Marquesas Passage Notes

Sailing downwind in the SE trades at sunset

Clouds and rain a thousand miles offshore.

Morning rain squalls on the radar around the boat.

We are all checked-in and back within our insurance coverage area (April 1st for French Polynesia, outside the cyclone season). I titled this the Marquesas Passage notes, even though we were originally heading 1,900 miles away- to Easter Island. More on the decision to turn right at the end of this blog.

Our actual track (click on the image to biggerate).

According to our log (distance through the water) we travelled 3,452miles. We sailed approximately 530 miles due south of the Galapagos (on the right), then went 2,725 miles west to Fatu Hiva (on the left). The trip was 4 days south and 19 days west.
Our best noon-to-noon run was 191 miles and our worst day was 76 miles. We basically had good winds for the first 2,000 miles toward the Marquesas, then very light, and trying, winds at the end.
We ran the engine for a total of 39 hours, most of them on the first 2 days leaving trying to get out of the wind hole around the Galapagos, plus the last 50 miles toward Fatu Hiva we motor sailed to get some extra speed so we could get in the anchorage before dark.
We put about 31 hours on the genset re-charging batteries.
We used about 140 gallons of water. This included liberal daily showers for the Admiral and every other day for the lowly mechanic/captain.
The boat did well, with fairly minor breakage. The rudder bolt – she broken man. Lost a dorade vent over while beating toward Easter. A broken shackle on the boom vang and a lost shackle on a running back.

Broken rudder bolt.

Boom vang shackle metal fatigue.

We started this passage heading toward Easter Island. The plan was to get to Easter toward the end of their summer before the fall weather started to arrive. Easter has no good anchorages and you can be forced to move around the island on very short notice due to changing weather and wind. In addition, you may not be able to get to shore for days at a time because of the swells. Not an optimum cruising destination. Then we were planning to sail to Gambier in French Polynesia. After that the plan was to close reach (or perhaps beat) the 750 miles to the Marquesas.

I watched the weather on the route to Easter for the 6 weeks before we left. The plan was to motor south out of the wind hole around the Galapagos, then stay close hauled and point southerly through the light S-SE winds for another 6 or 700 miles. Then as wind picked up a bit, crack off toward the west to make it more comfortable and eventually end up with the wind behind the beam when it picked up to the stronger SE trades in the 25 kt range.
Well, the wind went from nothing in the Galapagos to 25kts on the nose the second day out. So we were close hauled right at the start. My back was hurting from too many forced tourist walks in the Galapagos and cleaning the boat bottom. It was one of those ‘it hurts just to step’ and I was loading up on green Ibuprofen gel caps. We were both up early in the morning after 2 days of bashing into it and decided to discuss our options. We could continue on for another 12 or 14 days to Easter, arrive and possibly not have a decent anchorage, plus then have to do the haul up from Gambier later to get to the Marquesas. That meant continuing on my green gel cap routine OR  hang a right, head downwind, sail fast and smooth. Well you know which one won out.
Unfortunately, this change of plans put us into the Marquesas just before the end of cyclone season. The Marquesas rarely get any tropical storms, but they do come through the Tuamotos on bad years. Our plan was to head north toward the equator (anywhere above 5*S) on the first sign of a storm. That would get us out of known cyclone areas and was reachable by sail or motoring within two days. But we passed the end of the main cyclone season without incident and are now safely enjoying the Marquesas.
All and all it was a pretty easy passage – perhaps a little boring at times, but not as much work as you’d expect for an ocean as large as the South Pacific.
Paul

Fatu Hiva

Good Morning Fatu Hiva!

