Landfall!

We made landfall today around noon. Definitely not the most graceful entry we’ve made into a new spot. In fact, it was downright ungraceful, but we’re very tired and need to get some sleep. More tomorrow.

Position: 18 degrees, 29 minutes south; 158 minutes, 34 degrees west (125 mile day)

We expect landfall tomorrow morning IF the wind holds which is questionable. It’s gone light now so whereas all the bouncing around the last couple days was from the wind and big waves, now it’s because of the light wind. Today was a gorgeous day. The wind dropped to 14 knots and the waves down to 2 meters. We put the main up and set the jib out on the pole and ran wing and wing all day. It was the kind of day that is why we love cruising. The wind has dropped to about 6 knots now so we are eking out about 3-4 knots boatspeed. We have to get to Aitutaki by noon because that is high tide so if the wind completely drops out we’ll have to motor-sail.

Not too much else to update. Dinner was Mahi II. I sautéed some veggies that were about to go bad (an eggplant and a bell pepper) with an onion, threw it in leftover rice and seared the mahi on the cast iron pan with some spices. Yum. Also, we had the ceviche on crackers for lunch. Can you eat too much fish? I don’t think so….

That’s about it for today. Stay tuned for our update of our attempt at the pass at Aitutaki.

P.S. To JHam: Jerry-we do swab the deck, but with a brush. There’s no room on board for a swab although I used to swab the decks on a schooner I crewed on when I was in my teens. Ann swabbed, er, brushed the deck after we caught the Mahi. Fish scales everywhere although I’m getting much better about not spraying blood all over the place. In fact, these days, there’s very little blood when I gut and fillet the fish just lots of swearing as the boat rolls and I have to hang on to fish, knife and self. At least I no longer have to change my clothes and take a shower (bucket bath) after catching a fish. 🙂 You should have seen some of the early attempts. Psycho!

Position: 17 degrees, 48 minutes south; 156 degrees, 31 minutes west (138 mile day)

Ahhh, Mahi

Short post as it’s rockin’ and rollin’ and very hard to type.

We caught a Mahi just after lunch today, so we had fresh Mahi Mahi, rice and salad for dinner. (yay!) It was delicious. The fish also provided 5 additional dinners for two, 1/2 pound of ceviche that I made this afternoon and a pound of extra bits for chowder. Yum.

More blue water and blue skies with some clouds along with 10 foot seas and 15-20 knot winds. A good day, but we’re almost straight downwind which makes it rolly in these big waves. Wilson is doing an amazing job steering. We have only tweaked it when we reef the jib in or out-which is once or twice a day-and after three days, it’s steering us within five miles of the rhumb line course.

It’s beautiful out here even at night when the full moon is illuminating everything.

OK, time for bed. It’s Ann’s watch from 1000 to 0200.

By the way; to our family who are now in Aptos on vacation-Ann made ginger cookies for you all, but we can’t figure how to deliver them, so we’ll have to eat them. Sorry, she’ll make more later.

Position: 17 degrees, 08 minutes south; 154 degrees, 04 minutes west (about 130 miles last 24 hours) Sailing this afternoon, watching wave after wave after wave and nothing but blue water as far as I could see, I was struck by how “out there” we really are. We just left a small island, for an even smaller island some 500 miles away where the only entrance into the lagoon is narrow and shallow-maybe too shallow for us to fit. Just thinking.

I’m finally over my almost mal de mer. I didn’t feel very good for most of the first 18 hours of the trip. First touch of seasickness I’ve had in years. But got my sea legs back now.

Yesterday evening a potentially ominous issue came up. Just before sundown I glanced at the solar panel readout and it was dead. Not working. No light. Uh oh! Solar is one of our major sources of energy and it would be very bad if they panels quit working. It was too rough and I didn’t feel good enough to start rooting around in the electronics closet so I decided I’d put off looking at it until morning. Once the sun came up, I consulted the manuals and they said that; “a spike in power can cause the microprocessor to turn off. Disconnect all power and then reconnect, crisply”. Crisply??! Oh well, worth a shot. There is a fuse in the battery compartment under the bed in the quarterberth that delivers the solar power to the battery. I figured I could check it in case that was the problem and at the same time disconnect and reconnect it “crisply” and see if that would work. OK, found it, pulled it, it broke. Now I have to get the pieces of the fuse out of the inline holder (while still feeling a bit poorly inside the rolling boat). I dug them out-even had an extra fuse holder but didn’t feel like dealing with it so used the existing one for now. Found an appropriate fuse, inserted it crisply and voila! The panels came back online. Yay.

The rest of today has been pretty typical passage-making. Eat, sleep, read, enjoy the view. The evening radio nets start in an hour so we’ll be able to see where our various friends are and maybe talk with them. Last night Dave from Camanoe (our friend from Mexico who went to Hawaii when we left for the Marquesas) was on and called us when the net controller asked if there was any “traffic” for Charisma. Alas, his signal was pretty light and we couldn’t find a frequency so just said; “Hi”. Maybe we’ll be able to have a longer conversation tonight. Since he’s still in Hawaii it’s a long way and the ionosphere has to be just right to bounce the signal all the way down here.

