Underway Again (Briefly)!

After an all too brief stay on Fatu Hiva, we pulled up the anchor this morning bound for the Atuona on the island of Hiva Oa. We will do our official clearance here into French Polynesia. We had an absolutely amazing experience on Fatu Hiva and hope that the rest of our stay throughout the islands are as good. What really blew me away was the generosity of the other cruisers, a New Zealand couple in particular, Paul and Gina on their boat "Solace" We met them on Thursday afternoon when they stopped by to say hi in their dinghy. We invited them on board and as we were talking, I mentioned the problems we had with our radio. They knew about it from hearing us and Toketie on different HF nets and then they offered to lend us their spare antenna tuner until we could get ours replaced (hopefully in Papeete). It turned out that they had a complete spare radio setup on board. Well I went over to their boat that evening and we tried their spare tuner on his ICOM radio (same make and model as ours). The tuner worked so the next day Paul uninstalled it from their boat, brought it over, I put it in place and made the appropriate connections, and voila, it worked!. I managed to get all our backlogged emails and last night I spoke to the net controller for the Pacific Seafarers net in Hawaii and his comment was that he had never heard me so clearly. Obviously our tuner had been failing slowly for some time and finally gave out on the long passage. The pain in the butt of all this is that in order to get a warranty replacement I have to send the tuner back to the place of purchase (Victoria BC) and then they will ship a replacement to me. I will try and see if I can ship it off from Hiva Oa this week and get the process started.
The other major highlight from Fatu Hiva was our hike up to the waterfall yesterday. A good 50-60 minute uphill walk that brings you to this stunning grotto surrounded by vertical cliffs with the water flowing over them. It was absolutely amazing!! We had a bit of a birthday party for David last night to honour his 60th year and then a short nights sleep to get underway by 06:00 this morning. We have sailed most of the way but are motoring the last 10 miles to get the batteries fully charged before we squeeze our way into Atuona

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Fatu Hiva, Hanna Vavau Bay (Bay of Virgins)

We arrived in the anchorage at Fatu Hova yesterday morning at daybreak. We were actually here a couple of hours before dawn but hove to until first light. There were 10 boats already here and with us and Toketie, that made 12. We are anchored in deep water (25-30 meters) and have over 100 meters of chain plus some anchor rode out. We are very comfortable. The anchorage is stunning! Steep sided, lush, with craggy rock pillars. We are taking lots of pictures and will post them to the web site when we can. Shortly after we arrived, a couple of guys from an American boat "Argonut" came by and said that they were organizing a dinner on shore, hosted by one of the local families. 25 USD per head. After some encouragement from Cathy we said OK. There were 6 boats in all with maybe 16 people in total there. The food was great. During the meal, the couple hosting the dinner pulled out a guitar and ukulele and played traditional Marquesan music for us. Little to no English is spoken here. The first language is Marquesan and everyone also speaks French. Despite being pretty tired after over 28 days at sea, we had a great time. The village itself is wonderful. The French Polynesian authorities have invested heavily in infrastructure and it shows. They have built a stone and concrete breakwater with a launch ramp for the local fishing boats. There is a medical clinic staffed 4 days a week, a church, school, power, telecommunications, water etc. The houses are small but tidy and the people we've met so far are very friendly. I can't help reflecting on how things have likely changed with the adventy of more and more boats making the jump across the Pacific. 10 years ago, maybe 20 boats in total would have made the trip in a given year. There are probably closer to a 100 this year!

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Still Sailing After All These Days

Position as of 06:00 UTC 07°36'S, 135°07'W
We are still sailing. What else is here to say. We have been averaging 4 knots for the past 2 days and the winds look like that is what we will continue to average. We are sticking with Toketie, as they are still reporting us into Pacific Seafarers and hence our position is updated in Yotreps. David said to day on the radio that if we wanted to charge on ahead, don't worry just go. We decided not. We have come this far together, lets finish the long journey together as well. We cold be going faster with the drifter up but as Toketie does not have one, we take a comfortable pace. We will order a new antenna tuner as soon as we get somewhere with some internet coverage. Hopefuly we can arrange to get it sent to Nuku Hiva using Polynesian Yacht Services as the broker. We'll se how it all plays out. The boat has been under the control of out autopilot for the past couple of days as wehave had trouble getting the wind steering to handle the boat in these light winds. I played have it set up now and it seems to be managing pretty well. Hopefully we will be able to leave it as is. The autopilot we have was never designed to be used continuously for long periods and I really don't want to burn it out. On the other hand, it has performed really well and as long as I give it a bit of TLC at the next anchorage, all should be well.

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What Can I Say?

