Category: Uncategorized

July 26-29, 2014

When we left Suwarrow, we were part of a community, with most of the boats going to Apia, Western Samoa, and a few heading for Pago Pago, American Samoa.  Lady Carolina was in Pago Pago and True Blue V was in Apia, so we decided to let the weather decide our ultimate destination.

We left towards the back of the pack at about 10 am July 26th, and by noon, both engines were off, and we were sailing along nicely.  Then by 7 pm we had over 20 knots forward of the beam and we were reefed down and still pushing a speed over ground of 8 knots.  It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it’s always nice to see the miles tick away, especially at the beginning of a long passage.  On the SSB radio net, all of our monohull friends were really complaining about how uncomfortable it was, so either they are just bigger whiners or catamarans ARE more comfortable.  At least in these conditions.  Even though the seas were bigger this passage, Brenden and I weren’t feeling nearly as bad as on our passage from Mopelia to Suwarrow.  It’s not always about the size of the seas, but the direction and frequency.  Random, high freqency, beam on swells are very uncomfortable in Exodus.

By 6 pm the second evening (July 27th) the wind had shifted behind us, and we were moving along nicely under headsail alone, but that didn’t last long.  The night brought sporadic wind and lots of squalls, and by morning (July 28th) we were motoring without sails. Unfortunately, our configuration stayed that way for about a full 24 hours.  At this point we knew we’d be going to Pago Pago since the wind wasn’t cooperating for us to make it all the way to Apia.

We finally got wind again the following morning (July 29th).  It was pleasant sailing for a brief time, but then conditions deteriorated, and we got seriously slammed on our final approach.  After motoring for a day we were so happy to get wind again, but sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.   By the time we passed by the east tip of the island we had 25-30 kts of wind, 4-5 meter seas (the biggest we’ve seen since our San Felipe passage), pouring down rain, and fog.  And to top it off we had a 2+ kt current pushing us north making it hard to round the island.  We still had to use the engines in order to point at our destination!  We were close enough that we had VHF ratio contact with Lady Carolina, which made those last few hours a little more tolerable.  It was seriously uncomfortable and we couldn’t get there quick enough, but it was never scary.

When we made the turn into Pago pago harbor, the sea state changed instantly and we had a nice motor to the anchorage, except for the fact that it was so foggy we could barely see.  My log keeping wasn’t very good on this passage, and I don’t really remember the details, but by the time we arrived BOTH of our head sails were torn, so we limped to the anchorage with scars to document our experience.

Originally posted on July 25, 2014, by cruisingrunner

We’ve observed, and we’re not the only ones, that the cruising community as a whole is more friendly, relaxed, and fun to be around than society at large. There is less stress and more free time (except for all the boat projects) than back at home, and it really shows. Unfortunately, as with any cross-section of society, there are jackasses out here too. But at least for me they stand out more, and I also find them more amusing now than irritating, which may be a reflection of my own shift in outlook since becoming a cruiser.

Well, there is this one particularly amusing fellow on one of the morning SSB radio nets [note 1] that just has me floored. We first noticed him the morning they announced that they would be starting up a new net for all the boats west of Bora Bora. This makes a lot of sense as the fleet gets more spread out over more time zones, and it will also make each net a bit shorter in duration, and people can decide if they want to listen to one or both or neither. I was immediately on board, not that it mattered, even if I wasn’t it certainly wasn’t my place to make any judgments, and I certainly would never have complained. Well, this amusing fellow was obviously not happy about this at all. He made sure that he was, “on the record,” as severely disagreeing with this decision. He kept saying, “Why are you trying to divide the community!?!” He wasn’t constructive. He wasn’t nice about it. He was just sour. We listened to him rant on and on, and Tim astutely observed, “What a jackass!” I have a real problem with people who complain over volunteer activities when they themselves aren’t doing any of the volunteering. It used to irk me back in our Little League days, and it irks me now as well. And now we notice him when he checks in, and wow, what a jerk. I hope we don’t ever run in to that guy.

I was a little bit cranky during my run today, which may be why I’m a bit spun up about the jackass. I’m sure I was partly cranky because it was so hot out, about 31 deg C. But also a bit because we are preparing to leave Suwarrow tomorrow. Not that I’m particularly attached to Suwarrow, I mean it’s very nice and everything, but so is everywhere we go these days. It’s just that I’m getting a little dissatisfied with the pace we are having to move. When we were in Mexico, we had all the time in the world, and we got the chance to plant ourselves in a few places for awhile. Here it’s go, go, go, because it’s a big ocean, and there’s so many places to go and only so many months in the cruising season before we have to leave the tropics to avoid the cyclones.

