Adventures on s/v Evergreen

February 5, 2012

2012-02-06T03:55:00.001-06:00

Well, Happy New Year. Yep we are already into the second month, and as usual when we are land based my blogging goes by the wayside.

Fireworks

Welcome to Hawaii

Sail to Electric Beach and Pokai Bay

Arizona Memorial Pearl Harbor

We had a great visit with Dennis' niece Claire over the New Year. In typical Morrison style, she had to go home to rest..... Took her two tries to get back to the mainland as all the flights were overbooked to begin with and then one cancelled. We did a lot of touristy things while she was here - including the hike up Diamond head, 1/2 a day at Pearl Harbor to the Arizona Memorial, a trip to the north shore to the beach and to watch surfers as well as two sets of fireworks. We also took the boat out for a day sail with snorkeling and then overnight at a nearby anchorage.

North Shore Pipeline beach

The first set of fireworks we watched from the 42nd floor of the Discovery Bay Apartment/Condo building. Our new friends Dan and Sandra invited us up to watch the fireworks put on by one of the hotels over Waikiki beach. Pretty cool. I had never been in a high rise apartment before. They have an amazing view - Waikiki from the lanai and Diamond Head from the master bedroom. WOW!

On New Year's Eve Claire and Josh went out with one of our neighbors to watch the Ko Olina Resort fireworks from the water. Josh said it was the best he had ever seen The show was over all four lagoons of the resort and synchronized to music. Dennis and I watched from the beach and from our vantage point it was pretty awesome. Was also nice to be able to walk 5 minutes back to the boat!!

The job in nearby Ewa Beach did not pan out - sadly the Hospital actually closed. So, back to square one. I was able to get a part time (per diem) job at The Queen's Medical Center in the Operating Room, and have been working there since January 17. It is the biggest OR that I have ever worked in. So far I really like it, the people are pretty friendly and I am learning lots of new things. I also got a job at the new West Marine store in Honolulu. Doesn't pay much, but the discounts on boating supplies make it worthwhile. Working 2 jobs is keeping me very busy - with the bus ride I am gone about 12 hours a day when I work at the hospital. Dennis is back to chief cook and bottle washer these days. Probably not his favorite!!

Doug and Carla on Moondance are here at Ko Olina now too, so it is totally like home. They are only 3 slips away.

Dennis and Doug have been working some for the yacht broker here at the marina. To date they have done a lot of rewiring on a dive boat in nearby Waianae. We hope they continue to get jobs through this broker.

Diamond Head

Josh has made a couple new friends, so is socializing more. He is hoping to go go-karting with his friend Sevin this week. Today he went to a superbowl party on the windward side of the island with his friend JT. He was happy to hang out with kids his own age. He continues to do school work and boat work, so he is busy.

Otherwise, we (Dennis mostly) are continuing with boat projects and maintenance - a never ending process actually, but we have a few things that need attending to before we leave on any extended trips.

So, we are settled and working and enjoying the social aspects of our new home. We have awesome new friends and of course you gotta love winter in Hawaii! Dennis and Josh set up the air conditioner last week, so with the shades up it stays relatively cool in the boat. Makes working in the boat more comfortable.

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T13:46:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas 2011 from Dennis, Carol and Josh aboard s/vEvergreen currently located on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, USA.

Yep,it is hard to believe how fast this year has gone by and the number of miles wehave put under our hull. Like most years, 2011 has had ups and downs,butoverall we have had a spectacular year.

From the now familiar sights ofMexico to the picture postcard lagoons of French Polynesia there are just notenough words to describe what an amazing experience we have had this year. It has definitely been a life enrichingexperience for all of us.

Where's the T Rex? Fatu Hiva

TheMarquessa’s with their lush volcanic peaks reminded us of Jurassic park – rightdown to the staked out goat. Kind of eerie actually…. After a 24 day crossingwe were happy to see land and have fresh food. We began practicing our French, learning Polynesian words for things andorienting ourselves to cruising in FP. Wecaught up with Doug and Carla on s/v Moondance in Nuka Hiva and were fortunateto buddy boat with them the rest of the season.


Dennis on the hooka - Tahanea

TheTuamotus gave us our first experience of entering lagoons thru the reef. The entrance to Makemo was a little excitingbetween the current and waves. We had noproblems, but it was similar to eddy lines and waves on the river, only in asailboat. Josh broke out his spear gun and provided several yummy dinners. We voted the Tuomotus as best place tosnorkel. We did lots of snorkeling, one scuba dive and several dives with ourhooka. The water is so clear and there is an abundance of seal life – includingsharks.

The Lagoon at Bora Bora

Tahitiand the Societies were next up. By the time we got to Tahiti we were ready tosee a real grocery store. We socializedwith other Puddle Jumpers, provisioned, did laundry and boat projects; thenheaded out to explore the rest of the societies. We spent about a month in BoraBora – thelagoon is beautiful. Josh said goodbyeto kid friends there and had to put up with just us grownups until our finalstop in the Tuamotus on the way to Hawaii. We made our way back to Tahiti with stops at Huahine and Tahaa. We reprovisioned in Tahiti, and then headedout to spend some time in Moorea waiting for a good weather window to head backto the Tuamotu’s.


Toau Josh, Doug, Carol, Valentine, Dennis and Gaston.

Ourlast month or so in French Polynesia was spent in the Tuamotu’s on Toau andRangiroa. Toau was amazing – thecaretakers there, Valentine and Gaston, made our stay special. Rangiora was our last stop – Josh met up withhis friend Max. They fished like crazymen keeping us in a steady supply of fish. Again, had to wait for a weatherwindow to leave, but made it to Hawaii in 17 days, just in time forThanksgiving.

Josh with the Big Fish kids, Alex, Max and Ayla

So, here we are. Hawaii is beautiful, feels cool to us but Iguess it is winter. The marina is niceand our neighbors have been very welcoming and helpful. We will be here until June – ish, so come seeus.

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a Happy 2012,

Dennis, Carol & Josh

2 and a 1/2 weeks

2011-12-12T00:10:00.000-06:00

Aloha


Evergreen ready for Santa


Our new ride

Can't believe we have been in Oahu for almost

Josh does dishes


Sunset off the lagoon

3 weeks. We are adjusting to land life pretty well. We really love our new neighbors here at the marina. They have been so welcoming and helpful. We feel very lucky to have ended up here. Last weekend Melanie and Jon down the dock brought us their jeep to drive while we are here. How amazing is that huh??!! So, we are mobile. We went exploring one day, down to Waikiki and then up the west coast and back down the H3 home.

Josh is back doing math and is doing a good job keeping up with the dishes. We have done a few projects around the boat, sorting and cleaning (lots of that) mostly. In total I did 17 loads of laundry the week we got here.

The weather has been pretty nice, warm and windy, actually had rain the last couple of days. Hopefully it is washing off the rest of the salt from the boat.

I have been offered a job at the hospital in Ewa Beach. It is 12 hour nights, but is the closest hospital to us. The rest are all in town - which is an hour and a half commute. I have an interview in town tomorrow, just to see what is they have to offer. I would rather work there in the OR, but really don't want to commute on a daily basis, so we will see.


sunset over the marina

In the meantime we are enjoying our new friends and being in beautiful Hawaii. We miss Doug and Carla, are looking forward to seeing them here in January. Hope you enjoy the pictures....

112411

2011-11-25T10:12:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving!! Yee Haw We are in Hawaii and boy are we thankful!! We made it to Oahu's Ko'Olina Marina just as it got dark on Wednesday. Typical Morrison style. My last post was Friday the 18th, the weekend was pretty much more of the same, sunny days, cloudy, windy nights. We had big mile days - a record setting 197 miles from Friday to Saturday. It wasn't comfortable, but it was definitely fast. We could had Hawaii in our sights and it looked like a Wednesday morning arrival in Honolulu. Monday night we passed the southern end of Hawaii (the big Island) on my watch. We didn't get the high compression winds we thought we might get, with highs only in the mid to upper 20's. As my watch was winding down, so did the wind, I started the engine, and within minutes the high temperature alarm was going off. So, poor Dennis was rousted out of bed at 0600 to deal with that. Ane that set the tone for our last two and a half days. After working on the engine for 3 hours, it restarted, and then the wind came up, so we were back to sailing. We had been in email contact with a cruiser living in Kona who was helping us find a place to stay here in Oahu. That day after the net when he and Dennis were talking, he told us the channel between Hawaii and Molokai was blowing a gale. We figured we were 20-30 miles out from there, so should be okay. We did however put the second reef back in the main as it was getting dark. I don't think the reef had been in even 10 minutes before the wind jumped to the high 20's/low 30's and the seas built up. We had another wild ride that night, and made up some of the time we lost sailing backwards that morning due to the 2 knots of current against us with no wind. Tuesday we had more of the same engine drill. Dennis had worked on the raw water pump Monday - it had worked its way loose, and was spinning around not pumping. Tuesday we ran the engine for about 4 hours before the alarm went off again, and on it went. Fortunately the wind kept up, so we kept moving and the current finally turned in our direction on Wednesday. Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon was probably one of the wildest rides we have ever had the winds stayed in the upper 20's and the seas were big. We were taking waves over the bow and into the cockpit fairly regularly, but the end was in sight. The channel between Molokai and Oahu was the culprit - again lots of wind and water funneling through a tight channel - simple physics with crazy results. The entrance to Ko'Olina was straight forward, and we tied up to the fuel dock as directed. The joy of being still, of being able to stand upright, to pee without falling off the head while hanging on for dear life. We found some people down the dock on a commercial tour boat to take pity on us and let us in the showers. What a treat to stand under the water for as long as we wanted. After a beer and gin and tonic we walked to the hotel close by for an overpriced only moderately well cooked meal - but hey, the salad bar was awesome, and I didn't cook it or clean up after it and they served a good California red wine - not out of a box!!!!! Oh the things we take for granted.

This morning as I was waiting for the marina office to open we met a couple on one of our sister ships - hull #29. Debbie and Steve are now our new neighbors and new best friends. So far Oahu has been extremely friendly - like French Polynesia, only in English. Steve and Debbie graciously invited us to join them as their guests at Thanksgiving dinner at the home of their friends on the north island. What a beautiful home and nice people! It couldn't have been better if we had tried to plan it. Dinner was hosted at the home of Gary and Diane. Their backyard goes right to the beach, their home is lovely and welcoming and the food was amazing. Steve and Debbie introduced us to more people than we will ever remember the names of, all of whom were friendly and helped us to feel comfortable and at ease. Josh had kids to hang out with - mostly girls - which kept him occupied and happy.

So we have ended up on our feet - I am hoping to find a job at the hospital that is in the town about 5 miles away, otherwise it is at least an hour bus ride into Honolulu proper. I will be happy with whatever comes up, but it sure would be nice to be closer to the boat. It seems that the tsunami last spring took out about 300 slips at the Ke ehi lagoon marinas, so the downtown marina is full up. That is why we are way out here at Ko'Olina. It is a very nice marina, and the area although resorty is nice and clean and friendly. Target, Home Depot and a grocery store are about a mile and a half walk away, the bus stop is about a mile away and there is a small grocery store/deli a short distance from the marina. Steve and Debbie have already offered rides to West Marine and Costco. So life is good. We have new friends, a nice slip close to the showers and laundry (which is cheap, 1.50 to wash 1.75 to dry), the beach is close and best of all we are still. It was amazingly cool to sleep the whole night through, the right way in our bed and in Josh's case in his bed.

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111811

2011-11-18T15:45:00.000-06:00

Well, we made it through the ITCZ. I think I should get the sailing equivalent of a big silver belt buckle for riding the bronco thru the night last night. I stayed on the full 8 (or is it 12) seconds and then some!!! It was pretty wild!! The wind and the seas did their best, but I hung in there. My watch saw winds 18-23kt with gusts to 30. Not too big of a deal except the wind direction varied from 40 degrees in front of the beam to 40 degrees aft of the beam. Made sail trim and windvane setting a challenge. I pulled sail in and put sail out and adjusted the wind vane until I finally settled on the autopilot, the double reefed main and the staysail. With that we had reasonable speed 6-7 kts and only buried the port rail a little bit (Well actually a lot, but everything becomes relative after a while). The seas were pretty big and I got very wet. No rain though lots of clouds. The swell was and still is primarily from the north. The good news though is that the current is finally helping us a little bit - yeah!!! We will probably get to Honolulu on Thanksgiving Day - Kind of a pain as only the captain can leave the boat until customs comes, and then there is a fee for after hours/holidays - wonder if they'll take a check or credit card? Our supply of US cash is minimal. I had good sleep last night before my watch, and again after. It showed as I made pancakes for breakfast (1000 am). Josh is a little seasick again today, but in good spirits. There is actually blue sky out there, maybe we can get a little dried out today. The whole boat could stand to go through a car wash - ourselves included. Dennis cracked the hatch in our cabin this morning, and we got pooped by a wave. I had to tell him that generally I like to wash my underwear in fresh water! My drawer was out so that Dennis could reach the generator controls, which is why it was available to be doused with salt water. I wouldn't be surprised if we sprouted gills.

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111711

2011-11-17T15:52:00.000-06:00

From the ITCZ. Wind is squirrelly - up and down. Its rainy, we are motor sailing. The only thing exciting ( if you can call it that) was we sailed thru a flock of flying fish 3 nights ago - boy do they stink!! I don't leave the cockpit at night (at least not because of smelly fish), so I had to put up with the smell - yuck! Also had a first of burying the aft deck toe rail - never done that before. Goes to show you can get used to just about anything. Actually I just want to be there so the discomfort of sailing like banshees is secondary to my desire to have a long hot shower. Optimistically we could make it by Wednesday, if we can just loose the current and pick up 20-25 kts of wind, it could happen. We should be exiting the ITCZ within the next 24 hours, and will then make our turn towards HI. The northern trades should kick in and off we go. Carla and I missed our SSB call yesterday as I was helping to un reef the mainsail - hoping to get some more speed going (finally gave up around noon and turned on the engine). So, we rescheduled for today. Had to cut it short today because they needed to make some sail adjustments, we'll try again tomorrow. We are only 8 miles north of them now, but they are about 17 miles to the west of us. Might be getting close to VHF range, in which case calls don't have to be scheduled. We can pick up the horn anytime. Josh is feeling a little seasick today - not sure what is different. He is being a real trooper - gets up every day at 0600 for his watch with no qualms. We are really proud of him.
Well, I will try to post this.....

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111311 From The northern Hemisphere

2011-11-13T16:27:00.000-06:00

Well, its Sunday and we are back in the Northern Hemisphere. We crossed the equator around 0600 this morning. Not surprisingly, no one wanted to be woken for the occasion, so it passed quietly. We will probably have a little celebration this afternoon.

The wind finally clocked around to the southeast, so the last two days have been better as far as the motion is concerned. We hosed down the cockpit yesterday to get the saltwater off, things dried out some and I actually made a real lunch (Chinese cabbage salad). It has been nice to be able to open some hatches to cool down and dry out the inside of the boat. Lucky Dennis always seems to get pooped thru a hatch while he is sleeping, so the new rule is to always close the portholes at night!! He says it is a most unpleasant way to wake up - I personally hate having to dry everything out. It was my pillow that got soaked 2 nights ago when it happened last.

It has been pretty uneventful since fixing the diesel leak. Dennis and Josh had to add water to the generator cooling system, but that is a chore that will need to be repeated every couple of days related to the ongoing issues with it. I am pretty sure our batteries are looking forward to shore power almost as much as Josh is!!

We have been making good time 6-8 knots consistently. We have caught up to Moondance in latitude, but they are 36 miles west of us. Our next waypoint is the ITCZ or the doldrums. Brad has us aimed for 8 degrees north 148.4 west. We are hoping it is a narrow band and we get thru quickly and can make our turn to Hawaii. Optimistically we have about 11 days to go. - Pray for us. Right now we are at 00 degrees 30 minutes north 148 degrees 37 minutes west and fighting the counter equatorial current or some such PIA. It is very strong and are doing a ferry to the northeast. Interesting thought for a sailboat.....

Quiet day today. I am nursing a sore left hand, I spilled boiling water on it this morning. It hurts like stink, but I don't think it is going to blister. Amazing really considering how much motion I cook with all the time that I don't get hurt more often. There is certainly an art about cooking on a slant with a moving stove top. We should video it for a reality show - I bet it would be hysterically funny.

Well, that's it for now...

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Thursday 111011

2011-11-10T17:06:00.000-06:00

Well, here we are, its our fifth day out,and things are finally clicking in.

We left Sunday the 6th around 2pm. It was a beautiful day, the pass was no problem and Josh caught a 34 in approx. 30 lb yellow fin tuna just outside of the pass. That was a good thing even though it slowed us down. When we got back situated Moondance was 6 miles ahead of us. That night for the Pacific Seafarer's net we discovered our SSB was not transmitting. Dennis could hear them, but got no response to his attempts to check in. So... project for the next day. Ideally the winds would have been from the east or southeast giving us a beam reach. Alas the wind has been northeast, so we have been on a close haul. It is better than the death rolls we have had, but still is difficult to move around. On the upside, the Tuna was delicious!!

Monday Dennis cleaned all of the connections on the SSB, and Monday night was successfully heard and checked in. You can follow us on their website www.pacseanet.com. Our call sign is KI6HAI. I haven't navigated their webpage, so cannot give you any hints on exactly how to do it, but it can be done. Dennis thinks the connection was loosened at the deck fitting when I strapped down the water jugs.... I don't know, it is another one of those voodoo things that boats have. Josh discovered Monday night that sleeping in his bunk with this amount of port heel is not possible, so he has moved onto the salon settee until we have a more comfortable tack.

Tuesday we discovered diesel in the port food compartment. What a disaster. We unloaded it all, wiped and washed, tore off labels and relabeled with sharpie and put it all back. Only to discover on Wednesday that it was full again. So, repeat the above and add Dennis discovering that some stupid SOB in Evergreen's past thought that fixing a hole in the diesel fill tube with glue and covering it with tape was a good decision. NOT!!! Whomever it was better hope I never find them - it won't be pretty. Dennis cut out the hole and plugged the tube with a wood through hull plug and hose clamp. Today - no diesel, problem solved, food replaced.

The weather has been okay, we had squalls on Monday and Tuesday, no winds above 33knots, was weird to turn upwind, on the way from Mexico we turned downwind during squalls. We have a different sail configuration now, smaller main jib, so turning up feels like I have more control. Probably just my imagination. Mostly the winds have been in the 15-20 knot range. I had a first for me last night - I actually put out more sail. We had lots of wind, but no speed with the partially furled jib, so I put out the stay sail and voila! 6kts. We have been trying to go straight north with as much east as possible. Yesterday we crossed to the west of our north south line from Rangiroa to the equator. Hopefully we will get some southeast winds today (Jamie promised!!!) and will be able to make some of it up. If we continue at 130 miles per day will should be at the equator by Saturday....We'll see.

With the SSB working again, we are able to speak with Doug and Carla daily. It is nice to hear other people. I miss being able to just pick up the VHF and call over. Now we schedule our calls.

So today everyone looks well rested. Josh has been taking the 6-9pm watch at night and 6-9am in the morning. This lets Dennis and I get a 6-7 hour block of sleep, it really makes a difference. He fills in during the day as needed as well. We have been on power rationing, so he has not had as much computer time as he would like. Feeling slightly seasick hasn't helped his desire to look at the computer either. The weather is good, we are cruising along at 6-7 kts at 350 degrees true. A little more west than we would like, but at least we are moving, and at this point everything is functioning properly. Hopefully this will continue so we can settle into some sort of routine. I'll let you know. Now if I can get this to post life will be good!!!

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110311 from Rangiroa

2011-11-03T16:37:00.001-06:00

110311
Well, I have been pretty remiss in posting since we arrived in Rangiroa. We have been here almost 2 weeks now and even have reasonable internet, I have no excuse. Oh well, I am what I am I guess....
The trip here from Toau went well, no problems, sailed the whole way. We arrived Friday morning just before slack tide, but entered thru the pass anyway, again with no problems. We had a dolphin escort for the last 30 minutes or so and just before they left they gave us a real show - jumping and spinning - way cool. The pass was a little swirly, but totally manageable -at least for us going in. A big schooner left right after us, and going into the current was a bit rougher, they had a pretty wild ride going out. We anchored just northwest of the pass (Tiputa) in a real pretty bay.
The first week we spent getting to know the atoll and provisioning. The main town is about 8 miles from us, and getting there is interesting. There is a magazine close by, but is does not sell beer (heavens to mercy - what to do??:) ), and is somewhat more expensive. We have been ordering baguettes from there , so at least we have bread which is nice. We are anchored in front of the Kia Ora resort which has a nice dinghy dock and a helpful front desk. They called a restaurant to come get us one night for pizza and a taxi to take us to town on another day. We had a nice evening with Doug and Carla in the bar overlooking the lagoon. Moderately expensive, but not too bad for a resort.
As I said, provisioning is always interesting, and here the distance to town and lack of public transportation makes it even more so. On our first attempt we all hitchhiked into town, we were at least halfway there before we got a ride, but we were grateful nonetheless. There are two reasonably well stocked stores in Avatoru and one about 2 miles from there. Chez Daniel was willing to give us a ride back to the boats, so we stocked up on immediate needs - beer, soda, eggs, cream, fresh veggies and fruit. That Wednesday we took a taxi from the hotel into town, did our stop at the gendarmes and then into Avatoru for a big provisioning run. The taxi driver is very nice - Eugene. He waited at the gendarmes and took us to the post office. Chez Daniel was crazy with the arrival of new stock, but the woman who runs it (Elise) put aside beer, soda and eggs (we didn't want them to be refrigerated) and said we could have a ride back to the boats later in the afternoon. So, we walked to Magazine Kenny, back to town, had lunch,went to the smaller magazine, then did our shopping at Chez Daniel then waited for an hour and a half for a ride back to the dinghies. Whew!!! it was a long day. If you visit Moondance's blog (www.followingmoondance.blogspot.com) you will see pictures of the provisions on the beach awaiting the dinghies.
Since then we have done some snorkeling and walking and exploring. Josh's friend Max on s/v BigFish came to our anchorage at the end of our first week here. He was very happy to see them and has been going nonstop since then. We first met them in Moorea back in June, and were expecting to catch back up with them when we got back to Tahiti in September. As it turns out they really like the Tuomotus and have been here all season. Max (16) has 2 sisters Alex (14) and Ayla (12). They are a really nice family on a large catamaran. Josh and Max have been spearfishing and fishing like crazy. They have even sold some of the fish they caught to the locals. Quite the entrepreneurs.
It is hard to believe it is November already. We celebrated halloween with Moondance - watching Charlie Brown and the The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with Johnny Depp. Carla made popcorn balls - yum! The local population had trick or treating for the first time this year. We would have loved to have gone to town to see it, but it was really rainy and transportation is a real issue. Elise from Chez Daniel said it went real well. Tuesday the first was a school holiday - the day of the dead - I guess sort of like Memorial day in the US. Lots of flowers and such at the cemetery.
We are hoping to get at least one drift snorkel thru the pass in before we leave, and I hope that I can talk Josh and Max into one more fishing expedition. They have been real lucky catching yellowfin and it would be a nice supplement to our provisions for the crossing. I think we are going to head out on Sunday - Brad thinks it is a good window to leave. I am doing all the last minute projects and stowing, and we will do one last provision run tomorrow. The last thing we will do is put the dinghy on the front deck - at that point we will be pretty much boat bound, but at least it means we will be moving. I think we are all ready to head north and move into the next phase of our adventure. Hopefully we will get visitors in Hawaii, and I will find a job quickly. I will post along the way as I did on the crossing from Mexico. We will participate in the pacific seafarer's net, they have a website that I will post, I think you can follow us on that as well.

10/20/11

2011-10-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

Thursday 10/20 - Well we have been here for 2 weeks on Toau, and plan to leave today for Rangiroa. We have been pretty much boat bound since Saturday as we were scrunched between a high and a low. Which means it has been rainy and windy. Valentine is happy as the rain has filled up their tanks and she has been able to do laundry. We have only been off the boat twice since saturday, so would have preferred a little less rain. But, we got some projects done and Josh has done a good bit of homework. Since Dennis won the battle with the generator last week it has been running well, so we have had lots of power, good thing since the whole solar thing has been off line with no sunshine. The trip to Raniroa is about 100 miles, so we will leave around 4pm to time our arrival there with slack tide around noon tomorrow. It is still pretty windy, so we should have a good sail and may arrive early, seems weird to thing about slowing the boat down....

Our feast last Tuesday night was all we expected and more. Valentine served 2 kinds of raw fish - traditional poisson cru and hot and cold sashimi - grilled tuna and grilled lobster, rice and bread made with coconut milk and chocolate cake for dessert. What a lot of work! Including Valentine and Gaston there were 11 people.

Since then we have done a couple more snorkels, the fish here are amazing. On one a saw not 1, but 2 octopus. Josh has done some more spearfishing, even though Valentine and Gaston tell us to just go get fish from the fish trap.... We did two hooka dives, one outside of the reef which was okay and one on a coral head on the way to the Pink Sand motu. That one was pretty nice, cool coral formations lots of fish and even a lemon shark to check us out. We did that one with Doug and Carla and then afterwards met Valentine and Gaston on the Pink Sand motu for a picnic lunch. Ever the busy people, by the time we arrived they had many piles of dead palm leaves and trash burning, as well as more tuna on the grill. The Pink Sand motu is very cool, small but has lots of soft sand around it. I guess they harvest copra there. One of there dogs entertained us by chasing small reef sharks in the shallows. Gaston says he quite often catches them too!

We had another potluck/bbq last Thursday, seems to be the Thursday thing to do. By then we had 2 different boats in the anchorage, so got to try some different things. The couple from s/v Irene (Finnish boat - made me feel like I was in Crystal Falls) made smoked fish on the grill and a Finnish salted raw fish dish, I made potato salad, Carla made canneloni, Valentine had bread and rice and of course fish, and s/v Evan (a couple from Madagascar with a 3 yr old boy and a 9 yr old girl) brought mac and cheese and a chocolate torte for the little girl's birthday which was that day. I think I could live here.....

We have also done some exploring with Doug and Carla. We went to a motu north of us one afternoon, and to the west of the pass right here by the anchorage. We walked the whole way around that one, picked up several bouys for Valentine and Gaston. The bouys wash up on the motus and Valentine and Gaston collect up the good ones, send them to here family on Apataki who then resell them for them. Her nephew came on Saturday and took the 600 they had collected back with him to Apataki.

Monday when we ventured off the boat we walked around the main motu here. There is actually a small pension here, and my understanding is that it is currently closed because they have no means of transporting people back and forth from Fakarava. They used to have a 22 foot boat that they used, but the motor died. They will be getting a new motor soon, partly financed by the bouys that they pick up. They have quite the managerie here as well, 5 dogs, the requisite chickens, pigs and a pet frigate bird named UmuUmu. The fishing boat that brought the Tuna last week came again (sadly no Tuna) and brought them new coolers and chicken. Valentine shared the chicken with us, she said it was too much for them, and I also think they don't have enough freezer space to keep it.

We ventured off the boat again yesterday, mostly just to get off, but also to see if we could burn some trash. They had family here from Fakarava and they had gone fishing. Wow - amazing number of parrot fish, they filleted some, and strung some whole. They will take it to Fakarava and Tahiti to sell. Valentine again shared some fish filets with us - yum. Josh and Doug cleaned the bottom of Moondance yesterday as well.

