SV Yohelah – Pacific Loop

We were in Panama City for a little over a week at one of the rolliest anchorages we’ve ever been in, at the end of a causeway at the entrance to the Panama Canal. We could watch the ships anchor outside waiting for passage, then come and go all hours of the day and night. It was interesting to be there and fun to see, but boy were we tired of rolling around. The winter northerlies have started blowing, though, so we did’t want to move across to the other side of the causeway.

We had two primary purposes for coming to Panama City. First to get Maya “tutored” (Gary Larson fans will understand this), microchipped and vaccinated, and second to shop in stores that have products we haven’t seen since we left San Diego. Both objectives are complete, so now we’re at the Pearl Islands (Las Perlas), which are beautiful cruising grounds 40 miles south in the Bay of Panama with lots and lots of beautiful islands with white sandy beaches and lovely anchorages.

Yesterday on our way from Isla Bona to Isla Contadora we finally hooked a beautiful 25″ yellowfin tuna. We’ve not had the best of luck fishing (Maya spends more time in the fishing net than fish do) but finally got the tuna monkey off our back. After catching a couple of Mexican Bonitas I was a little unsure about how the yellowfin would taste, but we were delighted when it came off the grill last night. Maya came out while we were underway and Rob was cleaning it to get a little sample of fish straight off the hook.

We’re traveling in the company of friends from Germany we met in Ecuador and meeting other friends from Germany/Canada, Australia and the US in the Perlas for a Christmas potluck. The snorkeling, diving and kayaking should keep us plenty busy while we enjoy some truly beautiful cruising.

Today on Yohelah we’re enjoying a beautiful sunny day in the Perlas…….

Panama City anchorage is here

We’ve been in the Pearl Islands for a little over two weeks now and have had a wonderful time. We are traveling in the company of Brit & Axel on Hello World and met up with Shared Dreams, Legacy and Warrior for a marvelous Christmas potluck. The Pearl Islands are a group of islands about 40 miles south of Panama City in the Bay of Panama, with about 30 different anchorages on several small islands around the large island of Isla del Rey. We’ve seen alot of the area in these two weeks, but could spend much more time here.

The Christmas turkey we brought down from Panama City was a huge success, thanks to Rob’s roasting. At the potluck that night we had enough food for another 5 boats and everyone enjoyed the feast. A little excitement was added to the evening when Rob dropped the very sharp carving knife on his big toe and did some serious projectile bleeding all over Hello World’s cabin sole. But they all came to the rescue and bandaged him up and the toe is nearly back to new now.

There have been many beautiful white sandy beaches to explore, lots of nice shells to collect, mostly clear 80 degree water for swimming every day, some kayaking, and even a little snorkeling and diving. We did a dive with Brit & Axel in a shallow area with 30′ of water and some pretty good surge. Being my first dive in quite a while, I didn’t relax and get comfortable until the dive was nearly over. But the good news is that we finally had a chance to fire up the compressor and succesfully refilled our air tanks in the cockpit of the boat.

For New Year’s Eve (called Silvester by the Germans) we shared an anchorage again with Hello World, Shared Dreams and Legacy. We kayaked in the morning, had a late potluck, and then we played a game of cards to keep us all awake until the midnight hour. We all managed to ring in the New Year and even tried a little dancing on the aft deck of Hello World. Now we’re heading back north tomorrow to get back to Panama City.

Sadly we need to get reprovisioned and start moving west. There is much to see in Western Panama before we head back up to Costa Rica to meet up with T2. And the reprovisioning stop in Panama City is a huge one, as this is the last place we’ll see the convenience foods and products we’re used to from home until we get to New Zealand in November. Supplies in French Polynesia are amazingly expensive, so I’m going to stowe as much stuff as I can into my little cupboards and freezer.

We’ve agreed to meet back up with Hello World for some diving on Cocos Island, which is about 200 miles west of Costa Rica in the Pacific. Cocos is a very well protected marine park where divers pay thousands of dollars for an opportunity to explore the clear warm waters. I thought it would be a great opportunity since we’re going in that general direction from Costa Rica to the Galapagos. What I failed to understand when planning the stop is that the waters are teeming with hammerhead sharks and that’s one of the big attractions for the divers. For some reason we’re still planning the dive, so stay tuned to see what those pictures look like (and if I’m even in the water while Rob’s taking them)!