We will spend a couple of months in Tonga, and I am really looking forward to that.

-D.

[note 1] SSB stands for Single Side Band and it’s basically a type of HF radio, just like a HAM radio. We use it for long range communication out here, and cruisers often organize daily radio nets where we can connect and share information on weather, destinations, or whatever.

For a follow up see Who’s the Jackass Now?

Originally posted on July 22, 2014, by cruisingrunner

When we were back in Bora Bora, Tim met a husband and wife from Istanbul, Turkey who had taken notice that I was running. They told him they were runners too, and that their favorite place to run so far was in Nuku Hiva. Too bad I didn’t start running again sooner. Anyway, that couple are here in Suwarrow, and I got to meet them at the onshore cruisers potluck we all had our first night here. They let me know that they had scouted the motu here, and that it really didn’t look possible to run. How disappointing. After a 5 day ocean passage I wouldn’t even be able to run here?

The next day I paddled ashore to scope things out myself, and the prospects didn’t look good. There is a trail across the motu past the “yacht club” and book exchange, but it’s probably only a tenth or two of a mile across. I decided if I were desperate, I could do short laps. While I was doing my exploring I ran into Vaiane, the wife of the park ranger here at Suwarrow. We chatted a bit (in English!) and she told me that at low tide it’s possible to walk around the entire motu. OK, that’s my plan. Come to shore at low tide, and if you can walk around it should be possible to run, even if slowly.

Low tide today was at 11:45 am, so I paddled to shore and set out starting towards the southern end of the motu, towards the pass [note 1]. The running was like off-road running for about the first half to 3/4 of a mile. The terrain alternated between small bits of loose coral and the lumpy bumpy coral shelf, and it was tolerable, even if very slow. Once I got around to the other side of the motu I had to put on the brakes. From here and the rest of the way around the terrain alternated between very large chunks of loose coral and a very ragged and rough coral shelf. I had to walk unless I wanted a sprained ankle or a broken neck. So, at that point, it was much more like a hike than a run. The views were enjoyable, as usual, and I spotted a vessel approaching the pass from the east. At the far north end of the motu there were hundreds of birds, small black ones with white beaks, and they were not very happy about my presence. The entire way around the motu was just under 1.5 miles, and I went around 1.5 times, since I took the trail back the second time rather than hike around. So, not much of a run today, but a decent outing all the same.

Suwarrow has been a more social experience for us than our last two stops. There are several other boats here and we’ve had a potluck on the beach, a happy hour on one of the other boats. Since Exodus is neither the only nor the biggest catamaran in the anchorage, happy hour was not on Exodus, like it usually is. Today there will be a gathering on the beach to celebrate a birthday, and I will eat cake with less guilt having gotten in the run/hike this morning.

-D.

[Note 1] Atolls are basically a lagoon surrounded by a coral reef. For yachts to enter the lagoon, there must be a break in the reef wide and deep enough for passage, sorry if I’m being captain obvious. These breaks are referred to as “passes” and an atoll may have none, or it may have several. Some passes are challenging, and entry and exit must be timed to be close to a slack tide for minimum current rushing either into or out of the lagoon. Some atolls, like Maupiti and Mopelia, never really have a slack tide as the current is always flowing out because water is always spilling into the lagoon over the reef. We have found that it is easier to navigate a pass if you are going with the current, if for no other reason than you are through it faster. The most current we have had to contend with was when we were entering Mopelia and we had 4 knots of current against us. Probably a greater concern than current itself is the existence and size of any standing waves caused by the combination of wind, swell, and current. The biggest standing waves we have had to go through was when we were exiting Maupiti and they were between 2-3 meters. A bouncy ride, but not dangerous. Suwarrow has a single pass, and we had about 1.5 knots of current and no standing waves when we entered. It is one of the more straightforward passes.

Originally posted on July 20, 2014, by cruisingrunner

It’s extremely difficult, dare I say, impossible, to stay active on passage. Running is out of the question for obvious reasons. At least I hope it’s obvious. It is obvious, right? The boat motion is a huge hindrance. It’s hard enough just to move about the boat doing mundane things like, oh I don’t know, walking, that thinking about doing anything more ambitious seems downright dangerous. I have heard of people using stairstepper machines, but I just can’t see it, unless you are motoring along in dead calm seas, I just don’t see how you would keep your balance on such a thing. One option could be doing stair repeats in one of the companion ways [note 1] while holding on to the handrail, but this seems even more overwhelmingly boring than when I used to walk the stairs in our condominium with a sleeping baby in a front pack because I was desperate for exercise. And forget about Yoga. This is hard enough at anchor with the little bit of bobbing and swinging, forget about it underway. Stretching, just stretching, is an option. It’s easy to hold on or sit down in order to do a little stretching. But that’s about it.