We will spend the rest of today prepping the boat for the trip to Rangiroa and will go in one more time to say good bye to Valentine and Gaston. We will miss them, but will have great memories of our time here.

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Tuesday 10/11/11

2011-10-12T13:55:00.001-05:00

Saturday was a great day. We left around 1100 for the motu. It was quite the dinghy parade. Gaston and Valentine had their big yellow powerboat to guide 4 dinghies thru the coral across the lagoon to the pearl motu. Before we left Gaston jumped into their fish traps and speared 4 fish for our lunch. The fish trap is incredible, the number of fish - Wow! hard to describe. We were looking forward to lunch!!! The motu is small, but was pretty littered with trash and very overgrown. With Gaston and Valentine we had 13 people. The place looked totally different by the time we left. Valentine says that when the seas get big, the waves break across the entire motu, hence all the trash. We not only picked up garbage, but also raked up seeds from an tree that reminded me of a Russian Olive. Gaston cut down lots of trees with his very sharp machete. We separated glass and plastic, but everything else got burned. Gaston cooked the fish whole over a fire, and everyone contributed a variety of other things to constitute lunch. After lunch we went snorkeling. I didn't see any big sharks, but Josh and Dennis saw some big grey sharks and black tip reef sharks. The only one I saw was about 2 feet long. Sadly the only down side of the day was that the generator was still not working.

Sunday.
Dennis got up and started working on the generator again. It seems the new pump cannot handle pumping the hot water to the waterheater and back, so Dennis bypassed the waterheater. So, the generator was working again, but no hot water. Once that was taken care of, we went for a snorkel by the fish traps. Again - amazing numbers of fish. The fish swim in the trap, then can't figure out how to get back out. This was some of the best snorkeling ever. We saw an eagle ray, moray eels, grouper, an octopus, along with all the usual small reef fish. Josh was beside himself to use the speargun, so when I was done snorkeling, I followed him and Dennis around as they went hunting. Dennis was the first to have success with a 2 foot or so grouper, I finally had to make Josh quit for lunch, but after lunch he went back out with Dennis and got a good sized parrot fish. While they were out after lunch, Carla, Doug and I went in to look at Valentine's pearls. She was willing to trade food/clothes/household items for them. In the end I thing everyone walked away happy. I got a necklace, 2 baroque pearls and some 8-9mm pearls, and Carla got a bracelet a some more 9-10mm pearls. We were meeting for a rematch of risk that evening too. When we all gathered on our boat for the risk game, Dennis was just finishing up making the day's catch into tempura... YUM!!! We called the risk game at 8pm, took note of what/who was where and will continue another night. All in all a busy but very good day.

Monday
Ran the generator a long time to give the batteries a good charge. In the meantime Dennis continued working on the old pump, and finally got it working. He will reinstall tomorrow. Was kind of a cloudy blustery day, so we spent the day on the boat. I made bread - which turned out pretty good. Carla made cookies which she shared -yum!!! A power boat came in early in the morning and gave Gaston and Valentine some yellowfin tuna which they shared with everyone in the anchorage. Again yum!!! I think yesterday's time in the water caught up with Josh, because he ate his way thru 3.5 tuna steaks, salad, bread and 1/2 a pan of rice...Anyone interested in signing on as cook on my boat????? :)

Tuesday
Well the generator is winning the battle again today. I trust that Dennis will persevere and win the day, but it is not pretty. The generator drew first blood and right now is ahead....... Fortunately for me the watermaker is in a cooperative mood, so I was able to change out all the filters with little difficulty. We are supposed to be having dinner on shore tonight, we are looking forward to it. Valentine's feasts are stuff of legend... I'll let you know.

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Saturday 10/08/11

2011-10-10T01:47:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are in Tuau. We made it Thursday around 1000. There are mooring balls here, so we caught one of them, tidied the decks, cleaned up our cabin - we took 2 waves through port holes, then had naps. That evening Doug and Carla came over for drinks to celebrate our anniversary. Must be time to head back to the states, we are out of California wine!!!! Friday Dennis spent the day on the generator - again. Not entirely sure what is wrong. The high temp alarm went off, but it wasn't overly hot. The problem seems to be on the fresh water coolant side (that's where we just installed the new pump). Anyway, still are not sure what exactly the problem is or was, Dennis is putting it back together even as we speak, so we will see. Last night all the boats in the anchorage got together for a bbq at Gaston and Valentine's place. They are the only family that live here on Tuau. They fish and have a pearl farm and maintain the mooring balls. It was a great bbq. Everyone brought meat and side dishes. Gaston set up the bbq -- they use coconut husks instead of charcoal - and grilled the meat for everyone. We also brought in our trash and burned that. Besides Moondance, there are 2 other boats. A couple from Florida who have been cruising for 11 years, and a couple from Germany. So it was a good group of people. I am hoping to trade some food and sunglasses for pearls. Today we are going with Valentine and Gaston to a motu across the lagoon. We will help clean it up, have another bbq (Gaston will cook fish) and do some snorkeling. Hopefully the generator will behave and it will be a good day.

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Wednesday 10/05/11

2011-10-05T16:03:00.000-05:00

Last Friday was Doug's birthday, so of course we had a little celebration on Moondance. Carla made yummy stuffed cannaloni (sp?) and cake and I brought a big salad. We played dominos - again Doug is the supreme winner of the universe, kicked all of our respective butts. I also brought the second to last bottle of California wine. Yum!! The last bottle is for tomorrow - Our anniversary. I will also break out the last arrechera from Mexico. Saturday morning we decided to go snorkel with the rays again, I needed to use the phone, so we planned to stop at the post office at the little town on the way. Well, sadly if the post office parking lot is locked up (which it was), the phone booths are locked up. Our next stop was the Intercontinental resort - but no public phones there either. We knew there was a phone in Haapiti, so we dinghied onward. Of course it is past the rays, which were jammed with people and tour boats but what do you do. It was a quick call to the internet provider, actually talked to a person and resolved my issue - voila! Decided against snorkeling with the rays, too crowded and would have been a cold ride back to the boat. Saturday, I cleaned the decks and the inside of the dinghy - finally. They needed it, and it is a big improvement. Sunday Dennis and I took Doug and Carla's bikes for a ride on a loop from here (Opunohu bay) to Cook's bay. It was a really nice ride. The ride up through the valley with pineapple plantations was hard, but beautiful. We had lunch at the park at the head of Cook's bay - with the locals. Then headed on back to Opunohu Bay. Sunday night I made lamb for the first time. It turned out good, despite the grill going out halfway through. We may not be catching any fish, but the meat here has been good. Woke up to a major rain storm Monday morning, rushed around closing things up. It pretty much rained all day. Rinsed everything off, and gave the towels hung out a good rinse. We had been talking back and forth with Moondance about the weather window, and finally decided to leave on Tuesday. We made a last minute run to the store and left around 1230 on Tuesday. The carnival cruise ship was back at anchor in the bay, and the little town was filled with tourists. The locals had set up all kinds of booths with jewelry and crafts. I saw some of the nicest jewelry yet - sadly still too expensive, but very beautiful.
Tuesday's sail was good, we had to motor some, but the wind finally filled in and we are still sailing. We can see Moondance off our port side. They passed us while we were motoring, but we caught up and passed them under sail. We have been making good time, so will probably make Tuau (two wow) early tomorrow morning. We have heard lots of good things about Tuau, so are looking forward to our time there.

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093011 Moorea continued

2011-09-30T14:22:00.000-05:00

093011
Well its the end of September and we are still in Oponuhu Bay on Moorea. We have been pretty quiet. We are working on converting Moondance's dvd's to electronic files. They have 4 books of dvds, so it is taking all of our computing power to get it done. My little computer will only rip them, it isn't big enough to compress them, so ripping is my piece of the pie. Dennis and I did go exploring with Doug and Carla on Monday. We took one of the rare buses as far as it would go to the west, looked at all the shops and had lunch on the beach. We caught another bus from there back east to Maharepa. It is one of the main towns here on Moorea. We needed an ATM, which they had and of course we had to check out the market. I scored some smarties (not what they are called here, but you know what I mean) for Josh. He didn't realize we were actually leaving Tahiti on Friday and didn't stock up. From there we hitched a ride to the "Jus de Fruits". It is a fruit juice factory and distillary. They make boxed rum punches and maitais, flavored rums and liquours. We tasted quite a few and ended up buying a bottle of vanilla flavored rum cream liquour - quite good in my coffe even as we speak. From there we were able to hitch another ride back to our dinghy. All in all a pretty fun day. Josh was happy with his smarties too.
Tuesday we invited Doug and Carla here for a game of Risk. Four and a half hours later we declared Doug the winner with the most countries. Whew!!! Talk about a marathon. Definitely fun just long.
Wednesday Josh and Dennis cleaned the bottom of the boat and I procured fresh shrimp for dinner. Josh says the hull is as smooth as a baby's butt now. We will go fast, fast. Was a pretty hard job because of the wind and current, but they got it done. The shrimp came from a farm at the head of the bay. Doug and I dinghied over and picked up a kilo each. I made ours into a creole type of scampi over rice for dinner - yum!!
Josh was going to help Doug with their bottom on Thursday, but between generator issues and more wind they decided to put it off. We had problems with a fuse on one pump, then the freshwater pump crapped out. Thankfully we had the spare new pump (thank you Corinne), so it was just a matter of replacing it. Of course it wasn't as straightforward as it should have been, but by the end of the afternoon we were back in business. We will see what today brings. It is still pretty windy and a little cloudy. We are looking at a possible window to leave here on Monday or Tuesday.

The Hike to the top of Bora Bora by Josh

2011-09-30T14:14:00.001-05:00

The hike to the top of Bora Bora (aka THE true hike true hell)

As you can guess I did a hike, real surprise there. My family and I were in Bora Bora and we heard about a hike to one of the peaks. My dad being a seasoned hike from hell picker says, “Let’s do it”. The reasons why I did it: I would never hear the end of it if I didn’t go; My friend Jayce who I had recently met was going to do it; We heard some 11 year old girl had done it (that’s why I would never hear the end of it) and I liked a challenge. Bora Bora had three peaks, the highest peak was all cliffs and even with climbing equipment it was volcanic so the rock was crumbly and you couldn’t climb it. The second highest was thirty-five feet higher than the smallest peak. We went to the smallest peak which was 2300 ft high, so it was still really high.

The people going on the hike were my mom and dad, Jayce, our friends Doug and Carla, and I. We all got up at 8:00, to me it felt like 6:00 and it could’ve been for fast I was moving. The fun of it all started before we even got on land. From the anchorage to town and the trailhead was about a mile or two and we had Jayce in our dinghy. With the added weight it was too much for the sacrificial rubber ring on the prop. We were trying to get on a plane and all of a sudden we were going much slower. The ring was there so if something like that happened you don’t lose the gear box and the prop. You still have to replace the prop but it lets you go slow to get to where you’re going. We still went to the hike and Doug and Carla would stick with us on the way back. What a great way to start the day.

We got to the dinghy dock and got some more food from the store. We got all set and on our way, at first we were along a road through some houses then it turned into the trail. We heard that is was a good idea to get a guide so we wondering how we did that when a local guy standing on the side of the trail near the start just started walking with us, problem solved. My mom and Carla only went for the first tiny bit of it and then turned around to get to the store to get some beer before it stopped selling alcohol. The guide we had was probably around 60 to 65 years old and wore cheap $2 flip flops and he was just casually walking. My friend and I were 13 and 14, had good shoes on, and were doing everything we could to keep up with him. Since we really couldn’t keep up with him he waited for us. My dad and Doug were slower than us so at one point we went ahead because we could easily see the trail and we were careful. I would say that the first part of the trail was around 45 or 50 degrees steep and some places where they had ropes were about 60 to 70 degrees. The second part of the trail was steeper or it just seemed so because we were so high but I’m pretty sure it was steeper. There were a lot of trees on the side of the trail so there were roots and oh my god I love roots because they were sturdy handholds and sometimes like ladders. On the first place with ropes we were freaking out like “are you sure it’s THAT way” but it wasn’t that bad. During that hike I am pretty sure I broke the world record of how many times you could say the word terrify in any form. I’m sure Jayce wanted to strangle me because I was saying it so much.

When we finally made it to the top it was all worth it by far. We were 2300 ft off the water and had 330 or 340 degrees of clear view around us. We met some people on the way up who said it wasn’t good it was amazing and I would say it wasn’t amazing it was absolutely spectacular. Just below the top we ran into a couple who were from Detroit and had gotten engaged a few days before while they were in Bora Bora. The couple joked that for their honeymoon they would go to mars to top Bora Bora. We spent a pretty long time up there to rest and just look.

When everybody finished taking pictures we all thought “crap now we have to go back down”. In my opinion it was longer and worse because I slid on my butt down a lot of it. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I stepped down and my leg visibly shook, so next time I sat down to rest I stuffed my face with some peanuts that I brought and it got better. The food may have made me feel better but it didn’t make anything less terrifying. I find it funny that we thought it was scary going up the ropes, until we had to go down them. Jayce and I had gone ahead again and we stopped every once and a while and waited for my dad and Doug with the guide. As we got farther down it got easier and we were going faster so we went on ahead. We were so happy that we were done that we went straight to the store and bought some water and snacks to tide us over until we got back to the boat. Overall it took Jayce and me 5 hours and took my dad and Doug 6 hours.

Doug said it was the hardest hike he had ever done, for me it was the scariest I had ever done and right up there with the hardest. Over the summer my dad earned the title of, “not allowed to pick anymore hikes” and only one of them was harder. When we got to the boat we all jumped in the water to clean off and cool off. I took the next couple of days off from doing anything. I decided that no matter what, I wasn’t doing any hikes for another two months and banned my dad permanently from picking hikes.

Here is some visualization

70 deg 60 deg 45 deg

Sunday 092511

2011-09-25T16:01:00.001-05:00

092111 Wednesday
Finished up most of my provisioning yesterday. Dennis did epoxy work on several little projects around the boat, but you know how "little" projects are....By the time I got back to the boat from shopping, Dennis was just leaving to go with Doug and Carla to try and buy some fish since we have had no luck catching our own. Turns out not even the locals are catching fish. Made us feel a little better, but we still had no fish. Oh well. Doug and Carla came over for drinks and dinner and we discussed our action plan for heading out of here. Seems like we have unfavorable winds for the next 6 days, so we will finish up provisioning here, get our papers together with our agent and then head to Moorea until we get a good window. The anchorage is nice here, but it is too easy to spend money. Moorea has internet and baguettes, but the anchorage there just screams "get in the water". We can work on cleaning the hull, snorkel and hike and not spend money - all good things.
I haven't commented on the weather lately, but it is quite warm here. Not exactly sure of the temperature, maybe high 80s/low 90s. We are very protected in this anchorage, so part of each day we have no breeze which makes a big difference in our comfort level. Is still pretty good sleeping though - nice and cool at night. I put up the sunshade Tuesday, and of course it got really windy today.
Thursday 9/22 Did a final Carrefour run and picked up our exit papers. I made chocolaate chip cookie bars in the solar oven today. Probably could have picked a better, less windy day, but Dennis had been bugging me for them....After 3 hours, I decided they had to be done and they were mostly. I got no complaints, so I guess they were okay. Dennis and Josh worked on replacing the shower sump pump switch all afternoon and I went in and did work on the internet. Ended up being one of those starving hungry kind of nights as the sump pump project wasn't completed til almost 7pm.
Friday 9/23 Dennis was up at the buttcrack of dawn - finishing wiring the shower sump and then putting away all of his tools. The wind was not too bad, so we decided to up anchor and head to the fuel dock. I think our anchor was up before 0800. Fueling up went welland we were off to Moorea. We had a good sail over here, kind of a preview of things to come - mostly a reach. Josh was a little seasick, but didn't want to take any medication. So we were pretty conservative speed wise. We made it here by lunchtime and the rest of the day was pretty quiet.
Saturday was also a quite day. It was partly cloudy with lots of wind. I made a big brunch at 1230. Josh is being a typical teen and sleeping as long as we will let him. Since there was nothing pressing to do, we let him sleep. We joined Doug and Carla for dinner at a chinese place. Was good, but again howling windy - and only outside seating.
By the looks of the weather, we will be here around a week. We will work on cleaning the boat and rearranging the deck in preparation for the crossing to Hawaii. We will also explore the island some more and maybe go to swim with the rays again.

09/20/11

2011-09-20T15:48:00.001-05:00

091311
We made it to Huahine no problem. Mostly a motor sail, but did get enough wind to add a knot to our speed. Was a whole different arrival than our first time. No wind and rain, just bright blue sunny skies. We think that the high winds and waves/swell that we saw in BoraBora took out one of the channel markers on the north side of the channel in Fare. We had no problems with the entrance, but it is kind of weird knowing that there was a mark, and not being able to find it. The cruise ship Paul Gaugain was moored in the entrance to the bay just south of Fare. We were pretty sure that the big yellow thing our there was a mooring – and sure enough. Very unusual to see a ship that size on a mooring. That evening we all went in for happy hour and dinner at the roulettes.
Wednesday morning we had dolphins in the anchorage – way cool. Dennis jumped in with his mask and snorkel, but there was too much current for him to be able to get close to them. They did sense him in the water though, so gave me quite the show jumping and spy hopping to check him out. Later that morning we did some provisioning, and then went for a snorkel. The snorkel spot we chose had a permanently parked boat there. When we got in the water, we were inundated by all kinds of fish. It was obvious that the fish were regularly fed. Was cool to see all the fish, but it was close to feeding time and the sharks were hungry too. We hadn't been there long when the tour boat came and we were asked to leave. We moved about 30 yards away – and big surprise, no fish. Oh well, I got some great pictures at the first place. We pretty much drifted with the current back to our boat. We finalized plans with Doug and Carla to leave for Bourayne Bay the next day and had a quiet evening on the boat.
Thursday morning we took the big boat into the dock in Fare. The plan was to get some laundry water and take down the big jib. We will be working more to windward now, so will not need such a big headsail. Fortunately it was quiet windwise and Doug and Carla were on the dock to catch lines. The jib came down without a hitch, I got water in the buckets for laundry and scored some zucchini and fresh sliced loaf bread. All that accomplished, we left the dock and headed to Bourayne Bay about 5 miles south of Fare.
Bourayne Bay according to the guide book was supposed to remind us of a Scottish loch. We decided that was a bit of a stretch, but it was definitely pretty and not crowded. Probably because it is a deep anchorage. It felt weird to go from anchoring in 17 feet to anchoring in 80 feet. The rest of the day was pretty quiet.
Friday we were going to go on a dinghy ride to the east side of the island but it was way too windy, so we decided to move to Avea Bay and do the dinghy ride on the way back. Avea bay is very pretty. Saturday we dinghied with Doug and Carla south to the town of Parea. On the way there we stopped to watch the surfers at the pass, it looked doable, so we decided to come back the next day to try it out. We then explored the Marae, which is a sacred pile of rocks and according to a woman we met later one of the few with only original rocks. The town of Parea wasn't much, but the did have a shop where Carla bought a hand painted pareo. It is really beautiful and the couple who owned the shop (Frank and Miri) were very nice. She explained the meaning behind the different symbols/figures and demonstrated different ways to tie it. Afterwards, Frank gave us a ride to the magazine. As we were leaving they told us that they were giving a pareo show at the hotel near where we were anchored that night and invited us to come. Which we did. We probably had a little too much fun, but we survived.
Sunday was pretty quiet, I cleaned the boat and Josh and Dennis went and tried the surf spot. It turned out to be pretty scary with lots of outgoing current and breaking on the reef. I was glad I didn't go. That night we had Doug and Carla and Frank and Miri over for drinks after dinner. It was quite educational listening to Miri talk about her family and being raised on Huahine. Frank is from France (Brittany he likes to say), but has been in Polynesia for 20+ years.
Monday 9/12 - Left Avea bay for Bourayne Bay and our dinghy ride. The plan was to leave Huahine for Tahiti on Tuesady afternoon (good weather window). Doug and Carla decided to have a quiet day on the boat so stayed in Avea. We would meet the next morning on the way to Tahiti. After we anchored, we set out for the east side of the island in search of the sacred blue eyed eel. It was quite a long ride, but Josh did a great job of keeping us dry. As we approached the bay with the eels, we saw two "houses" out in the middle of the water. On closer inspection they turned out to be built out on reefs. We stopped at one that turned out to be a pearl farm. We snacked and listened to the talk about their farm ( not that different than on Tahaa). Afterwards we went to the small town of Faie and the eels. The eels do have murky blue eyes - almost like they would be blind. There was no information there about them - just a sign saying they were the sacred eels. Kind of underwhelming, definitely a tourist thing. So, we bought snacks and headed back to the dinghy. On the way back to the boat the dinghy engine acted up again. Fortunately we were close to the pearl farm, so we limped there and tied up to their dock while we cleaned out the filter in the carburator. What a pain. At least we had the proper tools with us and practice makes perfect. This was the first time Josh had been with us when it died, so Dennis took the opportunity to show him how to fix it. After that we got back to the boat with no problem. The wind was nonexistent, so we put the yankee jib up for the crossing to Tahiti.
Tuesday morning we finished securing the boat and headed to Fare. Josh and I took the dinghy to get fuel for it in town, the plan being that Dennis would go slow in the big boat and we would meet hime back at the pass. Sadly the dinghy motor acted up again. Josh and I were able to fix it, but by then Dennis had caught up to us. Deciding that fuel wasn't in our karma, we headed on out the pass to Tahiti.
The crossing was uneventful and we made the anchorage by marina Taina and were anchored before noon. We had breakfast, rested a little then headed in for happy hour then dinner at our favorite chinese restaurant. YUM!!
Tuesday 9/20. Since then we have been pretty busy provisioning and doing projects. We have done a major Carrefour run (groceries), 6 loads of laundry, a cost and co run (cereal), internet time at the Pink Coconut, dinghy engine work, generator muffler repair and the list goes on. We are hoping for a good weather window to be out of here soon. We haven't finalized a plan, but that is on the list for today......

090511 post

2011-09-08T21:23:00.001-05:00

090511

Well, Happy Labor Day. Really cannot believe we have been in French Polynesia almost 5 months. We left BoraBora (finally) on Friday 9/2 - early 0615 - that was a killer. We motor sailed to the Tahaa (Ta ha a) pass without any near misses with either the HawaikiNui or the Taporo 6 freighters. As we approached the pass we had a most excellent whale watching experience. Two or three humpbacks gave us quite a show. They started by waving their pectoral fins, then some breaching and tail slapping. We thought the show was over, but not so - one of them came from our starboard side and crossed in front of the boat - about 20 feet away. Too close for my comfort, but gave us a really good look at him/her. They gave us a few more breaches or spy hops, then the show was over. (I wasn't able to catch any of it on film, so you'll have to take my work for it for now.) Just in time for us to head into the pass. We met up with Moondance in Apu bay. We snagged a mooring ball next to them and settled in.

We got the dinghy back in the water, had some lunch then went with Moondance to the small magazin (store) across the bay. We traded in our case of 500ml Hinanos for some fresh, picked up a couple of cold ones and some rice and headed back to our respective boats to prepare for dinner at Moondance. Carla made yummy chilli with cornbread. I made quesadillas and salsa for appetizers and apple cobbler for dessert. After dinner we played dice - the Morrison's cleaned up. Sadly by 9pm we were fading fast after our 0600 wake up call. We agreed to meet at 1030 the next morning to go to the pearl farm.

Saturday - we met up and walked to the Pearl Farm - just up the road from the dock. See the end of this post for Josh's report on the farming of pearls in French Polynesia. After the tour we were able to look at loose and set pearls. Tahaa and Raiatea produce a coppery colored pearl found only at these islands. Pearls come in different qualites. "A" quality is round with less 10% imperfections, "B" has 30% or less, and "C" more than 30%. Carla picked up a couple of 8mm copper colored pearls - very pretty. I wasn't able to find anything both Dennis and I agreed on, so saved our money for another day. After the pearl farm we decided to walk to the magazin and look for the phone booth on the way. A good ways in, Dennis and I went back for the dinghy, with a stop to buy fruit on the way, we scored some bananas, pamplamousse, limes and papaya, with ripe bananas and 2 green coconuts thrown in for gratis. We dodged another rain storm and met Doug and Carla at the magazin. We hung out in front of the magazin drinking our beers, watching the ground crabs and snacking for about an hour, then headed back to the boats. We agreed to leave the next morning for Haamene bay on the east coast of Tahaa.

Sunday - we were off the mooring ball around 1000 - took Josh a while to undo the macrame the bouy for the mooring ball had made with our line to the main mooring - note to self tie the bouy line up out of the water. Was nice to stay on the mooring, didn't cost anything. Apu bay is quite deep, so anchoring would have been difficult. We made it to Haamene bay by noonish, and were able to pick up another mooring in front of the Hibiscus Hotel (thanks Fiona). After lunch we took the dinghy in to the hotel dock to see if we owed money for the mooring. We had some pleasant surprises. First, no cost for the mooring, then happy hour from 5-7 and finally the Hibiscus hotel itself. The owner, Leo Morou (a Belgian) is the founder of a turtle rescue foundation begun in 1993. Since it was 2 hours until happy hour we decided to go for a walk. We didn't make it to the head of the bay, but we gave it a good try. We got back to the hotel restaurant about 4:20. Dennis took the dinghy to the boat to get Josh and dice, while Doug, Carla and I looked through the log book of guests and information on the turtle rescue and waited for happy hour to start.

Leo and his wife buy turtles from local fisherman that have caught them in their nets. These turtles (green turtles mostly) would otherwise be killed and eaten, or sold on the black market. The turtles are kept in a pen by the restaurant where hotel guests or other tourists can see them and for a fee adopt a turtle and set it free. The turtles are tagged for future study before they are released. I found it interesting to learn that turtles come back to their birth place to breed and lay eggs. The females do not become fertile until they are at least 20 years old, and will lay 2 clutches of eggs during a fertile year. But, they are not fertlie every year, more like once every 3-5 years. When the eggs hatch the hatchlings run the gauntlet from the nest to the water. Even after they reach the water they are easy prey. The lucky ones find a debris current and live in it for a long time. Not much is known about the early life of turtles, because they are not seen again until they are 14-18 inches long. I think to date they have saved in the neighborhood of 4000 turtles.

Monday - As we were leaving the restaurant yesterday, the server asked if we wanted to visit a vanilla plantation - which we did, so we set it up for 0900 Monday.

