From Where to Where?

Leaving Opua at dawn

I have mixed feelings about being in internet range again after seven weeks of being away from all things networked and interconnected.

Actually, I lie.  

In this day and age, I think that getting out of touch of the web is one of the best things that you can do for yourself.  I can't wait to go get lost again.

But it was heartening, when I reconnected to the blog after all those weeks of just sending in posts via the HF radio, to see the comments that showed how much people seemed to be enjoying our dispatches from never-never land.

It's a different thing entirely, writing via the radio, without either the aid or the distraction of pictures.  I must say that I enjoy it.  Pictures are such poor things for telling a story.

[This is where I remind myself of some things that pictures can never tell you about this passage.  Like pissing on deck in a gale, and the wind swirling around you so that you suddenly get this faint taste of urine from the air…Cruising World magazine ain't never going to tell you about that.  And also, how I started off carefully mopping saltwater from the cabin sole, and wiping it down with a rag rinsed in fresh, just to keep everything nice-o…but how everything devolved until our cabin in back was a soupy mess of discarded boots and raingear, waiting for their next run on deck.  And how Elias suddenly wised up to the fact that his bunk in the bow is actually the crappiest spot in the entire boat to sleep, and his decision that the very best bunk, the port side settee with its cozy lee cloth, was his and his alone.  That kind of thing.]

Still, pictures have their place.  So, if you haven't already gorged yourself on everyone else's scearrhea (that's compulsive online over-sharing, natch), I offer this brief photo-travelogue of the 23 days that took us from Opua, New Zealand to Tahanea Atoll, the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia.

The route looked something like this

Lunch on the back deck on the first day, Cape Brett in the background

Juvenile wandering albatross joined us once we were out of sight of land

Skua chasing a wandering - I think Alisa IDed it as an Antarctic skua

The crew, they are...

…all happy.

More stuff than normal seemed to break on this passage - these Schaefer fittings on the inboard end of our mainsail battens are…well, kind of crap.  Tend to strip out if the sail slaps.  Thank your ever-luvin' god for West System epoxy.  There are very few things I wouldn't want to go to sea without…West is one of them. 

Keeping the program moving while the epoxy cures on the main - staysail set with the jib poled out to windward

The crew, they're still...

...happy, though Alisa is strapping herself into the galley and cooking in raingear

And, actually, Eric isn't that pleased.  The poor guy never got over seasickness - a concerning change from his normal two-days-and-it's-over routine

Putting in a reef.  I'm a poor log-keeper, so I lost track of the number of reefs I put in and shook out…but it was tons

Then we got smart and hove to to let a low pass in front of us.  But the low stalled out and parked over Galactic.  Wrong call - we had been making a steady 8+ knots on a beam reach, and might have been heroes if we'd only kept it going.  No big deal, we just ended up hove to for an extra couple of days, waiting for it to stop blowing.  (This is where I defend our 23-day passage time by noting that we were hove to for five days.)  Except that I did take that one poor step below and broke my ribs.  Now that changed the tenor of the passage.  This pic was taken a few days later when the wind was down and we were moving again under staysail alone.
The waves, oh they're big enough. 

The Kodiak mantra - "Sure hope this weather holds!"

Eric was reduced to sleeping on the sole in the saloon

"C'mon, Mike!  If we barberhaul the cunningham like <<grunt>> this, we can get another eighth of a knot out of her!"

"We don't know any better!  This is the only life our parents ever gave us!"

The kids are totally unflappable about it all.

Only five days from the finish…and poor Eric is green again

A sign of the tropics - the first flying fish on deck.  The boys ate it for breakfast

We had a visit from whales - Sei or Bryde's - way out there in the blue blue world.  One came up a boatlength away from us...

Meanwhile, we're getting soooo close.  We're getting northwesterlies on the back side of a front.  Everything is fine as long as we don't catch up with the front

A squall 24 nautical miles long...

And finally, at dawn, a tuna just outside Tahanea

You never met a kid so proud of himself

Eric and the perpetual spaghetti factory

Inside the pass, and the water suddenly so flat

Blessed Tahanea

Anchor down, awning up, sushi for dinner

More to come soon.