Author: cruisingrunner

So, I haven’t shaved my legs since we left Mexico.  My first dabbling with unshaven legs was way back in college, just after Andrew was born.  We became good friends with Angela and Uwe, a couple from Germany who had a son just a couple months older than Andrew.  I noticed that she didn’t shave her legs, and that totally appealed to me at that time in my life.  I was busy, mostly focusing on Andrew and school, and mostly not focusing on how I looked, so I embraced my newfound granola-ness.  I also became a vegetarian around that time, but that’s for another story.

This time, I mostly stopped shaving out of practicality.  In order not to waste the fresh water, I typically shave sitting on one of the back swim steps using sea water, and you can’t really do that while underway, so I figured for the long passage, I would abstain.  But then we got to the Marquesas, and I learned that hairy legs have a very real benefit that comes in most handy in the tropic, that is, as mosquito repellant.  Not really repellant, per se, but more like shield.  Tim has always commented that he has a natural mosquito barrier, and now I do to.

Fun fact: It is now the year 2022 and I’ve lived back in San Diego for 5 years, and I still don’t shave my legs.

We spent 5 days in Taiohae, the capital of The Marquesas.  Here are my memories, in no particular order:

1. Busy, crowded, rolly anchorage

2. Hours and hours at the coffee shop at the dock for internet.  Buy a $2 coffee, and you get all the wifi you want.  I would often purchase a fresh squeezed pamlemousse juice too.  Mmmmm.

3. The dinghy dock ladder.  First, if you parked too close to it at low tide your dinghy could get caught underneath it, and then as the tide rose it could pop your dinghy.  Second, the sides of the ladder stopped at the top wrung, so there was no higher leverage point to pull yourself up with.  It made for very awkward dinghy deboardings.

4. Fruit and Veggie market at o’dark thirty on Saturday morning.  Chaos.

5. Bad burgers, but good brick fired pizza.

6. Tim is becoming quite the seamstress.  He made a cover for our generator.

7. Finishing all of my chores before Tim was ready to leave, so I had a full day to take a solo walk around the entire bay.  It was a holiday and there were many families gathering for picnics and fun.

As cruisers we are no strangers to being jolted awake during a peaceful slumber.  Sometimes it’s a gust of wind through the rigging or sometimes its rain falling into our open hatch, and still other times it’s a little bit of boat motion at anchor that makes you jump up and check the time because you are sure you are underway and must have overslept your watch.  This particular morning at anchor in Controller Bay, we were awakened by a voice on the VHF radio asking for assistance.  Steve on Lady Carolina was first to respond, and it turns out it was someone he knew, a single hander, from back in Mexico.  The vessel is called Grace.  From what I gathered during that initial transmission, Grace’s engine was not working, and he was coming up on the rocks that were just at the entrance to the very large bay.  He suspected he was possibly out of fuel, but maybe the fuel gauge wasn’t working, so he wasn’t sure.  Steve responded that he’d launch the dinghy and be out to help him as soon as possible.  Shortly after, Craig on True Blue V responded that he’d be out to help too. 

At this point I got on the radio and asked Grace what his position was, so we could see how far away from us he was and how close he really was to rocks before we entertained going out in a dinghy to help.  Seconds after that Steve got back on the radio and resumed his conversation, so I just listened, but didn’t really gather any new information beyond his position coordinates that I had asked for.  Tim quickly plugged those into his iPad, and responded with, “F that.”  Grace was just at the edge of the bay and nowhere near the rocks.  It’s about as big as any anchorage ever gets, and he should be able to sail in and anchor no problem. 

I don’t remember exactly how it went, but Tim got persuaded to go out and help.  True Blue V’s dinghy outboard is only 8HP, so it wouldn’t be practical for the trip, so Tim and Craig went in our dinghy and Steve and Kyle went in their dinghy.  At some point I suggested they take some diesel, in case that’s the problem.  Tim was very cranky about all this and refused to go too far out in the anchorage until it was clear that 1) Grace actually needed assistance, and 2) There was anything an additional dinghy and 2 people could do to help.  Following the VHF traffic, it appears that Grace started sailing away from land, and at that point Tim absolutely refused to follow.  Grace was clearly out of danger of any rocks and was clearly moving under sail. 

