Aries 32 - Thistledown
I'm here... I've made it to the marqueses. I weighed anchor from la cruz de huanacaxtle in bahia de banderas (near puerto vallarta) on april 16th, easter sunday. I didn't realize it was easter until later when I looked at a calender. I left around 1pm. I sailed downwind out of the anchorage, and slowly headed up until I was pointed out of the bay, saying goodbye to a couple of boats as I sailed by. I left too late in the day, and the wind died before I even got out of the bay... I bobbed around at the mouth of the bay most of the night, trying to get out to sea. since I was leaving from the mainland instead of baha, I had to cross the sea of cortez, which meant lots of frustrating calms.
By the 20th I was moving at about 4-5 knots and making decent time. I started thinking "I see why the call this the 'milk run'" as I cruised along at a good pace on a broad reach. after the first week, not seeing any ships and being well clear of baha, I pretty much stopped keeping watches... I hardly even went on deck. I just sat down below reading, sleeping, cooking and eating. I read lots of books, and eventually ran out of "light" reading material. I read the book "dove," by robert lee gram, the youngest person to sail alone around the world. He got hit by a ship and I nervously checked the horizon again for a couple of days but didn't see anything and gave up again.
As I got farther from the coast the wind came more and more from astern... the wind in the north pacific goes in a giant clockwise circle, which I'd already followed down the west coast of north america. When the wind picked up and was coming from dead astern, the boat started to roll somewhat violently... which became a little hard to deal with. you get thrown around a lot on a boat in some weather. It's difficult to stand up without holding onto something. After weeks of it, it becomes frustrating... constantly getting bruised and banging into things. I'd make a cup of tea and then dump it in my lap... naked. I'd try to pour tea and I'd need one hand for the tea pot, one for the cup, and one to hold onto the boat so I didn't fall over. How does that work? sometimes I'd hook my elbow around a railing or something to keep a hand free, but that wasn't always a tight enough grip. I had to swing the cup back and forth as I was drinking it to not spill. writing in the log book while being thrown back and forth. trying to sleep. It just never stops... or when it does stop, it tempts to you let go for a second and then throws you on your ass again. I go to the bathroom in a bucket... and once I spilled feces all over my cockpit... all over my lines and winch handles ... everything. At least it hadn't been raining or I would have been doing it in the main cabin. One day the sliding hatch got stuck and I pulled hard to open it, suddenly it slid open and my thumb got caught at the end of the track. I think I broke my thumb. For 2-3 weeks I couldn't open a jar or turn a can opener or anything like that with my right hand. It's better now though.
I use a two part vang system as preventers.. to prevent the boom from swinging across the boat and hitting me. It keeps the boom in a fixed position. You're not supposed to do it the way I do it, because they say if the boom hits the water it can snap in half... which would be very very bad, and probably sort of dangerous too. It's so much easier to do the two part vang thing though than to run a preventer to the front of the boat, that I just can't bring myself to do it the otherway. The boom did hit the water sometimes as the boat rolled, but luckily it never broke.
Lots of little things broke, and I'll need to fix some of them before I move on to tahiti. My stern light died after only 2 or 3 days. My leaky fuel tank that I thought I'd emptied, somehow found more diesel fuel to leak into the bilge. My decks leaked more. a cowl vent fell off of a dorade box and needs to be re-bedded. I think my port lights need to be rebedded. The holding tank for the toilet leaked, though maybe I should get rid of it... It's seeming to be more hassle than it's worth, and I don't mind using the bucket. The control line on the windvane chaffed through, and so I hove to at one point and had to hang off the back of the boat to re-run the lines. When I arrived my dingy started leaking again, so I have more fiberglass work to do. My spinaker and main halyards chaffed most of the way through... I think I can keep using my spinnaker halyard but I think I'm going to cut my main halyard shorter and re-splice it. One of my winches siezed up but I was on port tack for days and didn't need it, and had plenty of time to re-build it.
Where the circle of wind in the northern hemisphere meets the circle of wind in the southern hemisphere is where you find the inter-tropical convergence zone or "ITCZ." This is "the doldrums." In this area there is very little wind, and when there is wind it usually comes in short little squalls.
