April 2, 2014
Logbook – April 2, 2014
Passage Log Highlights
- 0024 AIS target Andante
- 0715 Land Ho!
- 0812 D–>A main + genoa
- Squall – main (1 reef) + genoa (2 reef)
- 1045 Oh crap! engines on, sails down – up to 40 kts, gusts to 47
- 1322 Arrive Hiva Oa, Atuona, The Marquesas, French Polynesia
Daily Notes
- Brenden says, “It smells sweet, like pollen”
- 2000 Spanish wine
Email to family and friends dated April 2, 2014
Subject: PPJ Day 23 – The End
Departure from Punta de Mita, Nayarit, Mexico: 11 March 12:12 (UTC – 6 hrs)
Arrival at Hiva Oa, Iles Marquesas, French Polynesia: 2 April 11:52 (UTC – 9.5 hrs)
Days at sea: 22 days 1 hr 10 min
We had a hell of an arrival, though. We had a lot of squall activity through the night. On my first watch I was faced with a parade of squalls and was trying to run parallel to them, but the last one in the line nailed us and I saw heavy rain and a max of about 28 kts, with full canvas. Not ideal, but not terrible. On my second watch I was faced with another parade of squalls, this one longer and with bigger pink blobs (on radar), so even though Tim had asked me to wake him at sunrise, I still had to wake him early because I didn’t want to get nailed again. I reefed the head sail alone, but needed Tim to reef the main, so I got him up, and we reefed, and… the squalls dissipated. Of course.
When we were close to the island, all the squalls on radar were behind us moving across our path, so we were clear and in the home stretch. I even turned the radar all the way off, not standby, off. When we reached the tip of the island the wind shifted suddenly and hard to the NE, which meant the squalls were now being blown right towards us. We got hit suddenly, and a little bit flat footed, with a doozy. We saw low 30s with full canvas before we put one reef in the main and 2 in the genoa. Then we got seriously nailed. Sustained 40 kts with gusts up to 47. (Sound familiar?) The second reef still wasn’t an option due to a fully chafed line, so we needed about a half a second to decide to just engine up and drop all sails. We were so close, we did NOT need this drama. Turning into the wind and dropping the main was a bit of a hobby horse ride, but we are a pretty well oiled machine at that maneuver by now, so it wasn’t too bad. However, we really weren’t prepared for that maneuver in terms of the mess all around the boat, and the boys were awesome at tending to the fishing pole that almost blew out, and the BBQ cover, and the dinghy painter that was trailing behind us (which would have been a disaster had it fouled an engine)
After that, of course, the wind subsided. A bit later, I take a seat at the salon table, glance at the electrical panel (which we all do by habit, now) and notice a bilge pump is running. What!!! A quick inspection reveals the head on the SB side (mine and Tim’s side) is full of water and it’s splashing out and into the bilge. Luckily, the bilge pump does its job and we are able to pump most of the water out of the bathroom through the shower drain pump. It didn’t take long to realize that the small portal in our shower was left open. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So, when we turned into the wind to reef, and then to drop the main, sea water just poured into there. We should really be pulling everything out of the bilge and drying it out now, but we’re not. That will come tomorrow.
Just minutes after anchoring and turning our engines off an alarm on shore went off. We poked our heads out, looked around, and no one was reacting. Colin had emailed us about the quake off of Chile yesterday, so we had Tsunami warning on our minds. So, I radioed our contact on shore that we are going to check in with tomorrow to inquire, and luckily, she told us it was just a test the do on Wednesdays.
We’ve met a few new people already even though we haven’t ventured off the boat yet. All are from Europe and have come via the Galapagos. Would you believe it that one guy told us that we had good timing, that the entire anchorage was evacuated yesterday for, yes, you guessed it, a TSUNAMI scare.
All that aside, we are in paradise now. And we are soaking it up. We arrived to a VERY crowded anchorage, in fact, we were the 12th one in here and everyone is stern anchored, so we all fit. All eyes were on us as we threaded the anchorage to the very back near shore and dropped stern and bow anchors. NAILED IT!
We will sleep well tonight.
—– At 4/2/2014 6:30 AM (utc) our position was 09°48.18’S 139°01.86’W
Gresham Family Exodus 