Aries 32 - Thistledown
Last time I wrote I was in Pago Pago, american samoa, waiting for mail. I got my packages, about 12 boxes. I got about 30 books, a waterproof laptop case, a waterproof camera, waterproof bags, a new stereo for the boat (which I've yet to install), a new LED cabin light, charts and cruising guides for the next section, fiberglass cloth and epoxy resins, a waterproof spot light, a replacement for my broken GPS ... among other things. I was pretty excited.
The one thing that didn't come was my collision avoidance radar detector... I had sent it to be repaired from Raiatea in French polynesia. I called to ask about it and they'd lost it (they claimed it had never arrived)... Then they found it but said they weren't going to cover it on warranty. Eventually they repaired it and sent it to my parents, but by the time they'd got it taken care of I didn't have time to wait in Samoa for the replacement. I don't trust the mail in most countries, so I'll have to pick it up if I fly home for Christmas or something, or I'll have someone bring it if anyone flies out to visit. It would be a nice thing to have, but I've yet to see it really work so far. Hopefully eventually I'll get some use out of it. The thing cost $500 so I'm kind of angry about it.
Jim on Aguja, Herbert on Bamboo, and Jonah on Araby, showed up shortly after my packages arrived. It was good to hang out with them.
Someone in Pago Pago suggested I checkout findacrew.net to find someone to come sail with me (he'd found someone that way). I checked it out. I started talking to a girl named Jill that I found on there, and spent a lot of time talking to her via email and internet phone. She seemed pretty adventurous. She's american and was born in Illinois, but grew up in Saudi Arabia, taught English for a year in Ecuador, was finishing up a year of teaching in S Korea when I started talking to her, and was on her way to travel around China with her father and to do a quick fill-in teaching gig in Tianjin. She'd never been sailing before, and I kind of tried to scare her away explaining that I don't have any normal ammenities like a toilet or shower, and that sailing is rough, etc, but she was up for a challange, and willing to take a chance, so flew into American Samoa to meet me and try it out. She arrived on September 10th.
We got along quite well, which was really what we were both most concerned about. By the time she came it was looking pretty likely to be more of a relationship thing and as opposed to just a crew thing, which I was hoping for anyways. It's quite a... first date of sorts, for her to just go ahead and buy an expensive plane ticket to a random scumy island in the south pacific and move in with me on my little boat... but, luckily it went well.
We spent a lot of time hanging out in Pago Pago before leaving, getting to know each other and finishing up some boat projects I'd started. I think this was good because it gave her time to get used to boat life, and get over her nightmares of the bucket-for-a-toilet, and to get used to me, and to talk to other cruisers and get an idea of what to expect at sea, etc. I'd show her pictures of boats heeled over and beating to windward and she said "is this boat going to tip like that??" ...and I'd say "yes" and she'd get scared. Her conversations with other cruisers went likewise. I think it was best for her to expect the worst, and it took a bit to instill those sorts of expectation.
On September 22nd we left Pago Pago, to sail to Apia, in Western Samoa. It was only a 70-80 mile hop, a good introduction for her. She was pushing me to skip Apia and sail straight to Fiji (she was itching to see somewhere she'd heard of before). I was tempted to sail by Apia and maybe just keep going if she was liking it, but, it's on the north side of the island, and Fiji is south-west from there, and I figured it best to just play it safe. As we sailed out of Pago Pago we were on a close hauled course... I asked if she was feeling nausious yet and she said no. I said "well, this is the most uncomfortable point of sail, and that's quite a swell running, so if you're not sea sick now, it probably that means you don't get sea sick." I guess I spoke too soon because she started throwing up soon after I said it. It was pretty nasty though and I felt a little ill too.
In Pago Pago I left my laptop on one day and took my batteries down to 8 volts. They never recovered. I kept hoping they would, I got them up to full voltage, but they wouldn't hold a charge anymore. Halfway to Apia the running lights started flickering and we haven't had running lights since. We haven't even really been able to use the cabin lights; we bought another kerosene lamp and have been using flashlights... The lack of running lights would have been pretty sketchy sailing alone, so it was nice to be able to keep more legitimate watches. I'm going to buy new batteries here in Fiji. It'll be nice when we can use the cabin lights again, and the new stereo is installed, and we have running lights.
