Position: 16 degrees, 59 minutes south; 149 degrees, 24 minutes west

We’re just about 5 miles abeam Tetiaroa, north of Tahiti. We left today at 1230 with a Three Manta Ray Salute. A couple miles outside the reef, I saw a big splash out of the corner of my eye. At first I thought maybe a whale, but as I scanned the sea, just 50 yards away, up blasts a manta ray, then another and another. They were 6-8 feet wide, jumping 5 feet high…and doing backflips!! Crazy! What a fun way to leave French Polynesia.

Adios Morea.

We aren’t actually “out” of French Polynesia, but we have fully checked out of the “country” and we intend our next stop to be Hawaii. We’re basically going north skirting west of the Tuamotus, although if the winds allow we’ll go a couple hundred miles more to the east as we head north. That gives us more options as we get ready to turn for Hawaii in 1500 miles or so at around 15 degrees north latitude. At that point the winds sometimes come from the northeast and we want to be prepared for that.

It’s a nice change right now to be heading out on a passage with the wind around 12 knots, waves around 3 feet and the temp at 80 degrees F. We’re in shorts, t-shirts and bare feet at 1930 in the evening. It’s “winter” down here so the days are short. It’s dark and we’re hoping the clouds will go away so we can see the moon, but all in all, a nice night.

After 22 days, Charisma made landfall at 1000 local time in Papeete. We’re docked at the new marina in downtown Papeete. More later, need to check in and take a shower first!

What a sight!

A dolphin escort into the harbor at Papeete.

Entering the harbor.

Happy to be tied up at the dock.

Only one thing left to do!

WooHoo, a passage very much worth toasting!

Position: 17 degrees 39 minutes south; 149 degrees, 54 minutes west 91 NM

Right from the “Johnnie Joe School of Cruising Handbook”, Chapter Three on fuel management and planning. And I quote: “Fuel management isn’t hard. You just load ‘er down like the Exxon Valdez with all the diesel you can get aboard, then run ‘er hard. If ya got any fuel left when ya get there, then ya didn’t run ‘er enough”

Well, we get an “A” from the Johnnie Joe school, because at 0130 in the morning the engine went brrrat, brrart, pblpppt. And all was quiet. We drained out the last drop from the tank. Well, at least now we now know exactly how much we have left. Fortunately that means 10 gallons, which is our on deck jerry jug supply. So, we took a few moments to settle down, had a little something to eat, drank a bit of coffee and then set about siphoning the jugs into the tank, draining the crud out of the Racor, changing the filter, then crack the injectors and bleed the lines. We’re getting proficient at this as it only took us about an hour.

OK, now we have to sail most of the rest of the way. Fortunately the time spent motoring last night got us into a position where by sailing all day, we’re now six miles away from the SE point of Moorea, just across from Tahiti. We’re going to tack in a few and go across to Tahiti, then heave to for the rest of the night (it’s 1830 local NZ time) and at sunrise, which is about 0430 local NZ time we’ll head down the channel the last ten miles to Papeete. At least that’s the plan right now. When the moon comes up it may give us enough light – and confidence to head closer to Papeete tonight. We’ll still stand offshore, but the reason we’re not going closer for now is there are a lot of lights here and it’s not very clear what’s a stop light on shore and what might be a ferry boat or fishing boat. Better to just hang and go in with the vis is better.

Landfall!

So that was our day. Oh – one highlight was seeing Ann’s face this morning when she came up from her off watch. The sun was up and she said, “Good morning”, then turned around and there in front of us was the mountain studded island of Moorea looking for all the world like it was just a few miles away. It was actually still 35 miles out, but the beaming smile that broke out on Ann’s face made the whole day worth it.

Here's our path approaching Tahiti (on the right, Moorea on the left). We had to stand out waiting for some wind since we didn't have enough fuel to make it all the way in from here.

