S/V Morning Light

Little (or no) access to the internet lately, and very slow here.  I am in Niue (an island that is an independent nation).
Visited the Cook islands (Rarotonga and Palmerston) before.  Checking out today to leave for Tonga today, about a two day sail that takes three days (because you cross the international date line).  Things are going good, will post some stories and pictures when I get some better internet access (hopefully from Tonga).

Ran behind in writing stories for the past weeks, so a quick catch up here, before I move on.

For the past 10 days I have sailed together with Peter and Fiona from Sayonara. Which was great fun. They left Wednesday to go back to Raiateia, while I stayed on Bora Bora.

Taina (Tahiti) to Fare (Huahine) was an overnight sail with many different faces. Going through the pass at Taina was adventurous with a lot of current, that seemed to change direction a few times. The wind had been blowing strong from the north east for the past two days, so I was counting on more of that. The weather decided otherwise, the wind kept turning to the west and than completely died. We had to motor in a big swell. About 20 miles from Fare suddenly the wind, that matched the huge swell, arrived. And we had an exciting few hours of sailing (reached 8.9 knots coming down a wave). We got in safely in Fare, which turned out to be a nice anchorage near a quiet little town.

Bastille Day celebrations were minimal, for the rest it was just another Sunday for the locals. We enjoyed a few good days in Fare, and I borrowed Peter’s top climber (gear which allows you to climb up the mast along a halyard all by yourself) and installed an additional radar reflector (I had been told that I did not make a clear radar target a couple of weeks back) and ran a repaired spinaker halyard up the mast. Worked well, definitely added a top climber to the wish list.

Sailed from Fare to Uturoa (Raiateia) was surprisingly nice. Forecast was for light winds and rain, instead there were fairly good winds (about 15 knots) and it was dry. I found a spot at the city dock, after circling around to find a decent anchorage location without any luck. It took a hard 180 degree turn to make it into the spot, but with help from the people on the dock, it all worked out. Sayonara went on to the Carenage, where they wanted to see about arranging a haul out a few weeks later. Took advantage of the alongside docking by getting my bike form the forepeak, had not used it since Curacao, hard to believe. Gave it a good cleaning and went for a little ride. When I got back to the boat around lunch time the wind had increased and was pushing Morning Light hard against the dock. Not a good situation, time to leave. Got the lines sorted and engine started and waited for a little lull, which somewhat worked, was able to get away from the dock without any damage. The fuel dock was only 100 meters away, in a calmer spot (protected from the wind by a big cruise ship). Came alongside on the second attempt, and was able to take in some tax free diesel. Still not very cheap, about 1 Euro a liter.

The intended anchorage at Tahaa did not work out, it was too deep and too windy. So we had to improvise and find another anchorage. Which we ended up finding in the bay of Hurepiti, all the way in the back. When we arrived it was very calm there, but as the wind was shifting to the east we started to get lots of gusts and swirling winds, but at least the anchor held (in almost 20 meters of water). We stayed there for two nights, since the Saturday was one soggy experience. It rained almost the whole time.

Sunday morning it was still wet, but there were maybe some signs of clearing up, and at 11 o’clock we decided to go for it. It was a rough ride through the reef pass, into a big swell. Eventually the wind picked up, and between some motorsailing we even managed to turn the engine off for a few hours. We arrived around 4 o’clock in Bora Bora, which has the most beautiful sight of all the Society Islands. Anchoring there turned out to be tough, first it was hard to find a good spot, then the anchor chain did not want to come out. Turned out that the whole mount of 50 meters of chain had tumbled over in the anchor locker (most likely when running into the big swell coming through the reef) and it took a lot of effort to get that all sorted out (access to the anchor locker is through a little 20×30cm cut-out a the front of the forepeak). Well, that was enough work for my 40th birthday, and we had a great meal on Sayonara to celebrate.

Bora Bora is a beautiful place, stunning view of the peak, that seems to change every time you look at it. Went north around the island (inside the lagoon), which is a tricky channel with not much depth to spare, but it brings you on the east side of the lagoon, which has the best teints of blue water so far. Took the dinghy for a search for rays, which are supposed to be pleniful there, but had little luck. Saw a few smaller ones, but not from very close. Today (Friday) I am going to take the dinghy into town, do some last shopping, get online and use up my last internet minutes in the post office. If the forecast is good, I should be leaving for the Cook Islands tomorrow, arriving there somewhere by the end of next week.

