Latitude 30 north,
longitude 122 west
I am on morning watch, drinking a
cup of coffee as we are off the coast of Baja Mexico
headed toward Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands.
We have 4 hour rotating watches all day long with a couple of 2 hour dog
watches at night. The rule being that you scan for any traffic every 10 minutes
but we haven't seen any traffic for the last 2 days. We have an auto pilot so
no one needs to steer 24x7.
We finally sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge late Wednesday afternoon, the
19th. The provisioning & preparation for the trip took much more than we expected
& we could not have done it without the help of our good friends & crew
Anne & Peter Alston.
We had a good going away party at
the marina with local friends. An overseeing the line handling gurus in the
blue jacket is fearless night watcher Edie who crewed on our shakedown cruise
up from San Diego
the week before. That was a rough ride "uphill". Thank you
Edie!
The highlight for friends &
their children was a boat ride to the fuel dock!
We have sailed about 500 miles so
far & the total for this passage is about 3,000 miles. The Marquesas
are just below the equator at 100 S latitude 1400 longitude. Though some of you
may know of the Marquesas from the Survivor show, others of you may know of
them as the islands that Norweigan ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl sailed to in 1947
aboard the raft Kon-Tiki from Peru
to prove that the Pacific
Islands were populated by
people from the East. We are living much more comfortably than they did on
their balsa raft. Or boat is 40 feet with a 13 foot beam with all the modern
amenities you could imagine (except a washer/dryer, though I do have a
collapsible bucket & washboard (!) for those times when we can’t find
a local Laundromat or laundress).
We are cruising along at 6 knots
with a wind of about 10 knots. We expect the wind to pick up in next couple of
days as we cross the Pacific high pressure system. Our large spinnaker sail has
helped a lot; with its stars & stripes design, we hope to only visit
islands that are currently friendly with the U.S.
We have now settled into passage
mode & expect this passage to be 24 days. We are eating well as our stores
are still fresh & refrigeration is working well. To be sure, we are
consuming more calories than we burn with good French cheese & apple crumb
but Anne & I manage to do an exercise video in the boat’s main cabin
everyday. (yes, we do have a TV with DVD & will be kept well entertained at
anchorage as our friend Charlie sent us about 50
DVDs!) We do look forward to lots of
swimming & hiking when we make landfall.
A little on the Marquesas: they are
volcanic islands with 2,000 ft vertical spires & vegetation that ranges
from dessert to lush jungles. There are many archeological sites including the
largest ancient stone tike in French Polynesia.
The islands were originally populated between 500 to 300 BC. The islands have
been the setting of Melville’s Taipee & Somerset Maugham's Miss
Thompson. Gauguin also left Tahiti for the
Marquesas in 1901 to get away from the local clergy who disdained the
savagehood that he aspired to. At his house in the Marquesas, he put a plaque
over the door proclaiming it “Mason du Jouir” (House of Pleasure)
& he outraged the locals with his seduction of young girls. He died there
& his grave is in the town of Atuona
which we hope to visit. The only official port of entry for air travel into the
islands is Papeete, Tahiti
which is 700 miles away. So, anyone flying there must go through Tahiti. Since the islands are way off the beaten path,
the 200-300 boats that arrive annually are really the island's only visitors.
More to come, Courtney
