Ann and John meet the Bishop

Ann went to church early in the morning. Our friends on Orcinius were nice enough to pick her up at 0715 in their dinghy and they headed ashore. Their mission: church. Mine for the day was to charge the batteries with our new alternator (it’s been cloudy/rainy so the solar panels are at half capacity) and run the watermaker as we’re running low on water. Done and done.

Meanwhile, Ann, Lisa and John reported that the service was beautiful, the singing outstanding and a surprise, the Bishop of the Marquesas was present. Ann got to kiss his ring and then later talk with him. He is Polynesian, but has spent some time in Los Angeles and San Francisco and was very fond of SF. After church they toured town and bought some more supplies for the next leg (beer, we are almost out of Modela and are on to Hinano). Since it was Sunday, the stores were only open until 1130. Tomorrow is some sort of holiday we haven’t figured out yet, and again the stores are only open half day, so we’re going to have to get things done early. We’re hoping we can fuel, but that may have to wait until Tuesday.

Bob spent most of the day on the boat plotting the next leg. There are so many options/atolls in the Tuamotus. We have to decide what course we want to take and which ones to visit. Despite the number, a lot are “disqualified” because of being too difficult or dangerous to visit. Atolls in general are notorious for being difficult to enter. You have a giant basin inside the atoll that is ebbing and flooding twice a day through one or two small openings in the coral fringe. The result is currents of 6 to 10 knots bursting through the openings at certain times making for hazardous/difficult navigation and control of the boat. The trick is to approach them at slack water. The problem is that slack water is not always when the charts say it should be. The other issue is once you run the gauntlet and get inside, you are then presented with numerous coral heads lying just under water. Unless the sky conditions are just right (typically you want the sun a little behind you with no clouds and a little wind for maximum visibility into the water) you can’t see the coral and could bump into it. Well, it would likely be more of a CRASH! than a bump, so we want to avoid that too. If everything’s right, you can see 50-100 feet deep and thus can navigate around the obstacles. As of now, we’re looking at a “central” route (versus Northern or Southern route) through the atolls. The central route is less traveled than the Northern but the navigation is a bit more challenging and the atolls somewhat more difficult. We’ll see. For now, ones we’re looking at include: Raroia (our proposed landfall and the place Thor Hyerdahl and Kon Tiki make landfall from South America when he was trying to prove his theory of ancient migration into Polynesia), Kauehi, Toau, Rangiroa, Apatiki, Tikehau. In reality we’ll probably only have time to spend on three out of five. The list is still in flux.

The other fun thing about today was about the utility of having a ham radio license. We haven’t had time to use it much since making landfall, but as we’re getting ready to go back to sea (the Tuamotus are about 400 miles away, which is a three to four day trip) we’re been listening to some of the ham nets. Today we talked with some of our friends who are a week or so ahead of us and already in the Tuamotus. They are 400+ miles away. We also contacted our friend Dave from Camanoe who recently left Mexico for Hawaii. We successfully chatted for a while and exchanged our radio email addresses. Dave was about 300 miles off of Baja, or about 2800 miles away from where we are and we were able to sustain a conversation. It’s fun on two levels: One you can chat up people that far away without wires. Two, we now have friends cruising all over the Pacific that we are keeping in touch with.

Also, while here we’ve found that we’re not the only ones with a major breakdown (the alternator) in a place where there just are not any spare parts. We also consider ourselves lucky we fixed it so easily (knock on wood!) Orcinius has been waiting for two weeks to get parts for their outboard motor which is being cantankerous. ShantiAna caught a spinnaker sheet in their prop which wrapped around the shaft so tightly it stalled the engine and caused it to torque so hard it broke an engine mount. Picara is waiting for a new exhaust manifold as their burst in transit. All the stuff that has to ship in has to come through Tahiti. There is lots of paperwork and import fees and very little infrastructure to get stuff here. As I have mentioned, it was a miracle (and some hard work yesterday) that we found, adapted and replaced our alternator in a relatively short time. While we could have made it to Tahiti without it, I wouldn’t have chanced going through the Tuamotus without solid electrical capacity to run the radar/GPS. People used to do it, but there’re also a lot wrecks out here to testify to the difficulty of doing it successfully.

So, we rested today. Tomorrow we finish preparing for the next leg and hopefully leave on Tuesday. Back at sea again after a month in a delightful place called the Marquesas. Wonderful people, amazing vistas, a fun time and we both have our tattoos to remind us of this place and the journey to get here long, long, long` after we’ve left.