Steve and Kyle went after him, though.  And to make a long story short, Steve boarded Grace from his dinghy and left Kyle in the dinghy being towed, since that was safer than trying to board.  Grace’s skipper did not seem to be firing on all cylinders and seemed to be more interested in serving tea and chatting then doing anything about the situation.   Steve helped him sail all the way NOT to our bay, but to the next bay over, Taiohae, which is the capital of Nuku Hiva.  He helped him anchor, and then he and Kyle drove all the way back in the dinghy.  He believes that without his help Grace may have just sailed back out to sea and something bad could have happened.

At first blush, it might seem that Tim was being cold and heartless.  But after doing an objective assessment of what happened, it’s clear that Tim was being sensible.  And I’m not the only one who thinks this.  Leann, from True Blue V, took this as a learning opportunity and put together a checklist of things to ask and do when responding to any sort of call for help.  Being nice and helpful is a good thing, but not at the expense of putting yourself or any of your own crew at risk.

One of my reference books actually says the following:
“Anyone who encounters another person or vessel at sea who is in need of assistance must render that assistance as long as it can be done without endangering the passengers, crew, or vessel rendering aid.”

In hindsight, Grace didn’t really need physical help.  His problem was he was out of sorts a bit after completing the Pacific crossing alone and while hand steering most of the way (his autopilot failed).  Perhaps with a little more careful handling of his initial VHF call for help we could have calmly talked him through it and could have led him safely to anchor in our anchorage by voice.  I don’t know.  I wasn’t there.  I did not personally assess his state of mind.  I do think, however, that understanding the facts a bit better before rushing out of the anchorage in the dinghies would have been the more prudent thing to do.

I learned a lesson that day, and I’ve taken Leann’s checklist, added my own thoughts and commentary, and I keep it in my comms notebook.

And I’m so very glad Tim was as levelheaded as he was that morning.

While in the village of Taipivai (called “Typee” by Herman Melville) we took our dinghy into the river (at high tide so we could get through the shallows) to the town and tied it up to a concrete wharf.  We walked around a bit and checked out the few stores.  At one of the stores, we ordered bread for the next day, and they wouldn’t let us leave without also taking a box full of bananas, “gratis.”  It rained on us a bit, but we still enjoyed stretching our legs and getting out a bit.  When we got back to the dinghy, we noticed something was missing.  Our dinghy painter!  The painter is the bit of lined used to tie it off to a dock or whatever.  However, they were thoughtful thieves, in that they didn’t just take the painter and let our dinghy drift away.  They took our spectra harness that we mostly use when anchoring the dinghy and tied that to the dock.  They took our very cheap Home Depot painter and left the very expensive spectra harness.  We got a good laugh about it.

The next day our friends on True Blue V parked their dinghy on the beach and tied their painter to a tree, so it wouldn’t float away when the tide rose.  Would you believe that when they got back their painter was also stolen.  And the thieves were thoughtful enough to pull their dinghy up higher on the beach to avoid the tides.

Our next time to shore we all brought extra line and just set it on the dinghy for the thieves, but I guess they had fulfilled their rope needs, because they didn’t take what we left.  Or maybe they just don’t like handouts.

The beautiful white sandy beach offered more than fun in the surf and sun.  All four boys (Alex & Brenden & the two Lady Carolina boys) were playing on or near shore with their surfboards, when Tim and I hear Brenden start yelling, “Mom!  Alex needs help!”  They are close to the boat at this point and Brenden is paddling Alex back on one of the surf boards, and Alex is in obvious distress.  Once he was on board, we could see that he had pink welts all over his chest, stomach, and one of his arms.  He was crying, and saying, “it hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” and Alex doesn’t cry.  I obviously gasped or made a face or something when I saw the welts, because Tim yelled at me, “You’re not helping!” 

We went about putting vinegar all over his welts, but this didn’t seem to be helping, so we tried baking soda and ice.  This really seemed to help the pain, so we kept this up for a while.  He was in pretty much agonizing pain for about 30-40 min, and then it seemed to lighten up for good.  He rallied and even went over to Lady Carolina with us that evening for a potluck.  He got to show off his welts.

