Greetings and Salutations from American Samoa,
Well, after 225 hours (9 days 9 hours), we have finally made our way
to Pago Pago, American Samoa. The trip down here was far from easy as
we battled our way through storms, squalls, becalmed days, and
tormented winds coming from all directions seemingly at once.
We left Fanning on March 4th, just a little after noon. We were both
ready to go, feeling that mild restlessness that seeps into you and
burrows into your bones when you've been at harbor for too long.
Raising the sails and braking free from the current at the mouth of
the atoll felt divinely inspired. We said goodbye to the kind, smiling
locals of Fanning, having enjoyed our time there immensely. In fact,
if we'd stayed any longer, we might have sunk from all the papayas,
coconuts, bananas, breadfruits, and lemons.
The weather was bright, sunny, and there was a pleasant breeze to
fill our sails. It seemed idyllic. It did not remain so for long.
Manchester, our auto-pilot, died within sight of Fanning, leaving us
with the difficult job of hand steering for the long haul. Then rough
weather set in as the evening drew on, and Capt'n spent the next 8
hours on the helm. I (Celeste) took the helm at 4am and weathered the last dark before dawn. The one true reward of being on the helm at the dawning
of the day is watching the sky come alive, Venus heralding the end of
the night's darkness as pale colour begins to wash.
I felt so infinitely small in the light of that fresh dawn, and I
couldn't help but be glad that I believe in a God who makes my frail
existence secure.
Later in the day Capt'n worked on Manchester and was able to get him
up and running again, after more than a few times taking it all apart
and putting it back together. It was a herculean effort, all told. But
having Manchester back means a great deal, far more than I can
properly convey. Imagine the difference between keeping watch and
constant vigilance, nerves drawn tight as your endurance is drawn out
to the very limits of human ability.
With only the two of us, Manchester makes a HUGE difference.
I (Celeste) awoke at 06:30 on day 3 to find that we were within a mile of crossing the equator. Seeing as I was born in the Southern Hemisphere,
this was my first time actually crossing from North to South, and we
made a small production of the moment. I filmed Capt'n as he explained
the reason for our celebration and then he marked it down on the
chart. The next big milestone will be when I finally cross the
International Date Line, and then landing at Australia (as then I will
have finally and completely circumnavigated the world).
In lieu of the squalls we'd suffered through our first night, the
next few days were stiflingly hot, humid, and poor winds. 88 F in the
cabin one day, well over 90 F the next. However Capt'n and I enjoyed
ourselves in our reserved, respective ways; talking about everything
from the biological/cuisine difference of the tomato to Milton to
cloud formation in the upper atmosphere. We're a special bunch.
On day 5, I woke up, mildly delirious and parched, and I believe I was suffering from a mild case of heat stroke. I lay there in that state
for quite a while before I pulled my mind together enough to get a
spray bottle and hose myself down, letting the cooling of
the water and the fan get my core temperature back down. The
winds were slower yet, and at some points we were barely holding on to
3 knots. Dolphins passed by us in a huge pod, hundreds of water silken bodies hurrying south past us.
Not everything was doom and gloom. Capt'n and I watched Chronicles of Riddick one night and I read a few books in between my watches. I read
Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" and W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human
Bondage", as well as listened to Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon" for the
n'teenth time while on watches. We also consoled ourselves about the
heat by imagining how cold our tropic-thinned blood would make the
weather back home in Seattle feel to us. I might love 50 degree weather, but just now I think I'd settle for something in the 70s... Q_Q
Or just cool enough so I'm not sitting in my own sweat each day...
Anyways, come the 7th day at sea and the weather changed again,
thunderstorms and squalls chasing us down as we crossed 6 degrees
South. Electrical storms are especially dangerous to sailing boats,
our tall masts nearly taunting the sky to rain down fury and
electrical destruction on our vessel. Thankfully the thunderstorms
remained at a distance, but we were accosted by nearly endless gusty,
squalls. The next few days passed in a blinding haze of ambient
moisture and waves breaking over our bow. We could have put up more
sail area and gone through the storms faster, but Capt'n was
monitoring three different Tropical Cyclones south of us, and so he
felt it best we languor on in our substandard weather than plow
headlong into potential danger. Wise.
By this point I was having more than a few food fantasies about fresh
fruits, plums and apples and all the sorts of things you can't get on
remote Pacific atolls. Also salad...
Being the crazy artist I am, I found a certain macabre beauty in the
midst of the storm, the pastel fallow of the clouds at the horizon,
the silver and steel blue cast to the water from the storm clouds
above. Even the churning foam left in our wake had a spent glory to
it. There is also the added benefit that with these truly torrential
tropical downpours, I was able to take a shower just standing in the
cockpit. It felt a little like some esoteric initiation right for
mariners.
All the independent squalls also meant endlessly shifting winds, as
each new storm cell influenced the wind in some new and infinitely
confounding way.
Some water got down the main hatch and got onto my keyboard, so I
immediately turned it upside down to try and get it dried back out. I
left it alone for the next few days, and eventually returned to see if
drying it out had worked. The backlight turned on when I plugged it in
and the enter key worked when I told the computer to resume normally,
but then the lights flickered and the keyboard remained unresponsive
once the computer had fully booted up. I tried switching usb ports, I
tried restarting my laptop, but to no avail. I will admit that I
suffered a momentary, crushing depression as I contemplated the death
of my most wonderful keyboard. However, never one to be bested by
chance for long, I flipped it over and started unscrewing it.
As I carefully took apart the many layers of my keyboard, I noticed
that there was a fine misting of droplets in between the capacitive
transparencies under the keys. So I slowly dried and aired each layer
out, checking other components as I went. I've no real knowledge or
understanding of electrical connections or the fine workings of
hardware, but I could at least spot that there wasn't any corroded or
disconnected wires. Then taking a deep breath, I pressed one of the
naked key nubs and a letter appeared on my screen!
I can tell you that I felt like Tony Stark at that moment. A mad
genius of epic proportions.
The last few days were more of the same until on the final day we
broke free from the end of the nearly 600 mile long storm trough, and
caught our first furtive sight of Samoa. We could still see the great
thunderstorms and towering cumulus clouds all about us, but our path
across the last forty miles to Samoa was blissfully clear.
Which is why you really shouldn't be surprised that just as we were a
mile out from Samoa, and as dark was approaching, another giant rain
squall hit and soaked me to the bone as I was taking down the main.
Just really par for the course by this point. Both of us exhausted and
running on little more than fumes, so those last few miles under the
bottom of the island and up into the harbor were a special kind of
torture, like a horse heading for the barn.
Now we survey the damage, find out what we can get here in Pago Pago and what Donna needs to bring from Seattle when she arrives in two weeks. It will be fun to have a new place to explore.