Moorea with Set Me Free

Some boats who make the "Big Crossing" (from North/Central America to French Poly) sign up for something called the PuddleJump. I'm not quite sure if it's free or any of the details, but all the boats get to check in every morning of the passage on the SSB (single side band, which we don't have). There's a big meetup in Tahiti, which bleeds over to Moorea for a day or so.

Ben didn't sign up for the PuddleJump so we weren't really interested in any of the goings-on (going-ons?) but we thought it would be entertaining to watch the race from Tahiti to Moorea. The folks on Set Me Free did us one better: they invited us to sail over and stay with them!

Joe and Liz were really thoughtful to offer this. Having folks on your boat can be a huge infringement of privacy so we took camping gear just in case we got the vibe that they wanted some space. That didn't turn out to be an issue though, we had an absolute blast with them and every day were blown away by their generosity. The first day we were there we joined them for the PuddleJump activities: outrigger canoe races, rock lifting competitions, coconut opening contests, etc.

Joe and Liz are divers and they had made friends with some instructors/owners of the company Top Dive so Nicky and Jen also hitched a ride to Moorea. They had never sailed before, so they were excited to see what it was about. Their plan was to take a ferry back to Tahiti that night but missed it...typical for sailing! So they stayed overnight and caught a ferry the next day.

That extra day gave Joe a chance to arrange a last minute dive--which included us! We were a little concerned since Ben and I have never dove, but Nicky assured us that the guides were really helpful and if there was an issue would take us back to the surface. I'm also worried about my ears, since I have issues popping them free diving.

Tomorrow we'll get up nice and early for our first diving experience! Wish us luck!

Rowing team from front to back: Local, Ben, Joe, Nicky, Liz, Local

This was before rowing. I wasn't smiling as much afterwards.

Joe getting a lesson in pareo tying.

Liz fixing dive gear.

Nose flute.

Circumnavigate the island by car

Brian and Richard rented a car so we could see more of the island than Papeete, yay! We got an early start and headed south out of the marina. The first stop was a cool Polynesian museum but with an entry fee of $10 a person we ended up skipping that. There's plenty of cool archeological stuff to see just pulling over on the side of the road.

We saw some really cool gardens with little plaques talking about the plants; I finally found out how to spell pamplemousse! At the gardens we hiked up a little ways and got a great view of the lagoon.

After that we stopped by some ancient ruins. It was pretty much some old stone walls--the real attraction was the coconut and breadfruit we picked. I was prepared for Ben to do some dirtbag foraging and had brought baggies just in case; Brian was not excited about the prospect of dirty fruit in his rental car until I pulled out the bags.

Ben's other foraging didn't turn out so tasty: he found a completely green starfruit. They taste almost like a sour patch kids candy. But more sour!

Not much else to write about, enjoy the pictures:

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Tiny little rental car. Ben tried to pick it up at one point.

 

 

Looking at the plants growing on the palm tree. It looked like lichen. I wonder if it only grows on the south side of the trees in this hemisphere.

June 23-28, Minus June 25

We're insanely lucky that this anchorage is mostly calm, with a reef to break the surf/swell from the big blue water. This means that the rudder can potentially come out, get fixed, and go back in while we're still moored. Pulling the boat out of the water, or putting it on the hard, is wildly out of our budget. So Ben (otherwise known as MacGuyver reincarnate) decided to try and pull the rudder out while Kyanos is still in the water.

I don't have a lot of pictures of this, since I was watching and standing by to help as much as I could. Which isn't much given my upper body strength :( But I'm pro at handing him tools and cooking/cleaning for him.

The rudder came out of the water pretty well, and only weighed 50-60 pounds in the water. Not really difficult to handle while in the water. The real challenge came when we tried to get the rudder into the dinghy and onto the boat. It probably weighs 200-300 pounds out of the water. Ben found this out while he was standing in the dinghy with straps around the rudder and tried to lift the rudder into the dinghy.

I was on Kyanos trying to keep the rudder from scratching the side of the boat, stabilizing the dinghy as best I could holding onto the painter and asking "do you want me to get in the dinghy? Do you have it? Need help?"

Ben was fine getting most of the rudder partially in the dinghy but as soon as it came completely out of the water I jumped in the dinghy and together we barely hoisted it in. As for getting the rudder out of the dinghy and onto Kyanos, we called some friends for help.

Osprey came over and we rigged up a 4 to 1 setup using the boom. Problem with that was that the boom doesn't swing high enough, or all the way to the bow where we wanted the rudder. The guys got the rudder on deck then just carried it to the bow.

So now we have a rudder on the bow of the boat and a hole in the stern. The bilges can keep up with the water intake if we stuff the hole with foam. The extra weight on the bow helps to lift the stern a little bit higher, too, so the hole is maybe 5-6 inches above water. Unless a power boat rips by--then the wake puts the hole underwater.