And just for the record, we finally got the last piece of equipment that we bought in Seattle installed on the boat. Last week our wind generator was finally mounted and wired up and started pumping amps into the batteries. So my brother Dale can stop snickering now at all the boxes of “stuff” we had in the cabin when we left, and any future cruiser getting their boat ready to leave can believe you don’t have to have the boat ready before you go.

Today on Yohelah we’re tanned, relaxed, bug bitten and ready to start moving on……

The Pearl Islands are here

One of the tiring things about living in a tiny boat is the fact that you can never just open a cupboard, reach in and get out what you want. You always have to move 6 things to find the one you’re looking for, then put them all back in exactly how they came out. That is now exaggerated to the max here on Yohelah after my trips to Costco, Mega Depot and two grocery stores, and the resulting loss of $1,000 from our bank account. How I stashed a thousand dollars worth of food I have no idea, but I do know that every locker and the freezer is brimming to the top. We even disconnected the starboard water tank and filled it up with canned goods (and a little beer and wine too). Hopefully we have enough food to get us through French Polynesia and into the Cook Islands where we can afford to reprovision again.

We also took a day off from projects and took a little tour with a bunch of other cruisers up the Rio Chagres. There were some indigineous families that moved from the Darien province in the 70′s into Panama City looking for a better life and opportunities. Finding the city no place to raise their children and missing the rivers of the Darien, they found the Chagres River about an hour outside of Panama City. They moved up the river and built a village. In the 80′s the Panama Canal Authority declared the area a national park, but allowed them to remain as long as they didn’t clear any more land or harvest food and fish commercially. Today there are 120 people living in the small community of Embera Drua and they’ve embraced tourism as an opportunity to make money so they can remain on the river and raise their children. We were motored up in canoes and toured the village, ate a delicious fish lunch and shopped for handmade baskets and goods. They then treated us to some music and dancing and sent us along our way home. All in all it was a lovely day and an interesting tour. The people were all very friendly and it was refreshing to see them managing to maintain the lifestyle they enjoyed in such a remote and beautiful area.

We also took a trip through the Panama Canal with our friends Chris & Heather on their boat Legacy. We first met them in Mazatlan in early 2007 and have seen them off and on several times since then. They’re headed up the Caribbean and to Florida next spring. We delayed our departure from Panama City because we wanted to make a trip through the canal as line handlers and it was nice to go on a boat that we knew. Fortunately and unfortunately it was all very routine and there was little excitement. Everyone knew what to do and the uplocking through three locks went smooth as can be. We were lucky to be side tied to a big charter power boat who has been through many many times and knew the drill completely. On our way out we were tied to the wall with a huge freighter right behind us. All in all it was completely uneventful and we made it through all the way to the marina on the other side before dark.

So now the to-do list is clear enough to launch out of here and head west and north. We’re very excited to be exploring more of the beautiful islands of Panama and get back into warm clear water for some diving. We don’t have as much time as we’d like but it seems we just never do. There are a ton of anchorages in Panama and a few in southern Costa Rica we’ll chose from as we scoot north. I’ll update the passage blog as we travel towards Costa Rica, where we’ll meet up with T2 in mid-February. Then my after T2 leaves my sister is coming down for some cruising in the waters of Northern Costa Rica.

Today on Yohelah we’re loaded up and ready to launch….

The Balboa Yacht Club is here

We’re still in Bahia del Coco in Northern Costa Rica after three weeks of visitors and big winds. Coco is at the southern end of the Gulf of Papagayo where it blows all winter long. Hard. Nearly every day. Without fail. But the weather is beautiful and warm and sunny and when it’s not howling it’s perfect here.

Teresa Lennstrom (T2) came down with her family for a week of vacation during the kid’s school break. They rented a condo here in Coco for 5 days and we spent a couple of days hanging out on the boat doing some swimming and watching Kevin do a dive course with the local dive shop. One day we went up into the mountains nearby and did a zip line trip through a beautiful canyon. Even though it wasn’t in the jungle canopy it was still very cool to zip line down through the canyon. And one day I got to go have lunch alone with T2 and get some girl time in. It was great to see T2 and her kids and remember that the phrase “polite teenager” does apply outside immediate family members.

We spent the next week hanging out in Bahia Huevos hiding from the winds and visiting with a couple of other cruising boats that were heading north. Then Leslie & Fred came down last week and we had another awesome week visiting with my sister and brother-in-law. Sadly the water got cold and we didn’t get much swimming in, but we spent a lovely day exploring a picture perfect private beach in Huevos. And I got to have a day in town with my sister having lunch and spending more quality girl time.

