Sitting in Anaho Bay in The Marquesas we were making final preps for the four-night passage down to Raroia. We were delayed a bit because we had a leak in our dinghy, and it was taking longer than anticipated to locate it. This little delay meant we were still in the bay when a French Customs boat rolled in to do some inspections. They stopped at Lady Carolina first, and after boarding and being there about 15-20 minutes, they started heading our way. A brief VHF chat with Steve included the advice to declare all the alcohol we had on board up front, even if it’s more than you claimed on your check in papers. OK, no problem. They came aboard, declined any sort of drink or snack, brought out a copy of our clear in paperwork and asked if this is what we had on board. I said, “well, we may have a few more bottles of rum and vodka, and maybe some more wine too.” I really had no idea exactly how much we had on board, so I was just playing it safe. They started searching, but I quickly realized that they were only looking in the bilge compartments that have little finger holes to open them, and it just so happens we have only one of the three stashes of alcohol in a compartment with a finger hole (totally coincidental), so what they found matched pretty much with what was on our paperwork, and they were happy, and I was relieved. Additionally, when they were searching the salon, the boys were in the middle of a chess game, and they had to move, and their game didn’t survive the moving process. When they moved, they went down into Brenden’s cabin to play, so when the Customs Agents went to search that side of the boat, they just peaked in Brenden’s room, saw the boys playing, and moved on without searching so much as behind the door. Maybe they felt bad about the earlier chess game, who knows. Since our entire beer supply is in Brenden’s head, that meant we didn’t have to explain why we had more Pacifico than we declared either. They left happy that we had declared everything and moved on to the next boat. Afterwards, we learned that they found undeclared rum on Lady Carolina, but all they got was a lecture. So, it ended up being a net positive since the rum had been missing for a while. The silly thing, in hindsight, is that there was absolutely no reason not to declare everything we had on board when we arrived in Hiva Oa. No one boarded the boat and there were no duties to pay, so going forward, that will definitely be my approach. Declare everything.
Anaho is on the west end of the north side of Nuku Hiva. The wind was blowing pretty much due east, so we had the options of leaving the bay and heading west downwind and the get into the shadow of the island as we headed south, or we could head east upwind and motor just a short while and then have a beam reach as we turned south. I suggested the latter, it was agreed to, and, yeah, big mistake. The winds came more southeast as we turned the corner so we either had to motor longer or make a big, long tack. Plus, the seas were a mess from the reflection off the island. Anyway, once we cleared Nuku Hiva it was much better, but then we had to pass the lee of Ua Pou, so we were in an island shadow anyway, so there turned out to be exactly no redeeming aspects of turning right. So, from now on when asked which way we should go, the answer is always, “left, definitely left.”
The entire passage was a lumpy bumpy one. Our first night we had winds in the 25-30 kt range and we were hard into it on the port side. We weren’t really prepared for all the boat motion and things were rattling around and falling over. I hadn’t put the fiddles on the stove, and we really needed them in order to get dinner going, and I got myself a little seasick digging those out and putting them on. We were taking waves over the side, so we were appreciating our soft bimini around the helm as it kept that area nice and dry. The cockpit took a few waves all the way up onto the table, though, and the worst part of all was Alex’s cabin hatch started leaking. He came up while I was on watch, and he was clearly distressed, and he said water was pouring into his bed. I went down to take a look, but immediately realized there wasn’t much I could do without getting immensely seasick, so since Alex swore the hatch was actually closed, I asked him to wake his dad for help. Tim got up, took a brief look, came up and told me he thought the hatch wasn’t closed properly and that’s why water came in, and he promptly went back to bed. Of course, with the next big wave water once again poured into Alex’s bed, and I wasn’t much help to him in figuring out why, so he just “put a band-aid on it” and put a rag near the leak to guide the water and a large plastic bin on his bed under the rag to catch it. This worked OK for the rest of the passage.
The second day the wind moderated a bit down to 23-24 kts and then after that it was a pretty consistent 15-20. The worst part (other than the boat motion, of course!) was that we had to keep hatches closed due to water splashing onto the deck, so it was bloody hot in the salon and cabins. We encountered many squalls along the way along with a new phenomenon we hadn’t encountered before. On the backside of a squall after it had passed by us the wind would totally die. I mean dead calm. It was like the eye of a hurricane or something, and we even had to fire up an engine a few times to get out into the wind again. Even with all of these “squall shadows,” as we started calling them, we made really good time. We had planned for a four-night passage, and since timing our arrival for a slack tide was important for entering the pass, our fast speed early on was a bit concerning, and the rest of our buddy boats slowed down almost immediately. At that point, we decided to proceed without concern for our arrival time, just reef for safety as we normally would, and as we got closer if it became obvious, we couldn’t make it in three nights then we’d slow down. Going into the third night we were liking that decision because it looked like we’d make it at just the right time the next day if we could keep up a reasonable speed, which we did.
Gresham Family Exodus 