The vanilla plantation tour was pretty cool. Brian (from Denmark) and his wife (from Tahaa) grow vanilla organically on her family's property. Another educational day for us. Vanilla is of the orchid family of which there are 33,000 different varieties. The vanilla plant does not produce a seed pod unless it is manually pollinated. The process was discovered by an Englishman watching a butterfly in Madagascar. Most of the vanilla we see in stores etc is not from French Polynesia. According to Brian, Tahitian vanilla is different and in France it is called black gold. Regardless, it is a very time consuming process to grow vanilla, and even more so to grow it organically. The vine is planted at the base of a tree and covered with coconut husks, when the vine is 18 months old, they start cutting the ends, to force more sprouting, this is done every 3 months until the plant blooms. At some point the tree which has been shading the plant is cut back so the vine gets about 60% sunlight. When the plant blooms - usually about 15 flowers per cluster- 2/3rds of the flowers are pollinated (by hand), then 9 months later the pods are ready for harvest. the pod clusters are harvested in total and taken to drying sheds. As the pods dry and turn brown, they drop of the stem naturally, this causes the least amount of harm to the pod. The drying process is also long and tedious. The pods are separated by length and quality (blemish free) then set out in the sun for 24 hours. They are then set in baskets by size, dried some more and finally they are massaged every day for 15 days, this releases the vanilla smelling molecule. All in all it is about 3 years from initial planting to final product. Here in Tahaa a kilo of vanilla beans is 22,000 FPFr, or 244 USD. Brian and his wife export primarily to Denmark for distribution to the rest of Europe. I am looking forward to putting a bean into a bag of good coffee to make my own vanilla flavored coffee.

This afternoon we explored the town of Haamene (10 minutes from end to end). It was a 20 minute dinghy ride from the boats, but always interesting. Tomorrow we are moving to Huahine. We will start in Fare - where we were before, then move south to Avea bay.

Pearl farming

While I was on an island called Tahaa we went to a pearl farm. Pearls were the first gems man ever discovered. Natural pearls happen when an oyster gets a piece of sand inside of it and it's mantle starts layering it with a material called Nacre which its shell is made out of. If you have ever seen the inside of an oyster shell or seen one that has been polished they are very shiny and smooth so that's what gets layered around the sand. Natural pearls are always small and not very good quality. In the beginning of pearl farming people harvested them and found them naturally but only 1 in 2000 oysters had pearls naturally. Since oysters with pearls became very scarce a Japanese man named Mokimoto developed a way to make oysters have pearls. That development gave birth to pearl farms all over the Pacific

On the farm we went to there were two separate places, one was where they had the oysters and one was where they had the processing center. The actual farm where they had the oysters was far away out on the reef surrounding the island. The oysters were hung on little ropes that were hung from one larger rope. There were ten oysters to each little rope and many little ropes to every big rope. All the ropes were hung 10 to 15 meters under the water and off the ground and there were a lot of the larger ropes so they had around 100,000 oysters on that farm.

When the oyster is old enough they open it just enough to cut into its egg sack and place a tiny round piece of clam shell and a piece of mantle which creates the nacre. For every batch of new oysters they have to sacrifice one with a good colored shell so the mantle makes a good color on the pearl. They cut up the mantle of the sacrificed animal so they can put a little bit of the mantle in with the shell for the other oysters. It's international law that the clam shell has to be from the Mississippi river because it's strong enough so that any jeweler knows that if they drill the pearl it will not break apart. When the oyster notices the foreign object it starts to layer it with nacre and after a while you get your pearl. If you cut open a pearl you can see the various layers of pearl and even the round shell in the middle. After they put the shell in the egg sack they wait a year and half then look at it. If it is nice, round, and big enough they can sell it. When they take out the pearl and they like it they put another round piece of clam shell in and they don't have to put the mantle in because the previous one is still there. When they put the clam shell in, it has to be the same size because that's the size the egg sack is so the piece can make a bigger pearl. Sometimes the pearl comes out in weird shapes such as ovals, flat, and just random, they call those barroque pearls and are considered bad. They are much cheaper because they aren't round and shiny.

Some problems that they have are predators eating the oyster but if they lose a few here and there it's not that bad. The only animals that can get at them are manta rays, turtles, parrotfish, and triggerfish. Every two weeks they take the oyster out and scrape anything growing on it off. Oysters eat plankton and anything growing on it gives competition so the pearl doesn't grow as much. If an oyster gives a barroque pearl or a bad quality pearl they use it to sacrifice the mantle then they eat it and send its shell to make buttons so nothing is wasted. It was cool to learn about how they make pearls and know they do it way different than I had thought they did.

082911

2011-08-29T15:33:00.001-05:00

082911 Monday

Still in BoraBora probably until Thursday. Dennis had lab work done this morning and is scheduled for an xray and ultrasound tomorrow, we will see the Doctor again on Wednesday. Of course today he is feeling good. It is always interesting (in a scary kind of way) to experience health care in a different country. I am pretty sure we could have gone to a free clinic, but we chose to see a private physician. As I said in a previous post, he does all his own stuff. Lab work is drawn in his office by a nurse (male in shorts and bare feet) in the morning before 0800 - as the blood and urine are sent to Tahiti by plane for analysis. The radiologist is only in town on Tuesdays. I guess very urgent and emergent things are helicoptered to Raiatea. There is a big hospital there. So no real immediate gratification here, but we should know by Wednesday.

We had a quiet weekend, finished up the bilge pump project, have a new switch and a relatively clean bilge - all is good. I changed the water maker filters - they lasted over 2 months!! They were not even very dirty when I took them out either. The new membrane is working like a charm. It is so nice to have something work properly, consistently. The generator has been working too. The dinghy motor is still having intermittant problems, but it is due to the fuel, and although a pain in the ass, only a 15 minute fix. The filter in the carburater gets clogged - it happened again this morning and of course we didn't have the tools with us, but boaters being what they are, we were able to borrow a rachet extension and 10mm socket from s/v Double Moon and voila - fixed. The weather has finally settled down - was pretty windy for the last 3 or 4 days - the waves breaking on the reef got huge and the current in the anchorage was really strong. It was flat calm this morning, we had the fastest, driest ride into town ever!

S/v Nina came into our anchorage yesterday afternoon. We saw them come up the outside of the reef, so Dennis and Josh went to meet them in the dinghy as they came through the pass. Was nice to catch up with them. They are on their way to Tonga. Josh and David immediately got together for video games and catching up and Dennis and I spent a nice evening on Nina with David (Dad), Rosemary and their guests Brad and Munie. It will come as no surprise that we had an overnight guest - I'm pretty sure they went to bed about the time my alarm went off this morning. Was quite a shock to the old system to have an alarm go off at 0550. Alarms are certainly one thing I don't miss.

I am going to try to post pictures today, but if I am unsuccessful, Carla is good at it, so you can sort of follow us by following their blog -

www.followingmoondance@blogspot.com

082511

2011-08-25T14:53:00.002-05:00

082511 Thursday
Wow, time sure flies. Monday and Tuesday last week we did more of the same in that lovely anchorage. The bilge pump switch broke, so I pulled that out.
Wednesday 8/17 we moved to the east side of BoraBora. It is an interesting trip. We had to weave our way through coral heads and shallow water to reach the anchorage we were looking for. Our charts for the area are pretty accurate and it is well marked, just pretty scary at times; our draft is 6'4" and the shallowest we registered was 7'5". Dennis reminds me that we don't hit bottom until 4'6" on the depth gauge, but still - makes me nervous. We anchored in 16 feet or so over a sandy bottom between the St Regis and Meridian hotels. BoraBora is one of those places that ends up just as advertised. The bungalow/hut/rooms are built out over the water, each one has its own steps to the water, some at the St Regis even had their own small pool. I guess that is what you get for $1000 per night. Doug and Carla went in for drinks at the St Regis - too spendy for us at $25 per drink.
Thursday 8/18 Dennis woke up not feeling well. We ended up going in to town (a long dinghy ride), but did not see the doctor that day as Dennis thought he was better. He woke up feeling bad again on Friday, so we went back to town and did see the Doctor. Such a different experience than in the states. It seemed to be first come first served, so we had about a 30 minute wait. Then the Doctor did all his own work, history, vital signs, urine dip stick - no nurse or receptionist - All for about $42 USD. It has taken a long time for Dennis to feel better. We didn't do too much on the east side as he was laid pretty low. Josh and I did some swimming, and I did some exploring in the kayak. Dennis and Josh played chess and killed zombies on the PS3. Pretty quiet though. Tuesday (8/23) we did some snorkeling. We were looking for the manta rays, but never did find them.
Wednesday 8/24
We had decided to return to our original anchorage, planned departure around 1000. Dennis didn't feel good again in the morning, so we delayed until after 1100. We made it back to our west side anchorage by 1330 - in time for rain and wind. Looks like we will have wind at least through the weekend. We had a quiet afternoon and evening. Carla was in a backing mood and we scored oatmeal raisin cookies - yum!!!
So here it is Thursday, we have been in Bora Bora almost 3 weeks - kind of hard to believe. We are at our turn around point, so from here we will be heading back to Tahiti via Raiatea and Huahine. We will spend some time on Huahine seeing the things we passed up on our way here. Once we get back to Tahiti we will finish up projects, provision and most likely head back to the Tuamotus. So, as soon as we get a good weather window, we will head back to Raiatea. Maybe Sunday or Monday, we'll see. We haven't had good internet connections, and have gotten behind on posting these blogs. I am going to try to get an SSB connection today to send these out......

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081411

2011-08-25T14:53:00.001-05:00

081411 Sunday
Well, we have been in this lovely anchorage for a week. We haven't done much but hang out and enjoy. The water is beautiful and over the last week, we have gotten out all of the toys. The sailing dinghy and the kayak are in the water, the hooka is out and the snorkel gear hasn't gotten an opportunity to dry out. Life is good.
Dennis used the hooka to work on the zinc on the prop, and the next day we took it to the pass for a dive. The zinc is fixed, and the bottom of the boat is clean. The dive in the pass was okay, not spectacular.
Josh finished math!!! Yeah! He and I have been doing some sort of PE everyday. Mostly swimming from the boat to one of the channel markers and back. Is good for both of us to get some regular exercise.
Friday morning, Dennis and Josh took the dinghy out the pass looking for a good place to use the hooka. They were not successful in finding a place to hooka, but they did find the lemon sharks. Dennis said they were huge. He got in the water, but Josh passed on that opportunity. There were also reef sharks and Josh spotted a humpback whale.
Saturday was Carla's birthday, so I got up early and baked her a german chocolate cake. From scratch. A first for me. I am generally a box mix kind of girl, but since german chocolate mixes were not available, I got all the ingredients and did it the old fashioned way. Turned out really good. They came over here yesterday in time for the sunset and snacks, followed by cake.
Earlier on Saturday (after the cake was finished) Dennis and I went exploring in the dinghy. Got kicked off a beach. So to spite them we sat in the dinghy and drank our beers - can't kick us off of the water!!! After that we cruised around the motus. Most of the beaches here are private - seems a shame, because many of them have nobody on them....oh well. Dennis let me off at the red channel marker for my swim back to the boat. After minor technical difficulties with my snorkel, I finally got going - whew! even a little current goes a long way when you are swimming against it. I was one tired puppy!
Today (Sunday) we had a leisurely morning. After breakfast Dennis and Josh took the dinghy to town in search of s/v Phoenix - a boat we met in Huahine with a kid Josh's age (Jayce). They were able to find them and it turns out the were coming to this anchorage today. After a late lunch, Josh and Jayce went snorkeling and then hung out using electrons on Evergreen. Jayce will spend the night, and tomorrow we are going on a hike. I have only signed up for the first part, as I have no desire to go on a 6 hour hike.
While the boys were playing the PS3, we went with Doug and Carla looking for the spot where you can snorkel with the sting rays. Lucky for us there was a tour boat at the spot, so it was easy to find. What a thrill to be in the water with these graceful creatures. I asked the local guide about the stingers, and he said as long as you are not aggressive towards them they won't sting, and also keep your fingers out of the water, you don't want to be mistaken for a fish! The rays will come right up to you, so you can pet them. They feel cool, not slimey or scaley, more soft and supple. They are intimidating at first, but after a while you get used to them, they are like cats, rubbing against your legs, coming up for a pet and then going on their way.
So yeah, this is how I dreamed it would be....... Lazy days. Beautiful, crystal clear, turqoise blue water, good company, spectacular sunsets (no green flash yet), swimming, snorkeling, paddling, yeah this is definitely okay.

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080911

2011-08-25T14:53:00.000-05:00

Tuesday morning 080911
The move to Tahaa went smoothly. We ended up anchored off TuaTua (a smallish motu with a fancy hotel on it) in about 20 feet of water. Dennis and I went exploring in the dinghy in the afternoon. We were sort of looking for a way to get to the outer reef as well as scoping out beaches and places to snorkel. Josh and Adam hung out again that evening.
Thursday Dennis worked on the generator in the morning . In the afternoon we went to a snorkel spot called the "coral garden". The area is betweent two motus, it is a shallow snorkel, pretty. There ended up being a good bit of current, so Dennis and I walked to the reef side of the the pass and did a drift snorkel back to the dinghy. Was fun. That evening Moondance had invited us all to their boat for Happy hour. Oh the dilemma of what to bring??? I settled on deviled eggs and made enough to for Josh and Adam to share on Loose Pointer. Carla put on quite a spread with fresh garlic/rosemary bread and yummy gourges (sp?). No need for dinner after that. Dan and Katherine (LoosePointer) said they needed to head to BoraBora the next day, so in the spirit of keeping the boys together we decided to move as well. Doug and Carla thought they would stay a little longer on Tahaa.
Friday we were up pretty early getting ready to go to BoraBora. It is only 12 miles away, but the pass into the lagoon is on the west side so, all told it was about 25 miles. We had a good sail over - uneventful. We were happy when Moondance decided to come as well. They had an exchange with our friendly neighborhood does not give way freighter, who finally did respond to their hails on the radio and did give them some room. Moondance has AIS which is a system that lets you identify boats when using your radar, so they had written down the name of the boat the night coming over from Moorea. Our AIS died in Mexico and we were not able to fix it and replacing it was too costly. We hope to replace it in Hawaii. Can be quite a handy little gadget.
We had our poles out and did hook a couple of bonita, I was not able to bring mine in, but Josh brought his in so we could throw it back. Dennis says mine was probably a dorado, but I don't think so. This was just before we needed to turn towards the pass into Bora Bora. Made it through the pass with no difficulty and decided the mooring balls at Bloody Marys were probably the best bet given the strength of the wind. We were all able to pick up a mooring ball and Voila! home. Adam was finishing up homework, so Josh hung out waiting for him while Dennis and I went to check out Bloody Marys. Pretty cool. It has been there for 30+ years and has seen many famous people through its doors. Now including us. Dennis had their namesake drink, which he said was pretty good. So how to describe it? It has the traditional thatched palm roof, sand floors, polished wooden tables with what I think are palm tree logs for seats. Their lunch menu is reasonable (in FP terms) $12 to $15 for a burger and fries. Dinner starts around $33 US. We decided we would come back the next day for lunch. The mooring balls we were on are theirs, and it is on your honor to come to the restaurant for a meal as payment for using them.
Josh and Adam had a sleepover on our boat friday night. Lots of xbox (Adam's) and computer time - not so much sleeping. But I guess that is the point.
Saturday
We got the boys up pretty early - hard for Adam to sleep once we are up as he was on the setee in the salon. I'm not sure either of them were fully awake before the computers were back on. I made waffles for breakfast. I wanted to make them from scratch, but all my flour had little bugs - eeewwww! So those went directly to the trash and I ended up using the mix. We went to Bloody Mary's for lunch. The burgers were yummy as were the fries. After lunch Dennis and I went exploring in the dinghy again. We went to the southern tip of the island. Found a beach bar on the way back, was nice to sit and watch the water.
Adam stayed again Saturday night. We cut them off of electrons about 11pm, and I think I finally chased them to bed around 2am.
Sunday
We were quiet in the morning so the boys could sleep in a little. After breakfast Dennis and I dinghied into town with Doug and Carla to explore. We missed the grocery store but were surprised to find many of the little shops open. Maybe it was because the "Gaugain" cruise ship was in port? Pretty unusual to find anything open on a Sunday. They are very adamant about keeping their day of rest. Probably something people in the US should think more about. What a concept, to actually spend time with your family interacting with each other at home or the beach. That afternoon we went back to our beach bar (which again was amazingly open). We had brought our own stuff with us, but I did buy an icecream. It was a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours, watching the beautiful lagoon sitting on sugary white sand. Yep, that is the way it is supposed to be.......
Loose Pointer came by the boat later, we swapped a few books and we adults said our "see you laters". Their plan was to leave in the morning for American Samoa via Suwarrow. The boys spent their last night together on Loose Pointer. What a quiet night for Dennis and I! We enjoyed a movie and had an early night.
Monday
Josh had the dinghy and was back at the boat by 815am! Loose Pointer was on their way. About 30 mintues later Josh realized he had one of Adam's game discs still in his computer. So he and Dennis took the dinghy on a mission of mercy to return the disc. They were able to catch Loose Pointer just outside the pass. Dennis said it was an exciting full throttle dinghy ride.
We were also going to change anchorages, but needed to hit town for groceries first. It is still amusing to me the way we shop here. We look at all the aisles, even if we only have a short list. Yesterday we scored progresso soup in cans - clam chowder (Josh's favorite) and a variety of chicken, and better yet, costco brand tortilla chips. So all in all a very fruitful shopping experience.
By the time we got back to the boat, had lunch and prepared the boat to leave, it was almost 3pm, a little late to be moving, but since it was such a short distance and well marked on the charts we decided to go ahead and move. We went maybe the long way around, but it put the sun behind us, which makes it easier to see the depth of the water - in particular we are still keeping an eye out for coral heads or balmies. We had no troubles though, and dropped the anchor on the west side of the motu south of the pass into the lagoon. Once again we are anchored in our own personal aquarium. Dennis and Josh jumped in immediately and called me to the side to see the spotted rays. I got my mask and went in as well, rays were still there. Dennis spent some time working on the dinghy motor - seems the gas has some sort of sediment in it that clogs up the fuel filter and the carburator (same issue we had in Moorea). We watched for the green flash at sunset - didn't see it, still think it is a myth. The sun sent down a golden ball into the sea, another reminder of why we are here.........

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Raiatea 080311

2011-08-03T14:19:00.001-05:00

Wednesday 08032011

Last Wednesday was a pretty mellow day, sort of. We all ended up cleaning the waterline on the hull during the afternoon Josh did the majority of it from the dinghy (was preferable to homework), and Dennis and I did touch ups from the water. Not exactly as mellow as I had anticipated, but the waterline looks great and it was nice to be in the water.

We left at 5pm for Huahine. We motored for the first few hours, then the wind came up enough to sail. There were at least 6 boats headed for Huahine that night, so the radar screen was pretty busy. I came on watch about 1230 am. We were making about 3 kts. I could see the navigation lights of the other boats all around us, but nothing within 2 miles. Around 0130 I saw a target on the radar about 6 miles out that appeared to be heading in my direction, so I turned the target tracking on, and sure enough on a direct course towards us at about 15kts. For you non sailors out there, the rules of the road out here give boats under sail the right of way and all boats are to avoid collisions, no matter who has the right of way. Well this boat never altered course! I ended up having to head off course by 30 degrees and at 3 kts we don't move very fast. To add insult to injury the boat spotlighted me on its way by. I had tried to hail them on the radio earlier, but no answer. After they passed and I readjusted my course I made a general call on channel 16 to the boats behind me to be aware that this vessel under power was not giving way. Moondance who were on the same course as us about 3 miles behind also had to alter course. That was a real first for me I have had large cargo ships make major course changes in order to get out of the way. Thankfully the rest of the night was less eventful.

Dennis came on at 0630 with Huahine in sight. Shortly thereafter it began to rain. The wind and swell had been increasing since about 400am and by 0700 it was rocking and rolling! At 0900 we jibed around to line up with the pass. Raining hard by now and seas pretty big. Just as I was preparing to call Josh to close a port I can't reach we took a wave - right into that hatch. I bet the look on my face was priceless. No real harm done, but to see a wall of water come in the port, drench me and things across the cabin from me, swirl around on the floor and head into the bilge. Just not any every day occurrence (thank you very much). Given the state of the seas, I basically threw all the wet clothes in the sink in our head and the rug out on the deck to get rained on all to be dealt with after we anchored. Our destination on Huahine was Fare (far-ay) on the Northwest side of Huahine. The pass in was a piece of cake, but anchoring in 20+ kts of wind and current is never much fun. We finally stuck on our 4th try. By then we were all cold and wet - definitely ready for coffee and a big breakfast, okay it was more like lunch by then but it felt like breakfast time.

I cleaned the seawater mess - washed floors and hung the salty clothes out in the rain, made breakfast and had a nap. The wind stayed strong all through the day Thursday and Friday with gusts in the high 20s. We did a lot of heeling in the boat as the current was so strong we never came around into the wind.

Friday we did some exploring in Fare. They have an awesome grocery store. Josh made the comment that we seem to spend a lot of time looking in grocery stores these days. Yeah, the highlight of my day - finding something we haven't had access to. This store has lots of stuff, but funnily enough no loaf bread, only baguettes. Cooked fresh at least twice a day. Fare is not very big, so exploring didn't take too long. We came back that evening for happy hour and dinner at the roulettes.

Saturday we took a pretty long walk - tried to hitchike, but no luck. We were hoping to get to the marae which is an old Polynesisn village/religious place - or in Dennis' words - an old pile of rocks. We were picked up by a "truck" which is a flatbed with a cabin with seats, or in english a bus. No charge for a ride all the way back to Fare. Do they have a regular schedule? No. Once back in town, we saw that the only bike rental shop was actually open, so we made reservations to rent bikes the next day. Then went for a picnic on the beach. Meanwhile, Josh had met the kid on Phoenix (Jayce) and spent the day with him. They had skurfed for awhile in the morning, then hung out in the boat the rest of the day.

Sunday dawned overcast but less windy. Josh was too tired to go bike riding, so we went in without him. By the time we got to the dock it was raining, and noone was at the bike shop. We waited for 35 minutes, and then decided it was just not going to happen. We ended up taking a long walk in the other direction and having Josh pick us up in the dinghy. When we got back to the boat, we decided that we needed to move to a better anchor spot. Which we did. We didn't move far, just enough to be back over shallower water and out of the channel. We sent Josh out swimming with the hand held depthsounder to see how far away the 10 foot depth was. Remember the current? Well, he got a pretty good workout. He never did get to 10 feet, but 15 was pretty far away, so we felt comfortable with our anchor spot. Late Sunday afternoon we met with Moondance to see how they felt about heading to Raiatea Monday instead of going to the southern anchorage on Huahine. We were hoping to catch up with Loose Pointer or Don Quixote (kid boats). They agreed, so we made plans for an early provision run and then crossing to Raiatea. We would try to leave by 1000am for the 20 mile crossing.

Monday. We made our 1000 departure time. Provisioning went well and quickly. I even scored some MahiMahi from a local fisherman - fresh that morning. The crossing went well, about an hour out we put up the spinnaker and had a nice couple of hours flying it. Is so weird to think that we go faster under sail than we do with the motor...... Is quieter too. We had our fishing lines in the water, thinking that okay, the spinnaker is up and we just bought fish so we are primed to actually catch one of our own. Sadly, no luck. We brought the spinnaker down about 6 miles out of Raiatea and finished with the jib. As we approached we were hailed by Adam on Loose Pointer. Yeah! They were still anchored In the lagoon at Raiatea. The pass into the lagoon was pretty straightforward and we found Loose Pointer easily. Anchoring ended up to be a challenge, but we finally set the hook to our satisfaction and settled in. It seems that the lagoon around Raiatea is deep and falls off the reef steeply - not much sand to anchor in. So our anchor is in 30 feet and our stern is over 90 feet. Dan and Katherine invited us for drinks that evening and we had a nice visit with them and Doug and Carla - catching up. While we have been having generator problems, their windlass (pulls up the anchor) just died a sudden death. A new one isn't in their future until American Samoa. Those guys are going to be totally buff by then pulling up the anchor with a chain rode is hard work.

Tuesday. Josh got a good deal of homework done in the morning and the rest of his day was spent with Adam hanging out and doing whatever they do when the hang out and have their laptops with them. Dennis and I went into town (Uturoa) around 2pm. Didn't do too much - checked out the grocery store, had a beer with Doug and Carla, walked to the marina to check it out and came back to the boat. We are anchored quite a way from shore and this is the windward side of the island, so the dinghy rides can be pretty wet. By general consensus all three boats decided that we had enough of this anchorage and would like to go someplace new on Wednesday.

Tahaa is the next little island to the north and does not require leaving the lagoon to get there. So we agreed to head to TuaTua on the west side. Hopefully it will be more protected and have better anchoring conditions. I will let you know. Loose Pointer has already upped their anchor this morning and is at the fuel dock as we speak..... I guess I better finish my coffee and bring this to a close.....

072711

2011-07-27T14:31:00.001-05:00

Wednesday 07-27-2011

Moorea has been lovely. We arrived Saturday after a only a small hiccup on the big engine. We motored out of the lagoon southwest of Papeete into an 8 - 10 kt breeze, got the sails up and were going along at around 5 kts for the first hour or so. The wind died down to almost nothing about an hour out, so we decided to go back to motoring. When we turned the engine on there was a huge squealing noise. A belt on the water raw water pump was malfunctioning. Since we are a sailboat, we put the jib back out, let out the main and went back to sailing - very slowly. Dennis fixed the problem quickly and we were back to motoring in no time. He was a little seasick after that - a common side effect of working on the engine underweigh. It wasn't real bouncy, but the whole head down, butt up position is very conducive to motion sickness.

As we approached the anchorage to Moorea it started to sprinkle, which is okay and we were treated to two beautiful vertical rainbows. We anchored without a hitch and prepared to get down to the business of relaxing.

We had a very mellow day on Sunday. Dennis even laid down in the cockpit for awhile - amazing. It was very nice to just hang out on the boat and putter around. We went to Moondance for drinks and hors d'hourves in the afternoon. Nice to just sit around and chat. We made plans to go to Cook's bay with our dinghies the next day.

Monday - turned out to be the dinghy engine's day to have problems. We made it to Cook's bay with lots of stops and starts. Dennis cleaned out the fuel filter when we got there hoping that was the problem. Once again we managed to arrive at the "witching hour". That is the 1200 to 200 timeframe when just about everything is closed. We explored the area for awhile then decided to dinghy further into the bay to the store which about to open, buy the rest of our picnic lunch and eat it. Cleaning the fuel filter didn't fix the problem, but we pressed on. Lunch was good, cheese and pate on baguettes with oranges, pretzels and beer. Doug and Carla ended up giving us a tow back to the boat. We motored when we could, but sure got home quicker than if they hadn't. Dennis and Josh immediately got to work on the problem and by dinner time it was fixed. Some sort of carburator problem. So now all of the engines have had some attention and hopefully that will be the last of it for awhile.

Tuesday we took our dinghies to the west side of the bay exploring. We stopped at the little town with one of the oldest churches or at least it is on the site of the original oldest church. Anyway, nice little town. veryone made their phone calls, we picked up another picnic lunch and headed off further to the west. Quite beautiful, white sandy beaches, clear, clear water. We had a great picnic on our own private section of the beach, walked around the little motu and finished our tour with some wine at a picnic table in a very pretty little bay. We ended up at the same village we started in so Dennis could call NZ to order the final parts for the generator. Was very nice to have a day where nothing needed to be fixed!!!!

Doug and Carla had dinner with us that evening. Yummy steaks and garlic potatoes and greek salad with port and chocolate for dessert. After dinner Josh taught us to play a card game called spoons. Bascially a card version of musical chairs. What is that saying about "age and cunning will overcome youth and vitality"? Poor kid didn't stand a chance. We all had a good time though.