One day I checked the weather forecast and it looked like it was going to be relatively calm (for the Gulf of Papagayo, that is), so I had this brilliant idea to go for a day sail. We were going to head north into the breeze and turn south if it kicked up. But somehow we forgot that plan. We were screaming south and decided to tack and turn around and the jib sheet hung up on the flag halyard on the standing rigging. Once that was straightened out I heard Rob tell us we needed to roll up the jib quick. What he had seen and I hadn’t was 40 knots of wind coming straight at us. And of course we had up a full jib and full main. It took three people to get the jib rolled up and then we dropped the mainsail because we had to head straight back up into it. We were making 1.5 knots and water was coming over the bow all the way back into the cockpit. Needless to say it was a long hard trip clawing back into the bay and back onto our little anchor.

The next day we rented a car to drive up to the lake and see some jungle and do some zip lining. Sadly it was pouring in the mountains so we had to forego the zip lines this time. But we had a nice drive and saw some of the beautiful interior of Costa Rica.

Now it’s Sunday and we’ve been up to the marina this morning at the head of Bahia Culebra to fuel up the boat and wash off all the salt we took on during our little 3 hour tour earlier in the week. Tomorrow morning we’ll go get our zarpe and stock up on veggies one last time. We’re 2 days from meeting Brit & Axel (from Hello World) at Isla Cocos, where we’ll stay and dive for 3 days. Then we’re about a week from the Galapagos, where we’ll stay for the 20 days they’ll allow. I’ll update the passage blog until we get to the Galapagos.

Today on Yohelah we’re rested up and heading to Cocos to dive with hammerhead sharks for some unknown reason…..

The Gulf of Papagayo is here

First and most important – Happy Birthday Leslie! OK, now an update. We arrived at San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos mid day on the 21st. We got checked in and are allowed to keep our boat here only 20 days, so we have much to do and as always not enough time. There aren’t too many boat chores, but a few important ones like refueling and changing the engine oil.

Sadly we motored the entire trip down from Costa Rica, so today Rob & Axel are going around finding enough jerry cans to borrow to get the refueling done in a reasonable amount of time. We have a permit that allows us to buy fuel tomorrow for $2.00 a gallon. If we have our agent provide the fuel he’ll charge $3.45 and won’t refuel us until the day before we leave. So Brit & I will spend a day shuttling the boys and jugs back and forth and collectively we’ll save about $400 refueling Yohelah and Hello World.

Rob & I returned late yesterday from a 4 day boat tour around to the other islands. Why we get off our boat and take a boat tour I’m not sure, but that’s just how it happens. We were part of a group of 15 on a tour that included a guide, all transportation, hotels and meals. For 4 days it was $440 each, which in our opinion was worth it completely. The group consisted of one additional pair of yachties and 11 other folks that all knew each other. There were 7 young people from a volunteer bio-reserve station that were here doing work to help clean out invasive plant species that have been introduced to the Galapagos from other areas, along with some relatives of one of the volunteers. They were all really nice and we enjoyed the group as much as the tour.

The first day we left early in the morning and made a bird watching and snorkeling stop at a couple of small uninhabited islands on the way to Floreana Island. Then at Floreana we had lunch at the home of a local family and took a truck up to the highlands to a tortoise reserve and some springs and caves. Then back onto the boat for a quick passage to Isla Isabella where we spent the night. The next morning we went to a tortoise breeding center and then up to Volcan Sierra Negra, where we had a 5 hour hike in the hot Galapagos sun. We hiked up to the edge of the volcano, which has the second largest caldera in the world, nearly 10 kilometers across. We went around the caldera a bit and down across some volcanic formations to a fissure where I think you could see right into the middle of the earth. Then back up to the caldera rim for lunch and a 1.5 hour hike back down to the bus after lunch. Needless to say, we were completely exhausted. But after the hike we went back out to see marine iguanas and snorkel with penguins. We saw lots of the swimming iguanas, which are endemic to the Galapagos (meaning they only exist here in the Galapagos and nowhere else on the planet). Sadly, the only penguins we saw were ashore and they weren’t in the mood to snorkel with us, which was unfortunate because Rob was dying to see what their little snorkels looked like.