With the rudder out we can inspect the bearing and figure out what we need. Progress! Maybe not forward progress but progress in some direction, at least.

Bad picture, but you can see water through that hole. That's not that great since I'm standing in the cockpit while taking the picture.

I admit, I did a lot of this (reading) while Ben pounded away at the rudder.

Old bearing.

Hole in boat. Scary.

Rudder on the bow. Not where it's supposed to be.

 

Arrive Papeete, Carrefour

We decided to run to town to scope out parts stores and see if we could find a rudder bearing anywhere or have it machined, so to the bus stop we went with Osprey. They joined us on the marine store scavenger hunt since their transmission wasn't working quite right.
Some of the locals and other cruisers had warned us that the busses on Tahiti aren't all that reliable or regular--you have no idea when they'll pick you up but you better not be out after 5 when they stop running. Hence the early start.

After being in the Marquesas and Tuamotus where the population for an island could be 200-2000 it was mind blowing to see thousands of cars rushing past and huge buildings. Completely culture shock. It made the long walk from the last bus stop to the marine parts store entertaining. (It wasn't that long of a walk, maybe 2-3k but all that pavement made it hot!!)

Poor Ben had to deal with hangry (hungry-angry) Sarah. After not eating for two days on the passage all I wanted was food, more food, then even more food. And possibly after that more food.
We did find a little sandwich place for lunch that had free wifi, so I got to let my mom know we were safe and sound in Tahiti, although I might have left out that whole rudder issue... Don't worry mom... we're fine... After lunch we wandered back toward the bus stop, which was conveniently across the street from McDonald's where we got dessert. Ice cream is 100% effective at preventing hanger issues.

Near the marina where we're moored there's this grocery store called Carrefour that we figured we'd walk through and scope out before provisioning tomorrow. That was even more shocking than all the people and cars. Carrefour is HUGE. You can find absolutely anything you need--camping gear, skateboards, bicycles, dishes, candles, beer coozies, puzzle cards, calendars of nude Polynesian women, TVs, oil, car parts, and food food food! Imagine spending over a month shopping at teeny little mom and pop grocery stores where they carry cans of Russian chicken spam (really wish I had a picture of that) but no vegetables then walking into a HUGE Fred Meyer. Oh man. We walked around for hours: up and down every single aisle debating everything:

"Our cookie sheet is rusting through, we really need another one"
"Do we need another one for $17."
"I guess not, we can play MacGuyver with the cookies."

Another entertaining thing about Carrefour is the carts: they aren't locked in to drive straight. The wheels can turn any which way. Which means that if you're not paying attention to the cart as you push it, you could be pushing it diagonally down a narrow aisle full of expensive wine. No casualties. These carts are really useful, though, because you can take them back to the marina. I had been worrying about carrying a couple 6-packs of coke and cans of food back to the boat, but that wasn't an issue with the carts.

Now imagine pushing a cart that has crazy wheels over dirt trails in spots, uneven pavement, through a marina, over the docks (not tooooo close to the water, please!) and down a quay to the dinghy. All the while being really really hungry. Now imagine doing all this while laughing at how silly you must look. That was our experience that first night at Carrefour.

Check back for pictures, Ben's HP computer hates my iPhone and won't let me upload pictures to it. There's some entertaining photos of town/Carrefour.

To Tahiti!

After snorkeling Ben and I hurriedly put snorkel gear away, packed things up in the cabin, cleaned up the cockpit a little, took sail covers off then started to pull anchor. Osprey didn't snorkel with us in the morning so they were a little ahead of us pulling anchor. If you recall my first post about Fakarava, the anchoring is a little suspect due to the coral. Brian ended up in the water, diving on their anchor to free it. We were a little worried Ben would have to do the same, but it ended up being simple enough for him to just be at the surface directing me.

He would pop his face out of the water and tell me to run back to the cockpit, turn the wheel hard over port/starboard, put it in forward/reverse, how long to have it in such a position then I would run forward again and he would tell me to either take in anchor or give the chain slack with the windlass. It didn't take too long for us to untangle the chain and head toward the pass.

I helmed while Ben navigated the pass. Unfortunately we couldn't sail it since the wind was right on the nose and the channel was too narrow to tack. The wind seemed good and when we got a little ways out of the channel we were still excited about moving on to Tahiti.

Once we cleared the actual pass, though, it turned out to be really big swell. When Ben checked the weather the other day he said there'd be good winds but he left out the fact that we should expect 8+ foot seas. The forecast also was a little on the small side--we saw seas bigger than 12 feet.

That size swell wouldn't be a huge deal since there was really good wind. We were seeing nearly 8.5 knots with the working jib and a double reefed main. 8.5 knots = only one overnight to Tahiti! Woo!
While we were bashing around thanks to the swell an awful clunking started from the rudder. At first Ben thought it was just the upper bearing breaking loose from the fiberglass job he did in San Diego but when he stuck his head in the lazarette he saw it was the lower bearing. The lower bearing of the rudder is just above the waterline when we're on anchor but as soon as we start to sail fast the stern wave raises the waterline considerably--enough that the lower bearing is under water.