Today we will prepare for the overnight passage to Huahine. It is about 70 miles, so we will leave around 5pm in order to arrive after dawn tomorrow morning. So it will be a pretty mellow day around here. We are looking forward to seeing someplace new and Josh is hoping we catch up with some of his friends. Would be nice

07 23 11 from Moorea

2011-07-24T02:43:00.001-05:00

072311

Saturday - Well it was a long week. The generator is functioning, but not fixed. We spent the first half of the week getting a new stud made. The machine shop promised us Wednesday afternoon, and Voila, it was ready. Finding an inserter for the heilcoil was not so easy and in the end they not only gave us the helicoils, but also loaned us the inserter. Jean Paul the owner of that shop - Poly industrie - was so helpful. Actually pretty amazing, and one bright spot in an otherwise frustrating and dismal week. The new stud went in fine on Wednesday night, Thursday when Dennis put it all back together another stud stripped. Well, we decided to just put it all back together and see if it worked. Which it did. So after a week where we walked at least a zillion miles and oscillated back and forth between optimism and frustration we finally left Papeete for Moorea!!! Yeah!!!

We will order the necessary parts, and fix the generator the rest of the way when they arrive. In the meantime we will carry on in the Society Islands - Moorea, Huanine, Terteroa (?) and BoraBora.

Josh is doing well, even though kids his age will be fewer now. He spent most of his time the last week with David from Nina, hanging out, going to the beach and seeing some of the polynesian sporting events. I think he was also ready to leave Tahiti if not David, as well. As he says, it is expensive and there is not that much to do. We plan to keep him busy in the water snorkeling, spearfishing etc. Will be good for us too to be more active. A little less work and a little more play is definitely in order.

Adventures in anchoring.

As cruisers we are able to get duty-free diesel. The trick is knowing what days you are actually able to get it. In Hiva Oa we were denied fuel until after the second ship came with fuel. In Nuka Hiva we had it delivered in Jerry cans, but the delivery people only worked Monday thru Friday. Tahiti fortunately has a real drive up fuel dock open every day. But duty-free fuel is only available Monday thru Friday. Makes upping the anchor, fueling up and leaving a bit difficult on the weekend - if you need the fueling up part.

We wanted to leave on Saturday, but needed the fueling up part. So Friday afternoon after I got back from returning the helicoil inserter and Dennis got the generator all back together we had to head to the fuel dock. We didn't expect too much trouble as the fuel dock is close, the anchorage had space (so we would have a place to reanchor) and it wasn't windy. We all took our places, engine on - check. Anchor up - no problem. Steerage - ooops no steering. Okay, we can handle it. As we drift into the channel Josh climbs into the dinghy tied to the side of the boat and he will steer us back to a place to drop the anchor. HMMM here comes the wind. So we end up using the rudder from the windvane (emergency rudder is its secondary purpose). In the meantime you can see the possibilities going thru Dennis' mind. He says, " watch the boat." We are somewhat out of the channel, but not anchored. I hope the boat is not going to do any new tricks while I "watch it." So he runs down to our cabin, takes the bed off, opens the compartment with the hydraulics for the steering (next to the generator) and turns a lever and "Voila!" steering. Seems one of us leaned on that lever during the generator deal and turned off the hydraulic part of the hydraulic steering. All things should fix so easily. Fueling up and reanchoring were a piece of cake after that.

Monday July 18

2011-07-18T23:15:00.001-05:00

071311

on the subject of separations. I have to say one of the things in life that I really dislike are goodbyes. Cruising provides a wonderful opportunity to meet many different people from all walks of life but at the same time also provides too many opportunitesto say goodbye. We have met folks that seem to have an unlimited cruising budget to people that are on a tighter shoestring than us. Big boats, little boats, new, old, one hull and two, there is always something/somebody new to meet. Thankfully other countries learn english, so we are able to communicate with people that we meet from all over the world - europe, south africa, australia, new zealand. It has been and continues to be a life enriching experience for all of us. Josh is meeting kids from all over the US and the world. The only downpart to all of this is when it comes time to say goodbye in a final sort of way, not in just a "see you at the end of the crossing" or "catch up to you at the next anchorage" kind of way. Today for example two boats we have known since La Cruz Mexico left for Hawaii and the end of their cruising experience (at least for now). I really hate this part. I guess it says a lot for the tightness of this community - especially among the cruisers with kids. We are a smaller subset of the whole. As parents we feel our own sense of loss at the goodbyes and as well as the pain experienced by our kids. There is no consolation in the fact that they have had more kid time than we ever dreamed they would, or that they still have friends to "hang" with. Josh wants his pack whole. So for me I am feeling my own discomfort but know from experience how small a world it really is. Josh and his friends just have to take our word for it - and how many teenagers believe that us grown ups understand their pain? So, Phambili and Calou we'll see you later, if only to prove to our kids that it is possible.

On generators. A totally different kind of pain to be sure. Dennis spent the whole day tearing apart the generator in order to replace the head gasket. After 10 hours, the gasket was replaced and only the putting back together to do.

Thursday July 14th - Bastille Day

Well, the polynesians have been celebrating their Heiva for 3 weeks now, so a major French Holiday is a good reason to shut everything down. Carrefoure closed at 1230, no buses, no restaurants or shops. Our plans were to take the bus downtown for the canoe races in the morning and then head over to the Tahiti museum in the afternoon to watch the polynesian sports. As I said, no buses. But, this day will be one we look back on and say "remember that time in Tahiti?" A toursist van came by the bus stop while we were waiting for the nonexistent bus and the driver agreed to give us a lift into town. He was a very nice gentleman from the Cook Islands. He dropped us off right where the parade was going to be. The parade was pretty much a nonevent, but we did get to see all the different types of military, the gendarmes and the pompiers (firemen). Very short and sweet, no floats or candy. From there we headed to the waterfront for the canoe races. Start time was supposedly 1100, but hey 11 or 1230 whats the rush? The first paddlers were kids in 6 man outriggers. The next heat was 16 person double canoes - women. We watched them, but did not want to wait another hour to see the men's 16 person race. So we headed to the bus stop (did i mention no buses?) and got a ride within 5 minutes. The man was going to the same place as us - the museum, so score - an airconditioned ride in a mercedes!!! I have to say that 70+ miles per hour feels fast these days!!! The competitions going on at the museum included Javelin throwing, stone lifting, coconut husking and copra collection.

The spear chucking (as Dennis calls it) was pretty wild. All the teams threw their spears at a coconut on a pole about 25 feet high. The ground around it looked like toothpicks gone wild. What is even more impressive, is that they actually hit the coconut pretty often. All the men wore pareos wrapped sort of like diapers - not my favorite look, - and one team had traditional headdresses and loin cloths - hmmmm not much left to the imagination.

Stone lifting makes my back hurt to watch. They were lifting a 100 kg rectangular stone from the ground to their shoulders. There is definitely a technique to it. When we were at the rendevous in Moorea there was a demonstation by the reigning champion. Very cool, but we decided we would save our back injuries for boat work.

The coconut husking is done on a sharp stick planted in the ground. Those men sure get to the nut fast Again the technique was demonstrated to us on Moorea. Carla and I tried it out - it isn't as easy as it looks. if I did it for a living I would probably be missing some fingers.

My second favorite (after spear chucking) was the women's competition of harvesting copra. Copra is the meat of the coconut and is a major export of Fr. Polynesia. The way it works is one woman has an ax and chopps the whole coconuts in half (husk and all). Let me say right now, that the coconuts you see in the grocery store are the "nuts". The nut is encased in a thick fibrous husk when it is on the tree. You probably knew that, but just in case. Anyway, the first lady halves the coconut, and the other two use a curved heavy metal spatula- type implement to peel out the coconut meat. Each team had about 20 coconuts, first one done wins. To be finished, all the coconuts had to have the meat removed and all the meat had to be then put in a burlap sack. What hard work. Those ladies are tough. There was coconut milk flying everywhere. Again, i would be the one chopping the coconuts that had no toes. Pretty amazing to watch.

The copra harvest was the last event and then it was time to figure out how to get back to the marina. Once out at the road, Carla and I spotted the guard we had talked to last week about the games. His english is pretty good, so we asked him about a bus. He just shook his head and said "no bus". Then to our amazement he started flagging cars down and asking them to take us to the marina. The fourth or fifth car was a small citreon with a youngish french driver named Frankie. We crammed in like sardines and were off to the marina. Frankie spoke pretty good english as well, so we were able to invite him to come to the boat (Moondance) for a drink. Very nice young man - here from France to work at the airport installing atutomatic blinds and lighting. We hope he enjoyed meeting us as much as we enjoyed meeting him.

So, I ask you, what would be the chances of 3 rides to exactly where you wanted to go all in the same day? And that is if you dared to try to hitchike at all!! What a great day.

Friday July 15, 2011

Back to generator work. It started off well, but in the end we still had bubbles in the coolant. So in we went to make phone calls. Dennis got a few more ideas to try. After the calls we walked to Carrefoure to pick up distilled water. In the automotive section if you are ever looking....... Picked up frozen pizza to do on the grill and came back to the generator. Dennis decided that the bubbles are probably from the water pump, as they continue when the engine is off and just the pump is running. So hey - seems like all is good to finish up in the morning. Had pizzas cooked on the grill, so we wouldn't heat up the inside of the boat. I burned the bottom of the first one because the grill was flaring up from grease on the bottom. But, the top was good. The second one was slightly undercooked. The grill had tipped forward during cooking. Number three was perfect, and Josh got home just in time to eat it. Impeccable timing huh?

Saturday July 16, 2011

Plan for today was to put the generator back together and do final provisioning in preparation for leaving on Monday......Well, that plan went to shit pretty fast. One of the bolts/studs that holds the head onto the engine gave as Dennis was torqueing it down. Well hmmm. What to do? Back in to make a call. Fortunately Dennis was able to get hold of a mechanic willing to come out immediately. They got the stud out and yes it is stripped at the end and no we won't be able to get the widget (helycoil) to fix it until Monday. So that is where we stand. I guess Dennis will spend the rest of the day taking the generator out of its compartment.........Suffice it to say that the frustration level on Evergreen is pretty much at capacity. The ramifications of no generator are painful. Not dire, but definitely require a major change in habits on board. We have to run the big engine to charge batteries (which isn't really good for a diesel to run on no load). The solar panels generate some power, enough as a rule to make water, but not charge the batteries enough to maintain the rest of the boat. The big engine uses a lot more fuel as well. So, we will continue trying to fix the generator. I'll keep you posted.

Sunday

Well the generator has been out and is back in its compartment waiting to have the bolt fixed. It only took all day. Just goes to show, shit happens just about everywhere. We turned on the main engine to charge the batteries and pumped diesel from the generator into the generator compartment - about 2.5 gals. worth. Man!!!!! So, the soundproofing on the bottom of the compartment had to go as it was totally saturated with diesel. We pumped and mopped and pumped and tore out soundproofing and pumped and transferred to disposable containers, mopped and pumped and finally cleaned out the generator compartment. Then Dennis worked on the engine. So 3 hours on the generator and 4 hours on clean up. Yeah, Evergreen has seen happier days. But, on a positive note no fuel got into the bilge and our cabin does not smell like diesel right now. If the mechanic actually gets the part tomorrow and is willing to install it on Tuesday, we may be out of here by Thursday - hey it could happen...... meanwhile I guess we will be spending a few more days in Tahiti.

July 11, 2011 Tahiti

2011-07-11T17:48:00.001-05:00

07112011
Moorea/Tahiti
Moorea Tahiti Rendevous 6/24 thru 6/26
Friday we headed downtown Papeete for the welcome speaches and
cocktails. Lots of standing around waiting, but was nice. Cocktails
were a little too sweet for my taste, but who can argue with free?
After the speeches, the whole group of puddle jumpers headed to the
waterfront for dinner at the roullettes. Roullettes are a very French
Polynesian dining experience. The equivalent of US roach coaches, but
more upscale and in general good food for a reasonable price. We
ended up with chinese - was good. There were native dances going on
as well, so really a nice experience.
Saturday was the race/rally from Tahiti to Moorea, we were up pretty
early for what we thought was a 930 start. They ended up moving it to
1000 - could have used that extra 30 minutes of sleep! Not much wind
for sailing, so we motor sailed for most of the 18 miles. Mooread is
beautiful. It is a heart shaped Island with the lobes of the heart to
the north. We anchored at the head of Oponuhu bay. I hope we don't
ever get immune to the beauty of these Islands, but it seems we go
from one beautiful place to the next. The water is so clear, you can
see your anchor in 50 feet of water. Sadly at this point I was
starting with a cold - Dennis shared it with me. Nice huh? He had
been pretty miserable with it and I ended up being miserable with it
too. We got all situated, I think Josh was off the boat with the kids
before the dust settled. Tahiti has been great for him kidwise - lots
of kids to hang out with. It will be hard when we leave here as boats
will begin scattering to the winds dependent on schedules and final
destinations.
Sunday was a day of traditional polynesian activities. We had a team
for the outrigger canoe race, which was a blast. I was able to make a
flower lei/necklace, there was a booth for palm weaving, one for
dyeing pareos, and demonstrations of rock lifting and coconut husking.
There was also a race carrying a load of bananas. Josh and Francois
both won their races. For lunch we ate traditional polynesian food -
I am sure it was a good experience, but wish we had only bought one
ticket's worth, not 3. Later in the afternoon there was more dancing
and an awards ceremony. By then I was back on the boat having
succumbed to the misery of my cold. Dennis said the dancing was quite
good.
Monday was kids day after the rendevous. Many boats left, but the
anchorage was still pretty busy. The kids spent the day on the beach,
we went for a walk to some botanical gardens, nice, but a long way
uphill! That evening the adults met on the beach for happy hour was
nice to get to know some of the boats that did not come from Mexico.
Kudos to Toast on DonQuixote for arranging the kids day, watching all
of them all day on the beach, and setting up the happy hour that
evening. Great job! Everyone had a good time. We took on an extra
kid - David from Nina. Nice kid. He and his Mom are at the Marina on
their boat while his Dad is working. So, was nice for him to have
some extra kid time.
Tuesday we took the dinghy across the channel to a couple of snorkel
spots. The first spot had Tikis that had been submerged for some
reason or other. We saw a really unusual fish too, sadly I couldn't
find the name of it anywhere, but very unusual. After that we went to
a spot where the stingrays swim with you. How amazing! Kind of
spooky too. They are soft to touch and the tails are scaly. I didn't
see any barbs, but I'm sure they were there. By then I was freezing
as was David, so we went in to the hotel for drinks and to warm up.
Wednesday David left for Tahiti with DonQuixote. We went with
Moondance for a hike up to the Belvedere, Josh went on the same hike
with Phambili. We enjoyed the hike, the view was worth every uphill
step. Met a couple on their honeymoon from San Jose. Is always funny
talking to nonsailors....He wanted to know how we got here??? Sailing
we said - How far??? 3000 miles we said. You should have seen his
expression.......priceless. As was the expression on Doug's face when
the mouse ran between his legs. Which then made me empty out my pack
to be sure I didn't transport one of the little buggers back to the
boat to wreck destruction.....
Tahiti #2 06/30 thru 07/11
Thursday we headed back to Tahiti - had a beautiful spinnaker run
back, very cool. Josh was able to hook back up with the kids, and all
was well in his world.
Friday I spent pretty much the whole day sewing. I took on some work
to help out another boat, and the extra cash was nice too. We had our
final violin concert Friday night. John who had been crew on Calou
was leaving on Saturday, so gave a final farewell performance on the
dock. It had been very nice to get a regular dose of culture. John
is a fantastic musician and will be missed. After John played, Pacal
and Bruce from Calou performed (she sings, he plays accordian) so, we
had a very nice musical evening.
Spent Saturday sewing as well. Saturday night we got together on Nina
to celebrate David's 16th birthday. Again very nice. The kids enjoy
being together. Nina is a schooner that was built in 1928 for the race
to Spain, which she won. Beautiful boat. Josh asked if he could have
a sleep over on our boat - 5 boys!!! So, they all invaded, Dennis and
I retired to our room, and the boys used electrons, zoomed back and
forth to each others boats and generally had a good time.
Sunday was a quiet recovery day.
Monday the fourth we had generator issues - again. We are hoping it
is only a leaking head gasket which we spent all day trying to order.
We finally got it ordered from NewZealand with promises it would be
here on Friday. (currently it is the following Monday, and no sign of
it.....). We were supposed to get our extended visas, but the only
lady with the authority to sign them left for vacation until the 15th
without signing them......AARRGGHHHH!!! Nina hosted a July 4th party
on the dock that evening. Gotta love the fact that we can let Josh go
all the way across Papeete to hang out with Phambili at the Yacht club
(Francois and Tyler were with him too). At the party on the dock that
night we were given the message three times (on the VHF and in person)
from people he saw in town to say that he was spending the night with
them. It is so cool how the cruising community keeps track of the
kids and each other. We may be mobile, but we are still tight.
Tuesday - spoke to Cindy (our agent) who said it would be fine to go
to Bora Bora with out the visa. Went to town looking for parts, spent
the whole day with very little to show for it. Saw Tommy from
Phambili at the marine chandelry. They were hauled out for repairs on
their saildrive (they are a catamaran) and bottompaint. He and his
wife are physicians from Canada. I think I have mentioned before that
they live in Canoe Cove on Vancouver Island - the same place we had
our boat! Anyway, I had him look at the rash that was driving me
crazy on my back. Turns out it is shingles. Which explains why
nothing I put on it was helping! I have had quite a time with it,
fortunately it is only moderately painful. My ibuprofen consumption
has reached an all time high, but I have seen much worse cases.
Wednesday - Carla and I did laundry - of course it rained!!!!
Immigration visited Moondance - Very concerned about lack of visa -
gave them a paper saying not to leave Tahiti
Thursday - Talked to Cindy who talked to immigration, who talked to
the High Commisioner who then gave another person authority to sign
the Visas - Wow!!! what a pain, but it all works out. We rented a car
with Doug and Carla to tour the Island. It was still raining, the
laundry was well rinsed! We went to the James Norman Hall house (he
wrote Mutiny on the Bounty with a guy named Nordhoff). We stopped at
Point Venus - where James Cook watched the transit of Venus across the
sun. Next we stopped at the blow holes - notable for the fact that
one goes under the road and if you drive over it at the right time, it
sounds like it is right under the car. Still raining, so we bypassed
the waterfalls and continued on around the east side of the Island.
We turned around before the Isthmus to head back. It had stopped
raining at the waterfall, so we stopped - it started raining again,
but we decided to walk to it any way. Very impressive especially with
the extra water from the rain. We were all soaking wet by the time we
got back to the car. Again at least it is a warm rain.
Friday July 8th - Happy Birthday Dennis. We picked up our visas first
thing, Josh's had to go back to be laminated, but otherwise all good
to go. We continued our car tour southwest on the Island. Our first
stop was at the Tahiti Museum. It has a very thorough history of the
geology, sociology and biology of Tahiti and French Polynesia. Its a
good thing not all the explanations were in English, we might have
been there all day!! Next we went to some grottos, then lunch then
down to the isthmus. We returned to the Marina and agreed to meet
for drinks on Moondance. Josh had deserted us for Phambili who were
moored at the city docks in town. I opened one of our last 4 bottles
of good california wine to celebrate. Carla made a yummy chocolate
cake. So, I think Dennis had a good birthday.
Saturday - We made an early run to Cost and Co the Fr. Polynesian
cousin of Costco for US cereal etc. Stuff that is bulky and hard to
carry on the bus. Doug dropped us off at the marina then returned the
car. Dennis, Carla and I went back to the boats to unload our
purchases. We all met back at the dock to go into town to the market
and to watch the finish of the canoe races. Tahiti celebrates Bastille
day with a months worth of traditional festivities. The canoe race
started at 0800, they paddled to Moorea and back. The first boat
finished at 215pm. Sadly the market was closing down, so we did not
make any purchases there. That evening we had tickets to the
dance/chant contests. We had dinner at the Roullettes by the arena.
Good and inexpensive. The chants were interesting, the first dance
group was good - man can those women shake it!!! But, the second dance
group was incredible! It was the Tahitian version of Opera with
dancing. The only down side was all the words were in polynesian, so
we were not able to really understand what it was about.
Sunday - Josh spent saturday night with Phambili again. I slept in
until 1030. Too many early mornings and busy days in a row. Was nice
to laze around. Phambili arrived in the anchorage around 1100. In
the afternoon we went and hooka'd on a plane/boat wreck close to the
anchorage. Was nice. Another early night for all. Josh fell asleep
at 8pm!!!!
Monday. Well we now possess all of our visas but no generator parts.
Cindy just laughed when Dennis asked if she had it. We are at the
dock in the neverending search for free or semi free internet.
Hopefully Dennis will be able to download new drivers for our antenna
so we can get signal at the boat. The one thing about being here in
Tahiti is that we seem to be so busy that I can't keep up with the
blog, we also spend way too much money. We are all looking forward to
leaving for the more remote islands. Josh is spending the day with
Francois. It will be their last day together as Calou and Phambili
are leaving in the morning to start their trek to Hawaii. Will be
quite a subdued boy for the next few days. He and Francois have been
fast friends since they met in February in La Cruz. Fortunately for
him there will still be kids for him to hang with, but he will really
miss Francois. Well, I guess we are now all caught up. Hopefully the
internet will cooperate so I can up load this to the blog..........

Tahiti

2011-06-23T15:03:00.000-05:00

Hard to believe we have been here a week already!
We arrived last Thursday morning and after several failed attempts to find the place we wanted to go we anchored with little fuss southwest of Papeete. Sure could have used a map app on the ipod to help us find the marina we wanted to anchor by!! But all's well that ends well, we had lots of daylight and no pressing engagements, so it didn't matter that we were a little lost.
We are in a nice anchorage, close to the marina. The marina has dinghy docks, bars/restaurants, fuel and is within walking distance of the grocery store. What more could a cruiser ask for? (okay cheap beer would be nice, but this is Tahiti, nothing is cheap!)
Friday we met with our agent to deal with paperwork, then took the bus into Papeete. We strolled around town and the market, then hit the grocery store on the way back to the boat. What a beautiful store! Almost all the comforts of home. It is good to know we will be able to provision well for the second half of our trip.

Saturday we had plans to return downtown in the morning, which we did after Dennis worked on the generator again....... Was a fried fuse holder this time. Kind of scary for awhile, not knowing what was wrong, but all better now. We were able to pick up fuse holders at the chandlery in the marina which was convenient. we finally made it to the market downtown. It is pretty amazing- lots of pearl and mother of pearl jewlry, pareos, wood carvings, crafts, and flowers galore. So colorful. On Sundays they have a vegetable market from 0500-0800 (yes in the morning). The buses don't run on Sunday, but we decided it would be an okay dinghy ride.......I don't quite understand the whole buttcrack of dawn vegetable market thing, but it is pretty much the rule here in FP. A painful rule I might add. Sunday we were in the dinghy by 0630. The vegetable market was impressive though, just about everything you could possibly want.

Monday we met our agent Cindy to go to the High Commisioners office to complete our extended stay visa. Pretty much a typical bureaucratic visit. Is somewhat of a cultural shock to see government workers in flipflops, but hey even the construction workers wear them!!! Spent the rest of the day walking to the marine store and the hardware store. We hit the grocery store on the way home, and then had an awesome dinner on Moondance.

Josh had been (and still is) a real trooper hanging out with the adults. The kid boats left Fakarava several days after us, so he had to trail around after us for 4 days. The kid boats arrived in Tahiti on Tuesday, so he is back to having kids his own age to hang with.

Tuesday was laundry day. Funny we can only do as much laundry as we have lines to hang it on, so was a 2 day deal this time. The good news being that there are machines at the marina, so we were able to do sheets and towels and cotton things. Was/is nice to get all those things really clean. Met a girl we initially met in Hiva Oa on the dock, and she cut my hair. She is from Holland and a hairdresser by trade. She did Josh's hair in Hiva Oa and did a great job on mine. Feels really good to have the nasty dry ends gone. Tuesday night we had dinner with 4 other boats at a restaurant here at the marina - 18 people total. Was good fun. Good pizza too.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I finished up the laundry. Was an all day affair pretty much as we had to wait for washers. Got back to the boat in time to make my calorie difficient men some lunch, clean up, have a rest then make dinner. After dinner we dinghy'd over to the Intercontinental hotel to see a Polynesian dance troupe. It was Marquessan style dancing and very good. It is hard to describe the style, almost Native American style. The men especially made it look very savage and it wasn't a stretch to imagine them prepping you for their dinner!!!!

Today so far has been pretty lazy. It really is the first day without a morning appointment off the boat. We are expecting the watermaker guy this morning sometime. The watermaker is working, but even with new filters the parts/million is 600. Which is safe, but higher than you would expect. So we are having it looked at. This afternoon will be another provisioning run. We will leave on Saturday for Moorea with the Puddle jumpers, will be at Moorea for about a week, then return here to restock the pantry prior to heading out to the rest of the Society Islands. It is 1000 and we are still waiting........

more later......

June 15 2011

2011-06-15T17:16:00.000-05:00

Well, Happy Birthday to me. Sure wish I would get a little wind for my birthday. We are motoring along with less than 5 kts of wind, en route to Tahiti. Would be nicer if we could sail (not to mention less expensive), but oh well we take what we get.

We left the south anchorage of Fakarava (Tekamanu) on Saturday. It was a pretty easy motorsail/sail up the channel. Sort of like following cairns on a hike, only it is on water and you follow the channel markers, staying left or right depending on the color of the mark. The marks by the way usually sat on coral heads, so good things to avoid. pulled into the north anchorage around 1500. Calou called and said it was a Holiday weekend, so the store was closing at 6pm and would not reopen until Tuesday. So, we quickly put our dinghy in the water and went into town for a few provisions. Didn't need much except bread, which they were out of. Bought a couple of Hinanos (tahitian beer) and walked around with Doug and Carla. Another very nice little town. Is very weird to be able to stand on the street and see water on both sides. Different water to be sure, but still.... After our walk (we resupplied our Hinanos) we made arrangements to dive the next afternoon. We watched the sunset from the dive shop dock, then headed back to the boats.

Sunday
Kind of a busy pre dive morning. Made plans to have a pizza party on Phambili (they caught back up to us after going to Tahiti, Borabora etc with family) that night a get together and pre birthday celebration for me.
The dive was excellent. Josh did great. Was my first tank dive in 7 years and the first time I dove with Josh. Technically I was a little rusty, but enjoyed it all the same. We saw big grouper and a huge tuna and of course the requisite sharks (not too close). The coral was beautiful as well. Dennis came up with zero air as usual, and I could tell it had been awhile for me, cuz I had less than 50 bar.
The pizza party was great! We had a large variety (each group brought some). It was my first pizza with peanut butter (thai chicken). Carla made a totally yummy yellow cake with chocolate frosting. MMMMMM!!! Have I mentioned lately, that it is all about the food?

Monday

Dennis fixed the generator. Sounds familiar huh? This time the glow plug wire was routed too close to the engine block, got hot, melted and shorted out. Thankfully mechanic extraordinaire was able to figure it all out and have it fixed by noon. We rented bikes for the afternoon (one speed beach cruiser kind) and toured the Island a little bit. Did a total of about 12-13 miles, which was about all our backsides could handle!!! We stopped for a late lunch at a roullette (read french polynesian roach coach). I had a tuna steak and fries and Dennis had a burger. Again yum. Had a pretty quiet night in preparation for departure on Tuesday.