Day three took us back to the boat for a a snorkeling stop and then to Isla Santa Cruz, the island with the biggest town. There we had an awesome lunch, a tour of some lava caves and then to the park to see the giant tortoises “in the wild”. That was followed by a stop at the Charles Darwin Research Center where we saw Lonesome George. George is lonesome because he’s the very last of his species and was rescued and brought to Santa Cruz many years ago. Given that these tortoises live well over 100 years he’s been lonesome for a long time and his species will be extinct once he’s gone. Attempts to produce offspring have been unsuccesful as different species are not fertile together. Three species of tortoise are extinct from three islands because of a volcano on one, invasive introduced species like rats and cats eating eggs on the other islands, and primarily from sailing ships taking live tortoises for meat.

Day four was a trip to a beach that Rob & I skipped so we could get some shopping done. I had accidentally dropped my scuba weight belt off the back of the dinghy in Cocos and needed to find a new belt and weights, along with some other miscellaneous and very difficult to find items. After one last lunch it was back on the boat and back to Isla San Cristobal. Neither Rob nor I have ever done multi day guided tours before and we have to say we totally enjoyed it. Anyone coming this way should look up Manolo at Sharksky Tours for a very busy but fun four days.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the winds between here and the Marquesas and it’s been pretty ugly. Before we left on our trip we heard about a boat that had been 5 days from the Marquesas for 10 days. There are just huge holes out there with nearly no wind. The forecast file I got today looks much better and is showing about 10 knots of wind just 300 miles south of here. Hopefully it’ll keep filling in between now and the 9th when we have to leave. With good tradewinds it’s a 20+ day passage for us. With really light and flaky winds it’ll be a lot longer than that.

Hopefully before then we’ll get all the pictures and videos uploaded from our stop here and at Cocos. We’re busy with chores and friends and scrambling to find some insurance since the broker we’ve been working with completely screwed up and dropped the ball and has left us uninsured at the very last minute. Anyone considering Anchor Marine in Seattle should find another broker.

Today on Yohelah we are a combined 100 years old and still recovering from our volcano hike 3 days ago…..

Many cruisers here in the Galapagos are, like ourselves, preparing for their longest voyage to date, and the activity in the harbor is apparent all around. Jugs of water and fuel are being delivered and sitting on side decks waiting to be emptied into the awaiting tanks. Awnings are coming down, dinghys are being hoisted and stored on deck, and windvanes are being prepared for the upcoming 3,000 mile passage. Our to-do list has been finalized and at a glance it doesn’t seem that long, but it just always feels like there are so many things to do.

The southeast tradewinds have not quite settled in yet and we’re a little too far north for them anyway, so we’ll have to make our way south pretty quick to find some wind for our passage to the southwest. A rhumbline course from here to the Marquesas will keep us in light air longer than we have fuel to motor and will take us into a huge hole that’s about half way between us and the Marquesas. Everyone is watching the weather charts and forecasts closely and comparing notes at the end of the day when we get together after finishing the day’s chores. When we arrived the anchorage was quite crowded and now it’s nearly empty. Boat are still trickling in but more have left to go south than have arrived.

We have a planned departure date of Wednesday morning, and will be leaving with our friends on Hello World and Carina. Hokus Pokus, a Swedish boat we’ve been anchored next to is leaving tomorrow morning on Mats’ (the skipper) birthday. The only fly in our ointment will be if we can’t get our new insurance finalized tomorrow. We’re insuring through a German company and the logistics of the time difference are causing some difficulties. But hopefully that’ll get ironed out tomorrow and we can check that off the list. There’s a morning and evening net where the boats enroute check in on the high frequency sideband radio and we’d like to start out with friends we’re traveling with so we can chat and compare weather and routes and things that are happening along the way.

The Galapagos have been a very interesting stop and we’re glad we got to go on our little four day tour and see the sights. Of course there was more here we could have done, but we’ll weigh anchor on Wednesday and as always be thankful we got to experience what we did. We’re anxious to get this 20+ day passage started and see how the winds will be. Landfall in the Marquesas will be very exciting for us and we’re ready to be on our way. French Polynesia is a highlight for many sailors and we’re happy to be joining that crowd this year.

Today on Yohelah we’re nearly ready to go and very excited for our upcoming 3,000 mile voyage…..