So, there you have it. About three days to go (hopefully) to our next island. Position: 17 degrees, 08 minutes south; 154 degrees, 04 minutes west (about 130 miles last 24 hours) Sailing this afternoon, watching wave after wave after wave and nothing but blue water as far as I could see, I was struck by how “out there” we really are. We just left a small island, for an even smaller island some 500 miles away where the only entrance into the lagoon is narrow and shallow-maybe too shallow for us to fit. Just thinking.

I’m finally over my almost mal de mer. I didn’t feel very good for most of the first 18 hours of the trip. First touch of seasickness I’ve had in years. But got my sea legs back now.

Yesterday evening a potentially ominous issue came up. Just before sundown I glanced at the solar panel readout and it was dead. Not working. No light. Uh oh! Solar is one of our major sources of energy and it would be very bad if they panels quit working. It was too rough and I didn’t feel good enough to start rooting around in the electronics closet so I decided I’d put off looking at it until morning. Once the sun came up, I consulted the manuals and they said that; “a spike in power can cause the microprocessor to turn off. Disconnect all power and then reconnect, crisply”. Crisply??! Oh well, worth a shot. There is a fuse in the battery compartment under the bed in the quarterberth that delivers the solar power to the battery. I figured I could check it in case that was the problem and at the same time disconnect and reconnect it “crisply” and see if that would work. OK, found it, pulled it, it broke. Now I have to get the pieces of the fuse out of the inline holder (while still feeling a bit poorly inside the rolling boat). I dug them out-even had an extra fuse holder but didn’t feel like dealing with it so used the existing one for now. Found an appropriate fuse, inserted it crisply and voila! The panels came back online. Yay.

The rest of today has been pretty typical passage-making. Eat, sleep, read, enjoy the view. The evening radio nets start in an hour so we’ll be able to see where our various friends are and maybe talk with them. Last night Dave from Camanoe (our friend from Mexico who went to Hawaii when we left for the Marquesas) was on and called us when the net controller asked if there was any “traffic” for Charisma. Alas, his signal was pretty light and we couldn’t find a frequency so just said; “Hi”. Maybe we’ll be able to have a longer conversation tonight. Since he’s still in Hawaii it’s a long way and the ionosphere has to be just right to bounce the signal all the way down here.

So, there you have it. About three days to go (hopefully) to our next island.

Position: 16 degrees, 37 minutes south; 152 degrees, 18 minutes west

Yup, we’re finally out of French Polynesia. I took the French flag and the Polynesian courtesy flags down today for the first time in three months. The next flags to go up will be the yellow “Q” flag and the Cook Islands flag as we enter the Cooks. Hopefully that will be in about 3.5 days at Aitutaki. I say ‘hopefully’ because it’s a tricky entrance. There’s a very narrow cut through the coral reef of something like 30 feet and the depth is approximately 6 feet. We draw 5 feet, 8 inches, so it will be close. Fortunately high tide is at 1200, so we’ll have the sun overhead to help us see the bottom. It’s a +0.68 meter tide so that will give a little extra room. Once inside though, the lagoon is very small, so if there are many boats there, we won’t have room to anchor. Lots of “ifs”. The last “if” is if we can’t get in, we’ll keep on going another couple hundred miles to our next stop at Palmerston Island.

It’s bumpy bouncy again, so this will be short as I don’t have my sea legs yet and it’s not easy to type and not get seasick, LOL.

This moonrise tonight was almost surreal. It was a full moon and came out of the clouds above Bora Bora. Just amazing. Breathtaking really. It was the biggest moon I’ve ever seen and it was red. Amazing. A great way to start another leg of the voyage.

It’s blowing about 16 gusting to 20, the seas are about 4 feet and we’re doing about 6 knots with just the jib rolled about 40%. The wind should increase some in the next day or so then ease as we approach our destination. We checked in on the Seafarers Net, which is a Pacific-wide Ham net dedicated to keeping track of boats who wish to be followed. Good safety net. If you google searfarers net, or possibly go to www.pacseanet.com you can find the report that shows where we are. I think there are two Charismas, so we go by Charisma San Francisco.

That’s it for now, I need some air. See you tomorrow.

Easy day today. We’re pretty sore and stiff from yesterday’s climb so decided not to leave today, but will go tomorrow. There’s a good weather window for the next day or two with modest winds, then they turn into 20+ knots and 3.5 meter seas, but all downwind and easing as we go west, so we’ll be heading into the better weather and leaving the stronger stuff here. About five other boats are heading out tomorrow as well. The folks who are staying here are going to get a strong blow.

So…we dinghied over to the store, and bought some supplies. Ann did some laundry and pre-made a pasta salad to have available for our trip and I uploaded pictures to the blog and Facebook and that’s about it for today. Had a nice time with ShantiAna and Bright Angel with cocktails on the deck outside Bora Bora YC, then dinner.

Slow, easy day, but our last day for a while in civilization. From here it’s nothing but very small islands for 800 or so miles then Tonga. I think the biggest one has a population of 200 and the small one has about 50 people. Should be interesting.