The reason he knew it was the lower bearing was because water was POURING into the boat. The bearing effectively sealed the hole. We really couldn't see more than that while going so fast, so Ben dropped the headsail and reefed the main again. I didn't know yet that it was the lower bearing, but I did as soon as he got on the radio to Osprey. The conversation when something like this:

Ben: Well, our lower rudder bearing failed and it looks like we're taking on about 10 gallons of water an hour. Since we can't fix it in Fakarava we're going to keep heading to Tahiti.

Richard: Ok, we'll change course to stay within VHF distance.


When Ben said all this I had no idea if our bilges could keep up with that level of water or if the rudder would completely fail and we would lose steerage or anything. He did eventually explain that the electric bilge can do 30 gallons and hour and we have two manual pumps just in case. We also wouldn't lose steerage so there wasn't any danger of us drifting aimlessly in the Pacific. Phew.

The next two days were completely miserable. I was seasick enough that anything but a horizontal position was unbearable. Which meant no cooking. We ran out of crackers that first afternoon so the second day we didn't eat anything. It was also impossible to slow the boat down any less than 6.5 knots--even with just a mainsail up. Pretty impressive for a boat that's headsail driven.

BUT by the second morning we could see Tahiti and the swell had died down considerably. I woke up feeling famished but not queasy at all and whipped up some cinnamon rolls. We were so hungry I couldn't wait for them to bake all the way. Even doughy they were delicious.

Once we pulled into the anchorage outside of Marina Taina we kept our eyes peeled for a good calm place to anchor. When we asked another boat about the holding (how well the anchor will set) she pointed out a private mooring that would be empty til August. Score--free mooring! No anchor to worry about. Picking up the mooring went really smoothly even though we'd never done it together before and I haven't seen it done since Catalina (April 2012).

We cleaned up the boat as the other boats that left Fakarava at the same time came into radio range. Osprey showed up a couple hours (ok maybe not that long) after we did and immediately wanted to hear how things went with the rudder.

Since it was Winter Solstice we decided to celebrate with happy hour at La Casa Bianca. Our new neighbors in the anchorage, Bella Vita, joined us and listened to our rudder woes. They were really amazing about offering help, tools, whatever we needed.

It was really great to relax after sailing over 200 miles with a broken rudder bearing while taking on water. Did I mention the SAT phone stopped working as well? It was a bit scary, but turned out ok.

Snorkel South Fakarava Again

Slack tide today is somewhere around noon, so we'll pull up anchor around 11 and head to Tahiti! An 11 o'clock departure time means that we have some time in the morning to entertain ourselves. Mark and Neville from Compass Rosey stopped by to see if we wanted to drift snorkel again. My ears were a little painful from trying to dive deeper than I should have, so I was unsure if I should even get in the water but decided to anyways. It turned out to be a good thing that they stopped by with their dinghy; Rob and Bri needed help getting their stuff to shore so Wizard could pick them up. They'll be on Wizard through to Rangiroa and any other island in between.

Somehow we got 6 people and 2 100 pound bags to shore then the 6 people to the pass to snorkel. The current made it a little difficult to get there quickly. At one point Mark and Neville had the motor throttled up pretty high but weren't moving at all!

The water was a little clearer than yesterday, and there are more grouper! It's really amazing to just watch them sit on the rocks and give you the eye if you swim close. Some are so absorbed in saving energy for spawning that you can almost get close enough to touch them.

More grouper mean more sharks and they were a lot more curious than before. Again I got a little behind the group and at one point counted 7 sharks that were a little bit too close for comfort. Some of them were a little bigger than others, too. It turns out that they were silver sharks that show up for the big grouper feeding. It didn't take me long to catch up to the group with the strong current, and I made sure to stick a little closer to everyone after seeing all those sharks up close and personal.
We saw a pretty big barracuda, a huge Napoleon Ras and another eagle ray before getting too cold to stay in the water anymore.

The Napoleon Ras is a super cool fish (it might be spelled wrasse, I'm not sure). It's a surprisingly large reef fish, big enough that the sharks don't bother them usually. They're really friendly too. We discovered that when you toss some of your compost into the water it attracts some of the smaller ras, which in turn attract sharks. But if you toss enough stuff in (like cucumber salad that got left out overnight, oops) the Napoleon ras will show up. If the sun is reflecting off the water it's really unnerving to see all the little fishes around 8-12 inches long surfacing and feeding on the cucumber then these HUGE blue lips come out of nowhere and take a chomp. Some folks call them the Labrador of the fishes, since if you reach your hand in the water they'll rub their side against it. You can scratch them a little, too, and they'll come back for more.

Ben has some video of us petting the ras, when we find good internet I'll try and post it.