On april 30th I wrote in my log "It's raining. I took the reefs out. wind is dying quickly. looks like this might be the 'doldrums.' the little bit of wind seems to be swinging around and coming from the south now." I was right. I didn't have decent wind again from about a week, or about 200 miles. I should have gone father west before going south... the people I know that left from baha made the crossing in a little over three weeks... crossing the equator farther west they never experienced the doldrums.
The doldrums were hot, and slow and boring, and frustrating. The boat rocks back and forth violently with the swell, not having any wind to steady the boat. Occasionally when it's really bad I take the sails down to keep them from flogging, and the boat rocks even more violently. Every couple of days the rain starts pouring down and the wind picks up quickly. On May 6th I was reading, and immediately jumped up as strong wind and heavy rain suddenly came up. It was almost the end of the doldrums/itcz at this point. I ran outside and the rain was blowing sideways stinging into me as I went to put a reef in, and when I eased the main halyard the boom dropped in the water... the toppinglift had broken. My dutchman flaking lines broke too, making the mainsail harder to deal with. The toppinglift wasn't that hard to fix though. When the wind picked up it would usually only blow for a few hours, and so was only good for another 20-30 miles or so, but I still found myself aiming for dark clouds desperate for wind.
As it became unbearably hot, I grabbed my buzzers and shaved my head and face. /me2.jpg
I've read that when you start seeing birds, it means land is close. It must be a particular kind of bird though, because I saw birds the whole time. Once I woke up to the sound of a thud... and went back to sleep, but in the morning (on May 5th) I found a tiny little bird shivering in my cockpit. He seemed to have a broken wing or foot or something and couldn't move so well. Maybe he hit my mainsail and broke something and fell. It was raining. I gave him a little flaxseed and oatmeal and water. He was tiny and I've heard you're not supposed to touch baby birds so I scouped him up with a piece of cardboard and put him somewhere I wouldn't step on him, and gave him a little sideways plastic container to crawl in to hide from the cold rain. The next night I found him in the bottom of the cockpit again. Afraid I would step on him I scooped him up to the seat again with a piece of cardboard. He started to run... took a few little hops, and jumped over the gun'l... flapped his broken wings once or twice and flopped into the water. He seemed to be sinking as soon as he hit the water. He would certainly drown. It was raining. The boat was moving at a knot or two and even if I'd decided to turn around I'm sure there was no way I would have found him. oh well... I'd liked the idea of having a bird on the boat. I started thinking "what could customs say?? it's just a bird that landed on my deck.. not a real pet."
The first time it rained I was happy... ran outside with a face cloth and took a shower. It was nice... but... then I went down below, and it was still hot, and even hotter because I had to have all the ports closed... and it was so humid... and if I stayed out in the rain I got cold eventually... and my decks leaked more so everything got wet. ... as long as the rain brought wind though it was ok with me.
When I ran out of literature I read the new testament. I didn't want to read it because I wanted to read the old one first, but I couldn't bring myself to read textbooks quite yet and didn't have much else to read. I read it right after reading "under the banner of heaven," an interesting kraukaur book that talked a lot about the mormon religion. I found the new testament to be a terrible book. They told the same exact story 4 times and couldn't even get their facts straight! It didn't seem like much of the book was even the "word of jesus." The idea that there was anything divine about it seems pretty far fetched to me, but.. I'm probably offending someone so.. anyways... my point is, they kept talking about eating bread and fish and wine and I started to crave that kind of meal. I kept thinking about bread and trying to get up motivation, and after a few days I baked a couple of loaves of bread, opened a can of sardines, and opened a bottle of port that I'd bought when I went wine tasting with my parents in california. I think it was my best sea-meal. I think it happened to be on mothers day.
