06.05.2013- 23.05.2013 PACIFIC CROSSING TO MARQUESA ISLANDS
Pandai
Sun 5 May 2013 23:00
As we started the crossing Paul decided to tell me that he had read about a poor guy who had fell overboard mid-Pacific and his wife never found him. This happened a few days before set sail so, even though we were all aware of the dangers at sea, this sad news made it all feel more real.
We went through all the safety precautions and practices but one day, Tony accidentally dropped the red cheese grater container overboard, which Charlie and Lynsey were very upset about. So we thought we it would make a perfect Man Overboard Practice. All hell broke loose - there was shouting, pointing, trying to get the sails down quickly to be able to turn the boat round.....then I lost sight of it :-(
We thought as it was red we stood a good chance of finding it but we did not succeed. It sort of highlighted again how easy it is to lose something/someone at sea...and we never got back our lovely red cheese grater container :-(
One not so good day was when the sat phone ran out credit as it meant there would be no way to communicate outside of the boat and we still had two weeks before we arrived in the Marquesas. Luckily a message was able to be sent and Debs, Tony's wife, rescued us by topping up the credit from the UK - phew!!!!!
When we had reached the half way mark (1500 miles) we arranged to have an afternoon tea party! Charlie baked a yummy chocolate rum cake - which is probably the yummiest yummiest cake we have ever tasted! We made a variety of tasty sandwiches with the crusts cut off, put some silly masks on and had a jolly good time!! We watched the whole of Series 2 of 24 and were going to dress up as 24 characters for the party but it was a bit tricky to put together outfits!
The day before we arrived in the Marquesas we were caught in a rainstorm all day. It was miserable :-(
The outside door to Tony's cabin leaked, it pretty much looked like a waterfall in there so we took some pictures to send to the boat manufacturer. Also the ceilings leak in Tony's cabin and the saloon - there is now a waterbubble you can still see in the saloon :-/
We arrived at the first island in the Marquesas, Fatu Hiva, in the early hours on 23rd May after 17 days at sea! Wahooooo! It was an eventful day - as close as we were to land that we could almost touch it, a flippin windy monsoon decided to kick off! 30-50kt winds were being funnelled through the valley into the anchorage. The river became so fast flowing it turned the bay were were in brown and there were hundreds of coconuts floating past the boat and out to sea! It was really dangerous as anchors were dragging and boats were crashing into eachother.
We did eventually manage to step foot on dry / soggy land and took a walk. There were gorgeous waterfalls cascading down the tall cliffs due to the amount of rain there was. It was great to be on dry land and exploring a new place.