We made it into the Hanavave, otherwise known as the Bay of Virgins (more on the name later) just after sunset yesterday. We’d finally thrown in the towel and turned on the motor for the last 50 miles so we could add a knot of boat speed to the wind generated speed and get in before dark. We, unfortunately, were not greeted by beautiful, half-naked Polynesian girls swimming out to the boat. But we enjoyed a great sunset from the Marquesas.
As you can see this is a very small town… the population of the entire island is about 500 or so. Fatu Hiva is the most remote and unspoiled of the Marquesan Islands and Hanavave reportedly one of the most beautiful anchorages. It is definitely classic South Pacific. Right now, we’re enjoying being the only boat in the anchorage.
It is an interesting feeling of accomplishment to have traveled so far (3,000 miles) and be at sea so long (3 weeks), and arrive in a place as exotic looking as this but still end up 1,900 miles from the destination you were originally heading (Easter Island). We’re still working on our navigation skills.
More later.
Paul

Marquesas Passage Day 19

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 125 miles. We are well past the line on our ancient parchment chart that would indicate that we are going to fall off the edge of the earth and have passed into the section that thoughtfully warns "Thar be Dragons". Hopefully we'll see land before we see the dragons. Not to say that we are anxious to arrive, but Chris spent a good part of her afternoon watch standing in the cockpit practicing her best "Land Ho!!" holler, along with the parrot on her shoulder's indignant response of "Who you calling a Ho?".
We had a long visit late yesterday afternoon by herd of dolphin. There were probably 2 dozen of them playing with the bow for a 1/2 hour. We tried to communicate with them, but I am pretty sure they spoke only French.
Last night was very light again. A fair amount of it was a driftathon - with the knot meter reading goose-eggs at times: 0.0. We could have started motoring a few days back and been in by now. But, hey, we've sailed 3,000 miles without motoring, might as well finish it off under sail. We have about 80 miles to go this morning. I doubt we will get in before dark, so that means we go extra slow and spend another night waiting for some light before we head in.
Paul



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Marquesas Passage Day 18

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 118 miles. Our friends on Libertad sent a message telling us we should look closer at the fine print on the glossy Downwind Tradewind Sail brochure. The small print mentions variable winds at times, YMMV.
We had a nice sail yesterday afternoon when the winds came up to 18kts for no apparent reason in perfectly clear skies. Last night was light and a little on the rolly side. We are getting close, with about 180 miles to go. If we can knock off half the distance to the island each day, then with the somewhat rude rules of Calculus, we will never actually arrive.

Paul


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Marquesas Passage Day 17

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 76 miles. That's a pretty dismal mileage run for yesterday. Today's will be better - I promise boss, we are trying. Now that we are closer to the Marquesas, we seem to get rain squalls each morning. They are good for getting some decent winds and boat speed. This morning's offered up 28kts of wind for awhile -- in the right direction. We've got about 5 bags of Skittles left and about 295 miles to go. Should work out about right. We pulled the freezer apart yesterday and got at the last of the pressure-cooker pre-cooked meals -- chili and curry. Add a little rice and we at least won't go hungry.
Not a lot to report, Chris says yesterday was a lot like the day before yesterday.
The World ARC Rally boats should be near us somewhere. This is a rally that takes a large group of boats around the world in 15 months. No time to smell the roses or the hibiscus. They are headed to the main anchorage in Hiva Oa. The thing I really dislike about these big rallies is that they bring their own crowd with them. An anchorage that has 5 boats in it and that can take maybe 15 boats nicely, all of a sudden has 35 boats in it. The Marquesas is the last time we should see the World ARC boats, unless they lap us on their way around. The last time we saw or heard any of them was in Puerto Villemil, in the Galapagos.

Paul


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Marquesas Passage Day 16

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 127 miles. We started the Marquesas part of this passage with some great wind. The first few days we were doing 180-190 mile days. Things held up pretty well for 2,000 miles. But now the trades have shut down. Yesterday afternoon and last night was a driftathon. Mostly doing about 2 kts. I put a reef in the main to reduce the slatting and slamming of the mainsail going back and forth. Advance notice on today's noon-to-noon run looks like it will be well under 100 miles. Slow! The last GRIB I looked at showed a little reprieve in a day or two -- from really light wind to light wind. This morning we are up to 3.5kts -- yee-haw!