Position: 18 degrees, 00 minutes south; 151 degrees, 21 minutes west 107 nm

The “distance to waypoint” on the GPS just switched to 100.9 miles! Wow, we are almost there. Back to Tahiti. Our memories of Tahiti are not full of tropical evenings and exotic landscapes. We have a few of those memories, but Tahiti meant being at the quay in noisy Papeete waiting for medical news. Our dear friend had had a diving “incident” in the Tuamotos and was being looked at in Papeete. It was a tense time. Thank God he is fine. Tahiti, and sailing to it, has always been on Bob’s list. Ever since he was a young boy following the travels of Robin Lee Graham in the National Geographic series. I heard about this desire early in our relationship. It went like this (on about date five): Bob – “I’m going to sail to the South Pacific in 2012. You can come too if you want. I mean I would like it if you did.” Seriously, he was that determined. He had hit his “Make it Happen” point. Tahiti, just saying the word out loud was my “Make it Happen” point. I enjoy a Facebook group called Women Who Sail. It is full of wonderful women interested in sailing. I think over half of the posts include angst from these women on how to make it happen. We dream about doing this but getting there is different. I never dreamed I’d be here. But saying “Tahiti” made it happen. I walked into my boss’s office at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Timing was important. I told him I needed to talk and he invited me to sit. I looked up and with tears in my eyes, it was a scary moment, I said, “Jim, there is no easy way to say this so I will just blurt it out. I am sailing to Tahiti.” His look was one of confusion. What? I clarified. “That means I need to quit.” Well that got his attention. He sat up straighter in his chair and said, “Holy crap, shit, that means you’re taking Bob!” I had worked for him for 17 years. Bob was our most prized consultant that I was dating. “Well, not really, he is taking me!” To his credit Jim gave me a huge smile and nearly jumped out of his seat to hug me. Oh my God! How exciting! Wow! And I stopped the tears of fear. I had done it. I said the word, “Tahiti” and now there was no turning back. It was going to happen. Jim stuck his head in my office as he left for the weekend. He still had that huge grin on his face. “I am so very excited for you…today. But come Monday after all of the implications have set in over the weekend I will be hating you. Have a great weekend.” So here we are, returning to Tahiti. Making it happen still. Time to go put the champagne in the fridge.

(From Bob) OK, on the sailing front, we’re still not “laying” Tahiti, more like Bora Bora, so I decided to follow the “Johnnie Joe School of Cruising” advice and “Run ‘er till she’s empty”. Yup we’re motor sailing for all we’re worth in order to head direct. If we just kept sailing, we would have to go around the west side of Moorea and then tack somewhere northwest of Tahiti. I would add at least a day, if not two to the passage. I’ve estimated we have about 20 hours of fuel in the tank, so we’re running 15 hours then we’ll shut down and sail a while and see where we are. Unless my estimate and/or our consumption is off. If things all of a sudden get quiet, we’ll know where we stand. We have ten gallons in jerry jugs on the deck, so when we’re well within that range, we’ll dump those in the tank and use that for the final push.

Exhaustion. It was a long night last night and we wear it like a layer of thermal underwear. It’s too hot for thermals this close to Tahiti. Almost there. Just over 200 miles to our waypoint off the island as I write this. But the exhaustion is palpable. For Bob especially. Sailing in light air, fluky light air close hauled is not easy. Wilson, our fabulous windvane is trying but it is not easy as the squalls, not big ones, small ones just big enough to disrupt the fine balance Bob has achieved. Charisma is trying but she answers best to Bob. I try but know that I can only adjust so much. Bob gets awakened by the imbalance of the boat and arrives in the companion way to do his magic. He stands and listens to the input from Charisma and deftly applies the necessary adjustments. She listens and we are off again. Until the next squall sucks all of the air and changes the fine balance. I pray for wind adjustments. I know God doesn’t make deals but perhaps the angels can work with the winds. Perhaps the squalls can give Bob more than 45 minutes sleep each time. That’s how it was last night and through the morning. This afternoon we had to lower the “Whomper” jib and adjust the furling line. It is a big sail and was not furling properly. Working with a sail this large is no easy feat under sail. Bob is an expert from his younger years as an ocean racer; we got it done. Seems a small adjustment made a big difference because it is furling better now. Bob made more adjustments and the wind shifted behind a squall. We are now headed on a better course and the winds are building some. Maybe it will be an easier night. Because we are almost there…

Position: 18 degrees, 52 minutes south; 153 degrees, 07 minutes west 97 nm day (and thanks to Carol on Arnementia for finding my little mistake on yesterday’s position report)

So, if sailing in light air is a delicate dance, sailing in light air on a squally day is like mud wrestling! It’s not very pretty.

In light air you spend a little time balancing all the inputs; jib, main, helm, and windvane and you can achieve a balance that will last for days. Until today, I hadn’t had to touch anything – Charisma was sailing just fine all by herself. But last night the squalls kicked in. Every squall has the same pattern. The wind increases – in this case, from a nice comfortable 10 knots to 20 knots. That part throws everything off balance. You have the big sails up, so you have to furl the jib and/or reef the main. Then the squall lasts 30-45 minutes and once it passes it takes all the wind with it and leaves almost a vacuum. Nothing. Charisma just wallows with no wind to guide her. That part usually last another half hour where you have to go to the helm and try to just keep the boat from spinning in aimless circles using the very small amount of boat speed you might have – maybe 0.5 knots or less – for rudder input. Then the wind fills back in. Now you unfurl the jib and/or unreef the main and go through all the little adjustments to rebalance everything hoping this time will be the last.