Tuesday

Didn't quite get into town early enough for bread. Hard to believe they were out of bread before 830. These people are so nice though. The proprietress of the grocery store shook her head in disgust when I told her the boulangerie had no bread, and let me buy one of hers. Wow! Where else would that happen? So, we stocked up on a few more snacks, eggs, premade sandwiches for lunch and called it good. Had the anchor up by 1015 and made it out the North pass by 1120. We were able to fly the spinnaker for a few hours, but the wind died so the motor came on and has been on ever since. After all the wind we have had in the last few weeks, you would think there would have been some to spare for this passage, but apparently not. Was a beautiful night watch - big full moon, no squalls.

Wednesday

So, here we are about 120 miles from Papeete. No wind and pretty hot. We hope to be there by tomorrow morning, and will be there for a week, then will head out with the Tahiti Moorea sailing rondezvous, then will come back to Tahiti for final provisioning before heading out for BoraBora etc.

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June 10,2011

2011-06-12T14:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it is hard to keep track of time here, and my typing skills are getting rusty - so yeah, it wasn't the 6th when I wrote that last post........

So, we spent 6 days at Tahanea. It was as I said extremely beautiful. We snorkeled with Moondance on the coral head behind the boat. Pretty amazing! Only saw one shark, but tons of other fish. Probably the best snorkel spot I have ever been at. Seems like we crammed a lot of activity into about 4 days, then spent the last 2 days on the boat waiting for some weather to pass thru. The boys went lobstering twice. The first night's catch was combined for all boats in pasta at the birhday celebration for Antoine (turned 13). The second catch we shared with Moondance. That was a yummy dinner - arrachera (from mexico), fried parrotfish appetizers (caught fresh off the coral head by Josh that afternoon), lobster in garlic and butter and green salad. Yep, it is all about the food!!! Dennis and Doug did a drift dive thru the pass one afternoon. Both said it was fabulous. The weather came the next day, so Josh and I missed our turn.....

June 7th -- had an uneventful trip out the pass on our way to Faaite, our intermediated stop on the way to Fakarava. Had a good sail and were safely anchored outside the pass at Faaite by 4pm. We had heard mixed reviews about the anchorage, but for us it was pretty nice. We were up before the sun on Wednesday. It is only 12 miles from Faaite to the southern pass here at Fakarava, but we needed to catch the slack before 0800. The waves and swell were a little intimidating on the approach to the pass, but once we got lined up we passed the breakers through smooth water. Lots of coral heads to miss in here, so pretty interesting getting to the anchorage. All set by 0900. After breakfast and little naps, we put the dinghy in the water to go exploring. We are anchored on the south side of the pass, the bottom has a lot of sand with good holding. The motus are pretty and the beaches actually have some sand. We went to the north anchorage (a long dinghy ride) to check out what little civilization there is here - 2 dive outfits and a pension. We met Calou at shore, so Josh and Francois were able to hang out for a while. The dock attached to the pension is really cool - kinda like pictures you would see of Bora Bora. The buildings are on stilts in the water, with walkways to shore. The enclosed little lagoon is like their own personal aquarium - full of sharks! So yeah, lots of sharks here. Supposedly the marbled grouper are going to spawn here at the full moon (the 15th) and will be a feast day for the sharks. Sounds like sharks come from miles around to get their fill. We have seen black and white tip reef sharks, and hear there are tiger sharks and grey sharks.

Thursday the 9th was a clean up cooking day on Evergreen. I made banana nut muffins and my first loaf of white sandwich bread. We also cleaned up inside. Was nice to have a clean boat for a little bit. That afternoon we met Moondance on the beach at the leaning palm motu for happy hour and bocce ball. Scattered a little more of Steve to toasts and good memories. Made it back to boat just ahead of the rain!

Friday - got up early today to do a drift dive with the hooka thru the pass. Was pretty nice. No sun, so visibility could have been better, but saw lots of fish and no sharks. I was surprised actually, I expected to see them all around. While Josh and Doug were down, I saw a 4-5 foot manta ray doing flips out of the water. Pretty cool. We also saw medium sized marbled grouper. Tonight we are having a bbq here on Evergreen with Moondance, then tomorrow we will head up to the north anchorage about 30 miles from here. There is a channel that we have to follow, so won't be hard, just have to pay attention. There is an intermediate anchorage that we may stop at, but Josh is anxious to catch up with Calou (they left yesterday for the north anchorage) so we will see.

Overall continues to be much cooler than expected and not as many bugs as expected. Neither are bad things, but I wouldn't mind a little more sun. The water is warm, so it is easy to get into (at least it is if there aren't 6 sharks circling the boat - note to self- don't throw fish guts into the water right next to the boat, the sharks are quick learners and slow forgetters).

Had a big power yacht come into the anchorage on the north side of the pass on Wednesday. We heard they have 27 crew. They of course have a huge tender and jet skis. We planned a bonfire with the other boats here in the anchorage that night, and had to change locations as the yacht's crew had raked the beach in preparation for some "do" on the beach on Thursday. Can't believe they didn't invite us, what with all their comings and goings you would think it would be the polite thing to do, but alas no...... Makes you wonder.... Oh well, I'm sure we have more fun anyway.

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June 6 2011 from Tahanea

2011-06-03T20:07:00.001-05:00

Memorial Day - May 30 2011.
Had an early morning walk to the boulangerie (bakery) for bread. Got caught in the rain, so sheltered in the boulangerie for a while and explained to the bakery lady and her friend about Memorial day. We planned a barbeque with Moondance and invited Calou, Callopyge and Charade. It ended up being more of an appetizer and dessert thing on the dock, but was very nice. So, we had added a little bit of US to our stay in Makemo.

May 31, 2011
Spent a leisurely day getting the boat ready for the overnight crossing to Tahanea. It was nice to have all day to prepare, even though it meant an overnight watch schedule. We untied Moondance from the dock about 1615, and Lor and Carol helped us untie right after that. We all blew away from the dock nicely and headed out through the pass. It was not as exciting as coming in, I guess we knew what to expect for one, and it is easier going out into open water. Calou passed us as we were putting up our sails, and we all sailed off into the sunset (so to speak). To get to Tahanea we had to go westish along Makemo (starboard tack downwind) then jibe to the southwest. We left at night because you have to enter and exit passes at slack tides, and entering a new place needs to be done in the daylight, preferably with the sun high in the sky. The daytime slack here at Tahanea was at 0940, and the closest slack at Makemo was at 5 pm. Hence an overnight crossing. Was not too bad, a little rolly, but we should be used to that be now. We were in sight of Tahanea around 0730, just in time for a morning squall. We got all the sails down and motored into the wind until it blew and rained itself out. The pass was pretty benign, all made it through without incident, we anchored and were pretty much settled by 1030.

June 1st
It is beautiful here. Totally deserted tropical island beautiful. The atoll is narrow, so you can easily see the open ocean from here inside the lagoon. The water in the lagoon is crystal clear shades of dark blue, sky blue, turquoise and green. Pictures can't really do it justice. As much as we enjoy being at the dock, we are loving this anchorage. There is a coral head about 50 yards behind us that the boys snorkeled on. They said it is really good.
After naps, we went exploring with Doug and Carla. We found a little sandy spot (beaches are more rough coral than sand) to have some wine and snacks. As the sun was setting we scattered some of Steve Hall's ashes. He would have loved it here, it is a fitting place for part of him to rest. Rest in peace good friend.

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June 6 2011 from Tahanea

2011-06-03T20:07:00.000-05:00

Makemo

2011-05-29T13:18:00.001-05:00

Sunday 5/29/2011

Well, we have waited out a storm front here in Makemo for a week. It has been very (max of 40kts) windy. But, it has also been a real treat to be tied up to the wharf here - especially since it is free!!! We did not expect to be able to be at a dock until Hawaii in November. So way cool for us. The local people here are very friendly, and the cruising boats here have provided unlimited entertainment for the local kids. Just goes to show that not much happens out here on Makemo!! Josh is picking up a little bit of French with the help of his friend Francois from Calou. The rest of us are getting a lot of practice as well, as English is not spoken very much. Really it is good for us to be immersed, so we learn faster.

As I said earlier, we have gotten a lot of projects done, only have three left on the list - finish rebedding a stantion, run Josh up the mast to fix the wind vane (definitely not something to be done in high winds, and we may have to forgo for now), and sew some straps onto a pad to protect the dinghy from the windvane when it is on the davits. The generator pump is fixed (finally, was not a straightforward process), the dinghy is patched and floating (finding a weather window to get that done was also a challenge) and I have done a lot of mending with the sewing machine. I even made sword scabbards for the 2 little boys on Charade and Calliopyge (the 2 French boats at the dock). My biggest chore remains laundry. I try to keep caught up, otherwise it gets overwhelming. But, all the sheets and towels are now freshly laundered. Now all we have to do is make water to refill the tank I emptied to get it all done.

Yesterday I went snorkeling in the afternoon, right off the boat. It is so clear and there is a reef just on the other side of the dock. I saw lots of cool fish - the coolest being a common lionfish - and one small black tip reef shark. It was nice to get in the water. Dennis had the kites out, and then took the kayak out. Josh helped with a lot of chores and then hung out with Francois. Surprisingly it has been pretty cool. Maybe we are just acclimated, but I actually had to wear a jacket to sit in the cockpit last evening. It is still pretty windy, but seems to be calmimg down a little bit. It will do what it will do I guess, we just have to wait and see. We are ready to move on though so hopefully.......

May 28, 2011

2011-05-28T20:50:00.001-05:00

05/24/11

(5/15-5/16) Spent two nights in Daniel's Bay - our last stop on Nuka Hiva. It was a nice anchorage with a hike to a waterfall.- 2000ft high, Very impressive! It was a pretty easy hike with a fresh water swim and shower at the waterfall. We had a little picnic with Doug and Carla then hiked back. For whatever reason, Josh and Francois did not wear swimsuits, so did not swim. When they got back to the beach Josh swam out to Calou to get their kayak, and he and Francois then paddled out to the boats. Thankfully it was an easy dinghy landing and launch, and we got back to the boats safe and sound. We did supply the local mosquitos and no-nos with a feast, and we are still itching.

5/17 - We were up and at em pretty early to leave for Ua Huka - about 24 miles from Daniel's Bay. We had a good sail, another less than stellar anchoring experience, but finally got settled in the Northeast anchorage. Sorry I can't remember the name, and probably can't spell it even if I could remember it, but it is the 3rd largest town in the Marquessa's. Nice place, lots of good places to provision. Wednesday we went in exploring, and to scope out the markets. At one of them I tried in my very bad French to ask a young girl if she knew anyone who would trade for fruit. After much confusion, the lady with the girls said that she had fruit, and we could come by her house the next morning. We bought some breadfruit and mangos from a house a little further down the street too. That night we ate pizza out - was really pretty good, and not too expensive. The next morning Doug and I trekked in at 0545 to get bread. We actually scored pretty well - baguettes and sandwich loafs. Then at the dock we were able to catch some fresh tuna (amazing what bites on a 500 franc note :) ). At 0800 we all went back in to get fruit. We weren't really sure where we were going, but figured we would see the lady, and she would recognize us. We got limes, starfruit (not my favorite) and pamplamouse and when we asked how much, she wouldn't take anything!!! Much to our dismay, we did not get her name, but on our way back thru this fall, we plan to stop by with a gift for her. Since we had accomplished all we set out to do, we (Evergreen and Moondance) decided to head out for the Tuomotus.

We left about 1030 am on Thursday, and by 1030 am on Friday we had gone 166 miles - a personal record for us. We were on a reasonably comfortable point of sail, and moving along. Josh took the 6p to 9p watch, and helped out a lot during the days. Friday and Saturday were pretty uneventful pretty fast, did another 160 miles during the second 24 hours. Saturday afternoon we started seeing squalls, so we ended up slowing down and we brought in the big jib. I had 2 squalls during the first 2 hours of my watch Saturday night, after that I could have put out the big jib, but decided not too as I would have had to wake someone up to help me furl it if another squall came through. Made it to Makemo late Sunday afternoon, was close. The pass into the lagoon looks huge until you are in it and realize that the channel is narrow, and even at slack tide the water is squirrely. Dennis did a great job steering through the crazy water - reminded us of the passes in the San Juan Islands. As we were coming through the pass into the lagoon, Calou hailed us on the VHF - they beat us by about 3 hours, having left just behind us on Thursday. The next surprise was that we were able to tie up to the wharf here. What a luxury to be at the dock! No power or water, but no big deal there - we make our own. But to be able to step off the boat onto land - Wow, we weren't expecting that until we hit Hawaii in November. Moondance did not make it in to the lagoon until the next morning. We saved them a place at the dock which is now quite cozy. 5 boats all tied up.

The kids are totally loving it, and this is the first time Josh has actually interacted with the local kids. This week is a school holiday, so there are kids on the dock all day. Josh is also loving the water here. it is just as we imagined it would be - clear and so pretty. It is like we are tied up in our own personal aquarium. You don't even need to snorkel to see all the fish. The water is so clear that it is disorienting it seems shallower than it is. Conning for coral heads is the next new skill on our checklist. We are also impressed with the provisions available here. The guidebooks led us to believe that there would really be nothing, but in reality the store here has some of the best selection we have seen to date, and not out of proportionately (sp?) expensive. Yesterday (Monday) I was able to get avacados and carrots, as well as italian andouille sausage and frozen chicken drumsticks ( a Josh all time favorite).

Monday morning there were 3 boats here at the dock (including us) one left, and then 4 came in. All boats we know (except one). So we were pretty busy getting everyone situated and tied up. The wind is such that it pushes you away from the wharf, so getting lines to the people on the dock was challenging, but we finally got everyone settled. As Carla from Moondance said - what is not to like, a dock (free), people on the dock to catch your lines, a free baguette, and free fish!! I am not sure who was handing out the baguettes, but the fish (marlin) came from s/v Charade (ginormous catamaran from France). Seems they landed a huge marlin Sunday, so we all shared in their bounty. Doug cheffed it up on our grill for dinner that night - YUM!

Tuesday 5/24 - Very windy and rainy today. Since we are tied up, we are trying to get as many projects done as possible. Sadly we rubbed a hole in the dinghy on the way here, so it needs repairing. Currently it is on the dock awaiting a dryer day so the patch can be applied. It also had a leak in the hard bottom (which probably contributed to the chafing) so the shell was full of water. After draining it, Dennis resealed it. I removed the dinghy cover to repair the chafe holes and to add leather patches for added protection. Then Dennis worked on the generator - switching out water pumps. We have such awful water pump karma - it just isn't right. So that turned into an all day project that will overflow into tomorrow. In the meantime, I repaired the protective leather cover that Roger made for the Hydrovane in Halfmoon Bay in September 2009. Then it was on to laundry. Laundry just happens to be my least favorite chore. I try not to let it pile up because it really is hard work. I would kill for a good old fashioned wringer! The highlight of the day though was the morning delivery of chocolate croissants. OMG some of the best we have ever had. The French Baker in Barra de Navidad is nothing compared to this lady. YUM! I have told you lately how it is all about the food????

Tomorrow's agenda is pretty full as well. We ordered loaf bread from the bakery which we will pick up around 0800. The dinghy will hopefully get its patch, the generator water pump will go back in (sans leak i hope), Josh needs to go up the mast to fix the windvane that the stupid booby broke on the crossing and I need to get the sewing machine out to fix the dinghy cover. In the midst of all that we have an appointment to look at pearls at 1300. The dock is great, but feels like work too. We think another couple of days here, then we will move to the NW side of the atoll (this atoll is 40 miles long) for a day or two then on to the next atoll - TBD.
Saturday 5/28. Still here, has been howling windy all week. Calming down today, hope to leave Monday. Projects are all done except for Josh's trip up the mast. Not the best thing to do in 30 knots of wind. More later. Happy Memorial Day!

blog post 051411

2011-05-15T04:19:00.002-05:00

5/14/11 Saturday
We have been in Nuka Hiva for a week. Met up with Doug and Carla on Moondance, so have been able to combine socializing with provisioning, repairs/projects and sightseeing.

Carol & Carla enjoy tropical drinks

Had a couple of rolly anchorages after Atuona on Hiva Oa. Hanamenu was nice the first day and we had a great sail there from Atuona. The next 2 days and nights there were rocking and rolling. The freshwater pool was really nice though.

Dennis in the pool on Hanamenu

We left Hanamenu for the next Island to the north - Oa Huka on Friday the 6th. The sail there was pretty nice. We arrived to more rocking and rolling. According to the local kids surfing, this was the time they had had surfable waves in months - lucky us. We were not willing to try a dinghy landing, and neither was Calou, so we left the next morning for Nuka Hiva. On the sail here from Oa Huka we put a small tear in the mainsail, lost a tuna right at the boat and then had to anchor in the dark. Was not one of our better days. Sunday we had to get the hooka out so Dennis could dive on our anchor which had become horribly wrapped in the lines and anchor of a mooring. 2 and 1/2 hours later we were reanchored and settled. Whew!! Things have been much better since then. Taioahe is the name of the town here. It is the biggest town in the Marquesa's. I tried to repair the mainsail myself, but although our machine would have done the sewing, the sail is just too big to move around to get the patch installed. So we ended up having to take it in to the sail loft - got it back yesterday afternoon.
Our hooka has paid for itself in this anchorage - Tueday, Dennis spent several hours in the water helping s/v Whatcha Gonna Do retrieve their stern anchor and search for their main anchor. No luck Tuesday, but they finally picked up the line with a grappling hook on Wednesday. One nice thing about the cruising community, we help each other out.
Wednesday we got up at O dark thirty to go to the vegetable market with Doug and Carla. We got lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, green beans (long and regular) and green peppers. We had 160 liters of diesel delivered on Wednesday too - what a mess getting it into the tanks!!
Thursday we shared a rental car with Doug and Carla and drove to the north side of the island.

Taiohe bay - Nuka Hiva

Had a nice lunch and hike.

Overlooking the anchorage -Nuka Hiva

The hike over to Anaho was not all that long, just steep. The bay is very pretty and has a coral reef which Dennis snorkeled on. I saw a small (less than 2 feet) shark and nearly stepped on a pretty big stingray, all in water less than knee deep.


shoppers take a rest

Friday we got our provisioning done before we returned the car. I think we bought something from every grocery store here. The supply ship doesn't come until next Wednesday, so we are having to do without carrots and apples but, we are pretty much set now until we get to Tahiti.

After stowing the provisions I went in and did laundry at the dock. It is nice to be able to use their water instead of water we make, especially for sheets and cotton items.
Today was a lazy day - we got the mainsail back up and that pretty much covered it. This evening we went to a party to celebrate the anniversary of something here. There was local music and dancing. Pretty cool and all over by 9:30 pm.

Doug - phone booths are in odd places

We plan to go to the next bay over tomorrow for a couple of days, then to Ua Pou (next island south) for a day or two, then we will cross to the Tuomotus. That crossing will take 4-5 days. The Tuomotus are atolls. We are looking forward to calm lagoons and clear water - I'll keep you posted.....

Tahoato and Atuona #2

2011-05-14T15:51:00.001-05:00

Really enjoyed Tahoata. Did lots of snorkeling and swimming and some socializing.

The beach at Tahoata, opening coconuts

Took the dinghy the 3 miles to the neighboring village. They have a really cool church there. Wish I could describe it properly. It had the traditional thatched roof, but underneath it had tongue and groove wood, a beautiful stained glass madonna and child over the alter and the pulpit was carved wood. Very different.

Cool Church

We also scavenged mangos - yummy. Talk about a sugar rush. We had the by now requisite rain shower, but the clouds and rain keep it cool. One thing about the Marquessa's we have noticed is how neat and tidy everything is. It is unbelievably clean. A real change from Mexico. Left Tahoata for Atuona on Hiva Oa on Wednesday. We still needed to pick up our duty free fuel paper and get fuel. The boat with fuel was due in on Thursday morning.
Thursday morning came, and sure enough a big boat in the little harbor. The Arunui 3 is a combination freighter/cruise ship. Carries about 100 passengers. And we lost our passengers to it. Mark and Vicki were able to get a cabin on it, so off they went. Sure seemed quiet on the boat after they left.
Friday we were supposed to take a tour of the island, but turns out they were doing some blasting on the road, so we postponed until Saturday. In the meantime we took a hike to some petroglyphs, scored some limes and bananas. Was a pretty buggy hike, and we didn't find the waterfall that was supposed to be there, but there was a new fence in place, so that is probably why.
Saturday we took our tour around the island. Went to the ruins of a village - was pretty interesting. Then we took a long almost 4 wheel drive ride to the north side of the island to see "big tiki". The drive was actually amazing. These islands tend to have two distinct climates windward and leeward. Windward is drier and sunnier, more desert like, and leeward is tropical - rainy and humid. The big tiki was very cool. We also bought more pamplamousse and bananas and limes. Pamplamousse (like grapefruit) is a new staple in our diet.

Josh with the King Tiki, beheaded soldier tiki on right

Sunday I did some laundry on shore - they have a great water supply, so I took advantage of it. We bought some internet - very pricey. 4.00 per hour. It was Pascal's Birthday (from Calou) so we helped her celebrate with pizza out and chocolate cake at their boat afterwards. Again yum!
Monday, more laundry - its never ending, but doing it myself is so much cheaper. We had linen and towels done for us, Wow! cost as much as a whole season's worth in Mexico. Oh well, won't be doing 24 days worth again. Josh also had his hair cut by the girl on the boat next to us. She did a very nice job. Not too expensive either.
Today (Tuesday) we left for for a new anchorage on the NW side of Hiva Oa. Is pretty nice, and had a good sail over. Water is not as clear as we had hoped, but at least it is not crowded. We hope to see Calou here tomorrow, then on to Oa Huka in the next few days.

Hiva Oa and beyond

2011-04-26T22:49:00.001-05:00

Was a looonnngg day to FatuHiva. 35 miles, 10.5 hours. motorsailed the whole way, into the wind. Yuk! But it was well worth it. The scenery here is beyond description - lush, verdant, majestic, oh and did I mention wet? Beaucoup de plui!


Fatu Hiva Ho!

We pulled into the anchorage about 1700, got the anchor set and Josh was gone. Yep, we caught up with Calou and Phambili first kids in 28 days. I think he might have been just a teensy bit tired of adults. Sounds like we lucked out though, it is a small anchorage and we were told 8 boats had left that morning. Would have been very crowded. As it was there were only 5 including us.
Wednesday we got up early for a hike to the next village over (Omoa). Don't really know what we were thinking - a 10 mile hike after a month of zero exercise, and a steep hike at that. It was a beautiful hike, but very hard. It rained lightly on the up portion, which was a blessing, because I am pretty sure if the sun would have been out it would have been miserably hot. We stopped at a nice little covered picnic bench for lunch and a rest and then started the downhill portion into Omoa.

Lunch at the top

At that point we were treated to a full tropical downpour. Did I mention it is a warm rain? The dirt road turned into a muddy river and going was treacherous at times.

Mud, Mud Glorious Mud

We gave up on keeping our shoes dry and clean. What a sight we must have looked as we trudged into the village 5 hours after we started. The village of Omoa is very pretty and again the scenery... There was a cruise ship in the harbor (the Paul Gaugain) and a few tourists braved the rain to come in. They had a display of cultural arts - tapa, wood carvings, pareos, jewelry. Was very cool to look at. We also were able to pick up baguettes (read Josh in hog heaven). The tiny village by our anchorage has a store, but no beer or bread there. The rain had stopped be the time we got to the village, and except for our shoes we dried out pretty quickly. John from Calou had towed over our dinghy, so thankfully we didn't have to do a return hike or pay for a paroque ride home. It is only 3.5 miles by sea. We made it back to the boat in time for a little more rain, but as Josh says after 5 days in the Marquessas he is used to being wet.
Thursday we had a pretty lazy day recovering from the hike. Got a few projects done around the boat, and Dennis spent the best part of the day helping Calou with their refrigeration. They had been without refrigeration since the second week out. At this writing it is not cooling past 30 degrees, so Dennis may go again to see if there is anything else to be done. That night we had a great get together on Phambili. Pot luck and music. Bruce plays the accordion, John plays the violin, and Pascale (Bruce's wife) has an awesome voice (Calou). We had quite the concert.

Dennis resting - Omoa

Sadly as we got up to leave we discovered our dinghy was AWOL. It had been very windy and the painter came undone and the dinghy drifted off. Fiona and Tom from Phambili took their dinghy all around the anchorage, but no luck. So we gathered everyone back on board Evergreen, pulled anchor and went searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. By that time it was about 0100. We spent the rest of the night following a path we thought the dinghy might have drifted. We had to take into account wind direction and current. It was a pretty rough night. By daylight we had seen nothing, were tired and discouraged, about 0630 we turned to head back to the anchorage. About 0830 I woke Josh to come and keep watch as I was beginning to hallucinate. Not 20 minutes later he yells "there it is", and sure enough 5.5 miles from the anchorage there was our dinghy bobbing around in the waves.

dinghy Ho!

We came about, lowered the main, and were able to retrieve the painter on the second try. That dinghy has a charmed life. It is really unbelievable that we found it. Also weird is that it was upwind of the anchorage. The winds over night had maxed at about 20, and we saw up to 30 on the way back in. Totally crazy that the current had more of an affect than the wind. But, we are not complaining. We brought our tired and grateful selves back into the anchorage, set anchor and fell into bed (about 1130). That afternoon we took the wayward little dinghy into the village in search of pamplamousse (grapefruit). We were able to buy some - 4 large pamplamousse and a coconut for 600 francs (roughly 7USD). They are good though.
Saturday we set off for Tahoata. Had a good downwind sail and made good time. Arrived around 1530. Now this is what I imagined when I dreamed of French Polynesia. Clear tourqouise blue water and sandy beaches. The kid boats are anchored close by - life is practically perfect. Had a good swim - the first real one since we have been here. Were supposed to have a bonfire on the beach, but the rain decided otherwise. Josh spent the night on Calou, and here we are.
Sunday - Happy Easter. Hard to believe it is Easter. I did not plan for it in my provisioning either, so no easter baskets this morning. Phambili is heading out today, they have family coming and have to get to Rairitoa (sp) to meet them. We will be here a few days, then head back to Hiva Oa - I'll keep you posted.