 

Snorkel South Fakarava

Rob and Bri had organized a dive with some other cruisers with the company Top Dive, so they were up and about really early this morning. I started to make cinnamon rolls for me and Ben, but they came back to the boat between dives with Mark so I decided to whip out pancakes since they were faster. The diving here is apparently fantastic, they were really exited about it.

After they went out for their second dive we radioed over to Osprey to see if they were up for a drift-snorkel. We decided to go a little bit earlier than slack tide since when the tide shifted it would start to pull us out of the pass, out to sea. Once we dinghied over there it was a little bit hard to get in the water. After being spoiled in the Marquesas by water temperatures of about 83, temps somewhere in the 70s (ok, high 70s) feels cold!

The colder temps were completely forgotten as soon as we saw all the reef life. The reef is shallow up near the shore (less than a foot deep), then it drops to anywhere between 5 and 20 feet, then drops again to almost 70 feet. The water is sometimes clear enough to see all the way down to 70 feet, but not quite today. Since there's so much variation in depth there's something for everyone here. I'm not comfortable free-diving at all--my ears won't pop once I get deeper than 5 feet--but Ben and Brian like to dive as deep as they can to check things out. Parts of the reef were shallow enough for me to just float along checking out the fishies and coral. I tried to count all the species of fish but lost track around 30. There were several different species of parrot fish, grouper, rock fishes, butterfly fishes, trigger fishes, etc. I need a fish guide book then I'll continue the list.

Since I was just drifting, completely mesmerized by all the colors, I got a little behind the group and Ben would come find me occasionally. Later he told me that the whole myth of "yum yum yellow" fins was true. He had teased me before that sharks like yellow swim fins more (hence the yum yum bit) but apparently it's somewhat true. There's several videos on his GoPro of blacktip sharks coming up behind me, taking a look at my fins and swimming away. This makes me feel so safe in the water. Later, Mark mentioned that he had noticed sharks checking out his fins too, which are yellow.
The sharks here are curious about humans, but it's because of spear fishing. They want to see if you'll get them a free meal. So if you have no spear, and aren't making the fish bleed you're totally fine in the water. Even if you have yellow fins.

There's a weather window tomorrow so we'll leave for Tahiti! Rob and Bri are looking for another boat that will stay a little longer in the Tuamotus and go to more islands. As a little going away shindig Ben made quinoa burgers which were fantastically delicious. Richard and Brian jo
ined us and we all ate until bursting and then ate some more. They tasted better than actual burgers! If we find avocadoes we have to make them again.

All the commotion of tasty food attracted other cruisers and Kyanos suffered a little "rum squall." A rum squall is when a couple people visit the boat, decide to stay and have enough fun that other folks start showing up. Joe and Liz on Set Me Free stopped by after their dinner; Mark came over just as we were pouring after dinner drinks. (Convenient timing). Kyanos doesn't have that big of a cockpit but we crammed almost 10 people in there. The best seats in the house were where Bri and I are sitting, any closer to the kitchen and the heat was too much. It also smelled so good from cooking the quinoa burgers that it made me hungry again.

Snorkel Fakarava, and the Absent Minded Baker

Cruising life is difficult to explain. Boats make life intensely complex and frighteningly simple at the same time. A lot of the day is centered around food, and food can make or break the day, it seems. We talk a lot about food with other cruisers, have frequent potlucks and share recipes with other boats. It's difficult not to continuously write about food.

This morning started out pretty awesome with breakfast: cinnamon rolls. Osprey had a really tasty recipe in Cooks Afloat and they looked pretty simple. Breakfasts tend to be pretty bready but funny enough we haven't had cinnamon rolls yet. Osprey was bringing a French press for coffee in exchange for breakfast so we needed two batches and I decided to get creative: a sweet potato batch and a coconut batch. The mashed sweet potatoes were mixed in with the dough, then rolled out, filled, rolled up and cut like normal. No problem.

With the coconut ones I rolled the dough out and put in the usual filling stuffs for cinnamon rolls: sugar, butter, raisins, then added the coconut and went about that whole business of putting them in the oven. Notice something missing from that list of ingredients? Something important to cinnamon rolls--cinnamon! I made cinnamon rolls and forgot the cinnamon! To remedy this I sprinkled a lot on the top and put a lot of cinnamon in the icing. I was even tempted to sprinkle some in the coffee grounds.

Luckily the rolls tasted pretty great, even without cinnamon in the filling. Ben might revoke my baking privileges if I keep forgetting the main ingredient. (One of the first breakfasts I made on the boat was pancakes and I forgot baking soda. Not fluffy.)

We just snorkeled around the boat today--hopefully we'll make it to the pass tomorrow. There are plenty of coral heads and sea creatures to keep us entertained for awhile: just watching the sharks swimming near us keeps us alert! They're all black tips which aren't very curious about humans unless you're fishing.