I found lots of flying fish on deck. Most were dead though, and I was never in the mood to eat them. They usually came at night. sometimes I'd wake up to the sound of one flapping around, and I'd go throw him overboard... I don't feel like cooking a tiny fish at 3am... but the next day I'd look around and see a dozen that the sun had baked into the deck and just couldn't be bothered to wake up and save the ones that woke me up anymore. I should get a big plain hook with no lure on it, and use flying fish for bait. I didn't go fishing until I was almost here. I just have a lure tied to a line that I hold by hand, or tie to the boat.. I don't have a rod or real or any of that gadgetry. I'd wrap the line loosely on a winch so that it would slide out and be noticable if something bit. I was afraid the lure was too big... it seemed like a fish that would eat such a big lure would be too big for me to eat. I don't have refrigeration. I trailed a line for about 2-3 days, and eventually (on may 18th) noticed the line unwinding, being pulled by something. I pulled it in and realized as it got close, that I'd caught a puffer fish. A puffer fish is one of those big poisonous things that blows up and has little infectious spikes all over it's belly. I think it's the same fish that's some sushi delicacy that has to be cut just right or you die. remember the simpsons where homer eats one and they tell him he's going to die? I think this was the same fish. It's an emblem for the openBSD operating system. I decided not to eat it. I decided not to touch it, because of the little spikes on the belly, and got plyers to pull the hook out. by the time I got the hook out it was dead, and floated away upsidown. I felt bad and didn't fish anymore. It was a cool looking creature and it seemed lame to kill something and not even be able to eat it.
When I was about 400 miles from the marqueses, I did a 150 mile day. I started thinking I was almost here. I was well into the south east tradewinds and moving a long at a nice steady pace... and then the wind died again. It took another week to do the last 200 miles or so.
I talked to myself a lot. and thought a lot. I never had crazy hallucinations like slocum or anything though. All in all it was a fairly easy passage. I slept when I felt like it. There weren't really any dangerous shipping lanes or extreme difficulties. I felt lonely sometimes, but it wasn't so bad. I cried sometimes when reading books and I think I was just feeling sort of emotional. I cried reading "for whom the bell tolls" and thought it was a really good book... but then I read "dove" the next day and cried reading that too. Maybe I was just feeling lonely or something. I wasn't that sad or anything. or... I think because no-one's there to see me it's easy to just let anything out. when something would be frustrating I'd just throw a tantrum and kick something and yell at some stupid broken thing.
I really enjoyed "for whom the bell tolls" ... maybe partly because just by chance I read it right after "noam chompsky on anarchism," which talks a lot about the spanish revolution. I really liked what he did with the language though, it was entertaining how he expressed the spanish in english... I think it helps to know a little spanish when reading that book.
I thought about safety a little... and how vulnerable living things are... our mortality. Like the little bird that fell overboard. We all die though. In "for whom the bell tolls" one of hemingways characters wrote "it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees." It was kind of interesting though... like... I'd be tangled in spinaker lines on the foredeck without any clothes or harness on, in the middle of the night, rain coming down sideways... I wasn't thinking about "what if I fell overboard?" I knew I wasn't going to fall overboard. It just didn't seem possible. I started thinking though... "what if I got pneumonia or something like that?" I mean... a couple thousands miles from a hospital... people used to die of stuff like that. ... just from being cold and wet. Like that it could really be a saftey thing just to put on a rain jacket or make another cup of tea. I'd be dead many times over if it wasn't for modern medicine. really if I got deathly ill I'd end up pressing the button on my EPIRB and someone would probably come rescue me... but that'd be lame.... and my boat would be abandoned. The trip would be over at the least. I didn't really think anything like that would actually happen. I don't even really know anything about diseases like pneumonia. It was just something to think about when I was laying in my bunk wet and hot and humid in the stuffy cabin with all the windows closed because of the rain... and laying there for weeks on end my mind wanders to all sorts of ideas.
I think I figured out celestial navigation. I read the books. I took a sun sight and got my latitude. I didn't take star sights not because I didn't know how, but because it just seemed like too much of a hassle... so many tables to look things up in over and over again. It'd be easier with a calculator but my calculator got wet and died. I trust my GPS more than I trust my calculator, and probably more than I trust the nautical almanac which can get wet and fall apart. You also need a very accurate clock (chronomoter)... so I use a GPS as a chronometer... my watches lose or gain a few seconds a day, and I'm far too lazy to keep track of how much each one gains or loses. Even the sextant itself... you have to be fairly careful with them. The GPS just seems so much simpler and more reliable than celestial navigation. I have a spare GPS for backup, and they're both waterproof. I might buy a third. I just have to make sure I never run out of batteries. If I did have to navigate celestially I think I'd ignore longitude and just sort of do dead reckoning + latitude navigation.... sail till I'm at the right latitude and go due east or west. It would take much longer but it would get me there all the same.