The whole wet, tired crew (L-R Francois, Anina, Naomi, Fioan, Cam, Josh, Tommy, Carol,Dennis and Vickie not shown Bruce,Mark and Antoine)

Day 24 & 25 - Land fall

2011-04-18T20:37:00.001-05:00

2989 miles

Hiva Oa at Dawn

Land at last

Anchorage at Atuona

Made it to Hiva Oa Yeah!!!!!! Didn't kiss the ground, but the thought crossed my mind. The island came into view on my watch - around 0030 - was very weird after 2900 miles of nothing but ocean. Of course, the last 25 miles were hard. Dennis' watch started at 0100, but I got him up early (it really was a little freaky - hard to explain). Actually everyone got up to see "land ho". The moon was almost full, so it was bright even with the clouds. The wind never died down like it had the 2 previous nights, so we made better time than anticipated. Dennis woke me to do a downwind turn at about 0430, Mark was up, so I went back to bed. It was rocking and rolling - guess we had winds up to 30 knots. We held off the Island till just after the sun came up (0530ish ship's time). It was pretty surreal coming in - Josh says it is like Jurassic Park, and I have to agree. It is a volcanic island, so no sandy beaches, just jumps straight out of the water. The contrast of the greenery on the steep hills with the dark rock is amazing, then you have the island peaks shrouded in clouds - and lots of waterfalls. We could smell the island as we approached as well - florally with an underlying humid smell. We had the anchors down by 0630 - fore and aft as this is a very small anchorage. The guides say how rolly it is, and it is, but after the last week we have had sailing, it is positively flat. I made a big breakfast, then we all had a rest. (Note - eggs have done very well on this trip. Lost 5 the last night with all the rolling we did, and the yolks break easily so no sunny side up eggs, but really I have been happy with how it has worked out.)
Since it was Sunday we could not check in, but our agent told us it was okay to go ashore. So, we got the dinghy all set up and paddled in and walked around the dock area. Up the road a little way was a house with a goat pen. I guess we have been away from civilization too long, cuz we spent about 30 minutes watching those darn goats. Picked up some avocados that had fallen off a tree - should be yummy in a couple more days when the ripen. Not really much to see in the dock area, and Atuona the village is a 1.5 mile walk - up hill. I was ready to call it quits before we even got to the hill. Oh, and by the way Brad - if this is the best shower in the Marquessas, I will stick with the one on the boat!!! The "shower" is a concrete building - probably 6 feet tall, no roof, with a pipe that turns on. Private sort of, but cold only. A reminder to me of how good we have it on the boat.


Waiting in line for the Best Shower in the Marquessa's

Monday -
Lots of rain over night. Filled the buckets on deck and probably 8 inches in the dinghy. So, I did laundry. Too bad it has rained off and on all day - Marquessan rinse cycle - at least it is free.
The agent here on Hiva Oa - Sandra, answered our hail on channel 11 around 0800. We arranged to have her pick us up at the dock at 0900, so was a mad rush to get us all ready. Checking in was pretty easy - she came with us and helped with the paperwork. It was pretty straightforward. After that was all squared away, we decided that even though it was raining, we would stay in town. Went to the ATM for money, then stood in line inside the bank to get smaller bills. The money here is very pretty, and BIG. Also in large numbers. 30000 FP francs is about 340 dollars. Things are crazy expensive here. We were prepared, but still. 2 cheeseburgers, 2 beers and a soda cost 44 dollars - whew!!! You don't even want to know what I spent at the grocery store. Oh well, hopefully we will start catching some fish. Yes, we were totally skunked on the way here. Hard to believe not on Tuna or Mahi Mahi wanted to be our dinner in 3000 miles!!!
The Rain continues - it has been raining, not just raining, but torrential downpours - all day. We are leaving for Fatu Hiva tomorrow morning - about 35 miles. It is supposed to be a must see in the Marquesas, and Josh hopes to catch up with some kids. We will return to Hiva Oa in a week or so.
They do have internet here, so we will probably buy some time when we come back.

April 15, Days 22 &23

2011-04-17T22:14:00.000-05:00

Day 22 - The intrepid crew continues their search for the elusive southern trades. But alas, they only find SSE winds and have to turn up into the wind in order to make their intended destination of Hiva Oa. It is the 4th day of mixed seas, overcast skies and frequent squalls. The ride has been uncomfortable and hot. The crew is wearing down even though their final destination is within 300 miles. So the cook breaks out the easy comfort food - spaghetti!!! hoping that full bellies will help them to sleep. The crew reminds themselves that the passage is nearly over so it is possible to bear a few more hours of discomfort with the hope that tomorrow will bring sunny skies and calmer seas.
2762 miles

Day 23 - Well, happy tax day. Woke up after a calm night to sunny skies. Yeah!!! Mark deployed the genoa around 0615, so we were back up to speed early. Cruised along most of the day at 6+ knots, still heading up wind, but not too bad of a ride. Around 1530, we were joined by a large pod of dolphin that hung around about 40 minutes. It was cool to watch them play around the boat. They look so joyful, chasing each other, jumping out of the water in graceful pairs, or singly to do big belly flops or twists. The whole crew gathered on deck to watch. Made water last night, so even though the watermaker is not as efficient on this tack, we still made almost 60 gallons. Hope to make a little more before we make Hiva Oa, so we arrive with both tanks full. Everyone was practicing their French today. I am finally going to put those 3 years of high school french to use. Is hard to believe we are almost there.....By the time this gets posted we will probably be in sight of land. YEE HAW! Sure hope I am not too land sick. After 24 days at sea and never being seasick, it is pretty ironic that I will be the miserable one when we get to land!! Oh well, I may have to premedicate myself with a nice cold beer!!!
2872 miles

Day 19 April 11, 2011

2011-04-12T21:33:00.000-05:00

Day 19
2378 miles. Variety of weather conditions today. Lots of rain overnight and off and on thru out the day. Brad our weather guru says we are in an area of convection, which in english means: Spinnaker up, Spinnaker down, genoa in, genoa out, engine on, engine off, hatches and ports open, hatches and ports closed, dry clothes, wet clothes, 7 knots, 3 knots. The only real down part is that when we close up the boat it gets stinking hot inside - muggy too. So, we race around opening and closing, because the airflow is critical. Hopefully we will leave this convection behind sometime tomorrow. We have been lucky with the wind though more than we expected, but not too much either. Josh is the resident expert on spinnaker deployment and dousing, can and does do it in his sleep - i wake him in the early mornings to help me put it up. His new nickname is Dr. Spinn.
We are actually thinking about landfall and being at anchor. Maybe Saturday. Josh is dreaming of real internet, I am dreaming of fresh veggies and fruit. Think I might chill a diet coke for the occasion.

Day 18 04/10/11

2011-04-10T21:13:00.000-05:00

EQUATOR DAY!!!

1745 2241 miles, heading 224T

Crossed the Equator this morning at 0515. Everyone including Josh got up for this once in a lifetime event (you only sail across it the first time once). I managed to get a blurry picture of the GPS at 00.00.000 - pretty cool. It was Mark's watch, so the rest of us went back to bed for awhile after that. More festivities were planned for later in the day.

On Day 17, we ended up turning on the motor. The first time in 2 weeks I think. Made water all day. Had some rain, basically a nice routine kind of day. Watches are easy with the motor on, no sail adjustments to worry about just hanging out with "baby Jesus" (the autopilot).

The wind had come back up when I got to my watch this morning, so off went the motor and up went the spinnaker. We are making 4-5 knots with 5-10 knots of wind from the ESE, big long period swells - pretty cool. After breakfast of Waffles (Josh's request) we ended up taking down the spinnaker and heading on more of a reach with the genoa and staysail out. I got the dough ready for lunch - PIZZA!! During this, Josh was making his crown and Trident for our Equator celebration. I cannot wait to post the pictures - very cool and funny. We drank mimosas and opened the gift from Doug and Carla (s/v Moondance). YUMMIES inside - chocolates and Tequila!!Thanks a million guys. We all dressed up in hats or flowers and pareos. Josh was King Neptune with long hair and white beard (shaving cream)and Trident. So we are now all officially "Shell Backs", having crossed the equator physically (I guess flying doesn't count). After our little celebration Vickie made personal pizzas for lunch. Thanks to Patrick and Laura on s/v Just a Minute for the dough recipe, it was awesome. Tonight we will have chicken enchiladas. I am doing them on the stove top, and so far I am under impressed with how they are turning out - too wet. Will be more like enchilada soup, but oh well it is still slightly cooler for the main salon than using the oven. We will toast with Agavero and call it a good Equator Day. The only thing to mar the day thus far was that the raw water pump on the engine crapped out when we turned on the engine around 1530 (wind was dying). So Dennis spent an hour or so fixing that. In the meantime the wind came back up, so we are still sailing and the pump is fixed.
Only 750 miles or so to go, less than a week!!! I can hardly believe it, but seriously can't wait to walk on land!!!

day 16

2011-04-08T21:08:00.000-05:00

1982 miles, will pass the 2000 mile mark today yeah!!!!! Calmer seas today, which of course means dying down winds and hot hot hot, and humid, humid, humid! We have turned as south as possible for our run to the equator - chasing any possible winds there might be. We should be at the equator Sunday morning ish. It is funny you wish for calmer seas, but then you wish for more wind - oh well, no free lunch. Speaking of which, we are eating cabbage in salad in every way imaginable. I am hoping that there will be some other green leafy that we can afford in the Marquessa's. We listen to Jimmy sing about Cheeseburgers in Paradise, and we begin longing for them, then we calculate what the probable cost in US dollars (rumors are $45 US dollars) will be and start wishing for a fish on the line! So far no fish. Had two hits today, no fish and down one lure - bugger! Capaz used say if you rant about something, you had to rave about something else. So, here are mine for the day. Rant - I AM SO TIRED OF ROCKING & ROLLING. Rave - the sea is such a beautiful blue, and the R$R means good boat speed. Okay it is out of my system. I expect that when we finally get to landfall that I will have a major case of land sickness. You know why sailors had such a bad rap as drunks, you have to drink to make the land hold still...... or at least sway in synch with you. Any ideas for dinner? I am thinking maybe lasagne.... We'll see.

day 14

2011-04-07T21:10:00.000-05:00

hot and humid today. passed 1750 miles. Lots of wind today, made a consistent 7 knts. Replaced the errant water pump on the generator and successfully ran the generator and charged the batteries. I have to say, Dennis made it look easy.
Saw turtles the last couple of days, seems weird to see them out here in the middle of nowhere. We see more birds than I expected to as well. And inquiring minds want to know what you call a group of flying fish while they are flying, a flock or a school???
Is hard to believe it has been 2 weeks. Josh and I commented to each other that we have sailed more on this passage than we have in the whole rest of our lives. Certainly things that used to seem intimidating - the spinnaker for example- are now pretty much no big deal. I guess practice does make perfect. We are using the Hydrovane for steering instead of the autopilot which is pretty cool, and uses no power. The rocking and rolling is still a pain for cooking and sleeping, but otherwise is just another part of the day.
No rain for a couple of days which is nice because it gets pretty stuffy in the cabin when we have to close everything up.
Otherwise, pretty quiet here....

day 13

2011-04-05T21:32:00.000-05:00

1560 miles - passed the halfway point. We spent yesterday putting up and taking down the spinnaker, and babying the generator. Got a decent charge, and some good spinnaker time in. Certainly feel like we are in the tropics. A body acclimates to humidity right?
Today we have been flying the spinnaker again. Big rain cell missed us this morning, and we were able to hum along at 8 knots on its outer edges - cool! Josh has been getting some school done and has finished a couple of novels. Otherwise we are ready for landfall, but can't think about it too much cuz we have at least 10 more days to go.

Day 11 Boobies 2, Evergreen 0

2011-04-04T21:45:00.000-05:00

Well, Day 11 is coming to a close. The last 2 days have been very different. Day 10 dawned sunny, hot and calm. It felt very tropical. I spent the morning after my watch putting grommets in the mesh panels I made to attach to the bimini to provide shade. The wind picked up in the afternoon, and we flew the spinnaker. Got good speed and a comfortable ride. Late in the afternoon we were joined by a Boobie (with green feet not blue). He hung out on our lifelines until he decided to poop inboard instead of outboard - straight into the cockpit. At that point he received a blast from the hose and flew off - straight to the radar dome. Well boys being boys, out came the pellet gun, then the sling shot and finally a knot in the end of the spinnaker halyard. All that was achieved was peanuts on the deck and a hung up halyard. Boobie 1, Evergreen O. That night at dinner time we actually got 3 fish on our lines. All Bonito, all small. We did offer one to the stupid Boobie, but the fish was too big.
I had a moment and agreed to leaving the spinnaker up at least through my watch. Well, it seemed to be going okay, but the winds were building. After reading email from Brad (s/v Capaz Seattle Wa) who is helping us with weather routing. Dennis decided to bring down the spinnaker and reef the main. Thanks Brad and good call Dennis. Started raining on Vickies watch and Mark got us up for a possible squall at 0430ish. We pulled in the genoa, put out the staysail - winds picked up pretty good, but otherwise no problems, other than trying to sleep in a boat that is rocking and rolling.
This morning I spent my watch in the rain. Winds maxed out around 25 knots. Thankfully it was not cold, so I was wet but comfortable. Dennis turned the generator on around 0930, and thus began our day long project of trying to make the generator behave. My understanding of it is that the raw water cooling pump gets vapor locked/doesn't have a good antisyphon valve or something. So Dennis installed a secondary line that we could pump to draw in the water to prime the pump. Worked fine motoring, at anchor and even sailing 2 days ago. However today we discovered that it definitely does not like bouncy seas. After much angst and pumping and turning off and on of the generator, Dennis installed an electric pump to his secondary line and it worked quite well - when we were on a starboard tack. As soon as we changed to a port tack - it quit drawing water, which leads to the generator overheating. We did get some battery charging in, but think the generator won that skirmish. Keep in mind that we had lots of wind, off and on rain and big bouncy seas all day, so maybe it was really mother nature that won, cause we were pretty wiped out by the time we called it quits.
During dinner (no fish on the lines today - didn't put any out) a Boobie tried to land on our Mast head. Unfortunately the windvane up there is not meant to support Boobies. The Bird got his foot tangled in the fins of the vane and after much sqwuaking got loose, but bent up the vane pretty bad. Boobies 2, Evergreen 0.
It is bedtime now, we are mostly dried out, the stars are out, the radar is clear and we are hoping for an easier day tomorrow. I'll let you know.........

April Fools

2011-04-01T21:04:00.000-06:00

We've turned back!!!! Just kidding, actually jibed to the SSW during the night. The wind that pushed us along so well for the last 8 days finally petered out last night. We had two awesome spinnaker days though and have passed 1070 miles. So we are currently limping along at 3-4 kts wing and wind heading about 190 degrees T. At least it is a comfortable ride.
Yesterday was a very good day for all the crew. Seemed like everyone was well rested and needed to get energy out. So we cleaned the cockpit, shook rugs, swept the main salon and kitchen, did laundry and had showers. We looked like a real cruisers boat with all our skivvies hanging on the lifelines! Had 2 fish on the lines - Bonito. The first came during breakfast. It was very small so we threw him back. The second fish hit as I was making dinner and we were preparing to take down the spinnaker. Would have made a pretty cool YouTube video. Turn off the burner, Dennis goes to the line, Mark to the helm, Vickie to the cockpit, Josh and I to the foredeck to take down the spinnaker. Mark turns up, Vickie runs the sheets as I drop the spinnaker onto Josh who gathers it all up so it doesn't go into the water. With the Spinnaker under control, Josh goes back to help Dennis with the fish. Another Bonito (not our favorite fish) bigger this time, but not enough for 5. So we let him go too. We have decided to keep the next one as long as it is not way small. Almost anything tastes good in fish tacos. Today is quieter, my 2 goals - make water and write the blog post. Check off both.
We listen to Ham radio nets daily. Mark has 2 he likes in the morning (Amigo and Sonrisa) and one in the evening (southbound) and then we all listen to the Pacific Puddle Jump net that comes on at 0200 zulu (GMT). Dennis was the PPJ net controller last night. There are 16 boats now that check in with their position, weather and sea state every night. Is kind of like the old days when everyone gathered around the radio to listen to news. It is our daily contact with other people. We hear where they are in relation to us, and what the weather and sea are doing at those positions. Is also good to hear voices of people we know. The earlier nets also have weather on them which is useful as well.
Now that we are finally somewhat rested and into the groove we would like to put on paper (so to speak) some very heartfelt thanks to some folks who made this cruise possible and leaving La Cruz less painful.
To Nancy Gray - Thanks for teaching me that cooking outside of the home kitchen is not only possible, but can have variety and be interesting as well.
To Bob Gray - thanks for being so patient with our mail, and to both of you for teaching me how to enjoy the great outdoors. You are the big brother and sister I never had.
To Bill and Tracie on Zephyr - thanks for the sewing machine needles that made the front awning possible and for loaning us the water filters to fill our tanks.
To John and Gail on Music - thanks for GNTs, dinner, US cash, flags and help.
To Lisa Foley - thanks for the walks, cold water and diet cokes - you always seemed to show up when I needed you most. We are also so appreciative of the Mega and Costco runs!
To our favorite "mule" Uncle Henry - thanks for bringing down all the things we forgot!
To Doug and Carla - too many things to list, but hurry and catch up hey? We hear yucca on the beach calling!
To Steve and Ana - quietly there in the background all these years with sage advice, or cutting humor or a cold beer.
To Sue, Ken and Anna - for making room in your home and lives for us. No small deal and no amount of Thanks will ever be enough.
To all the rest of you who put up with our crazy life, we love you and thank you for your support and understanding of our crazy dream!!!

Only 1700 miles to go and once again we will prove that the world is round, we'll get there!

March 3,2011

2011-03-30T18:54:00.000-06:00

Day 7
860 miles out heading about 250 degrees True. Winds 10-15 NNE. Spinnaker went up on my watch this morning. Dennis was happy. We are making 7-8 knots mostly comfortable ride. Are using the autopilot and the windvane together to keep us on a somewhat steady course. Has been hard to get used to steering in a general direction but mostly to the wind. Will take it down before dark. We have had cloud cover for the last several days, it is comfortable, a little cool at night (read long pants, t shirt, sweatshirt and jacket with hood for me). The wind continues to be consistently inconsistent 7-20 knots NNE. Days are good, but nights have been hard for me. I have the best watch schedule 07-10 & 19-22 too bad I can't get a full night's sleep. Oh well, naps are good.

Have I mentioned how blue the water is out here? The color is so amazing, such a pretty deep blue. Have had one flying fish and 2 squid land on the boat, but otherwise no extra passengers. The birds (boobies?) keep eying us, but so far none have attempted to join the party. Have only seen one floating plastic container - was kind of insulting to see and also a reminder about plastic and what a far reaching effect we have on our environment. Our plastic garbage bag is getting fuller, but not too bad. Is still hard to throw the biodegradable stuff overboard, Dennis still can't do it.

So, since it really is all about the food, here is an update. The lettuce lasted in the cooler until yesterday, so 7 days; pears/mangos are being eaten up daily as they are getting soft (wrapped them in newspaper), apples and tomatoes are doing fine, eggs too, but need to drill holes in the lid so they don't go moldy. Will have our first visitors bring powdered eggs to Tahiti, so I will be able to bake without buying expensive eggs. I wish I had brought more lettuce, cucumbers, onions,carrots and potatoes (all of which seem to be holding up well)I should have brought more pancake syrup, and probably more milk, we seem to be going thru a lot of milk..... Oh yeah, and the grill is so not happening. Besides the fact that it is tipped on its side, I don't think I could keep anything on it. Have had to rethink some of my meals, but hey flexibility is my middle name these days. The other thing I wish I had gotten more of, but don't know where I would have put is the Italian sausage from Carne El Mundo. Had the last of it in spaghetti sauce last night. YUM! Will have to start making bread soon, will probably coincide with an increase in the outside temperature!

Started the second tank of water yesterday, so not too bad - about 8 days, 6 with 5 people. Flushed the water maker today. Don't plan to make water until this tank runs out, then we will just work off of the aft 2. One in use one being filled or filled. I am trying to accomplish one non watch/cooking/sleeping/eating thing each day. Yesterday I downloaded music to my ipod - really harder that you would think. Charge the computer, find the cds with mp3 music, figure out how to download to itunes, lock up itunes, consult the 13 year old, download cds to computer then to itunes then to ipod - miracles do happen. Now if I could figure out how to put a movie on the ipod....Feel free to email me with a solution....
Well, almost time to start thinking about dinner.....(eat, sleep, watch, cook, repeat....)

03/28/11

2011-03-28T21:43:00.000-06:00

day 5
continue to make good time. We have come 565 miles so far. Had another bumpy night. Lots of discussion today on how to keep it under control. Winds are consistently inconsistent 10-20 knots, is hard for the wind vane to keep up, so have to use the main rudder to help. In general we are heading 240degrees magnetic. Hope to miss the area south of us with no wind. I guess like everything in life there is a trade off - no free lunch so to speak, smooth ride no miles, bumpy ride, miles made good. Is cloudy today, feeling more humid, but still pretty cool. I sewed the opposite velcro piece onto the dodger today, so that the flaps I added to the bimini will cover the hand holds and hopefully keep some of the inevitable rain out. Not the most fun task on a 10-20 degree heal, but one more task crossed off the list. Since it is all about the food :) the menu tonight is meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. The fruit has been holding up pretty well, lost some green beans to mold, but otherwise I am trying to cook the fresh food up before it goes bad. Ran the generator for a while today, don't think it particularly likes to heel either, but just one more thing to keep an eye on. It all sort of runs together after awhile, can't believe it is already 1530. Only 2200 miles to go.....

March 27,2011

2011-03-27T19:41:00.000-06:00

Day 4
Had a pretty miserable night last night - lots of rock and roll. Made it to Socorro Island, but conditions did not permit a stop, Dennis stayed up through two watches so was very tired today. Winds were 15-24 knots, we did not put the second reef in the main, and paid the price with a bumpy ride. Bad call on my wind crystal ball reading. Think we will put that second reef in tonight. Have been making 6 kts consistently, Hence covered 132 miles on day 3. Have come 417 miles as of this posting. Better day today, turned downwind (south) some so have a slightly less bouncy ride. Still pretty rolly though. Has been cooler than we expected which I think is a good thing, but certainly more rolly than we expected. All but me are still taking meds for seasickness. No one is ill, just warding off bad spirits. Hopefully tonight everyone will catch up on sleep and have good watches. Have just about used up the cooler food - have had to rethink some meals as using the grill is definitely out for now. Lots of comfort food, pasta, chicken and rice (tonight again), chilli. Seems that for me it is all about the food. Will have Vickie make the last of the lettuce into a salad tonight (yum!). Is nice to have someone to help with the cooking -especially the chopping that everyone knows how much I love to do - not! Haven't been able to start Josh back on school, we tried today, but no one is ready to be inside looking at books just yet - a couple more days maybe...So, we are on a rough course of 230 with winds from the north and 6-8 foot swell averaging about 6kts, partly cloudy skies cool temps.

03/26/11

2011-03-26T18:33:00.000-06:00

Well, its the third day out, and things are starting to fall into a groove. We left Punta Mita on Thursday around 1000. Got the news that our dear friend Steve Hall (La Paz and gate 11) passed away. Not a very auspicious way to start a 3 week cruise. Ana will be in our thoughts and prayers.
The trip out of Punta Mita and away from the mainland was slow. We motored for about 3 hours before there was any hint of wind. After that things picked up and have stayed steady at 10-15 knots from the NNW with episodes of 12-18knots (usually when I am trying to cook). We are very happy with the fact that I made myself (and Dennis didn't let me weanie out of) replace the luff tape on our 130 genoa (jib/headsail). It has been great! We are making 5-6 knots consistently. The first night of watches was brutal because we doubled up with Mark and Vickie, wanted to make sure that they were comfortable with the boat and the electronics before setting them free on single watches. They are seasoned sailors and caught on no problem, so last night was much nicer, everyone got a good stretch of sleep. Dennis and Mark set up the Hydrovane yesterday, and we have been sailing with it instead of the autopilot (baby jesus as Josh says). Vastly improved sleeping for Dennis and I without the constant sound of the autopilot steering and the Hydrovane doesn't require power.
Today has been pretty uneventful, made 130 miles on day 2, will be at the Socorro Islands in the morning (sunday) and will at a minimum do a lunch stop, maybe overnight, we'll see. The highlight today was a sailfish chasing our lure. What a beautiful fish. Fluorescent blue. Thankfully he spit the lure out, after chasing it right up to the back of the boat. Would not have been pretty either losing the lure or bringing him in. I shudder at the thought of a fish that big with a pointy thing at the front coming on to our boat. Total carnage!!! He was a beauty though. Last night after dinner we had a dolphin show - Mark thinks spinner dolphins - jumping way high out of the water - it was great too.
So, so far so good, only 2400 more miles to go!

evergreen

2011-03-24T08:54:00.001-06:00

03/24/2011 Made it to Punta Mita after leaving La Cruz, spending almost 3 hours at the Port Captain in Nuevo Vallarta for immigration, and then a 3 hour sail to weather in 20 knots or so of wind - very bumpy. The checkout procedure is actually easy, just time consuming for those of you following us here it is. Port Captain closes at 1400 - plan accordingly. There is a dock to tie up to immediately past the Port Captain's office. The port captain's place looks just like the one in La Cruz. It costs 400 pesos - please have a credit card or you will have to go to the bank. The port captain takes about 20 minutes, then you have to wait for immigration to come. Bring in your handheld so you can wait at the restaurant at the head ot the dock - they serve a good mexican brunch. Immigration will go on your boat - our little lady stamped our passports on our boat as she compared them to faces, then left. Then we did too.
I am sad to report that we have had one casualty - the rum container did not fare so well on one of the 20 knot tacks - hit the floor and drained 2 of the 2.5 gallons into the bilge - a sad day for our pocketbooks, but our livers are probably happy!
Had a good night at Punta Mita, and our getting ready to leave. I am using Mark and Vickie's telcel, so an easy post. Will be via the SSB from now on. According to Don the weather guy, we should have good wind the next few days. We'll see.

Throwing off the docklines

2011-03-23T08:56:00.001-06:00

Well, we are leaving La Cruz today. We lost one or two skirmishes in the war on "the List", but won the war. Will leave around 1000 today for Neuvo Vallarta, check out of the country and head to Punta Mita for the evening, then we will head out tomorrow. Looks like we will have good winds and weather. More later

carol

test email

2011-03-16T22:17:00.001-06:00

March 16,

Happy St Patty's day tomorrow. On our final countdown for leaving Mexico. Weather permitting, we will leave on Tuesday next week. Projects are ongoing - bilge pumps, shade (aft complete, forward almost complete, bimini retrofit will be fast), boat is being buffed and polished by Adrian and his crew (looking good). Water tanks being filled, provisions being bought and stowed. Internet is back up. Yeah!!!!! Pacific high seems to be settling into place ( good for the trade winds to push us to the Marquessas), boom vang goose neck stil MIA, hopefully tomorrow??? Josh is getting as much kid time in as possible, so all is pretty much status quo.. this is my test post to the blog via email. hope to post a position report tomorrow and see if it shows up in the blog (it could happen). Costco run tomorrow afternoon - hope to shoe horn it all in somewhere.............

Projects, projects, projects!!!!