Wreck Bay, Galapagos is here

We’ve been in Papeete for a week now and most of our chores are done. Does it seem like all we do is sail and work on the boat? Well, not entirely.

The windvane took a hit from a big beam on wave on an overnight passage in the Tuamotus and bent. Luckily it bent where it was supposed to, on a tube that’s designed to collapse, saving the other parts of the windvane. So we needed to replace the “collision tube”, which is a 16″ piece of stainless steel tubing that has a lighter wall thickness than the rest of the unit. Sounds like it should be fairly easy, but not so. Rob schlepped around our bent up piece of tubing to every chandlery in Papeete. Finally, when he was almost to the last possible store he was asking at the counter and a Frenchman in line behind him said “I think I have some of that at my boatyard”. Turns out the guy owned a local ferry and had a boatyard where he took Rob. He told his guys to dig in the scrap bin, and sure enough they pulled out a piece that was long enough to cut off two spares for us! He wouldn’t take any money for it, saving us what was about to become an emergency shipment from the states if Rob had completely struck out.

The autopilot also barfed on the way in here, giving us a “drive until failure” message. Rob dug down to the back of the boat where it hooks up to the rudder post and one of the bolts had sheared off, leaving the unit basically hanging in mid air. You definitely could call it a drive unit failure when it’s not even hooked up to the drive unit. Some drilling, pounding, grinding and a little hard work later and the autopilot is behaving again.

Our wind generator also died on the way in here, and that one’s still a mystery. Rob’s written to the manufacturer after checking all the connections and technical electrical stuff, but no answer back yet. And having been a marine electrician in a previous life, Rob definitely understands the electrical things, so hopefully we’ll get some help from the folks who built it.

The biggest project here was to get Maya’s blood tested for rabies, in order to get bio-clearance into New Zealand. We need a blood test that’s more than 6 months old and less than a year old when we arrive in New Zealand. We couldn’t get it done in Central America, but knew we could here, reading from cruiser’s adventures in years past. There is a guy in the anchorage who needed to ask Rob some questions about his watermaker, and during the course of the conversation we found out he had dealt with the same issue to get clearance for his dog here in Papeete. And the good news was there was a French vet who spoke good English on a cruising boat about 200 yards away, who is working with a local clinic. The vet came to our boat the next day and I held Maya tight while he drew a big vial of blood from her right arm (she was such a good kitten). That vial will get shipped to the lab in Australia (one of apparently 3 places in the western world who does this test) on Monday when the vet brings back the sample. That’s been one of our biggest worries for the longest time, thinking we had to deal with a French lab in Paris and the potential language difficulties. Finding an Aussie lab is just the best news ever.

So after we get the blood to Federal Express on Monday we can finish up the last of our provisioning and head north to the rest of the Societies. We really need to get heading toward the Cooks where we can afford to fill up the boat with food again. I know I promised not to whine about the prices anymore, but this is just so crazy. I was at the store looking for fresh chicken and I’m sure I totally gasped out loud when I saw the package of 8 chicken legs for $25.00. Luckily we found the frozen chicken section and can afford to eat a little bit of chicken between here and Rarotonga. I’m just hoping Rob’s fishing gear does well for the rest of the month as we sail between the Society Islands.

Last night we went with friends to the evening’s performance of the Heiva Festival. It’s an annual dance and song competition, with dance troupes and singing groups performing every night for 8 days, and awards given at the end of the week. All the program info is in French, but what I figured out was that there are two types of dance groups, Heiva and Heiva Nui. The first group we saw has only been performing together for three years and has 100 dancers. They were pretty good. The second group we saw has been together since 1993 and has 160 dancers, and they were awesome. The drums and instruments were mesmerizing, the costumes beautiful, and the dancers and choreography amazing. The only bad part was that no cameras were allowed, so we didn’t get to record any of it. OK, well maybe Rob snuck in a few pictures, but the ushers were constantly scanning the crowd and stopping people who got caught. Each dance troupe performed for an hour, which included multiple costume changes, solo dances, and lots of great traditional music. This is not an event for the tourists, it’s for the locals and they were all out and dressed for a special night on the town. I felt lucky to get to be a part of it.

Today we’re going to scuba dive on a wreck inside the lagoon here in Tahiti with some friends. It’s in about 30′ of water on the outer reef. We haven’t been in the water here yet, but it’s so amazingly clear and we’re looking forward to checking out the wreck. Unfortunately the water temp is only 77 degrees, so we’re glad it’s a relatively shallow dive.