But, oh, if that were the only hindrance to physical activity. If only there weren’t another whole layer of issues for some of us to contend with. The motion of the boat makes it hard to move about, but it also causes havoc in other, more intolerable ways as well. I’m talking, of course, about sea sickness. Half of our crew, my husband and 12 year old son Alex, have absolutely no problem with this. They can read, play on the computer, do school work, do boat projects, all while the boat is rocking and rolling and heaving about. Unfortunately, the other half of our crew, me and my 11 year old son Brenden, are not so lucky.

Sea sickness is a very broad terms and has many different manifestations, from sea lethargy to sea dizziness to sea queasiness to the full fledged sea vomiting. For me, it very rarely goes beyond sea lethargy, which I call, “The Blehs.” The Blehs are very powerful, though, and they sap all of your energy and hinder any and all productivity. I’m not just talking about exercise, I’m talking about cooking dinner or even brushing your teeth. When you have The Blehs, you simply don’t want to do anything. You cannot function like your usual self.

It is very hard to describe. In fact, while planning this blog post in my head I realized that I cannot even give a list of symptoms that I feel when I have The Blehs. You know, like when you have the cold or the flu and you can say that your throat hurts and your nose is congested, and you are achy and cold with fever. I’ve thought about it, and I’ve really tried, and I cannot tell you what is wrong with me when I have The Blehs. I can’t say that this hurts or that doesn’t feel well, I mean, I very rarely, if ever, even feel nauseated. The only thing I can point to is what I feel like doing. For example, yesterday at lunch time there was no way I could even fathom fixing anything, not even a glass of water, for lunch, and I knew that Brenden was feeling the same way, and I also knew it was important for us to eat. So, I asked Alex to make ramen noodles for us, and I only had to give him a second’s worth of puppy dog eyes for him to agree. Oh yeah, and I had to say it would be good for Brenden’s tummy. Those brothers, they look out for each other. In contrast, today, I had no trouble preparing cheese and crackers and then making a tuna poke with the fresh yellow fin tuna we had in the fridge. There’s just no accounting for what the difference was in how I felt. I can’t explain it. On the one hand I just wanted to crawl in bed and close my eyes and do absolutely nothing and on the other hand I was pretty close to my normal self.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I was lying in bed with The Blehs, and all of a sudden, I noticed myself thinking about how messy the salon was and that I really need to give it a thorough cleaning. Without even knowing it I had started to feel better, and my only clue was that I now cared that the salon was a mess, because an hour before with a huge case of The Blehs, I couldn’t have cared a whisper that there was any mess anywhere in the boat.

Usually The Blehs are shortlived and last only a day or so. However, sometimes they can linger on, like this current passage, where it has taken me about four days to get my sea legs. And sometimes they can come and go depending on the changing nature of the boat motion. It all has to do with boat motion. Some motion is much more physiologically tolerable than others, it seems.

So, yeah, staying active on passage has its challenges. But luckily passage making represents a very small percentage of our overall cruising experience. And given the fact that we get to visit places cruising that we never would have otherwise, I guess it’s a necessary evil, and one I willingly endure.

-D

[note 1] If you know anything about boats you might be confused about my plural use of the word “companionway,” since the companionway is the stairway that leads down from the cockpit to the living area down below. But if you know just a little bit more about boats you might immediately understand that we have a catamaran, which has two hulls, hence two companionways.

After I got over my disappointment that our core puddle jump buddy boat group was dispersed, I made an observation.  For the first time in a while, we were making new friends.  You see, we are most definitely not outgoing people.  It’s not that we’re anti-social or overtly unfriendly, it’s just that we don’t naturally put ourselves out there.  When I mentioned earlier that I was disappointed that the boys were still having to be coerced to play with new kids, I should have been fair and admitted that those two apples didn’t fall far from the tree.  So, our natural disinclination towards extrovert behavior coupled with the fact that we were always with people we were already comfortable with meant for sure that there would be no putting of ourselves out there anywhere.

But then we were alone, and it became obvious what a rut we had allowed ourselves to get into.  So, we looked on the bright side of our situation and used it as an opportunity for making new friends.  And then as soon as we could we rushed right back to our Lady Carolina security blanket.

