Author: richwest3

July 06, 2012

After our white-water rafting adventure, we went to Toau.  It’s a small atoll just northwest of Fakarava.  Instead of going in the pass and inside the atoll, we used the mooring balls provided in a little bay outside on the northeast corner of the atoll.  The bay is called Anse Amyot.

There’s not much here – just a couple of families that make this atoll their home.

It has some nice snorkeling and it was a pleasure to just pick up a mooring, rather than finding space to anchor.  Speaking of snorkeling, it was here that Cyndi was charged by about a five foot black reef shark.  It arched its back, lowered its pectoral fins and in a classic “I’m going to eat you” posture, charged right at her.  When it was about 5 feet away, she screamed through her snorkel, scaring both me and the shark.  He turned and darted away.  We got in the dingy and motored to another spot in the atoll to snorkel without the extra company.

And as usual, the sunrises and sunsets were wonderful.

The families that live on the atoll, particularly Gaston and Valentine, invite cruisers in for a dinner they prepare with wonderful fresh seafood and even lobster. -Rich

 

July 2, 2012

There are a lot of things to love about this life, and we post a lot of pretty pictures, but the reality is that there are many challenges that we face along the way. Some of them are relatively minor, and some are more difficult and even dangerous. What makes these challenges and discomforts worth enduring are the rewards: beautiful scenery, good food, new friends, and the excitement of novelty and discovery. There is a certain balance, what I call a golden ratio, of good to bad experiences that make this lifestyle worthwhile. Rich has nicknamed this the e/a quotient (Ecstasy/Agony). When this gets out of balance the wrong way, when the “agony” percentage gets too high, then a person has to re-evaluate the plan. Some people quit all together, some decide to cruise part time, and some simply wait for the balance to be restored.

Rich and I went through this process at the end of our passage to Fakarava. I will mention here that by the time we arrived in the Marquesas, we had accumulated a high “agony” balance. I have been meaning to write about the passage but just never got to it. I will sum it up by saying it was surprisingly difficult. We have made two passages to Hawaii and back (back is notoriously uncomfortable) and to Mexico, and we thought we knew the passage process very well. But we were surprised by this one. What we thought would be our most comfortable passage turned out to be the hardest passage we have ever done. We had good winds (and with that we were lucky) but we were knocked around by a harsh and relentless swell from the east pretty much the whole time. By the time we arrived in Hiva Oa, we had been “ridden hard and put away wet,” as I think the saying goes.

And so we began our Marquesas cruise with a deficit, but soon we were having experiences in the “ecstasy” category, and our quotient was coming back into balance. After beautiful Daniel’s Bay, we headed back to the anchorage we missed in Ua Pou (Hakahau) to wrap up our cruise of the Marquesas. We met some friends there and had a nice night with them before they headed on to another island. This left us with a weekend there while waiting for a weather window for our next passage.

At this point, it became apparent this town had some annoyances: young people partying and blaring music on the dock (right next to the boats) until 3am, few clouds which made for relentless heat during the afternoon, children who like to use your dinghy as a swim platform after you leave it (which means a dinghy full of water and sand when you get back), and one particular local who really makes a pest of himself as he “befriends” the boats anchored there (I won’t go into details on this, but trust me).

Needless to say, we were anxious to leave in spite of a weather forecast that was less than ideal. We did leave on a windless morning and ended up stopping at a beautiful anchorage on the other side of the island, which we had all to ourselves. The annoyances of the past weekend were quickly forgotten in this beautiful place. But we were feeling anxious to move on, and if we waited for ideal conditions, we could be here for weeks. Actually, the biggest problem was a predicted two days with little wind.

We did head out and had some lovely wind to for the first day or so; then we got into that predicted period of no wind. It was comfortable enough but no sailor is ever happy using that much fuel. It was a relief when the wind came back up, but then concerning when it kept going up, becoming gale-force winds on our final night. It was a rather harrowing trip to Fakarava, and once we got there, we had to kill time and wait for an in-going tide so we could get through the passage into the atoll.

Luckily, being at the north end, we had gotten out of the south swell. Rich was able to put the boat on auto pilot and motor slowly along the top of the atoll and back, killing the 3 hours we needed to kill. In the meantime, our e/a ratio was seriously out of whack once again as this passage, added to the passage from Los Angeles, made for big e/a deficit once again.

Sailing on the ocean takes strength, endurance and courage, and these are things we have less of than we did 10 years ago. We had to ask ourselves if we were really up to this, and start listing our options if we weren’t. We have good friends who are ahead of us on this trip, and they had decided to put their boat in storage in Tahiti early in August and then return again next April after a much-needed break. They, too, had a rough passage, and they have decided not to do this full time. Our strategy was just to list our options, and then to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks.

As often happens after a bad experience, you end up someplace wonderful and have an especially nice time. That is what happened to us in Fakarava, which has been wonderful enough to restore our e/a balance (even with the wild ride while exiting the atoll), and for the time being we have decided to continue on.