2011-03-09T19:59:00.000-06:00

March 9, 2011

Definitely in project mode. Still in La Cruz, still at the dock. Teak is being sanded and hopefully they will be done by friday. It is looking really good. Knock wood I think we are getting more than our money's worth out of these guys. Dennis has done engine work and installed storm sail track on the mast. The rigger's have been by to inspect the rigging - which passed, but we are still waiting on the return of the piece of the boom vang that needed welding. Don't underestimate that amount of chemistry you learn on a boat.... unlike metals (e.g. aluminum and stainless steel) will corrode if they touch. Hence the need for a weld on the stainless bracket on the boomvang. I have been working on the shade for the back of the boat. I figure I have one more full day left. I am not entirely sure I will have enough supplies to do the shade for the forward section of the boat - may have to do a redesign... we will see. In the midst of it all we chose to take on 2 crew members for the crossing. Mark and Vickie from s/v Southern Cross. They were planning to cross in their boat this year, but as we all know, sometimes life just happens and so they were looking to crew on a boat. Since we know them and they seem to think they can tolerate a Morrison adventure......We are now 5. Will make provisioning and space a little crazy, but on the up side we will have two more brains and sets of hands. Watches are going to be much easier.
So the list is getting shorter, still have a second bilge pump to install and provisions to buy and stow. We have all been to the dentist this week, and all have return appointments for one thing or another. Josh gets the prize for no cavities though!!!! We will have the boat hull and bottom cleaned before we leave, Josh is going to clean the stainless and paint the inside of the hard dinghy....I can't wait to leave the dock and all these projects behind. We are the poster children for "Boat maintenance in Paradise".
Josh is crewing on a boat for the Banderas Bay Regatta this week. We all did it last year, but no time for Dennis and I this year. We heard a call on the net for teenage kids to crew on a boat, went and met the guy and his wife and the rest is history. There are three cruising kids, and then four or so from the American school in Puerto Vallarta. So, he will be out the next 3 days on SplishSplash.
Josh even got a birthday party this year. The kids on Scout made him a cake, Dennis and I went in to PV and got three buckets of the Colonel's best chicken and all the kids and parents sat around the hot tub at Paradise Village in Nuevo Vallarta and had cake and beverages. Paradise Village is two bus rides from La Cruz, but that is where the kid boats were at that time - so that is where we went. Not too many big kid boats this year, lots of younger kids here in La Cruz - about a dozen I think. There are at least four "big kid" boats crossing, so Josh will have something to look forward to when we all catch up in French Polynesia.
Well, not the most creative blog post ever, but the news is here. Maybe next time I will remember to bring up the picture drive and post pictures too!

Friday February 11,2011

2011-02-11T07:51:00.000-06:00

Still in La Cruz. Henry (my brother) arrived yesterday. He brought us all kinds of goodies, including water pumps, coffee, wine, GreenBay packer shirts, fabric and tent poles for my shade project, and various and sundry other boat parts. Is great to have him here. We are planning a trip in to old town Puerto Vallarta today, then tomorrow we will leave the marina here at La Cruz and head out into the bay for some surfing and snorkeling. The weather has been really nice - perfect actually -warm days, cool nights. If I could only kick this cold...... Its the first full blown cold I have had in two years, so I guess I shouldn't complain, but I really hate being sick. So, it is vacation mode for a week with Henry, then back to full tilt project and provisioning mode. More soon Carol

Mazatlan to La Cruz

2011-02-07T18:16:00.000-06:00

Finally left Mazatlan on January 29. The boat is fixed or at least has not overheated once since we left, and we have tried....We left the marina around 1400 to give the engine a bit of a run before we headed south to Isla Isabella. Its about 80 miles , so we left planning to arrive in the early morning. Last year we were uable to stop there becuase of unfavorable conditions so we were really hoping to spend time there this year. The over night trip was pretty uneventful. Dennis and Josh saw some phosphoressing dolphins, and I did my usual radar check of Venus (It comes up looking like a ship's light on the horizon, and always gives me a start.). We Buddied with Moondance who got the better dolphin show that night. We arrived to a settled anchorage, Yippee!!! Blue footed Boobies here we come!! Isla Isabella is basically an uninhabited island that is used as a base for fisherman and a group of scientists from the University in Mexico City who study the birds. It was a beautiful day for a hike and the birds were oh so cooperative. We saw cormorants with their red chests puffed out and fluffy white nestlings and lots of blue footed boobies. The boobies were in various stages of nesting, so we saw them on their nests with eggs, with brand new babies and older babies. It was so cool!!! The Lady from the university said these boobies have been being studied for 30 years. After our hike around the Island, we retired to our own private beach for a post hike bottle of wine and relaxation. After returning to the boat it was even warm enough for a quick swim to clean up (very quick I might add).

The next morning we left for Matachen Bay/San Blas again buddying with Moondance. We got caught several times in fishing lines, but fortunately never wrapped the prop or lost any tackle. Didn't catch any fish either. So far we have been skunked in that arena. We made it to Matachen for sunset - which was beautiful.

Don't know what the ground hog saw on the 1st, but we had another beautiful day. We did some school and finished off installing Josh's new bow seat in the morning. That afternoon we joined Doug and Carla from Moondance for an excursion into San Blas. On the spur of the moment Dennis stuck his thumb out as we were waiting for the bus and that is how we ended up in the back of a small pickup going into San Blas. What fun, and something you would never do in the States. The nice senors would take no pesos either. San Blas is a pretty little town with a nice central square and just about everything you could need, ferreteria (hardware store), tortilleria, esotetica (barber), market and tiendas. We enjoyed looking around and having lunch at McDonalds - no burgers to be found!!!!! Josh scored a new hammock on the way out of town. The bus ride back was far more conventional, but we didn't have to worry about losing anyone out the back either!!! When we got back to the beach we saw that s/v Scout had arrived. Josh could hardly wait to go see them, so after a bit of negotiation he was off to their boat to hang with the kids, and invite Lisa and Charlie to come in to the beach with the adults.

We left Matachen Bay the next morning managing to avoid snagging any lines or catching any fish for that matter. Our destination was Punta Mita. We were hoping for some good surf. A full day and another beautiful sunset later we were on the hook at Punta Mita. Sadly the next day did not dawn bright and sunny. We were experiencing the effects of the big high pressure system freezing the southern US and causing gales in the northern Sea of Cortez. Josh and Dennis fianlly decided to try it out, and did catch a few good waves. Two pretty tired and cold guys came back to the boat. We then decided to go on and head in to La Cruz (about 10 miles). We had great wind and actually sailed faster than we could motor. We dropped the hook in the La Cruz anchorage and here we are......

Being in La Cruz is sort of like coming home since we have spent so much time here. Many things are the same, and just as many have changed. Still it is comfortable. The anchorage is a little bouncy, and pretty full. The marina is busy too. We will eventually spend some time here at the dock, but for now we are out on the hook. Although we may move around the bay some, our next departure will be for the Pacific. Is kind of mind blowing. Also caused Dennis to break out "the list". I thought we had whittled that list down some in Mazatlan, but it sure doesn't seem like it to look at it!! Oh well got to have something to keep us busy, otherwise we would OD on social life!! We attended the Pacific Puddle Jump Party in Nuevo Vallarta on Friday, so I guess it is official..... We have the birgee (flag) and were interviewed for Lattitude 38 (the puddle jump sponsor) all that is left to do is finish the list, provision and leave. Wow again having a hard time getting my mind around it, it feels like a dream. Sure hope nobody wakes me up. In the meantime we have been catching up with old friends, meeting some new friends and are preparing for my brother Henry to visit. So yeah, we may not have jobs,but we are really busy.

Now you know where we are and what we have been doing. The one downside of La Cruz is poor internet coverage, so I will post this, then try to find a good place to upload pictures. Still waiting for warm tropical weather........Carol

Bar crawl

2011-01-22T18:56:00.000-06:00

red truck ride

So occasionally you just have to cut loose and have that happy childhood. Such was the case this past Wednesday night. We joined Doug and Carla from Moondance, Dot and Brian from Rainshadow, and the folks from Enchantress for a night in the historic section of Mazatlan. Doug and Carla are excellent guides, and Carla manages to have her camera fully charged at all times unlike me on this particular night. (All photos are courtesy of Carla's camera) We started off in one of the Mazatlan's "Red Trucks". Brings back memories of when riding in the back of a pickup was a perfectly acceptable way to travel.

sunset from Puerto Viejo

Our driver transported us to Puerto Viejo, a bar across from the beach - with the obligatory stunning sunset.

Puerto Viejo

From there we wandered into the square with the full moon rising over the trees. Dinner was at a place called El Tunnel across from the Peralta theatre. After stuffing ourselves with guacamole, tortilla soup, enchiladas, pollo asado and bring your own beers we went to the "bull bar". It is definitely a must see. Next time I am taking a picture of the banos - Not something you will ever see in the US. Our next stop was Topolos, definitely a leap up. I had a spanish coffee that was a work of art in the making.....Fire and carmelized sugar, cinnamon, flaming brandy and kahlua....very cool, and very yummy and the setting - WOW! I would love a courtyard like that!

Carol And Dot rest before 8peso beers

From there we took a sharp turn downhill into the 8peso beer bar. HHHMMM - I was wishing for the "bull bar" bathrooms. About 11pm we decided to call it a night and this group of happy children dispersed into the fog......

January 21 2011

2011-01-22T00:08:00.000-06:00

Still in Mazatlan waiting for the part from the states - went on the plane today - may be available to be picked up Saturday, but probably not until Monday. It continues to be chilly (48 at night, upper70s during the day), humid and foggy. Kind of weird weather, but I suppose we will be grateful for the extra cool time come July when it is really hot. Many people have asked what our daily lives are like so I thought I would tell you about today, which was pretty typical of days at the dock.

Dennis was up by 0700, I was up by 0730. I went with Carla (s/v Moondance) to the veggie truck. He comes Mon, Wed and Fri from 0600-0900 to Marina Mazatlan. I picked up some grapes, potatoes, bread (fresh), onion, mango and tamales. It is a little bit of a walk, but not bad - just enough to get the blood pumping. Got back to the boat by 0845. At 0900 I woke up Josh and started breakfast (french toast and bacon). We ate, I did dishes and Josh did some homework. He usually does 2-3 hours of work every day. Today he got off early because Dennis needed help with some projects. There are always projects to be done on the boat - saltwater and constant motion have a way of making things just sort of break or wear out spontaneously. Today Josh went up the mast to reattach the running backstays, move the spinnaker halyard to the port side of the mast and work on the flag halyard. While they were doing that, I did a little work on the computer then went out to work on the sea kayak that we bought from s/v Just a minute. The sun does a number on everything and in the case of the kayak, a lot of the webbing needs to be replaced. We had lots of of people coming and going commenting on what we were doing - especially with Josh up the mast. After the mast work was completed, Josh took the dinghy over to El Cid to see his friends. About 1300 the guy (Ezequiel) who does sewing came by. He needed to see our dinghy in order to give us a quote for the dinghy chaps. So I had to track down Josh at El Cid. He brought the dinghy back and went back to El Cid. We discussed the dinghy chaps we are ordering from Eziquiel and he decided he needed to take the dinghy today. That involved removing the motor from the dinghy, taking it out of the water, putting it back in on the other side of the dock moving the dinghy to the boat ramp and loading it onto Eziquiel's truck. That finished we went back to work on the boat. Dennis fixed some sharp areas on the mast and installed the final mast steps. At 1530, we showered then met friends at 1600 and went for drinks at a bar on the beach. The sunset was beautiful. After the sun went down we went to a little place called George's a short walk away. We had a very nice dinner and were back at the boat by 2030.

Nights on the boat after dinner usually involve a movie/tv shows. Tonight Josh is holed up in his boy cave, I am working on the blog and facebook and Dennis is watching a movie. We have pretty good internet here, but uploading pictures is always iffy. Not so good tonight, so always check back for pictures. I am usually in bed by 2200, Dennis and Josh by 2300. So, there you have it. The chores vary and it isn't every night that we go out, but it is pretty typical.

Since we are at the dock, we are trying to get through our list of things we want to complete before we leave on the passage to the South Pacific. The more we get done now, the less we will have to do when we get to La Cruz (Puerto Vallarta). We hope to leave for Hiva Oa in the Marquessa's between March 15 and April 1.

Wednesday January 19, 2011 Mazatlan

2011-01-19T12:50:00.000-06:00

A wise woman told me to forget the last 9 months and just post, so that is what I am going to do. Play catch up as I go. So, Evergreen and crew are in Mazatlan. We spent the first week at Marina
Mazatlan and are now at the dock at the Singlar Marina undergoing repairs to our engine. We have had a chronic overheating problem which we decided to have checked out prior to leaving for the South Pacific. Total Yacht Works came highly recommended, so here we are. Turns out that we have a leaky head gasket. Took about a week to confirm the diagnosis after testing the exhaust manifold, pulling the head and sending it to the machine shop.... So, then it was going to take 10 days to get the part. Well, Dennis decided that was not acceptable and ordered the parts himself. They are currently in San Diego, where they will transported across the border and put on a plane to Mazatlan. The parts are in a race with our French Polynesia Visas coming via DHL. Their ETA is Thursday. So we will see what gets here first. In the meantime there are always projects to do on the boat. We were without our engine when we moved from Marina Mazatlan to Singlar, so used our dinghy to move us to the new slip. We had help from Patrick and Jack from "Just a Minute", Doug and Carla from "Moondance" (who have first hand experience with this procedure) and Robert from the boat next to us. It was an uneventful move.

Josh is enjoying Mazatlan, getting lots of kid time in. He has two friends at El Cid, so we rarely see him after school work is done. He will be sorry to leave here. School is going pretty well. I found him a book on WWII which he really enjoys reading. Math continues to be the most challenging subject, he does well with it, just doesn't like it.

As usual with cruising, there is lots of opportunity for socializing. Could easily get in the way of boat projects if Dennis would let it :) ! We have been following football - unusual for us, except that the Packers are doing well. There is a sports bar in town called Yoopers that broadcasts in English and has a good happy hour....We also enjoyed going to the old section of town with Doug and Carla from s/v Moondance. It is very pretty.

It has been pretty cool temperature wise - lows in the 40s and highs only in the 70s. Very different from our experience last winter. Is good for doing projects and sleeping. I have no real desire to get wet though.
The following are some essays Josh wrote about some of his experiences.

Spearfishing

by Joshua Morrison 1/2011

One day while my dad and I were at the anchorage of Agua Verde we decided to go spearfishing. I had just gotten a new speargun and was anxious to try it out. There was a large pinnacle rocck out in the middle of the bay that looked promising. When we got to the rock it was kind of murky but it was not bad. We circumnavigated the rock and saw some nice parrotfish but they were too deep and swam away. After awiele we decded to move to a rocky area on shore. Once we got in the water my dad caught a parrotfish about half an hour in. The thought of my dad having a better fish than me triggered my competitive nature. With my competitive side going I caught a bigger parrotfish less than 5 minutes afterwards. We were done after that and went back to the boat, cleaned off and cleaned the fish. My dad cooked the fish and it turned out very good. That was a good beginning to spearfishing in Mexico.

The Crossing from Muetos to Mazatlan

by Josh Morrison 1/11/11

My mom, my dad and I left La Paz for Muertos which is 58 miles, so a long day for us on our boat. We got into Muertos late at night, ate dinner and went to bed. We left early in the morning to go to Mazatlan, what a short night! Mazatlan is 190 miles from Muertos so we did an overnighter. An overnighter is when we go all night; we take shifts so one person is watching the boat and two sleep. The weather was uncomfortable but there was lots of weine, so we went fast. It was our first overnighter since we got back to the boat from our summer break in the states. The entrance to the marina at Mazatlan was kind of difficult because there were breaking waves it it. My Dad had to time whent we went in. Once we were in the slip and setled I went boogie boarding with my friend Jack. After boogine boarding we went to the hot tub at the marina and hung out. What a good end to a hard couple of days.

Essays by Joshua Morrison

2010-04-01T14:44:00.000-06:00

Crocodiles of La Manzanilla

One of the days when my aunt and uncle were visiting with us we went to La Manzanilla to see the crocodiles. We got to the first place where you could see the crocodiles and we got out of the car that Larry’s (my uncle) brother drove us around in. We walked up to where you could see the crocodiles. I noticed that at some places there was no fence and you were just on a raised surface. Everybody was a little freaked, besides my parents, they had been there before. It was definitely a first for me in the respect that I had never been so close to crocodiles that big. I wanted to get some food for them from a place that sells fish for that very reason but mom said later.

We then went over to the north end of the pond where you could see the crocodiles. Even though they were farther away than the (sort of) fenced place there was nothing stopping them from walking right out to the heavily populated beach. It was a huge risk and we all thought “Never see anything like that in the States”. We sat down at a palapa restaurant and had refreshments. Since I was so psyched to feed the crocs we went got some whole fish (when my parents were here last there was only parts of the fish). The crocs weren’t really excited for fish at all but it was still cool seeing them lazily eat the fish. When we ran out of fish we got in the car and went back to the hotel.

It was a dark and stormy night
It was another beautiful day in the Barra de Navidad/Melaque area. The weather had been perfect, not too hot, not too cold with a nice afternoon breeze. It was great weather for my aunt and uncle visiting from New Mexico. We spent the day exploring Melaque and La Manzanilla. It was fun to feed the crocodiles and watch them lazily try and find the fish. We stayed that night with my aunt and uncle at their hotel instead of going back to the boat. The next day it was raining and that is quite unusual for that area. The next morning we bid my aunt and uncle goodbye, and headed over to the Barra lagoon. We took a panga in to the mother boat to find that she was wet because we had left some hatches open. Also to my mother’s horror we picked up a mouse somehow. That afternoon was filled with mopping up the boat and more rain.

Later that evening we were watching Mission Impossible III (good movie) and we started hearing thunder and seeing the outside get a lot brighter. We went outside and gazed in amazement at the incredible display of thunder and lightning. I felt sorry for the people in Tenacatita, a couple miles north of Barra, it looked like they were getting some of the lightning right above them. We eventually went in to finish our movie and I went off to bed. I didn’t go to sleep because I was a little freaked when it started raining and blowing so much it made the boat heel. I got out of bed to see that my parents were already securing items and my dad started the engine. My dad steered the boat so it stayed pointed into the wind to avoid the wind catching our side and using it as a sail to make us heel. My mom and I looked for any boats that might be dragging. I stood up in the back of the boat when it started to die down and commented that I should go get my shampoo and take a shower. After the ordeal I thought, ”it’s my mom’s fault for the wind” because she said earlier that “We’re in a calm anchorage” while she held up glass wine glasses. When we started heeling, they were on the side of the counter and just slid off the counter onto the floor, SMASH! PIECES!! . I blamed my dad for the rain because he ordered some drinking water from the store so Mother Nature said “OH!!! I’ll give YOU water!!” and that’s how we got rain.

Racing in the Banderas Bay Regatta by Joshua Morrison

2010-04-01T14:38:00.000-06:00

When we were in Chamela on the way back up to the Sea of Cortez we were invited to go over to s/v Gato Go for dinner and a movie. Since it was a bouncy anchorage we didn’t put the motor on the dinghy and just rowed over to GatoGo. GatoGo is a big Kenner 43 foot catamaran, that’s a boat with two hulls instead of one, so it’s a big boat. When we got to their boat my mom started making dinner with Craig and Bruce the two guys onboard. While we were eating dinner Craig asked if we wanted to crew with them for the Banderas Bay Regatta and we said “Sure, why not”. When we got to La Cruz they gave us some papers that we would need to get into the party and so we could be crew. So for the kickoff party they did some folk dancing at Paradise Village (a very very expensive hotel resort) and I was thinking “I’m glad I brought my computer if this is going to go on for a while”. We met up with Craig, Bruce, and the other crew that they had, Tom and John. Then the party kind of dispersed to the yacht club and/or any of the restaurants around. We went back to our boat to sleep and get ready to go back in the morning for practice sailing on Gato Go. The next day we got to the marina at Paradise Village with Tom and John then set out for a practice sail. For the first part we practiced our start and got a bearing on where everybody was going to be and who would do what. After scaring ourselves half to death with how close the boats got we went out into the bay and practiced using the screecher (a big sail that’s kind of like a spinnaker). After practice we went in to go eat and go home.

The next day began the races, for the start of racing there was a parade of boats out the channel doing all kinds of stuff; we dressed up in various costumes. For the start instead of having 55 boats start all at once which would lead to sunken boats they had six classes leaving at different times. The slower boats did shorter courses than the faster boats. The course for that day was a lot of upwind sailing and catamarans don’t go upwind very well. We just tried to go as fast as we could on the upwind so we could catch up on the downwind. Of course that never really happened but we had fun getting almost last place. After the race, we hung out in the pool at Paradise Village and had dinner at another restaurant then went home. The second day we were happy because it was a course with supposedly not much upwind and a lot of angles good for catamarans. Although we didn’t finish we still had fun. We all got a little mad at one boat that completely didn’t go around one of the marks. The last day of racing was the same course as the first day so we knew we weren’t going to do very well. To make sure we didn’t finish the wind died right when we were headed up to the last mark. The committee boat gave us an offer to turn around and not go around the last mark and they would give us the points for last. The other option was that we could try and finish, so we took their offer and turned around. Not even five minutes after we turned around the wind picked up so fast that I had gone downstairs for a little bit and when I came back up it was windy! We were saying “couldn’t it die down and pick back up after we finished”. So we just went in with last place and the awards ceremony was next. I’ve been to enough things like that to know it’s going to take twice as long as they intended to. After dinner, I decided to see if any of the little kids wanted to go to the pool because they might have been bored, but none of them wanted to. So I ended up walking around and went to the boat and played on my computer for a while until everyone got back from the awards ceremony. Gato Go is so big they had two extra staterooms to spare so we spent the night on their boat.

On Sunday, instead of taking a taxi we went over to La Cruz with Gato Go. We had fun getting into the marina from their boat in the anchorage because it was very windy which made the water choppy. It was fun racing on Gato Go in the Banderas Bay Regatta. That is all the racing we’re going to do for a while. We won’t do any with our boat ever.

April Fools'

2010-04-01T14:32:00.000-06:00

Well, here we are in La Cruz - the trip around Cabo Corrientes was definitely not flat. It was probably the most exhuasting watch I have had in recent memory. It was windy (15-20+knots) and bouncy and of course we were heading right into it. To add to it, there were 6 targets on the radar all night long. At about midnight as I came on watch s/vGatoGo passed us by, then Persistence and several others. Throw some big ships in the mix and it felt like the sailing version of the 580 on a holiday weekend! We made it in to La Cruz by mid afternoon, the sailing was fine as soon as we rounded the corner. Seems like just about everybody we have ever met sailing was here or has come since. It has been interesting watching the boats we know complete their preparations for the puddle jump and take off. I have decided that I am glad that we are not doing the jump this year, but am definitely taking notes!! The last of the puddle jumping kid boats that Josh hangs with (s/v Totem and Capaz) are leaving tonight. The kids are cramming as much video game time in as they can, we'll probably have to pry the controllers out of their little hands....Tomorrow will be a quiet day for Josh, but today our boat looks like the "Evergreen home for video game addicted boys". I am way outnumbered

WHY WE ARE STILL IN LA CRUZ

We will be here well into next week due to a dead fresh water pump for the engine. It was not rebuildable and not one to be found here, so we are flying a new one from San Diego via Tiajuana on Monday. Thankfully we discovered this issue here and not under weigh - that would have been no fun. For an engine that is 27 years old with as many hours as it has, it really has not had too many issues, and we have bascially had no problems since La Paz. And as Dave from s/v ExitStrategy reminded me today - Cruising is all about doing boat maintenance in exotic places. La Cruz is also very comfortable -especially when you are in the Marina, which we are. The town and people are friendly, the kids can run around safely, the food is good, there are big stores close by to provision from and it is great fun to socialize. So what's not to like? The only downside is that when we finally do leave we will have to go to the Sea of Cortez more directly than we had planned - not necessarily a bad thing, just another lesson in flexibility.

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MEXICAN TOURIST VISAS

When we arrived in Cabo San Lucas last November, we were issued Visas good for 180 days. Back then, it seemed like an awfully long time, and I didn't do the math. As it turns out, our Visas expire on May 7. Our haul out date in San Carlos is May 15th. HHMMMM! Well, we had heard that you could get a 30 day extension, and the internet talked about extensions. So Kevin (s/v Albatross) and I decided that since we were here, we would go to the airport in Puerto Vallarta and see about getting extensions for our families. Quite the adventure it turned out to be and in the end, no extension for the visas. Four hours, 3 immigration offices, 1 port captain, 1 marina and lots of bus time were all we had to show for our efforts. I polled some of the more experienced cruisers the next day and found that yes, sometimes if you're livning right, the moon and stars are lined up and the person in the office is in the right frame of mind, you might get an extension. Try Mazatlan..... And the consensus is that as long as you are not flying out, no one looks at the tourist visa anyway. The general suggestion was to not worry about it, and if we get caught play dumb and pay the fine. More on that later.....

A Perfect Day

2010-03-14T13:54:00.000-06:00

So, you might think that every day is perfect in the life of a cruiser, and generally speaking that is so. However, some days are just more perfect than others and yesterday was one of those. We had a leisurely start and after a good breakfast, we left Tenacatita around 10:00 am. It was sunny but not hot. The forcast was for 10-15 knots of wind from the north/northwest - in other words right on our nose. However it was blowing from the south -way cool. We put up all the sails and actually sailed out of the bay. Josh and Dennis put the fishing lines out and less than an hour into our sail to Chamela - we had a fish on the line!!! Josh pulled in what we finally decided was an Amber Jack - sadly not so good eating. While we messed around with the fish, s/v Gato Go (a 44 foot Catamaran) sailed past and took the picture for this blog. With fishing lines back out (with instructions to catch dorado or sierra) we continued north. As we settled onto our tack to Chamela - Dennis mentioned to Josh that we would go faster with the spinnaker up - so up it went - smoothly, no problems, just up and out. The seas were a little mixed, so the ride was just rough enough to make lunch seem like a good thing to put off. We had been lazing in the cockpit for about an hour so it was roughly 1230 when - whirrrrrrrr! A hit on one of the lines!! Josh had just gotten to it, and the other line went out too. Well, slowing down under sail is not the easiest, especially the when flying the spinnaker, but we did the best we could. While Josh reeled in his line, Dennis reeled in the second line, but the fish had let go of that one. Josh pulled in a good sized sierra - good boy! We had just gotten it situated, dragging on a line behind us, when the other line got a hit - another good sized sierra!!! We ran around re-situating ourselves to bring a fish on board. I brought the first one that was dragging behind us in, Dennis exchanged it on the line for the second one, and there we were- looking forward to fish for dinner. We pulled into Chamela around 4pm. Gato Go had made it in ahead of us, but went to look at the anchorage at the islands. Was a no go for them in the islands, so we made plans to meet at their boat for dinner. It was a great evening of food and fun. Craig showed me how to make ceviche with part of the sierra, it was great and I hope I am able to duplicate it. Bruce made pizza on the grill, what a treat. Then we grilled up the rest of the sierra. With a tossed salad it was a wonderful meal. We watched Julie and Julia, and just when you think life is perfect, Craig pulls his pineapple upside down cake from the oven. Oh my gosh our stomachs had died and gone to heaven!!! As Josh and Dennis paddled us home in the dinghy, we noticed the bioluminesence in the water was working overtime. It was like fairy dust in the water - even the fish were glowing. What a way to end the perfect day.

We are leaving today for La Cruz, we are hoping the Cabo Corrientes forecast is accurrate and we have a flat ride in......