Once everything is set and you think you can go get some sleep you look up and see the next squall just upwind, and you know you’re going to do it all over again.

By the way, Ann now belongs to the “On the bowsprit when it goes underwater” club. She was out on the tippy end feeding the jib into the slot when we went up, up, up and big wave and came down, down down and the bowsprit and Ann were christened by the Southern Ocean.

We Found Some Wind

Last evening it was looking a little grim. We are pretty much out of fuel, except for our last 10 gallons of “get in” fuel in the jerry jugs on deck. By 10 PM the wind had all but quit. The speedometer was bouncing between zero and 0.5 knots. Charisma was pretty much just drifting in slowly spinning circles. But, at 12:01 AM the wind started to fill in. Within minutes we had a whopping 6 knots of wind and were going 3 knots boatspeed. That wind held and the rest of the night we were making between 3 and 4 knots toward Tahiti. Today, the wind increased a bit more, in the 10-15 range and we’re still there at 8PM doing 5-6 knots. Now all we need is for it to go just a bit more south and we can lay Tahiti on this tack. If it doesn’t we’re going to miss Tahiti to the west and we’ll be out here another day or two longer than if we can ride this wind straight in.

So, that’s about the extent of things here. It’s beautiful, the moon is up, sky is pretty clear and we’re just trucking along almost in the right direction. What a difference from the first half of this passage. Good thing there’s a well-known cruisers’ affliction known as “passage amnesia”. We’ve already almost forgotten the terror of the lightning and 50 knot winds.

Almost.

Position: 21 degrees, 21 minutes south; 155 degrees, 16 minutes west 112 nm (motored all night)

Today was one of those days that make you forget about the other ones. Blue sky, blue water, and warm weather. It would have been perfect with just a touch more wind. We’ve had about 6 knots of wind most of the day and are able to make about 3 knots boat speed out of that. Sometimes we stretch to 4 knots. We’re hoping for a tad more wind tomorrow, but nice to have calm conditions after chasing that low across the Southern Ocean. Now we’re in a high, so the air is more stable and we don’t worry (as much) about crazy squalls and stuff. We actually have no reefs in the main for the first time in over two weeks and we changed jibs to “the whomper”, our really big jib. The other nice thing about the change in weather – we have stowed the long underwear. We’re definitely in the tropics now, so have been all day in shorts, tee-shirt and flip flops. Nice.

Oh yeah, the green flash. This evening watching the sun go down I noticed the clarity around the horizon and said to Ann, “Watch for the green flash” (you’ll have to google the reason for this – too long to explain). She turned and we counted down, watched the sun dip and…blam, the biggest green flash either of us has seen. The sun disappeared and a second later this huge flash of fluorescent green lit up where the sun was. We were both so stunned we started cheering. A great end to a gorgeous day.

But wait, there’s more! Two hours later, the glow of the moon on the horizon announced an imminent appearance. Ann shouted, “Charisma time!” and I ran below to prepare our evening concoction. Got ’em done just in time to celebrate the moonrise with our favorite cocktail.

So, we’re 373 nm out of Papeete as of this writing. That’s the good news. The not as good is we’ve about used up our fuel and have light winds for at least the next four days, so if the wind dies, so does our speed. (We’re doing 2.3 knots right this moment). We might average 80 or so miles a day, so we’re still some days out. And, the wind looks to be heading us – meaning that at some point it may force us away from our destination. We’re trying to get “some easting” in right now and hope for the best.

It’s all part of sailing. At least it’s warm.

Evening. The sun has set. The remains of its warm glow have given way to the deep blue of the night. There is not a cloud in the sky, nor a whisper of wind. Nothing disturbs the horizon vying for our attention.

We are in a perfect, limitless amphitheater. The water’s smooth, gently undulating surface perfectly reflects the stars. The horizon is an indistinct blur vaguely suggesting a transition from sea to sky.

We feel as if we are floating on a sea of stars.

The moon boasting of its fullness tonight, rose with a gentle, golden glow. Higher now, it has turned an almost blinding platinum in the dark night. Only the most confident stars are visible beyond its glow. Below it, leads a shimmering path across the ocean. Perhaps leading to infinity on such a night, in such a place.

We can only feel honored and at the same time humbled in being here.