Checking in and out of Suwarrow was pretty straightforward, and Harry the Park Ranger was pretty on top of things.  Within minutes of getting the anchor down he radioed us and let us know he’d be coming out to the boat and that we were not to go ashore until he had checked us in.  I had to ask him to give us about 30 minutes since Tim had gotten in the water to check the anchor.  Harry was right on time, and 30 minutes later he showed up at Exodus in his metal skiff. 

He was representing many aspects of The Cook Islands government (Customs, Immigration, quarantine, etc.) and he gave us a slew of paperwork to fill out.  There was a fee that was accepted in US dollars, so we never did have to exchange to Cook Islands currency.  I don’t recall how much the fee was, but I don’t think it was too outrageous.  In addition to all the forms, Harry took some sort of bug spray and did a few token sprays around the boat.  It seemed comical, and clearly, he was just checking a box because if we really had bugs, there’s no way those few sprays would have accomplished anything.

You are only allowed to stay in Suwarrow for two weeks, but since we were looking to leave at the first weather window, we didn’t butt up against this limit or have any experience with how strict it is followed. 

Checking out was easy.  I just went ashore and signed some papers.  The only tricky part was deciding when to leave and then sticking to that once you have gone through the checkout process.  Harry wasn’t very happy when people didn’t leave when they said they were going to, apparently.

July 21, 2014

Like Mopelia and the Tuamotus, Suwarrow is an atoll, but the pass is about as straightforward as they come, with the exception of not being marked at all.  So, we rely on our charts, the reports of other cruisers, and most importantly, our eyes to find the coral shelves that lie on each side.  We had a bit of a false start though, because we got just about to the pass entrance when we realized our depth sensor wasn’t working.  Tim was standing on the bow while I was at the helm, and he turned around and asked me the depth.  When it is too deep for the depth sounder to get a reading the instrument display blinks.  So, when Tim turned around and asked me the depth, I shook my head indicating that it was too deep to get a reading (which is somewhere around 500 ft).  He yelled back, “I can see the bottom!”  After a split second we both processed the situation.  Abort, Abort!  Tim gave me the, “Oh crap, turn around as fast as you can” signal. 

We turned around, power cycled all of the nav electronics, because sometimes when we transmit on certain frequencies with the SSB it wipes out our wind transducer, so we thought maybe that happened to the depth one.  No, that wasn’t it.  We figured out by slowly approaching that we just weren’t picking up depths greater than about 45 ft.  So, we cautiously proceeded through the pass and made it to anchor.

At anchor, Tim cleaned the depth sensor, but that wasn’t it.  So, we lived with it until we could get a new one.

Since leaving Mexico I hadn’t really participated in any SSB radio nets other than our private little mini-net, which had a different name everyday depending on the mood and inclination of whoever was net controlling on any particular morning.  But when we separated from everyone in Bora Bora, I found myself tuning into the Good-bye Isabela net, which was started by a group of boats when they were leaving Isla Isabela in The Galapagos, and it grew as they made their way across the pacific.  We had heard about it much earlier from one of TBV’s Aussie friends when we were in Fatu Hiva as well as from s/v Field Trip when we were in Tahanea (The Tuamotus), but it wasn’t until now that I started tuning in regularly. 

When we were in Maupiti I checked in for the first time, because a friendly voice was net controlling that day, and it was either that same day or shortly thereafter that they announced that another net, The bye bye Bora Bora net, was spawning to better service those vessels who were moving west faster than others, so specifically for those who had moved west of Bora Bora.  I thought it was a great idea, since the Isabela net was already overcrowded, but some others, specifically one guy, was pretty outspoken against it.  Anyway, it moved forward, and from then on, I was a pretty regular check-in on the Bora Bora net.

There was a core group of regulars, and they welcomed the Exodus crew into the group.  On our passages from Maupiti to Mopelia and then from Mopelia to Suwarrow I checked in pretty consistently.  So, when we got to Suwarrow, it was pretty cool to meet the gang.  The Southern Cross, Novae, Shakti, Sundancer II, Jac Tar, Tulu (who we had previously met in Nuku Hiva), and Keyif (Tim had actually met them in Bora Bora, they are runners too.) 

We had a sad moment on passage to Suwarrow.  We realized that our PPJ convoy of buddy boats was totally dispersed at that moment.  Chara was still back in the Societies (they have a 1-year visa for French Poly), Lady Carolina was in Pago Pago (American Samoa) and True Blue V was in Apia (Western Samoa).  We were still keeping in touch daily via SSB and we were hoping to reconverge eventually in Tonga.  But for the moment we were entirely spread out.