Just in case you think the Morrison's have given up adventures, or how to really use Charlie's Charts

2010-03-08T18:56:00.000-06:00

We are using Charlie's charts as our cruising guide, and have had no real issues with the info in it. I guess there is another slightly more current guide, but we don't have it. Anyway, we left Z town and Josh didn't want to do a "get up before the buttcrack of dawn" overnighter. So we decided to head to Lazaro Cardenas. It would give us one medium day and a short overnighter into Manzanillo. Figured even though it looked icky, the anchorage would be well protected for an overnight stay. We arrived about 3:30p, had to move out of the way of a container ship, the port control called asking what we intended, I told them we were headed to the first northeast anchorage for the night. Seemed a little weird, as nowhere else has cared one way or the other. Then the very nice gentleman asked if it was an emergency? Getting weirder, but I replied no, we were not having an emergency. All this is going on as we are taking down the main (in the only wind we had all day I might add), with very long pauses in betweeen. Then we went on to anchor in this small lagoon - with the nastiest water we have seen to date. The port control guy comes back and asks all the usual port captain questions, hailing port, number of people on the boat, last and next port etc.. again with many pauses. We finally had the anchor set, I had heard nothing from the port guy for the last 15 minutes or so, so we got on with relaxing, making dinner etc....About 5:30 a harbor patrol type boat arrives and the fun truly began. After much back and forth, we finally understood that he wanted us to move, and that we would have to go to the harbor master the next day to get "the paper stamped". At one point we asked if we could just leave - but oh no, once you are there you have to get "the paper stamped". We were getting nervous about running out of daylight, so we pulled up anchor and headed up the river to the place they wanted us to anchor. Unfortunately the drawbridge was down, and when I called to have them open it, it was broken (you could see sparks from the welder they were using on it)....I was starting to freak out and again asked if we could just leave... but our little friend was adamant that "the papers had to be filled out". So there we were anchored in the channel, barely enough room to swing with the current. Definitely a bad scene, hard to see too, cuz it got dark. We had decided to make the best of it I had resigned myself to a sleepless night on deck to make sure nothing hit us. Next thing you know, our little paper stamping cog in the bureacratic wheel came back and said the Navy would come inspect us, then we could leave and not deal with the papers the next day. So, the Navy came - very nice man with a big gun, black soled boots and no english to speak of...Took copies of the papers I had, and took pictures of the boat. We're thinking cool, let's eat and blow this joint....Not so quick missy. Senor Navy returns and wants to take pictures inside the boat. Well what are we to say but "sure come on in".... He took a picture of each room, the fuel tanks, the TV, the electrical panel, no rhyme or reason really. Finally about 8:15 we were set to go - which we did. No letting the proverbial door hit us in the stern as they say. Dodged a container ship on its way out, 2 tugs and a container ship coming in. I really have never been so happy to leave a safe anchorage in my life! Sailed thru the night to Maruata. Met up with another boat there that said - Yeah boats aren't allowed to go there unless there is an emergency....Now we find out. Guess that's the downside of old guidebooks.....But, I guess any Morrison adventure you walk away from unscathed is a good adventure.. Right?????

March 8, 2010

2010-03-08T18:14:00.000-06:00

Well, it is hard to believe that I don't manage to find time to update our blog any more frequently than I do. Wish I had a good excuse, but I really don't. But let's catch up any way.

We had a great time in Tenacatita - even if we did manage to flip the dinghy. Thankfully the only permanent damage was to our egos..... Between kid boats, good snorkeling, spear fishing, the jungle tour and La Manzanilla with its smart crocodiles we had a great time. Before we knew it, it. was time to leave for Barra De Navidad/Melaque to meet up with Dennis' sister Corinne and her husband Larry. The calmest anchorage is in the Lagoon at Barra De Navidad, so that is where we parked. It's a crazy little anchorage - very shallow with not much room to err. We had waypoints to put into our navigation software, so that helped. The day we arrived the ocean swell was quite high and it was pretty trippy surfing the waves into the channel. We made it to the fuel dock - we had to use our jerry jug spares to get us from Tenacatita- and into the anchorage without mishap. Pretty disconcerting to park the 6'2" draft boat in less than 9' of water!!! (picture above of Barra Lagoon, below right Corinne, Carol & Larry)

Corinne and Larry came in on January 28th. We met them at the airport, cuz gee, that's an exciting thing for us these days. We took them out sailing the next day - guess they won't be joining us for any long crossings....they were troopers about it, but both of them had trouble with the motion. We came back into the bay and anchored for the afternoon in Melaque. Dennis, in true brotherly form, took them out to learn to snorkel. You would think that he would be past the whole torturing his sister thing, but I guess not. I'm thinking that by the time they gave up and came to the bar on the beach it was way past "miller time".
Fortunately in Mexico the sun is always over the yard arm, the beer is cheap and the Margaritas are yummy!!

Larry's brother and his wife joined the party on Saturday - it was nice to reconnect with them (they live in Mexico City). Sunday we all piled into Casey's car and headed back to La Manzanilla to see the smart crocodiles. It really is amazing how well trained these big guys are. You may note in the picture that they know to stay away from the yellow caution tape that bars their exit onto the beach. I bet Florida wishes they knew how to train their crocodiles to stay behind the tape!! They must have one or two that haven't learned to read yet, because there are signs at the beach restaurants close by warning you to keep your pets on a leash for their safety.....
The visit ended all too soon, they left here on February 2nd in the rain, and arrived home to snow. We hope that they will come visit us again next season.

Don't know if I have mentioned it before, but it is not supposed to rain here in the winter. Doesn't seem to be following the rules this winter. The night before Corinne and Larry left it rained like crazy, so when we returned to the boat the next day it was sopping wet. To add to my dismay, at some point we managed to acquire a mouse. Pickky little bugger too. I think it tried a little of everything it could chew into. Finally deciding he liked juice, pita chips and ritz crackers. We searched high and low in Barra for a real mouse trap, but only came up with the sticky kind. I'm pretty sure I heard little mouse laughing as he ran across those. (picture left is Josh with the monkey at The Sands Hotel searching for the banana in my pack)

We left Barra de Navidad for Manzanillo with our stowaway on board. What a mess! In Manzanillo we finally found real mouse traps, and the bartender at the Las Hades resort gave us some poison. Between the traps and poison, we are hungry mouse less - I hope I don't come across his desicated body in the future. Met up with kid boats in Manzanillo, so stayed there a little longer than planned. We also got to spend some time with Jim & Diana from gate 11. s/v Black Dragon showed up from Zihuatenejo as well, so Josh really got a kid fix! FYI the Las Hades resort area is where they film the movie "10" with Bo Derek. Very pretty, sort of mediterranean looking.
Finally we had to leave so we would make it to Zihuatenejo in time to meet Sue and Anna (friends from Tracy). We had a pretty good trip, the last 8 hours into Z town were pretty wild 20-25knots steady wtih on and off rain (did I mention it doesn't rain here in the winter?). Zihuatenejo is a pretty town - easy to be in. There is someone on the beach to help you land your dinghy for about 80 cents to a dollar, and the port captain is right there. Sue and Anna made it in with no problems. Had another great visit. Very relaxing. Josh taught Anna to drive the dinghy. He also pulled her behind the dinghy on the tube until I thought her arms might fall off. We spent a day at an all-inclusive resort and another day on the beach. Josh and Anna went parasailing too. Another visit that ended all too soon. We didn't linger in Zihuatenejo after they left. Basically provisioned and left.

(Above - Anna Parasailing, right - Sue relaxing, below Josh parasailing - self portrait.)

Arrived back in Barra lagoon on Monday and here we are......all caught up.

Josh on Spearfishing

2010-03-08T16:44:00.000-06:00

Spear Fishing
By Joshua Morrison

In Chamela my dad and I (Josh) finally got the spear gun out. With the spear point sharpened (sharpened by me) and the Hawaiian sling ready we got in the dinghy and left. When we got to this snorkeling spot I showed my friend Bryce (from Capaz) the spear gun. At that point my parents shot out with the dreaded mandatory safety lecture. Even though it is important I still am not fond of lectures in any way. After that we snorkeled until there weren’t as many people so there was much less of a chance for accident. My dad and I tested the gun out in open water first with one of the rubber bands back and it jammed. The rubber bands are the rubber cords that get pulled back and allow the spear get launched. The second time we tried it with both bands back and it jammed again. The second time it jammed we couldn’t unjam it so we couldn’t use it. My dad and I fixed the spear gun at the boat after snorkeling by putting a washer in. We moved to Tenicatita and went to one of the snorkeling spots and it jammed again. By that time we were thinking “Heck with it we’ll put two washers on” and that seemed to do the trick because it stopped jamming.

One day my friend Nikita and I were spear fishing in Tenicatita while our parents were off wandering around. We weren’t getting anything until I saw a fish that was injured. I dove down and got it with the Hawaiian sling but it got off. I got it again and this time I shoved the fish further in on the prongs against the ground. By that time I realized Nikita was right there with the spear gun. He shot through the fish and wrapped it up in the string to make sure it didn’t get away. When we got back to the dinghy Nikita told me the reason the fish was injured was because he had shot the fish first but it got off so he pursued and that’s when I came in. We brought it back to my boat and cooked it up and had it for lunch. It tasted pretty good.

January 17, 2010 Tenacatita

2010-01-17T21:48:00.000-06:00

Well, we are now in Tenacatita about 120 miles south of Banderas Bay. We left La Cruz on the 5th and headed up to some Islands at the west end of the bay for some snorkeling. Spent one night there, then back to Punta de Mita (north western most anchorage in the bay). We were hoping to get some surfing in, but no such luck, so flat we had no trouble landing our dinghy on the beach. We spent two nights there, then moved to Marina Vallarta in Puerto Vallarta proper. We had a slip right next to another Liberty 458, and there is another one that berths there as well, but they were out. Then, as if that isn't "small world enough", a couple walked up and said they used to own a Liberty too. Theirs sank on an uncharted reef in the south pacific. Talk about old home week. We spent two nights there, did some provisioning, bought the telcel card for internet, got laundry done (expensive) and filled up water. From there we headed Yelapa.

Yelapa is on the southern end of the bay. Very picturesque. No cars, streets are really glorified sidewalks, mostly cobblestoned. Primary form of transportation is mules, followed by wheelbarrows for hauling things with one or two 4 wheelers thrown in to keep it interesting. People were friendly, lots of permanent gringos. We had some adventures in dinghy landing on the beach. It is a very deep bay, our mooring was in 170 feet. I guess sometime in the not so distant past the beach used to go out about 400 yards, but an earthquake did away with that. Now, it is deep right up to the beach. So, on our first landing attempt, Miss Grace and Coordination basically fell down as I got out of the dingy (right after a shower I might add). We went back to the boat, I changed and we tried again, new strategy, Dennis and I will get out at the front of the dinghy....... Well, a wave hit my side, and in I went (did I mention we had just done laundry??). I guess it just proves that I am more than a little nuts, cuz all I could do was laugh.....We ended up walking around wet, got some good intel on where to eat in town (where they actually have a dock), went back to the boat, changed again, and went into town for dinner.

The next day we went into town again and did a short hike to a waterfall. We met some nice folks from Iowa who were there for a wedding. After lunch, we attempted dinghy landing number 3. Bathing suits on, dry bag packed - dry like a bone..... Josh and I had our pictures taken with a huge iguana on the beach. It was pretty cool holding them. We had heard that there was another longer hike to a waterfall, so off we went. It was sort of surreal, we waded thru the river to get to the path/sidewalk/trail. Then proceeded to basically walk thru everyone's back yard. So we're walking along, and it is very primitive feeling and yet kids go by on bikes, and the occasional 4 wheeler passes you. Most homes had at least one mule and chickens, a couple places had cows and we saw one pig. The path was becoming more trail like, and what do you see, but a street light!!! There were street lights all the way to the first river crossing. The foliage was green and felt like the jungle. (probably cuz it is). After the first river crossing the path became a trail, fortunately the nice couple from Iowa had mentioned that the turnoff to the waterfall was under a fence marked "to the waterfall". Felt kind of weird going under a fence, but sure enough we ended up at the bottom of the waterfall. Very pretty. On the way back, I am sure I saw Macaws. Made it back to the beach before all the palapas closed, had a couple of margaritas, went back to the dinghy only to find that my backpack had been gone through and the only thing missing was my camera. I know it is my own fault, I shouldn't have left my camera there even though the dinghy was in our sight....So, that is why there are no pictures of the iguanas, the mules, the waterfall,s the beautiful rooster, the poinsetias growing in the garden or anything else since I last downloaded pictures. We left Yelapa the next day. I am trying not to let the camera thing ruin my experience there, cuz it really is a neat place.

Our next stop was Ipala for one night. The guys caught a bonita that day. The next day on the way to Chamela they pulled in a 45 inch dorado. In Chamela we caught up to s/v Totem and s/v Capaz. Josh was overjoyed to have friends to hang with again. We had a great afternoon on the beach, then a day snorkeling, the next day we thought we might move to a different anchorage, but Totem scouted it and called to say it was not so good. They came back and hosted a yummy dinner on their boat. That brings us to today and Tenacatita. We stopped at the not so good anchorage to go snorkeling at a place called the aquarium. It was good snorkeling, some of the best so far. Now we are anchored in the good anchorage and will be here for a few days........

more later

January 2, updated January 17

2010-01-17T20:55:00.000-06:00

On Internet access

Okay, how hard can it be to maintain wifi in the marina?? So sure, I know nothing about how it works. It is basically magic in my book, but really when it is not working, it makes me want to chew nails. Part of why we are willing to pay to stay in a marina is to have at will internet access. I don’t suppose we’ll get a discount either. Oh well, I shouldn’t be such a gringo about it. It could be worse; I could be sitting at my desk in Tracy with internet at the speed of light. I suppose it’s a small price to pay.
Well, we succumbed to my frustrations and bought a mexican internet usb card. Whew!!! I now get internet in places that I don't get cell service - crazy!! Is nice to have reliabe access though.

January 2, 2010

2010-01-17T20:45:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year!!! It is hard to believe it is 2010, we are in Mexico, it is raining, and I am in shorts and a tank top. Gotta love it!!!! We spent the first day of the New Year zip lining through the jungle. What a blast!! It ended too soon, and then the scary part - riding mules back up the mountain to our starting point! Whew!! The whole day was an adventure including the bus rides there and back. We were all tired, but quite pleased with our Christmas present.

Josh asked his friend Jamie to come along too. She and her family from s/v Don Quixote are moving to New Zealand for a year in February. This was Josh's first permanent goodbye to a new friend.

New Year’s Eve 2009

2010-01-17T20:15:00.001-06:00

Sadly I have no picture of this, but we decided to pay to have a couple more coats of varnish put on the teak. It was a hard decision for Dennis, but the price was reasonable so went ahead. Well, do you know that it never rains here in December? Except when the Morrison’s are doing their varnish. The night before the work was to start it must have rained at least 2 inches. The taping and sanding started though, but it turned out that we had some water invasion on the starboard side which slowed things down (other things did as well, but that is another drama and part and parcel of having work done in Mexico). Back to New Year’s Eve. Should have been done, but weren’t, so decided to skip New Year’s Day and finish today. Guess what? It is raining. Very frustrating to say the least. Hopefully tomorrow….. On a lighter note, we were able to see fireworks in panorama and in two time zones. The finale done here in La Cruz (earlier time zone) was right over our heads – very cool! Josh spent the night on Don Quixote who graciously hosted a kid’s New Year’s Eve

December 29th - Behan's Birthday

2010-01-17T20:11:00.000-06:00

On turning 40

As you all know, Dennis and I have left the 40 milestone in the dust, but we have been fortunate enough to help initiate a couple of new members to the over 40 club in the last couple of months. PJ from Capaz turned forty in November (while we were in La Paz). Her husband and family threw her a party on the beach, complete with a birthday card in the sand, margaritas, cake and a bonfire. Note the tiara in the picture. Next up was Behan from Totem. Behan turned 40 in La Cruz. We had a party on the dock, I made enchiladas, and there were 2 kinds of chocolate cake and poetry. I was a little behind the eight ball with my contribution to bad poetry, but managed to come up with the following:

Ode to 40

Welcome to 40, our club you’re now in
Anytime now the shooting pains will begin.

Your eyes are still bright, but soon you will wonder
Why your arms they’re just not longer.

The print on the page your read, remember when?
If you could only find your glasses you could do it again.

Your kids, genius teens soon will become,
They’ll wonder how you survive being so dumb.

Menopause it is coming, for Seattle you’ll be yearning,
When in the tropics your insides are burning.

(Menopause it is coming for cool climes you’ll be yearning,
When all night long your insides are burning.) for the non cruiser

The slide down the hill this is just the start,

Old age really ain’t for the faint of heart.

Don’t give up hope for although there’s no cure

A few things to have will comfort for sure.

To help ease the pain have available at will,

Chocolate, tequila and lots of advil.

Certainly won’t win any literary awards, but hopefully brought a smile to your face. Note in the picture that the tiara made another appearance. Behan kept it in place the whole day.

Christmas in La Cruz

2010-01-17T19:59:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas 2009

This was a first for Josh is many ways. It was his first one on the boat and in a different country. It was also his first away from all the hype and commercialism. It is just not that big of a deal here, or maybe it is because we don’t understand the language, listen to local radio or watch TV. Josh did comment that it was the fastest Christmas morning ever. We came in to the Marina on Christmas Eve, and I made cookies and posole. It is nice to be at the dock in some ways. Access power being the primary one. Our big gift was a trip on New Year’s day to go zip lining. More on that later. So Christmas day was pretty quiet - lots of kids around so that was nice. In the afternoon Josh and Dennis took the dinghy out for some fun in the anchorage. Dennis pulled some kids behind the dinghy on our water toy, while Josh, his friends Nikita and Jamie went scurfing. Scurfing is when you get pulled behind the dinghy on a surf board. According to Josh this is pretty hard. He certainly complained of being sore the next day. We spent Christmas dinner with the Capaz and Totem families. It was a great way to finish the day.

Finally a post - From Banderas Bay December 19,2009

2009-12-19T23:41:00.000-06:00

True to form, I am a little behind the eight ball with this post. Time sure flies when you are doing nothing. Anyway, lets catch up.....

We left Catalina on the 9th of October and spent almost a week in Newport doing boat work and staying out of the weather. It is a very protected anchorage, so we were able to get lots done. From there we went to Dana Point for another week. We had a blast there. The Wards out did themselves in the hospitality department – again. With their help we were able to provision for the trip down the coast and tie up all the getting out of the country loose ends. In between it all we took surfing lessons, the kids played, we got a little sail in, bought a couple more surfboards and in the end were ready to go.

The trip down from San Diego with the Baja HaHa had some exciting moments. We clocked a gust at 40kts on our 3rd sailing day - was wild and crazy. Josh was very seasick that day, but fine by the next day. So, we left San Diego 10/26 headed for Turtle Bay, should have taken about 2 days (so 2 nights on the water) the morning after we left, the weather forecast was not so great wind and swell wise, so the fleet (most of it) stopped at a place called San Quintin. Probably should have stayed one more day, cuz the next day was worse than the day before! But, the boat was fine and we just hung on for the ride. That day out of San Quintin a boat was surfing down a 15 footish wave and hit a whale, the whale hit them back, ripping out their rudder. The boat sank within 40 minutes. They deployed the life raft and were eventually picked up by the Coast Guard out of San Diego. The crew is fine, the boat is gone. Can’t imagine how the Captain felt as she watched the wind vane pass by her face.
We made it to Turtle Bay on Thursday late afternoon. Had a beach party on Friday, and left there Saturday by 1130. From there on it was great. We had one night of totally cool sailing the wind was 15kts or so all night under a big full moon. Pulled in to Bahia Santa Maria relatively early on Monday. Had another Beach party on Tuesday, left at the buttcrack of dawn on Wednesday and pulled into Cabo San Lucas Thursday mid afternoon. Cabo is beautiful to look at, but very touristy, expensive and definitely wild. Too many days there, and we would be checking into the Betty Ford Anchorage for rehab! Left Cabo the next Tuesday and made it to La Paz by Friday afternoon. No overnights, but 40 -50 mile days which are kind of long at a whooping 5- 6 kts. Met quite a few kid boats, some we knew from Alameda and some new. We felt like we were finally starting to unwind some.

Had lots of irritating mechanical issues from Turtle Bay to Cabo. The fitting on the engine block that holds the oil pressure gauge and a couple of other things broke off and spewed oil all over the engine compartment - that was the night before we left from Bahia Santa Maria for Cabo. Dennis was able to fix it, but in the process, we shorted out the voltage regulator, so the batteries weren't charging. Dennis hot wired the alternator so they would charge until we got to Cabo. Somewhere in there the fresh water pump on the generator died (Turtle Bay actually). We were able to find a replacement in Cabo, but after Dennis replaced the pump, the new one lasted about 20 minutes. He returned it, but they wouldn’t refund our money, so Dennis made them hook up the replacement to a battery -it did not work either, thankfully the last one on the shelf worked, and seems like it will continue to work. The engine (Izzy) had lots of overheating problems all the way down from San Francisco, seems Dennis may have fixed that -we ran it very hard 3 days in a row, on our way to La Paz, so we'll see. It is entirely possible that Izzy is just lulling us into a false sense of security....

To keep me on my toes, I have spent some quality time with Mexican government agencies. It took me about 5 hours to get checked into the country in Cabo San Lucas. A stop at the bank, 2.5 hours at immigration, a long walk to the Port Captain's office for another 2 hour wait. Such fun!! Had to get the Temporary Import Permit for the boat in La Paz. That only took 3 hours. Thankfully our friends from “MoonDance” have access to a vehicle and Carla taxied Tracie (Black Dragon) and I down to the place where that had to be done. The bus ride would have added at least 2 more hours to that process.

Fish wise, we are doing -well - 2 skip jack out of San Diego (soso eating) and a 30lb yellowfin Tuna. Josh hooked a marlin the day we were coming into La Paz. He was so funny, all excited and adrenalin rushed. Thankfully the darn thing spit out the hook, god only knows how we would have gotten on the boat and subdued it without needing stitches!!!!! We hooked a MahiMahi later in the day, but let it go because it was too skinny. Since then we have caught Sierra (yum) and another Jack type fish.

We actually had a traditional US thanksgiving with friends from Alameda. "Moondance" had access to the home of other Alameda friends that are still in SF. They are usually at their La Paz casita by this time of the year, but let “MoonDance” open up the house for them so we could have our little "fiesta de paavo" (sp?). So it was very nice - Turkey and all the usual trimmings.

One of the funniest things we have experienced thus far is the Mexican equivilent of WWF or Lucha Libre. Yes they take it very seriously. I wish I had pictures to post. It was so fake, yet so funny. The fans just added to the hilariousness of it all.

We finally decided to say goodbye to La Paz the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It was sad to leave familiar faces and a place we were comfortable with. Especially for Josh, as he was able to experience more personal freedom than he has ever had. There were lots of kids in La Paz, and he was able to run around with them alot. There is a club house at the marina for them to hang out at, they had a campout on the beach (the Magote), a game night, a bonfire on the magote and he is our designated dinghy driver. But, it was time to move on to warmer places.....

To get to Mazatlan we left from Los Muertos. It is about 190 miles, so that involves an overnight sail. We spent a beautiful day on the beach and at the resort at Los Muertos before leaving at 3am for Mazatlan. It was a good sail and we arrived in Mazatlan in the daylight as planned. We spent 3 days at the El Cid Marina and resort. Josh got his first taste of the Mercado. Not sure he realized that food didn't come from the animal in packages.....

We left Mazatlan on a Sunday evening and overnighted to Isla Isabella (a wildlife refuge) -got there about 1100a. Sadly we couldn't find an anchorage that we felt comfortable with, so decided to press on to San Blas (note to self, if ever in the same situation again, leave early enough from Mazatlan to be able to bail and reach San Blas in the daylight!). Made it to Matenchen Bay (San Blas) after dark in the rain. The next day was beautiful and humid. We took the dinghy into San Blas, Josh met up with his friend Jamie (a girl) and Dennis and I went for provisions. Jamie came back to our boat for a sleep over and surfing. They all went surfing, and I stayed on the boat and rested- I had a cold, and didn't want to make it worse. We got up and surfed the next day too, before Jamie's family came and got her on their way to the next anchorage. Of course Josh was ready to pack up and leave that minute too..... Surfing was pretty good, small waves. Dennis and Josh are both standing up etc... but although I can catch the waves, I haven't been able to stand up.

The next morning we got up and went in for a Jungle tour. Was pretty cool. Saw lots of birds, a turtle, an iguana and a couple of crocodiles - big too. The half way point was a fresh water pool for swimming, just upstream from the last croc......... hmmm maybe not. Those crocs looked like they would have no problem with that little ol’fence installed to keep them out. Liability is just not that much of an issue here. It is a pretty spot though, lush and green.

After another dinghy ride into San Blas for Jamie's laundry (another note to self - do not try to pay your 9 yr old sister to do your laundry......) we left for the next anchorage about 8 miles away - Chacala. It was a pretty anchorage, Jamie got her laundry and had a sleep over again with us. Sadly, the surf was so big, there was no beach landing in our future and no sign of a water taxi either. So, not wanting to spend a bouncy day on the boat......

We left the next morning for Punta Mita - Is interesting our charts have us sailing on land...........Punta Mita is the northern point of Banderas Bay (home of Nuevo Vallarta and Puerto Vallarta). As we came up to round the point, we could see the surf breaking - way out from shore. It sure looked big -like Maverick big. Gave me a severe case of heart burn. We ended up taking a very wide turn around the point before anchoring at Punta Mita. We all went surfing the next afternoon- thankfully it wasn't as bad as it looked, again I could catch them but not stand up. Josh was a crazy man - said he caught 12 waves - It is scary cool to see him up there doing his thing. Dennis and I went out the next morning hoping for smaller waves - which there were, but they were breaking closer to shore where the bottom is all rocks. I did finally manage to stand up though, so it was not an entire wash. Because the surf was so big, we had to anchor the dinghy at the edge of the waves (maybe 100 yards from shore?). Since the wave action over the rocks was a little scary, Dennis and I paddled our boards in to the Palapa (beach restaurant) for a late breakfast. The surf had been building as we were eating, so Dennis left to go rescue the dinghy while I paid. As I was paddling my board out to meet him, he came closer to meet me....I'm sure my expression would have been kodak moment worthy. A big wave was building up behind him, and looked like it was going to break on him. He turned the dinghy around in time and gunned it as a just as the wave came up - He went almost vertical and said he caught air on the back side.......too close for comfort.

That afternoon we motored down to La Cruz - about 8 miles. Caught up with Jamie (Don Quixote) again and met some nice people living in the Marina. So, here we are. We'll be here in the bay through the New Year. Will probably move around some and explore. I am disappointed with the water quality, it is a huge bay, good anchoring, but I have a hard time wanting to get into it. Dennis was in scraping the junk off the bottom of the boat, and came out with little critters attached to him. Probably is related to the whole scraping thing, but eewww!!

The weather is actually pretty pleasant here, in general not as hot as I thought it was going to be, but the humidity is meeting my expectations. Actually had a cloudy day yesterday - was nice as I was working on a sewing project outside on deck. It was actually cold last night. So unlike Tracy which only has 2 kinds of weather (sunny and hot or cloudy and cool) they actually get a variety here.

We have seen a lot of wildlife - lots of dolphin and some whales. Rumor has it that the bay here is home to many whales. We went out today, but did not see any. We took a 5 day cruise out to the Islands around La Paz and went snorkeling with some Sea Lions at a place called Los Isolotes. It was very cool. I just love it when a pod of dolphin swim with us - it is so cool, they seem humanish as they play in the bow wake.

Well, we are caught up, I promise to try to be better, and will post pictures soon