Teresa

The anchorage at Marina Taina in Papeete is here

We first met Robin & Michelle on the boat Warrior in Zihuatanejo when we were so busy with Sailfest in January of 2007. After we crossed the Tehuantepec in February of 2008 and anchored off the coast of El Salvador, Warrior pulled in and dropped a hook behind us a few hours later. Since that time we’ve enjoyed Robin & Michelle’s company off and on as we’ve traveled south, back north again, and further south yet.

They were in the US finishing up work on a research grant when they decided to buy a boat, learn to sail, and take her home to Australia. They found Warrior for sale in California. She had been designed by Brit Chance, a designer of America’s Cup boats and the son of a colleague Robin had worked with early in his career. Warrior is a cold molded wooden boat, 50′ long and built for speed. She was famous in the racing circuit in the US for years, winning Trans Pacs and many other long distance ocean races.

When Warrior left Panama last January they were bound for the Galapagos, Easter Island, Pitcairn, the Gambiers and then back up to the Marquesas. It was a several thousand mile detour south that Robin was determined to make and we wish we had the time to do as well. But Warrior was built to sail to weather and they enjoyed the trip immensely. We didn’t catch up with them again, though, until our stop in Anse Amyot in the Tuamotus.

Robin had started feeling a little off in Panama, and by the time we saw them in the Tuamotus he was feeling pretty bad and had lost a lot of weight. We saw him at dinner twice in Anse and he did a little snorkeling, but they were just waiting for the weather to settle so they could get to Papeete to a doctor. Even with Michelle’s doctorate in language, and French as one of her languages, it became apparent that he needed care at home in his native tongue, so he flew back to Brisbane soon after arriving at Tahiti.

The diagnosis is cancer and he’s home to stay for treatments. In the meantime, Michelle has rounded up crew and is sailing Warrior the remaining 3,700 miles back to Brisbane. That’s a daunting task for any of us to have to take sole responsibility for our little boat without our mate. Michelle wants Warrior home though, to give Robin a special place to hang out while he endures chemo. Warrior and Michelle will take good care of each other on the long voyage home.

Teresa

It’s about 18 miles from Papeete to Cook’s Bay on Moorea. When all our chores were finally done and we headed across the southerly winds and big south swell were running pretty high, making the anchorage at Papeete uncomfortable and the one at Moorea very inviting. We sailed across and dropped a hook in a sandy spot just inside the pass near Cook’s Bay.

The passes in the Society Islands are much more mellow than the passes in the Tuamotus for a couple of reasons. First, the Societies are still islands and not just empty lagoons that fill up with water, so the amount of water inside the barrier reef is much less and the resulting current is less. Also, the Societies are on what’s called an amphidromic point, where tides are minimal and the water level difference is only 8 inches between high and low tide.

The southerlies ended and we moved into Cook’s Bay and decided to go for what the travel guide described as “an excellent day hike” on a shaded three hour trail. We took a shuttle around the island to the ferry terminal and walked inland on a road that eventually turned into a trail up the mountainside. And up it went. It was definitely the steepest trail we’d hiked in a long time. But in about 90 minutes we were at the top on a ridge with beautiful views where we rested and had lunch. We knew we were a bit slow getting up to the top and guessed we’d have another two hours to get back down. Yeah, not. Somehow we must have missed a right turn. The guidebook only said “on the way down avoid taking the wrong turn at a bamboo grove”. But it didn’t say what the right turn was, and apparently we took the wrong one. After traversing the valley on a lovely trail for another three hours we finally found a road. Unfortunately it went down to the wrong bay. When we got to the road that connects the two bays we stuck out our thumb and the third car had room to take us the 5 miles back to Cook’s Bay. It was a very long day, but we definitely saw lots of Moorea.

The northeasterlies started blowing pretty strong, so we moved around into Opunohu Bay looking for some shelter. We wanted to dive on the outer reef and had to wait for the wind to settle down. Yesterday it was finally calm and we hauled out the dive gear, threw it all into the dink and went out the pass to the buoys the commercial dive boats use. As we descended we were literally swarmed by fish. It’s obvious that the local divemasters feed the fish to amuse their customers. Everything on the dive was looking for a handout, including a huge mooray eel who came half out of his hole looking hopeful, and a 4′ black tipped reef shark who swam with us the entire 40 minutes we were down (I named him Sammy). There were two enormous turtles snacking on the reef that weren’t bothered by us and we swam with them for about 10 minutes. I’ve never been 5′ from a turtle before and could have swam up and grabbed ahold and gone for a ride, but I really didn’t want to bother them. Sadly though, the coral was nearly all dead. It would have been an incredible dive if the coral had been alive, and it didn’t look like it had been dead for long like the reefs in the Caribbean, but there were scarcely few places where it was healthy. We were extremely happy we had done the dives in the Tuamotus and seen coral reefs still spectacularly healthy because apparently here they’re not.