Aside from sharks we saw an eagle ray (really cool!), some really awesome clams that looked like they had purple lips and a bunch of grouper. Word on the street is that this pass is the second largest congregation of grouper that spawn in a couple of days. You can see rivers of migrating grouper and the sharks that follow them. It's interesting, but the sharks wait until after the groupers spawn and then have a feeding frenzy. I wouldn't want to be in the water for that, but some folks pay big bucks to dive and watch the sharks feed on the spawned out grouper.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of pictures since most of my time has been spent underwater and I don't have an underwater camera. Ben and Brian have some cool snorkeling video, though. I'll try to post one of those. I do have some pretty awesome sunset shots. Since some of the motus are pretty large, it looks like you're anchored in the middle of the ocean. The pictures don't really do any of the scenery justice.

To Fakarava

Osprey was up a little earlier than we were and pulled anchor to head to Fakarava as we were finishing up breakfast, so we hurriedly put things mostly away in the cabin and hoisted anchor to catch up with them--we wanted to watch them go through the pass. The wind was decent enough that we caught up with them and reached the pass first. While scoping it out we saw that the tide was perfect for leaving Kauehi but there was quite a bit of boat traffic. A little open fishing boat was anchored in the middle of the channel, two sailboats were coming through the pass and another was outside of the pass waiting to head through. We heard a little radio traffic and the one waiting was having engine issues. Even though the winds were perfect they didn't want to sail the pass. (Apparently only crazies do that and Ben's crazy).

Once we went through the narrowest part of the pass Bri and Rob noticed the gorgeous reef just outside the pass so they jumped in with snorkel gear to go check it out. Once they swam away we realized we hadn't come up with a plan about how/where to get them back in the boat. Ben and I tacked around near the pass trying to see where they swam to, but it's really hard to see swimmers even in 3-4 feet of swell. When we did catch a glimpse of them we tacked in the direction of a mooring nearing the mouth of the pass because it looked like they were headed that way, too.
They were swimming towards the boat hard when they looked up and realized we were sailing straight for them. At just the right moment Ben tacked without moving the headsail over (steered to backwind the headsail but flirted with a luffing main) which effectively hove-to Kyanos. It takes awhile to lose some of her speed, but I threw out a floating line for the swimmers to grab and ran forward to get a fender, which we use as a swim ladder. Even hove-to Kyanos is speedy: we were doing 3 knots while Bri and Rob fought to get back in the boat. They hauled themselves in and up on deck pretty quickly, given the speed of the boat. It went so smoothly enough that everyone was stoked: they saw some really awesome reef with sharks and we had some exciting sailing.

Once we got out of the pass and onto the course to South Fakarava the winds were on our beam/aft of the beam so Ben put up our super-racer symmetrical spinnaker. (The spinnaker has more square footage than my apartment). I didn't hear them take it down and put up the genoa since sailing puts me to sleep.

The pass into Fakarava was so much more low key than Kauehi, even with two dogleg turns to get through the reefs. Our buddies on Set Me Free warned us about all the coral which makes it hard to anchor. That was helpful info since the sun was going down and made it really tough to see anything underwater. Once the sun went down though, the water was clear enough to see the bottom by moonlight. Since we were anchored in more than 40 feet, we figured it was 50+ feet of visibility.
While we cleaned up the boat and put sail covers on we watched all the fish and sharks swimming around the boat while Ben made pizza. Nothing tastier than pizza after a day of sailing.

We haven't decided how long we'll stay here before heading to North Fakarava or Tahiti. All I know is that I want to try that drift-snorkel. It's possible to dinghy to the middle of the pass, tie the dinghy to someone and float through the channel while checking out the reef. When you've had enough, or the current gets strong enough to make swimming uncomfortable, you can hop back in the dinghy. We'll check the tide tables and hopefully hit an incoming tide so there's no danger of being swept out of the motu.

Project Day

Project Day!

Running yesterday might have been a bad idea. I was sore enough to have trouble moving around the boat; Bri led me in a little yoga which helped big time.

Ben has the sewing machine out today fixing sails--a little tear in the genoa and the top of the main. The folks on S/V Just Drifting stopped by to introduce themselves and say hi. Maureen and Wade were really friendly and I hope we run into them again. We got to talking about the passage from the Marquesas and they had torn their half ounce spinnaker and the window out of their genoa, which Ben offered to fix.

While Ben did the sewing and other typically woman's work, Bri and I did some more heavy lifting. We organized the lazarette (storage) which means moving around some spare anchor chain and scrubbed some more on the bottom of the boat. The poor hull had been a little neglected in the Marquesas so it took a lot of elbow grease to get that algae off. I really don't mind the scrubbing and cleaning in clear water, it's a little bit nerve-wracking in murky water. The remora loved all the little bits floating in the water. It sounds silly, but I think they helped clean a good bit of gunk off the boat.