Position as of 11:00 UTC 07°03'S, 134°10'W
We have had a slow day or so with light winds and calm seas. We are currently deep reaching at 3.5 - 4 knots. The antenna tuner is more or less shot. If I get it to work again I will be surprised so this will not get posted likely until we are well and truly landed. We hope to get to Fatu Hiva on Tuesday but unless we get some wind it will be a close thing. We will likely only be able to stay until Thursday or Friday and then we will have to move on to Hiva Oa to formally check in. Our plan is to arrange to get a replacement tuner sent to Nuka Hiva, the administrative centre of the Marquesas. It will be a logistical challenge and I am not sure how it will work yet. Our existing unit is under warranty and I have asked ICOM to send a replacement but I suspect that they will want to get the old one back first. We will see how it all shakes out.
We are certainly not breaking any speed records on this passage. The winds have been unusually light, despite the doom and glom predictions of various weather gurus that we will experience "directionally enhanced" trade winds. Since we crossed the equator, the winds have been extraordinarily light and variable. We ran wing on wing for most of the day with winds from the ENE. Odd direction for the SE trades to blow!! Hopefully things will steady out in the next little while.

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Trade Winds (trade you for some wind!)

Position as of 10:00 UTC 04°47'S, 131°33'W
We have been sailing slowly southwest in light variable "trade winds" since we crossed the equator. Tonight has been the first night in awhile hat we haven't been harassed by squalls so perhaps we are finally out that zone. The winds have been strange with shifts of 10-20 degrees. We spent all day yesterday beating into a southerly wind in order to keep to our course and not get too far west. I thought we weren't supposed to go to weather any more. Once again, it just proves that I am just ain't no gentleman. The winds have finally clocked around to the east and if the weather charts are half way accurate, we should keep this wind for the next few days. We have had a good day and night (so far) sailing and should put some decent miles behind us today. We have been averaging only about 100 miles a day but that's not too bad considering we have had 10 knots o wind during the day ad less at night. We are currently about 550 miles from Fatu Hiva where we will sneak in for a few days before "officially" arriving in the Marquesas in Hiva Oa. The radio continues to plague and sometimes I get it to work for a few hours before it all packs in again. I got it working today by thumping the tuner rather hard. The engineers last resort! It worked, a least long enough to get email. Will try and get it working again tomorrow as we could not check into Pacific Seafarers and for some reason Toketie didn't check in tonight either. The VHF decided to act up the other day as well. I spent a wonderful morning tearing that apart to find a broken wire from the microphone to the radio. Of course is did not break in the easy to repair places so we now have this Frankenstein configuration for the microphone. Ugly but it works.

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A Dark and Stormy Night

Sunday April 6, 2008
Actually it was a dark and WET night. It rained steadily and incredibly hard most of the night. The wind associated with the cells that we went through however was, for the most part, light. We motored, we sailed, we drifted for awhile. At one point we got within a mile of our buddy boat Tokatie so we headed off west to put some distance between us. We got to the limits of VHF range before we turned due south to try and intercept them. Well, we did. It's actually kind of fun to try and track another vessel around the ocean based on projected course and speed. By morning, the winds started to drop and we ended up rifting slowly south at around 1.5 knots. By 10:45 local we started up the motor and stated the long motor through the doldrums to the equator. At our current rate, we should reach the equator mid afternoon today! With luck we will get some wind before then as well. I poured the last of the diesel from the jerry cans we carry on deck into the tank today and it raised the level to 7/8 of a tank. We figure that gives us about 90 hours before we are sucking fumes. We have set a limit of 50 hours to leave a reasonable margin. We will see how we go.
I have pretty much given up on the HF radio. I am certain that the antenna tuner is at fault. I made a direct connection from the tuner to the backstay antenna yesterday and everything worked for about 15 minutes then it quit. I have been unable to get it to "tune" again. Oh well, I will likely look into the tuner one more time before I finally quit. I am quite prepared to get a replacement but we will likely have to get to Papeete before I can arrange it. Oh well. It's a bit weird being cut off from email. It makes you wonder how we ever managed to communicate before. Perhaps this is god for us?
By 05:30, the wind came up and we were able to sail, an unexpected bonus. I was sure that we would be under power to the equator. This is the nice part of having a fin keel boat. We are close hauled and comfortable in 7-9 knots of wind, sailing at 4-5 knots. No diesel being used, and most of all it's QUIET. Our engine is actually quite quiet anyways but after a few hours, you do get pretty tired of it.

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On Course for the Marquesas

Position as of 22:30 UTC 02°11'S, 127°59'W
We crossed the equator at 13:14 Pacific Daylight savings time on Sunday April 6, 2008. We hove to just across the line within haling distance of Toketie and toasted Neptune and picnicked in the cockpit. A very civilized rest on the way south. We have been sailing ever since and the winds are generally picking up and we are about into the SE trades no. We have had 10-15 knots all day and that is what we will expect for the next few days. Hopefully this will send as I managed to get the radio working again (temporarily I'm sure). All's well and we are 800 miles from the landfall

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