Reading up a bit more after the fact, the first aid book said to initially put a paste of baking soda and sea water on the welts in order to scrape off any loose tentacles that are still attached and possibly still releasing venom.  However, it says, absolutely do not use fresh water since this activates the venom already there, so we blew it by using the ice, I guess.  Then it said to use vinegar to continue neutralizing the stings.  The ice seemed to help since it numbed the stings, but maybe it would have passed more quickly overall if we hadn’t used fresh water.  Of course, there were lots of jokes all around about who would pee on it next time it happens.  I guess we can thank the sitcom Friends for the fact that it is now common knowledge that if you don’t have vinegar, you can use pee instead.

I’ve already mentioned in a previous essay how one of our younger cruising friends said to me, “but we love you guys,” referring to the old, or rather, middle aged crowd, but this really takes the cake.

We met a couple of young guys taking some time off from their lives to cross the Pacific from Mexico to Australia.  We hung out a few times, and they also went diving with Tim a few times.  The first time they came over to Exodus they brought a horrendous bottle of pink wine, and I thanked them by pouring them glasses and sharing it with them.  Well, it turns out one, or maybe both of them, I don’t remember, are also engineers, and one evening the rum was flowing, and one of them asked me what it was like being a woman in engineering back in my day.  Ha!

While in Atuona, I happened to be standing on shore waiting for one of my dinghy chauffeurs to come pick me up, when the Gendarme pulled up in his pickup truck.  He showed me a clipboard which held a picture of a young family: father, mother, daughter.  I noticed the mother and daughter were Asian, and they all looked happy.  The Gendarme asked me if I had seen them or their vessel, Norango.  They left Panama City on Feb 18 bound for The Marquesas, and they have not been heard from since.  It’s now early April, so I can see why their friends and family would be worried.  I let him know that no, I hadn’t seen them, and yes, I would ask around among the other cruisers.  Then he drove away, which sort of surprised me since I seemed to be the only one he talked to. 

Fast forward to Fatu Hiva, when a small, well weathered, vessel seemed to limp into the anchorage.  We were all enjoying drinks on Lady Carolina at the time, and from my vantage point I couldn’t make out the entire boat name, but I thought in ended in “…ango.”  It took several minutes for that to sink in, and when I realized it might be the missing vessel, I started asking everyone else what they thought the boat name was.  No one had a terribly good look, so I decided to paddle over and talk to them. If it’s not them, then hey, I’m simply welcoming a new boat to the anchorage.

Of course, it turned out to be them.  They were David, Lynn, and Sianna (6 years old) and you could tell right away that they had been at sea a long time and that they were so happy to be there because they just soaked up my presence, the presence of another person, which they hadn’t had in so long.  We talked for quite a while with me on my knees on my paddle board, and I told them about the Gendarme looking for them.  They realized, yes, yes, everyone must be so worried about them, because unlike us, who transmit our position every 15 minutes via InReach and who send an e-mail via SSB radio almost daily, they did not have any means of long-range communication while at sea.  They would go to shore in the morning to notify the authorities of their arrival, but I offered to send emails to their families right then if they wanted me to.  I could just imagine how every night must be difficult for their loved ones not knowing their fate.

Once I made it back to Lady Carolina after stopping at Exodus to send those emails, I told Steve about them, and he right away headed over in the dinghy to invite them over, and apparently there was some reluctance on Lynn’s part, because David had already been imbibing much alcohol, but in the end, Steve talked her into it.  I think Siana was the happiest to come over.  Imagine a very social little 6-year-old girl at sea with her parents for 45 days.  She loved being with all the boys.  They let her play with the Legos and stuffed animals, and from the cockpit I could hear her constantly chattering away.  I felt happy for her.

We learned that they had, in fact, made landfall at The Galapagos hoping to take on fuel and water, but they were turned away by the Ecuador Officials unless they paid the outrageous landing fee.  They didn’t want to stay they just wanted to take on resources, but Ecuador still said no.  I guess they ended up getting water from another cruising vessel at some point.  Anyway, while the French Government was looking for them Ecuador made no report that they had stopped in The Galapagos.  So, that seems like a failure times 2 on the part of Ecuador.  First, turning away a vessel that is in need of resources is a safety issue, and the fact that they were turned away is negligence on the part of the Ecuador government, in my opinion.  Second, when contacted by the French government, they should have had some record of their visit to The Galapagos, no matter how brief, to report back.  Since The Galapagos was a planned stop for them, as far as anyone knew, they had never even made it there.  So, “Boo!  Boo, Ecuador, Boo!”