After projecting all day Ben needed a little fun so he and Bri went skurfing--it's like water skiing behind the dingy using a surfboard instead. I want to try soon, but am currently way too sore after running and scrubbing for two days. Skurfing looks really difficult. In addition to getting up on a surfboard you have to keep ahold of the floating line attaching you to the boat. After Bri took a turn, Brian tried it also and got up on his first try! He didn't skurf too long since he and Richard were in the middle of making chili and cornbread for a potluck dinner. Well, not really a potluck since all we contributed was cheese for the cornbread.

Pretty soon we'll head to another motu: Fakarava. It's only 40 miles away (pass to pass) which is just a daysail. Richard and Ben have been watching the weather, but I'm not sure if we'll leave tomorrow or the next day or the day after that.

Fakarava allegedly has some of the best snorkeling and diving in the world, so I'm excited to see it.

Brian and Richard planning around the weather.

Ben repairing sails. The cabin normally isn't that messy.

Running on Kauehi

Too much caffeine.

Bri usually makes tea when she wakes up, so the coffee pot has made inconsistent appearances lately but today I made a big ol' pot of joe. I might or might not have had a little too much (ok I had a LOT) and been a little too excited to get the day started. To curb some of my enthusiasm (work off some energy) I jumped in and swam for nearly an hour while Bri and Rob got ready to go ashore to check out the store and flyfishing. Since they were dinghying over, I wanted to hitch a ride with them and go for a run.

Since the store didn't open until 11 or 12 (after the supply plane flew in) we got a little bit of a late start so it was hot hot hot. Luckily Kauehi isn't nearly as humid as the Marquesas, but there was very little shade on the road out to the airport where I ran. Even though the road was flat, it was one of the prettier settings for a run I've ever seen. So pretty that I ran until I stopped sweating and saw spots. I tried to blame this on the coffee instead of dehydration since I had to run back the same way I came.

One benefit of the way motus are shaped is that the beach is never very far away so I was able to soak my hat in water and splash some on myself to cool off. Eventually I ran into Rob and he told me about a little road that runs really close to the beach through the coconuts with more shade. When I got back to the store we asked some locals how far the airport was, since I had almost made it there before turning around. They told us it's about 5k away--which means I ran almost 6 miles in the heat after sitting on my butt on a sailboat for a couple weeks! Might have been a little too much.

When we got back to the boat and rehydrated I was still buzzing from coffee. Ben was working on cleaning up the cabin so Bri and I jumped in the water and scrubbed a little at the bottom of the boat. The water is warm and clear enough here that little things grow pretty quick. It also means you can get sunburned while in the water--but Bri and I wore rashguard tops to block a little UV.

Around 7:30 pm the coffee finally wore off and I konked out hard. The stargazing is really pretty here, even with the city lights but I didn't see much of it before falling asleep.

Here's some pictures of beach combing the other day. Ben decided that if sailing doesn't work out he'll try bamboo rafting.

Kauehi, Osprey Arrives

Woke up to gorgeous clear blue skies, even more beautiful gorgeous clear blue water after a great night sleep on anchor. While sailing, it's hard to sleep. Sleeping on anchor is so much easier. So we were all feeling pretty spry and perky drinking our coffee discussing what to cook when we saw a sail in the distance. Further investigation (binoculars) showed the sail to be our buddies, Osprey, who left Anaho Bay almost an hour ahead of us. Recall yesterday's post about arriving Kauehi after only 4 days of sailing. Sorry Osprey.

Ben and Rob hopped in the dinghy to get some video of Osprey under sail and let them know the ins and outs of the anchorage (lots of coral heads, hard sand) while I threw together some pancakes. When the anchor was set Brian and Richard joined us for breakfast and decided they liked arriving after us if it meant breakfast they didn't cook and didn't have to clean.

After breakfast I wanted to go swimming but had noticed these grey shapes swimming under the boat. As clear as the water is, it's still hard to identify fishes underwater. Especially if they have black tipped tails, like a blacktip shark. Rob nabbed one with his fly rod (catch and release) and it turned out to be a remora: the fish that attaches to sharks/whales and cleans their bodies. With a dark blue hull complete with keel and rudder, Kyanos must look like an odd whale. But the two little remora that hung out under us seemed to enjoy themselves. Don't worry, no remoras were harmed when we studied them.

The rest of the day was spent snorkeling, sitting in the shade, and staring at the projects that always need doing on a boat.

Osprey on anchor in Kauehi

Remora: cool fish that is not a shark. They look pretty shark like in the water.

 

Arrive Kauehi

The Tuamotus are a group of coral atolls (called motus) between the Marquesas and the Societies--but the structure of the coral atolls is pretty cool. When a volcano surfaced from the ocean floor it formed an island and when the volcano collapsed it left an island with a lagoon surrounded by a barrier reef. The lagoons have very narrow channels as entrances, and these channels are bordered by coral. Coral isn't too nice to the bottom of boats, so navigating these channels can be stressful unless you hit the right slack tide.