Internet comes at a premium here ($10 an hour), so no full size pictures, just these smaller size images below.

Sailing along Sayonara.

Sayonara at anchor in Atuona.

Paul Gauguin’s grave in Atuona.

View over the bay in Atuona.

Hiva Oa mountain ridge.

Dolphins.

The church on Kauehi, Tuamoto Archipelago.

The big event in Kauehi: the supply ship is in.

Aspirant surfers playing in the big surf on the windward side of Ahe, Tuamotos.

Tree on Ahe.

Ahe church.

Ahe anchorage: Morning Light and Steeltide.

Your diesel mechanic in action: dirty fuel filter.

Looking across the Taina anchorage (Tahiti) towards Moorea.

School kids in kanoes.

Polynesian outrigger kanoes, in early and morning and late afternoon, this is how the locals go get their exercise.

Moorea from the water.

Cook’s Bay, Moorea.

Looking into the collapsed crater on Moorea.

Marae Ahu o Mahine

Archeoligical site of Polynesian culture.

Information sign about the archery platform.

The archery platform.

Cook’s Bay from Belvedere.

Opunohu Bay from Belvedere.

The ridge between Opunohu Bay (left) and Cook’s Bay (right).

Church on Cook’s Bay.

Since it is a rainy day here in Tahiti, which takes much of the exotic feel away, on an overcast rainy day, things look just as dready as most other places, but maybe a nice moment for some reflection.

It has been more than one and a half years since I left Jacksonville, which can be considered the final start of the journey. Well, it feels a lot longer, sailing south along the Florida coast feels like light years back. But, that is mostly because there have been some many other places visited, that all left their impressions. I am enjoying myself, it is actually hard to imagine a life on shore, it doesn’t seem to be logical to ever go back to that (though, there will probably come a time when I will have to).

Someone asked how it was to be at sea for 4 weeks. And really, it wasn’t all that different. Like I always tell myself in anything else: four weeks is nothing more than four times one week back to back. Just like a 100 km bike ride is simply 5 times 20 km. Life on board was a steady routine, not being busy most of the time, things get dictated by the clock to the extreme. Getting up wasn’t so much timed, that sort of happended automatically with the arrival of daylight. After breakfast I would not have coffee until a set time (that I had been moving back and forth a bit, eventually deciding that 9 o’clock would be the best time to divide up the morning). Lunch was always stiptly at noon (after writing down the noon position in the logbook). Then sometimes I would allow myself a happy hour, or cocktail hour, at 4. Where I would have one, or at most two beers, assuming the fridge was still below room temperature. Once the fridge was at room temperature I would not waste the beer supply by drinking it warm. Than before sunset I would cook, just because cooking at daylight is easier than with the lights on. Not too much after that I would go to bed. On the Pacific I no longer kept up the strict routine of getting up every half hour, there wasn’t any traffic to keep a lookout for, which seemed to be right since I only saw one boat in between the Galapagos and the Marquesas. This sort of sums up the routine, and I would be doing that day in day out. Every now and then you do some math about how the progress is, looking ahead at the next achievement (like: the first 500 miles done, reaching the mid point, etc). Right at the beginning of the long leg, the notion of being completely self dependant was quite big. Whatever would go wrong, there would not be any help near, nobody would hear an alarm call on the radio, I would just have to figure it out all by myself. I was a lot more careful, moving around on the boat, stay low, use hand holds etc. In a way that doesn’t make that much sense, if I would have fallen over the side on any of the trips in the Caribbean more than 30 miles away from shore, chances of survival would have been near zero as well. But, at least it helped me being less careless, as I know I can be. As it is, I am probably one of the few boats without short wave radio, no life raft, no EPIRB (emergency signal based on satellites). But, I had been aware of that all the time, those were the choices I had made, keep it simple. When it comes down to it, to survive, all I would need to do is keep the boat afloat. Being by myself for 4 weeks didn’t seem to make that much of a difference to me. As I wrote updates for the blog, I had a feeling of being `in touch’ with the rest of the world, even though it is just typing something on a computer. After a while you realize that you never really hear you own voice, only exceptions being when I hurt myself (say when you hit a toe against a stancheon), when suddenly you cuss out loud (in Zeeuws!). But, that seems to be logical, or at least I think it makes more sense than talking aloud against yourself (which I don’t do). Arriving in the Marquesas did feel like a great achievement, when you come into the anchorage you are sort of proud of yourself: I did it. Suddenly you are back amongst people, which was almost a shock, after all the quietness, there are people around you, and are aware of you. It took me a while to make the adjustment, only when Strummer arrived, I got used to being around people again.