Our advanced technical ground logistics and support group has informed me that duck tape (AKA 100 mile an hour tape) is appropriate for stock car and midget racer body repairs, but not so good for marine steering applications. The bolt that broke on the steering is the one that has worked its way loose before-- the large bolt that goes through the steering arm and the rudder post. I'm pretty sure that it got bent when it was partially out. It was really hard to re-install and using a big socket wrench put a lot of strain on the bent part. The bolt is fat enough that I'm certain it would outlast the boat by 100 years if it had not worked its way loose. After breakfast today I'll stick some epoxy on the ends of it to help convince it to stay in place till we get to Papeete.

About 400 miles to go.



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Marquesas Passage Day 15

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 116 miles. I woke this morning to the sounds of sails coming in and sails going out, then sails coming in again and sails going out again. We were in the middle of a few rain squalls and the winds were clocking around in every direction. Our boat speed was 0.0 to 7.0 kts. Right now its 1.2kts. Looks like we'll be in these rain showers for awhile.
Since our little incident with the rudder I've been checking the steering gear twice a day. Yesterday I looked at it and it seemed like the rudder arm might have a tiny bit of movement in it. So we heaved-to tightened up the four rudder arm bolts. They came in a little bit. Then I decided to check the main rudder bolt. The head is on the backside and I could feel that it was snugged in all the way to the rudder arm casing, as it should be and was at least more than hand tight. I put a wrench on the nut for this bolt. It just spun freely. The rudder bolt has sheared inside the rudder post. Not a good thing. At this point all I can do is make sure that the bolt doesn't work its way out. In my best race car driver mechanic imitation, I used duck tape to hold the loose part of the bolt in. We will probably now haul in Papeete to replace the bolt. That's still another 1,400 miles or so from here.

471 miles to go to the Marquesas.



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Marquesas Passage Day 14

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run 125 miles.
You guys may think it is easy to turn out this blog each day on passage. Well it is hard to fit in all of the day's unique experiences in just a few short paragraphs. It kind of reminds of the Cheech and Chong sketch where they are at the first day of school after summer and the teacher asks them what they did on their summer vacation. One of them - I could never figure which was which - answers "I got up, went to the drugstore and looked for a job". When pushed for what he did on the others days the answer is "I got up, went to the drugstore and looked for a job".

After I did yesterday's morning blog Chris noticed that the boom vang wasn't vanging (the vang holds the main sail boom down). The shackle that holds the vang block and tackle to the mast base had failed. Metal fatigue -- it spilt in two. I replaced it with a soft-shackle that I made out of dyneema. These old-style rope shackles are pretty cool. Amazingly strong, easy to make and quiet.

We got visited briefly by a couple of porpoises. We are moving so slowly that they weren't interested in staying to play with the bow wake. Last night on my watch we had an unintentional jibe -- that's when the main boom flys over to the other side of the boat. No injuries -- no damage. The boom preventer clutch was not closed all the way -- this let the boom free when a wave it us a little sideways. I quickly set everything up on the other tack so it looked like to all those watching that I meant to jibe.

Looks like another slow day today. The GRIBs have the wind light and variable for the next forever.

Paul


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Marquesas Passage Day 13

Yesterdays Noon-to-noon run was 153 miles.

The tradewinds have decided to go away for a bit. We are seeing winds in the 4 to 13kt range out of the NE, instead of a steady 20kts of SE or E flow. Most of the time we are sailing more toward Hawaii than toward the Marquesas (another destination that Chris is OK with). We decided to jibe and head NW instead of SW as we were getting too far S, about 11*S. This morning we are at 9* 27S. The light winds means we have to watch the course carefully. Every time the wind picks up a bit or clocks a little we point the boat closer to the Marquesas. When the sails are start slatting away as the boat rolls in the swell, we point more northerly. If we see a rain shower anywhere we try and head for the south side of it to pass under it. This gives us a nice boost toward the Marquesas as we can point directly at our target and sail for 2 or 3 hours at 8kts in light drizzle.

We did checkin last evening with the Maritime Net at 14.300MHz - or as Chris calls it the Old Guys Net with BF Antennas. These guys boom in here with crystal clear audio from all over the US. The guy I was talking to was i Tennessee. Its nice to know there's a friendly voice at the other end of the radio if you ever needed it.

