Day 14 - Happy Easter!!
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sun 23 Mar 2008 19:45
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08:45.552S 128:50.150W
Happy Easter everyone!!
Unfortunately, the Easter Bunny did not find us and
we are left with only a few leftover brownies and our emergency stash of
M&M's. My father suggested that the Easter Bunny may have found us if
we had diverted to Easter Island....however, even the prospect of a giant Easter
basket was not incentive enough for us to endure the additional 1,000
miles it would have taken to get there.
We continue to make good progress with a nice
breeze behind us and beautiful weather all around. We have less than 600
miles to go and are still looking at a Thursday arrival in the
Marquesas.
The rally fleet is also doing well as a
whole. There are about 13 boats ahead of us. Branec IV, the trimaran
racing boat, is leading the fleet in a big way and should arrive in the
Marquesas tomorrow. The next two boats, Candela (American catamaran) and
Kealoha 8 (British 72ft monohull) should arrive on Tuesday at the latest.
After that, the rest of us will start to arrive at regular intervals over the
next week.
There are still three boats back in the Galapagos
waiting for parts to make repairs. A boom for one boat, a critical engine
part for another, and trouble with both the generator and watermaker on the
third. Other boats are dealing with various equipment failures as they
sail to the Marquesas. The worst we know of is Andante (this is the
British boat with a crew of average age 70). Andante's autopilot quit not
long after leaving the Galapagos. Normally, an autopilot failure would not
be so bad, but hand steering a sailboat 24 hours a day over the course of 2,900
miles and 18-20 days is an exhausting task for any crew, let alone one that
consists of energetic 70-somethings.
Now it's time for...
Marquesas Semi-Useless Factoid #13:
In the eighteenth century, thousands
of Africans (brought in from Martinique) and Chinese were brought
to the Marquesas to work on various types of plantations. Unfortunately
(or fortunately for what were essentially slaves) the erratic rainfall and
occasional droughts caused the plantations to fail and most of the 'imported
labor force' returned to their homes leaving the islands to the native
Polynesians. When the plantations failed, the sheep, cattle and
pigs were left behind to fend for themselves. Some of the
transplanted animals have done quite well as indicated in factoid #8 (Ua
Huka is overrun with what are now wild goats and horses).
Anne |