We stayed in Apia, Western Samoa, for about a week. We took a bus to the other side of the island one day, trying to see if we could find some of those turquois waters and white sand beaches like in the pictures I'd been showing to Jill... When we got out of the bus we asked when the last bus back was. He told us that the next bus back was 6am, so we were stranded. We ended up staying in a little resort fala ... a little straw hut overlooking the beach. It was nice, and came with meals. It was my first time sleeping on land since Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was nice, and I think that having Jill with me will motivate me to do little side trips like that. I often spend too much time just sitting on the boat, working on the boat, hanging out with cruisers, etc, and not enough time actually exploring and enjoying the places I visit.
It's starting to get late in the south pacific cruising season. The season sort of ends around November... rain becomes more regular, and by December there are often hurricanes in the south pacific. We were hoping to get to the Papua New Guinea area by around November 1, but we'll probably be at least a little late. This is an El-Nino year too, and the weather is already pretty crappy (lots of rain), so we're kind of in a rush. Given all that, we were eager to leave Apia quickly, and were planning to head right out to Tonga or Fiji soon... but then we saw the weather report and everyone said not to go.
To sail to Fiji would have been to sail right into a low preasure system (stormy weather) that was forming, so eventually we decided to sail to Fatuna (in the country "Wallis and Fatuna"), which would at least make us some westward progress, and seemed to stay north of the bad weather. We left Apia late on the night of September 27th. This was probably a mistake. It was against the advice of most of the other cruisers but we were both really eager to get going. Fatuna is French, much like French polynesia, and is very expensive and ... I duno, it didn't really appeal to me much. It also (because of the distant low preasure system which has an opposing wind pattern) meant sailing in very light wind, so it took about 5 days to go the 350 miles (we arrived on October 3rd). We stayed in Fatuna for 2 nights sort of recovering from the passage and catching up on sleep, leaving for Fiji on october 5th. Then the sail south to Fiji (with no updated weather report since there were no other cruisers in Fatuna and I don't have an SSB), was a beat into SE trade winds... which meant a pretty sail into the weather. All in all, we probably could have made it to Fiji faster by waiting a week or so for good weather, and sailing straight through in good tradewinds. We arrived in Fiji on October 10th. In good weather it might have only taken 5 days from Apia to Fiji.
We're here now though, and it's pretty nice. We're anchored in Suva, the capital. Paul from Seacor is still here, sailing with his father now (Laura went back to England to work). Jim from Aguja is also here. Jonah broke his boom on the way out of Apia, and now he's in Tonga repairing it. He'll be headed to New Zealand so I won't see him again for a while. Herbert is in Wallis, sailing north to Tuvalu and Kiribati, hoping to meet up with me again maybe when we get to the Philipines. Paul's going to Australia to sell his boat and go back to doing deliveries. We're trying to convince Jim to come north with us to asia.
Jill isn't really excited about returning to asia, since she's already spent so much time there, but maybe we'll spend less time in China and more in Malaysia/Thailand/etc. SE asia will probably repel her less than the other parts. She has a friend in Malaysia and I have a couple of friends in Thailand, and she taught English in Thailand once, and they speak Chinese in Singapore which is close to Malaysia (having an opportunity to study the Chinese language appeals to me). The northern storms don't come that far south so we're safer to hang out there for a long time. She might know of some lucrative winter-camp style English schools we could teach at in South Korea for a few weeks too which might be cool, and which might be similar to the thing I did in China. This is all assuming I don't scare her away before we get there :-P
new pictures:
Claudia sent me some of the pictures she took when hanging out with me between the marqueses and bora bora, and I posted those on my web page here:
/sailing/aries32/batch7.1/
Here are some of the pictures I took in Pago Pago with my new waterproof camera, soon after I got it:
/sailing/aries32/batch9/
here are some of the pictures I've taken since Jill arrived, the first batch from Pago Pago to Apia, the second from Apia to Fatuna:
/sailing/aries32/batch10/
/sailing/aries32/batch11/
I'll probably be posting pictures a lot more regularly now that I have a digital camera. As always, old mass emails are at /sailing/aries32/weblog/
Jill also took some pictures, and either I'll stick those on my web site, or she'll put them on her blog, but either way I'll send a link in my next email. I'd do it now but she doesn't have the right cable for her camera :-P