All's well on board. 720 miles to go.



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Marquesas Passage Day 12

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 150 miles.
Lots of little items to fill today's blog. I woke up this morning to a lot sail flapping and banging. The winds pretty much died. There's a 3 foot E primary swell that now has an additional 1 ft NE swell on it. This makes for a lot of sail flapping back and forth when the winds are light. Not good for the sails or the crew. Not sure where our nice tradewinds went, but for now we are making about 2 to 4kts in whatever direction we can. We still have 825 miles to go, so I'm not inclined to motor --- yet. The GRIB predictions don't look good for the wind returning anytime soon, so we may be out here another 12 weeks or so. (Kidding.)
Every few days we run a floating line off the bow for 1/2 hour on each side. This is supposed to keep the fan worms (living in shells) from forming at the waterline. I took a look at the swimstep yesterday. The stern is just covered with 3/4 in - 1 in worms. Pretty ugly and not good for boat speed.

We've tried to hear the Pacific Puddle Jump SSB net in the evening, but there is just too much noise on 8,297MHz.

One of our running backs came loose yesterday. A pin came out near the deck end. It is now appropriately secured with a bungy cord.

Chris wants me to let you know the shower sump pump is not working... and she's not happy about it.

Yesterday morning we decided it was time to fly the spinnaker, as the winds were pretty light. I wasn't sure if the wind goddess was going to allow it, but we went ahead anyway. We don't fly the spinnaker much and it takes awhile to setup all the lines. We raised the sail, lifted the bag and started to sheet it in when the tack line at the deck shook loose. This sent a lot of red fabric flying off to leeward. In the process of getting the sail behind the main so it would be in the wind shadow and we could get it back on deck, we watched the tack line and its snap shackle shake undone at about 25 feet above the water and slowly sail to the surface and head for the 12,000 foot depths. This was connected with one of those large shackles that has a safety on it, so you have to slide it back before you can open it. Can't see how it came apart. The wind goddess then felt sorry for what she put us through and turned the wind back up to 18-20kts and we sailed on without the spinnaker.

Yesterday was another turn-the-clock-back day. Ships time is now on Pacific Standard Time. The Marquesas are on one of those weird half hour time zones. So we'll have 1-1/2hrs more to move the clock when we arrive.

Paul


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Marquesas Passage Day 11

Yesterdays noon-to-noon run was 172 miles.

Late last night I was laying in the cockpit on my watch turning the pages on my Kindle. Except for the Kindle backlight, it was really dark. An unhappy flying fish landed on my legs. We were both then unhappy. Once I figured out what it was, I picked up his flopping body and threw him back into the deep. With all the flipping and flopping, he left a fair amount of fish scales and blood in the cockpit, so I kinda doubt that he'll be doing that stunt again.

Late yesterday afternoon we dropped the headsail because the winds were getting light and it was flopping around. We ended up sailing the night under just the main almost DDW (Dead Down Wind). It was rolly, but at least we were making the right course and doing 5 or 6 kts. Its even lighter this morning, so it's either back up with the pole and turning off some, or perhaps dig out the spinnaker. Either way we are going to wait till a rain line that is behind us now passes over. Chris thinks we should turn to port and sail off 1,000 miles to the SW to Gambier. That would be a nice beam reach. I said one major change of destination per passage is enough.

980 miles to go.
Paul


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Marquesas Passage Day 10

Noon-to-noon run of 172 miles. Things were starting to look a little bleak last night when I saw that we were down to our last bag of Skittles for my night-watch snack. I knew that I had the stamina to could continue on without anymore, but it just wasn't going to be the same. Then Chris came up with the hidden backup baggie full of Skittles packages. So we can stay out here a lot longer. On Halloween I used to send my kids out with specific directions to go get me Skittles. We tend to do long night watches when it is just Chris and I and the conditions are not too bad. I do 6pm to 1am and she does 1am to 8am. This way we both get a nice long continuous chunk of time to try and get in some decent sleep. It works out well and we don't feel run down day after day. The daytime watches are a little less structured, with both of us getting some sleep time sometime during the day on most days.