Last night we were going to leave for the northern Societies, which are just far enough northwest that we have to travel overnight in order to arrive during daylight. But a front was passing through and it was cloudy and rainy in the afternoon when we should have been getting ready to leave, which did not inspire us to get ready and go. The winds were forecast to be light overnight and the thought of motoring all night in the rain didn’t have much appeal. Of course as soon as it got dark the skies cleared and the wind started howling. We ended up with 25 knots of wind for most of the night in the anchorage, which was really noisy and unpleasant given that we were anchored in a narrow slot between two reefs (definitely between and rock and a hard place). This morning the sun is back out and the winds seem to have settled back into a southeasterly, which is the normal direction for the trades. So we moved back into Cook’s Bay so I can upload some pictures to the website. Tonight for sure we’ll hoist sail at sunset and make our overnight passage to Huahine.

I’ve been studying the weather down here for a long time and am finally starting to understand a little bit of what’s going on. There are definitely lots of factors down here that affect the weather differently than in the northern hemisphere; the primary one being that there are no huge continents. The forecasters here are now nearly officially calling this an El Nino year, which for us is ok. What it means is the trades will be lighter than normal, which we’ve already experienced all the way from the Galapagos. It also means the south pacific convergence zone (the area where the southeast trades bump into the equatorial easterlies) will be further north than usual. That makes our choice to visit the southern Cook Islands a good one, but might make a visit to Niue and Samoa difficult and unpleasant.

So far we’ve enjoyed the Societies and look forward to our last 17 days in French Polynesia before our visas expire. I was hopeful that since we’ve got our international zarpe already, maybe we could cheat a little bit in Bora Bora and not quite get underway on time. But this morning the local Gendarme boat came by and four guys came aboard and checked all our papers and passports. Guess we’ll have to play by the rules afterall.

Teresa

Cook’s Bay in Moorea is here

When we were in Playa Coco during Papagayo season last winter we met a guy who was singlehanding a Union 36 from the east coast of the US around and up to Alaska, traveling upwind most of the time. He was convinced that there was absolutely no such thing as a “good passage”, and that we just managed to forget the horrid stuff and remember the not so terrible parts. At the time we strongly disagreed.

We’ve met plenty of people who hate passages but many more who enjoy them. Most folks just endure them, I think. Rob & I were strongly in the camp of really enjoying most of our passages. Then we got to the South Pacific. What was it I said yesterday about finally starting to understand the weather here? Apparently that was a mistake!

Looking closer this afternoon at the weather charts I can see the front that we drove out into last night. It was a beautiful day in Moorea and I thought the front had passed through well enough to have a decent passage. Nope. The seas were a mess and the boat rolled and pitched violently all night. Things were flying from every corner of the boat, and we’re really good at keeping things put up. The boat has never been this much of a mess.

When we arrived this morning a squall was passing through and it was raining so hard I couldn’t see to drive into the pass and get an anchor down. So we turned around and waited until the squall passed and the rain slowed down enough to see. When we came back into the anchorage another squall moved on top of us and we were trying to anchor in 75 feet of water with 35 knots of wind. Not an easy task, and we got a hook down but ended up in the middle of the channel. After that squall passed by we up anchored, came in closer to shore and settled into a lovely spot in 20 feet of water just off the beach.

It was so rough we didn’t eat any dinner last night, which wouldn’t have mattered to me anyway because I was actually seasick enough to throw up before I managed to get a dose of Stugeron into me. So needless to say our first order of business this morning was breakfast, followed by a nap. When the boat is rolling violently side to side every 8-10 seconds there is little sleep happening on your off watch.

I do remind myself that even though the passages suck down here, I am still afterall in the South Pacific on my own little boat, living a life I do love. But truly, I am still waiting for a decent South Pacific passage.

Teresa

Huahine is here