and I needed to know I still had it in me to do a passage like this on a monohull, (after all I was on the brink of 50). And somehow I had an inkling that Ann and Bob could probably use just one more set of hands this time, just to make the going a little bit easier. Now that it's over, I'm glad I went and faced my fears. But it also reinforced what I already knew - that I don't need to have big seas and big wind to have fun, just a nice sundowner, great friends, and a solid boat like Charisma to keep us all safe and sound.