We sailed with the genoa on the pole most of the night. It wasn't behaving that well and I didn't feel like going to the pointy end of the boat and messing with the pole in the dark, so at about 5am we moved it to the starboard side and its been sailing pretty well since.

It's about 1,122 miles till Fatu Hiva.



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Marquesas Passage Day 9

Noon-to-noon run of 175 miles. The winds have become a little more variable now. We've made it past the half way point. We were going to have a big celebration last night but after discussions with the crew representative, it was thought that things might get too out off hand, so we had a scaled down party. No injuries and no one taken off to the brig.
This is, like, a big ocean. There really is a lot of water out here. It is further than driving from the Pacific in California to the Atlantic on the East Coast. And on that trip you get to go 60 mph, instead of 6 kts per hour. I think we are actually past half-way, maybe somewhere on the outskirts of Kansas City now.
Its overcast today. The days alternate between 80% sunny and totally overcast. Had another tropic bird fly by this morning. These are the white gull-sized sea birds with long, thin tails. We saw them nesting when we were in the Bahamas. Not sure what they are doing flying this far out to sea.

1,305 miles to go till Fatu Hiva.

Paul


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Marquisas Passage Day 8

Noon-to-noon run of 181 miles. When we decided to bail on Easter and hang a right, I grabbed a paper chart I had to check the spelling of Marquisas. It is a US chart based on a French chart. They spell it Marquisas. The French cruisers pronounce it Mar-Key-Sa. The English spelling is Marquesas and the Yanks pronounce it Mar-Cay-Sas. I think I'll just randomly go back and forth in its spelling on the blog.

After noon yesterday we moved the headsail from the starboard side to the port side and put it on the whisker pole. This allowed us to sail a little deeper. With the sail on the other side we were getting a little too far south. I think the boat sails better without the pole, so we will probably move it back over this afternoon (if our schedule doesn't get too crowded with other important meetings).

Very quiet night watches - just not much going on. The waning moon didn't show its face till about 1:00 am last night. The Southern Cross is up there- faithfully pointing south. It was a light night for flying fish suicides and no ship sightings.

Paul



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Marquisas Passage Day 7

Noon-to-noon run of 187 miles. There doesn't seem to be any discernible current. Most boats that leave the Galapagos do their passage further north, around 5-6 degrees latitude. We are down at 10*, about 250-300 miles south. Further north you are supposed to enjoy a nice current in your favor, often around a knot. That gives you an extra 24 miles a day for free. The down side to being further north is that the trade winds are typically lighter. I haven't heard a single report from any boats on passage in that area so far, so not sure what is happening up there this year.

There must still be some tuna around, as we saw about .75 miles astern of us another trawler -- our third. It was a 164 foot white Japanese ship the Kineamaru No. 138.

The other day we moved the ship's clock back to catch up with the sun. Boat time is now equal to Mountain Standard Time. This helps to put the sun overhead at noon and lets it set at around 6:30. Every 15 degs of longitude we pass moves the time an one hour. It is hard to believe that we are due south of the mountain states. Take a look at world map and you can see how far east central and south America are.

In the meantime, we'll keep on sailing west.

Paul


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Marquisas Passage Day 6

Noon-to-noon run 197 miles.

Not much going on yesterday and overnight. Winds would run for a 4-6 hours at 22-26kts, then they'd run at 16-18kts -- rinse and repeat. Sunny all day yesterday with clouds this morning. No ships, a few petrels and lots of flying fish. The flying fish always take off in big herds (schools?) breaking the water surface flying into the wind. How do these guys know which way the wind is blowing from underwater? There's no local weatherman and I have yet to see a wind-sock out here. The Shadow might not know, but I bet Wikipedia does. These are the mysteries one contemplates out here.

Distance to go till Fatu Hiva 1837 miles. All is well onboard.