Over the past months I have really enjoyed the choice of boat I have made. She is easy to sail by myself, the self steering is reliable and the dependency on electricity is kept to a minimum. After the head stay broke on the way to Panama, I really gained a lot more confidence in the strenght of the boat, and the choice for a cutter rig. On a sloop rig, which is still the most common among sailing yachts, the same failure would have been a lot bigger problem. Now I was just able to go along with staysail and main, and giving the strong winds in that area, not even loose much speed (and actually gaining more comfort at the same time). Also, during some other occasions, when the winds were strong, double reefing the main and furling in the genoa made for good sailing, even in rough seas.

Looking ahead, there are still more Pacific Islands to visit. The beaten path leads from here to the Cook Islands, then Tonga, and Fiji. After that most boats go to New Zealand to sit out the southern cyclone season there. Some others opt for Australia. My plans are different, a stay in New Zealand would have to be almost 6 months, which would probably be a stretch (though not impossible) of the budget. Australia is even less of an option, it is hard to check in, visa and crusing permit even more expensive, it doesn’t sound like they really welcome my visit there. The plan for a 2 year circumnavigation is left behind me, the shaft problem of Christmas day, then the head stay delay in Panama, pushed for too tight of time schedule to stick to that. There is not really a particular moment when I made that decision to leave the 2 year circumnavigation plan behind, as time went by, that was something that more or less grew on me. So, we are now looking at making this a 3 year circumnavigation. For a while I was hoping to go to Indonesia, as another place with some old Dutch influence. But, there is lots of paperwork involved in getting a cruising permit for it, so that also makes it less inviting. Well, that doesn’t leave too many options. It is quite logical to keep hopping islands past Fiji by visiting Vanuatu, and then the Solomon Isands. Than was wanting to go towards Malaysia and Thailand. Looking at the charts, studying the pilots, I am now thinking about going via the route of the Philippines, which sounds like an interesting place to go. I am not yet sure if I will go there straight from the Solomon Islands (would be a very long leg, crossing the equator with its windfree area), or maybe hop some of the New Guinea islands (unsure about the political stability there) or maybe a stop over in some of the islands of Micronesia. That is still to be decided, as I get closer to the Solomon Islands I might learn more about the do’s and don’ts in that region. Time frame for this is no sooner than the end of the year, Solomon Islands being on the edge/outside of the southern cyclone season, which starts in December.

Wednesday morning the weather looked promising, clear blue sky. So I decided to do my tourist duty on Moorea, make the walk up to Belvedere. I had a vague idea about which road to follow, and lucky me, it turned out to be the right one. It was a dirt road for quite a while, leading across a ridge which gave a beautiful view over the inside of the island, the collapsed crater of the volcano. Later the road met with a bigger road with black top, mostly shaded by the trees. Quite a nice walk. There was an unexpected cultural site to sea: an archeological site of the remains of the old settlements of the Polynesian people. There was an information board in three language with some explanation about the history, to my shame I must admit I forgot most of what it said already. But, the sites were quite interesting, an old archery platform, an ahu, and a marae. From there it was a little further up to the viewpoint. From the Belvedere you had a great view over most of the island and the two bays, Cooke’s Bay and Opunohu Bay.

On the way down I decided to descend into Opunohu bay, and then follow the main road along the shore back to Cooke’s Bay. In hinsight, that was a little too much, it was a lot further than I thought, and walking along a quite busy road wasn’t all the exciting. It took me five hours to complete the loop, only having taken about 15 minutes rest at the top. The legs were tired, and the hip (with titanium screws) wasn’t quite happy with it. Not much else was done the rest of the day.

Later in the evening I had VHF contact with Strummer, who had sailed into Papeete just that day. Sayonara had left for Taina. Since I am in no rush to go anywhere yet, I decided to backtrack to Taina and meet up with Peter. Sayonara had some fiberglass work done on the keel, after a close encounter with the reef near the Tahiti Yacht Club. Maybe we’ll sail together to some of the other islands of the Society Islands. Peter’s wife has joined him for a few weeks, and they will eventually go back to Papeete. After the Society Islands the next logical destination is the Cook Islands.