Bombing along!
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sun 11 Apr 2010 08:33
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Sunday 11 April 0042 Local 0742UTC
05:38.54S 109:20.38W
Have you ever been is a situation where things are
going so well that you feel sure by the law of averages something must go wrong
soon? Well we are in that situation right now. We have never had such good
sailing or such trouble free passagemaking so I am nervously waiting for
the bang, the severe weather, the light winds, god forbid an
injury.......
So this morning in daylight we shall give the
ship the once over and have a re-briefing of the crew lest we become
complacent, and check over everything else that we can. In the
meantime - we are setting the heather on fire. We have had five straight
days averaging exactly 220 miles VMG - VMG! per
day. The last two four hour watches have
seen 80 miles VMG to Marquesas. These numbers are breaking our own records. I
dare not even tell you what the plotter currently shows as our ETA. However the
one thing we know for certain is that this will
all change. I will however risk telling you that it is possible that we will
cross the half way point on Monday morning one week after we left Santa Cruz in
the Galapagos - scary!
Everyone is well on board and Trish is doing a
sterling job looking after us and is in good form. She did not enjoy the
Atlantic passage and was not looking forward to this passage however she reports
that she is doing fine here in the Pacific. She is making us pancakes in the
morning since its Sunday and I am really looking forward to that.
The Marquesas are part of French Polynesia together
with the rest of the ones they did not blow up with atomic bombs, include
the Tuamotos, Gambier Islands, Tahiti and the Society Islands and the
Austral Islands and are a French overseas territory and perhaps
therefor they think theirs to blow up as they please.
The Marquesas have a separate language and do
not see Tahiti as their "capital" and are culturally and geographically
different from the other islands. Ultimately we must clear into French Polynesia
through Tahiti but first we must visit the Marquesas and the
Tuamotos.
As things stand we are supposed to check into the
Marquesas with the Gendarmerie at one of the two main islands Hiva Oa in the
southern group or Nuku Hiva in the northern group. We would however like to
visit Fatu Hiva first which is the most southern of the group, but we have been
getting stories of the local Gendarmerie fining boats who arrive there first. We
will do a bit more research and hope to slide in under their radar. First let's
at least get across the half way mark.
Angus will fly home from Pape'ete in Tahiti
after organising a local (3 hour!) flight from Hiva Oa. He currently hopes
to be able to leave earlier than planned for the three day trip back to
Shetland.
We hope to cruise Marquesas and the Tuamotos to
Pape'ete in Tahiti from where we hope to depart for a vist home on the
26th of May leaving Scotland again on the 7th or
so.
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