Paul


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Marquisas Pasage Day 5

Noon-to-noon run 168 miles, this includes 1hr 45mins of hove-to time for repairs.
OK, its getting down right crowded out here. Last night we passed a 351ft Ecuadorian fishing trawler about 5 miles astern of us. At 351ft I'm pretty sure it was not a Sportfisher out for a day charter. It was most likely one of the huge tuna boats with a spotting helicopter onboard like we'd seen in Panama. The helicopter is used to search out the last tuna in the South Pacific -- a bit like strip mining.

We've had a few complaints about customers who are unhappy that they will not be receiving their Easter Island Tiki heads that they ordered from the SVGeorgia Paraphernalia e-commerce blog page (always read the fine print when ordering). We are negotiating a replacement item for them -- up to a 1/3 Marquesian body tattoo. This will include round trip express mailing of the indicated body parts.

Paul

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Marquisas Passage Day 4

Noon-to-noon run 191 miles. Just so our reader doesn't get bored we had some drama yesterday afternoon. Actually two dramas. The first was having a target show up on our AIS (Automatic Identification System for ships)display. This was a Class A AIS (i.e. big ship type) that was 18 miles or so away. The full info on the target never filled in, so we don't know where it was heading or its name. It was the first ship we've seen in 7 days. So there is at least one other boat out here, which was actually comforting due to our next little drama. Chris said she heard a knock in the steering. We had chased a knocking down on our passage from Virginia to the Virgin Islands. In that case it turned out to be the chain for the stern anchor clanking on the side of the aft locker. So I didn't expect any real issues, but climbed back through the man-cave and shown the flashlight on the steering and rudder post. I was a little surprised to see that the main bolt that pins the the rudder arm to the rudder post had worked itself loose. Not a little loose. The nut had come off and the bolt had backed its way out all the way through the rudder post and was just hanging on by a few threads to the other side rudder arm fitting -- none of it was supporting the rudder post. This bolt not only holds the rudder arm from slipping around the rudder post, but it also stops the rudder from falling out of the boat. Something that would ruin your day 1,000 miles from shore.
We furled the headsail and turned the boat up into the wind (heaved-to). The boat settled down nicely in the 18kt winds and 4ft seas. It took about an hour and 45 minutes using a big socket drive to get the bolt back into position and tightened down again. This time I used Locktite on the bolt. We'll inspect it a couple times a day now.

Paul



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Marquises Passage Day 3

Yesterday's noon-to-noon run was 170 miles. It was cold last night - must have gotten down to the mid-70's. Long sleeves and long pants were what was needed. We always see flying fish offshore, but there are some really large herds of them out here. In the morning we see the results of whole families that committed suicide on our decks. I'm thinking of taping the crisis center 800 telephone number to the side of our hull. It might help out some of the younger, more techy flying fish.

Most of yesterday and all last night we flew the genoa out to the port side with the pole. It was decent sailing, but had us pointing just a little too much north of our desired course. This morning we moved the genoa back to the starboard side without the pole. So far, so good.

Got a funny note from our friend Dwyer on Rascal last night. He's the single-hander we met in the Galapagos who is sailing to Chile right now, via Easter Island. I told him that Gentlemen don't sail to Weather, that's why we were turning off and heading to French Polynesia now, instead of Easter. He responded with "thx for everything, good thing I'm a Rascal, not a gent ;-)"

Only 2,375 miles to go to Fatu Hiva.
Paul


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Marquisas Passage Day 2

I forgot to put in the noon-to-noon run for Friday on yesterday's blog. It was 139 miles. Yesterday's noon-to-noon run was 150 miles. We had a fast night sailing downwind with the trades blowing 22-26 kts. Seas are down a bit this morning. We had the main with a single reef in it and the full genoa(headsail) out. Today we'll probably setup the whisker pole to hold the genoa out to windward. This will let us point a little further downwind -- more at Fatu Hiva. The boat has held up well so far, no major additions to the work list, except we lost overboard an expensive, shiny, dorade vent while beating to weather. And a few of my old friend port leaks came back to visit.

Paul

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