Approaching Kauehi, we knew that we had missed the sweet spot in the tide, but the wind was good so Ben decided we would approach the pass and make a judgment call. As we got closer we could see the tide RUSHING out of the pass-it looked like a whitewater river with standing waves and big current. Since the wind was in a great direction and we were sailing nearly 8 knots (super fast), we decided to go for it.

Ben fired up the engine (just in case); Bri stayed in the cockpit to work the sails; Rob went up to the bow to watch for coral heads; I went below, manned the chart plotter and tried to stay dry.

Occasionally I heard a shout from the cockpit "Woohoo!!! Did you see that wave!!!" "Holy crap, look at that current!". As Ben throttled the engine I could watch our speed drop from 7.8 knots...6 knots...4 knots...2.5 knots...2 knots...2 knots. With a full genoa and mainsail and engine at 3/4 throttle we were doing 2 knots against the current. Which means we probably battled a 6 knot current.

After we got through the pass I ran up top to get one more look at the rapids we had just ran in a sailboat. Everyone was fired up about it, so I tried to relax, but those sort of situations are really stressful. Especially if you're down in the cabin and all you can see out of the portholes are crashing waves. The sail over to the anchorage in the lagoon was remarkably tame after running the pass. The channel was well marked on the chart plotter but we kept a couple folks on the bow to watch for coral heads or reef just in case.

When we sailed close enough to the island to get a look at it we could barely believe what we saw--long stretches of white sandy beach, crystal clear blue water reflecting the palm trees and sunlight. It's hard to describe the water and how the sunlight made it glow brighter than the sky. After being on passage for 4 days (really not that long compared to the Pacific crossing) we couldn't have asked for a more perfect landfall.

As soon as the anchor was dropped and mostly set (the sand was pretty hard, so Ben and Rob dove on the anchor to set it) we all jumped in the water--didn't even put on sail covers or wrap up the lines--it was that inviting. I did pause long enough to grab a mask, snorkel and fins so I could wander over to the reef near the boat and check out the fishies. Hopefully we can post one of Ben's videos of the snorkeling here--although the camera doesn't do justice to all the colors.

June 7-10

On passage. Not much to say. We eat, we sleep, we watch for other boats and wildlife.

Squishy

"'I shall call you Squishy, and you shall be mine. You shall be my squishy.'
'No, Dory! That's a jellyfish!!'"
--Finding Nemo

The squishy I found was not as funny as in Finding Nemo. Well, I didn't find the squishy but it definitely found me.

It wasn't even a jellyfish; it was a Portugese Man'o'War.

I woke up all fired up to be active and decided to go for a swim and roped Ben into swimming with me to say good morning to Osprey. The swim over was great--the current was with us so the 25 yards or so went by in a flash. We had a good chat with them about heading to the Tuamotus when the weather looked good (which at the time was the next day) and what we had to do to get ready (forage more coconuts! More limes! More mangoes!).

While we were swimming back I felt Ben pinch me and turned to the right to fuss at him, then realized he was swimming on the other side of me about 15 feet away so I turned to yell something at him on the left. It was really lucky that I turned to the left because the initial pinch was the end of a tentacle: if I had been facing the man'o'war when it hit me it would have been BAD.

Getting hit with those tentacles is terrifying. It feels like you're being attacked by an entire swarm of wasps. I yeled for Ben to come untangle me--in the process HE got tangled up in the tentacles. He was a trooper about getting stung even with how itchy and painful it was. My usual reaction to bad situations is to freeze up, which prevented me from getting TOO wrapped up in Squishy, but it wouldn't have been good to stay frozen since I still had to get back to the boat.

Rob and Bri witnessed my encounter with Squishy and were ready by the time I got back to the boat. Rob was scared that I might go into shock and stop breathing because the tentacles were wrapped around my right arm, in the armpit and up over my shoulder and around my neck/throat. Before getting in the dinghy Ben picked the body and tentacles out of my hair so when we washed off I wouldn't get re-wrapped.

Bri has been stung in the past by these suckers, so she had the cure all ready to go: boiling water and baking soda. If you ever get stung by a man'o'war you want hot compresses: as HOT as you can stand. Then rub the stings with baking soda. Alternate these two things until you begin to feel better. It's also a good idea to pop a Benedryl and do saltwater rinses. Be careful not to scoop up more man'o'wars with the buckets of salt water since they tend to drift in groups.

All in all it wasn't that bad of an experience. It wasn't painful after the first two hours, just a little itchy and stingy that evening. The marks of where it was wrapped around me went away in about 2 weeks, and it did give me a little bit of fear of swimming--it's amazing how many bubbles are floating on the surface of the water that kind of look like man'o'wars but aren't. (That fear went away in the Tuamotus where the water was gorgeously clear.)

Tomorrow we set sail for the Tuamotus! It's about a 5 day sail but we might be able to do it in 4 with good wind.