We still think we are going to New Zealand, but we have discussed the option of sitting out the off season in a place like Tonga or Fiji as the New Zealand passage is intimidating. Time will tell. For now, Fakarava was incredible. Next Toau and we are hearing reports that it’s a very magical place. Stay tuned. -Cyndi

e/a approximately equal to zero as we kill time before attempting to enter the north pass of Fakarava after a rough passage from the Marquesas.

July 04, 2012

A train leaves the station at 12:05 headed north. Another train leaves the same station headed South… What’s this have to do with white-water rafting? It resulted from failing to find an adequate solution to a similar word problem.

Atolls are large bodies of water surrounded by a thin strip of land made of coral that has built up over the millennia. The amount of water enclosed by the land can be huge. This water runs in and out of the atoll with the tides through narrow passes to the ocean. The current in these passes can sometimes reach 23 knots for particularly huge atolls with a single pass. Typically, the current can reach 5 or 6 knots (basically miles per hour) in most passes. Since our boat can only travel at about 5 or 6 knots, it leads us to this. We needed to leave Fakarava at such a time that we could travel with the outgoing tide in the north pass. The pass was one hour away from the anchorage. So far no problem but part two is that we needed to arrive at Toau at high or low tide so there wouldn’t be much current in that pass. Toau is about 30 miles away, at 5 knots boat speed, that’s six hours.

Part three is that we needed to both leave Fakarava and arrive at Toau during a time when the sun would be high in the sky so that we could see any coral heads in the water that might be shallow enough for us to hit. Now add to that the fact that of the various tide tables we have – tables showing when high and low tides are at various locations – are in total disagreement as to when favorable tides will occur. None of them seem to be even close to correct and this is a problem that everyone we’ve talked to seems to be having.

Since ax + by/cz + 32.8 can never equal m, we headed out at daybreak to hit the Fakarava pass with outgoing tide. That was the best we could do. I guess another boat worked the same equation and came to the same conclusion as they headed out at the exact same time we did.

All went well for the hour-long trip to the pass as we followed the other boat. All looked well as they turned towards the pass just ahead of us. Then we saw it. Cyndi asked “those big breaking waves are on the reefs to the sides of the pass, aren’t they?!?” Nope. They are all the way across the pass.

The water pouring out of the atoll into the ocean, meeting the ocean waves, causes very large waves that don’t move much – standing waves. They showed up on radar like a land mass between us and the ocean. We watched as the boat ahead of us slammed into the waves and rocked like some kind of demented carnival ride. I lost my nerve and decided to turn around and try again later, when the current wasn’t so strong. I thought how lucky we were to have someone test the waters ahead of us.

Now we were to have a new lesson in navigation software shortcomings. As we’d turned tail and ran back inside the atoll, I watched our position on our electronic chart plotter. It displays a little line in front of our boat that shows where we should be in 30 minutes at the speed we’re traveling. The little line was way ahead of our boat. Wow, we must be making great speed. Yep, a look at the speed through the water showed we were moving at about six knots but something just didn’t feel right. We didn’t seem to be getting any further away from the line of breakers. In fact, we seemed to be getting closer at an alarming rate. What’s the deal?

Turns out that the plotter uses the little paddle wheel under our boat to judge the boat speed and it can’t tell if the paddle is turning forwards or backwards – just that it’s turning. Ours was turning backwards, fast! We were actually moving into the pass, backwards at about six knots despite running the engine at full throttle, forward. We were going through the pass and the breakers one way or another, either forwards or backwards. We opted for forwards and turned around quickly. Now there was nothing to do but hold on for the wild ride.

We have no pictures of this because I was too terrified to be alone in the cockpit for even the seconds it would have taken for Cyndi to grab a camera. (I wanted to be close to her during my final seconds on earth.) OK, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but it was rough. We slammed through six foot breakers with green water coming over the deck. The cockpit looked like a swimming pool – a very angry one – with all the water that had broken over the boat. I was soaked. Everything was soaked. The white-water ride only lasted a few minutes, maybe five at most, but it seemed like an eternity while we were in it. After we were out, and my shaking subsided, it didn’t feel that bad.

In retrospect, I guess we were really in no great danger. The pass was very wide and the bordering reefs were a long way away. Once we started to go with it, even at low engine power, we were traveling about nine or ten knots. That’s faster than Legacy should ever go but it got us through quickly. The water was turbulent for at least a mile out to sea as the water from the atoll poured into the ocean.

Our entry into the little bay at Toau (Anse Amyot) was completely uneventful. It turns out that the pass there can probably be entered regardless of the tide (in all but very bad weather). Since the white-water trip through the pass at Fakarava, we’ve had two similar but less severe trips through the pass at Rangiroa. It seems that this is just kind of a way of life around atolls. You plan, do your best, and then get bounced around anyway! -Rich

‘Cause Rich wouldn’t let me get the camera!

July 3, 2012

July 3, 2012

Change of plans – brought on by a really bad case of what we think is food poising last night.   Cyndi and I both got it and we’re still feeling bad this afternoon.  We may head for Toau tomorrow or maybe the next day.  It’s nice not having a strict schedule.  Oh well, if you’ve got to be sick, I guess this isn’t a bad place to do it.  We’ll take this extended stay opportunity to post some more pictures. -Rich