June 3-5

June 3rd through 5th were pretty low key: it was a lot of socializing, boat work, eating, hanging out, etc. The highlights were definitely the day sails on Osprey and Kyanos.
When you're out cruising it's not common at all to go out for day sails. When you sail you have to pack up your entire home, tucking things away to make sure they don't go flying when the boat heels over. It's not really like RVing because motorhomes don't usually tip far enough for dishes to cascade off their shelves. And they definitely don't STAY tipped that far, unlike sailboats. So it's quite a bit of work to pull up anchor for an afternoon sail then go back and reanchor.
Osprey's anchor wasn't set super solid, so since they already had to pull up anchor we went out for an afternoon. Their boat is really different from Kyanos in shape and the way it sails--it's a bit more deliberate (slower). But we had great wind that day and got that little Island Packet up to 8 knots!
We returned the favor that Brian and Richard did when they took us along and went out for a little sail the next day (June 4). This was mostly so that Ben and I could practice anchoring and sailing together just the two of us. It's difficult to learn that sort of thing on passage since you're trying to get some place as fast as possible. With an afternoon sail you can tack around and try all sorts of things to get the feel for them.
June 5th was Bri's birthday which involved cookies, laundry and going out to dinner at a funky little place in this bay. A family that lives here takes reservations for a certain number of people then just cooks whatever they have available. The possoin croux (French ceviche in coconut milk YUM) would have been sufficient for an entire meal but they also served sausage links, chicken, breadfruit, baguette, and some weird not quite cooked other fish.
A note about laundry: there's no laundromat and unlike Huck we don't have a washer/dryer on board. So it's laundry by hand. Brian is smart enough to have a laundry plunger; it's a lot easier than hand agitating. There's free water available in a random little spigot on a tree that's fed by a creek at the top of the pass we hiked over the other day. Free water = laundry and showers! Well, bathing suit showers since it's just out in the open.
At some point I'll figure out how to put pictures IN the post instead of at the end. Until then, here's some pictures:

 

Laundry. Yes, I'm using a plunger.

 

Workin' hard at relaxing in the hammock.

Thanks Bri for the music.

June 1st

Headed to the north end of Nuku Hiva on June 1. We had planned to leave early-ish in the morning but errands took longer than we thought they would, so we left sometime in the afternoon. There was pretty good wind the entire way, except for right as we approached the mouth of Anaho Bay. That meant drifting for a bit closer and closer to shore while we watched the sunset.

Since the bay took a dogleg into the actual anchorage, we didn't see where we wanted to anchor before it got dark but managed to hail Osprey on the radio and get some good info about reef locations. Since all this went on over VHF, we figured that a lot of boats had eavesdropped and knew some crazy boat was going to try to anchor at dark.

Even though there was light wind leading up to the bay and in most of it, there was a pretty solid 10 knots in the anchorage. So of course Ben wanted to anchor under sail and not fire up the engine. (For nonsailors--this is pretty unusual even in daylight).

The anchorage had a surprising number of boats, and nearly everyone was on deck watching us sail through. It was probably pretty unnerving to watch a dark boat weaving through the anchorage with no engine on. A couple of boats that didn't know this was Ben's usual MO had folks up on the deck with spotlights trying to get us to back off. We were never close enough for a collision to happen, but that didn't stop them from shining those annoying spotlights right at us and ruining our night vision.

The anchoring went really smoothly: Ben did fire up the engine for us to back down on it and make sure it set, but that didn't stop one of the boats from shouting at us that we were too close. Silly cruisers, we had lots of room.

Brian and Richard dinghied over after the anchoring spectacle ended to let us know they were going hiking the next morning with Joe and Heidi from Huck to the next bay over where there's a town and some of the best archeological sights in the Marquesas. Joe and Heidi are pretty entertaining--when they heard on the radio we were coming in after sunset under sail they made popcorn and watched the anchoring fun.

The hike was way more uphill than we had bargained for--and it was HOT and HUMID. About halfway there we realized it was Sunday and even if there was a store in the little village, it wouldn't be open. No cold beer in the middle of the hike :( To remedy this, Brian started foraging for anything edible--mangoes, coconuts, limes, etc. He succeeded in finding delicious mangoes and a coconut to nibble on.

The view from the top of the pass. Kyanos is the one in the middle of all the other boats.

 

At the village we stopped for a little lunch (baguette with oil and basalmic vinegar) and tried to locate these archeological curiosities. Brian stopped a local to ask where they were and he gave up halfway through giving directions and decided to just take us there. "There" ended up being up MORE hills with very little shade, but it was worth it to see the old burial sites and city ruins. The best part for me, though, was when our guide picked this orange something off a tree, cracked it open and let us try the insides. Turns out it was cocoa. You didn't actually chew anything, just sucked off the yogurt looking stuff around the cocoa nuts. Yummy.
Check out the pictures:

Baby head soup.

 

Father holding a dead baby.