Finally on may 22nd, at 4:07 UTC (about an hour after sunset) I dropped my anchor at a town called atuona in a bay called baie taaoa, on the island of hiva oa. The total passage took about 35 days, about 5 days more than expected, and almost 2 weeks more than some of the other boats coming from baha. I met some people from one boat though that came from panama and took 65 days... I was glad not to be in their shoes. they were coming from farther south, and in the eastern pacific the ITCZ is wider... they had a much greater extent of doldrums to deal with.
When I arrived I jumped in my dingy and rowed around looking for friends. I found the boat araby (jonah / "obi"'s boat), but jonah wasn't there. I tried to ask a couple of people if they'd seen him but everyone seemed to speak french. This was a big change from mexico where all the cruisers were americans. I think I did feel more lonely arriving at land not being able to speak to anyone, than when I was at sea and just expected to be alone. The next day jonah sailed in with matt on matt's boat, as did tillikum and herb on bamboo, and paul and laura on seacor. They had gone to the other side of the island to see some other bay. We had a little party on jonah's boat, people from other boats joined us, we ended up swimming around the anchorage and playing "king of the dingy" and having a good time... it was fun.
I hitchhiked to town the morning after I arrived and tried to check in, but they said I needed a bond for the price of a plane ticket to prove that I could leave... but the bank couldn't get my credit card to work, so I couldn't legally check into the country. For the first time in over a month, someone spoke to me in english while I was at the bank. I called home, but a payphone was $15. I tried to use the internet but the computer took the expensive phone cards, and when I checked there was always either a long line, or the computer was out of order.
we (me, araby, seacor, bamboo, and a couple of other boats we'd met partying in the anchorage) all sailed out on the 25th for nuka hiva, another island. We left in the afternoon and arrived the next day in daniels bay... the third tallest waterfall in the world is here. Aparently an episode of survivor was filmed here. It was a nice anchorage but there were a lot of mosquitoes, and it rained really hard for a day or two. My dingy leaked... I need to patch the fiberglass again. I kind of like just swimming around though to get to shore or whatever. It's nice to be able to use swimming as a means of transportation.
I got boarded by the coastgaurd / gendarmerie in daniels bay, who searched my boat and asked me lots of stupid questions. I told them I came from san diego because I never got a zarpe from mexico (never checked out because I left on a sunday, and I'm not sure I ever properly checked in). It made me a little nervous as they searched my boat and kept looking through reciepts from mexico, but they never said anything about those. luckily they never checked my logbook or charts either. They were kind of giving me a hard time about cruising around without checking in and told me I had to be in taiohae on monday or there'd be a fine.. The rain came on sunday so I sailed the five miles to taiohae monday morning. On the way into the anchorage there was very little wind so I motored the last tenth of a mile, the first time I'd used my motor since san diego. I might try to sell my motor in tahiti.
Now I'm in taiohae... and they have internet here, though it's $8/hour. The phone is still $15 for very little time, but I have a number where I can get incoming calls on a payphone if it's timed right. I'm probably going to stay here for a little while working on the boat, before heading either for the tuamotos, or for the main island of tahiti. I may stay in tahiti for a little while working on the boat more etc, then I'll continue west through a couple of more island groups to fiji, and then I'll hopefully go up through indonisia and papa new guinea, trying to get somewhere north of the equator in south east asia by november, when it's hurricane season in the south pacific. I'd like to find somewhere where I can stay for a while and study chinese in south east asia, though it looks like it's difficult to enter china by boat. Maybe I can study in taiwan or singapore or somewhere like that.
taiohae / nuka hiva (where I am now) is in the marqueses islands, which are in french polynesia, which is part of tahiti nui (greater tahiti). papeete is the main island of tahiti.
Everything is extremely expensive here. a beer in a market is $3, and at a restaurant or bar it's 7. People told me it would be expensive, and described it saying "a loaf of bread is like $5," but I found bread to be the only cheap thing. It's french... they have baggettes for 50 cents. fish is also cheap, and they have imported brie cheese etc which, though expensive, is at least good and available. When I arrived in hiva oa I got an omlette... it was just a couple of scrambled eggs with 2 slices of bacon laied on top... not even any cheese... and it was $10. I got a cup of regular coffee to go with it, and that was another $2.50. The coffee here is good coffee though.
anyways... this email is getting a bit too long... I better just go ahead and send it. I wonder how many of you are actually bored enough to read all this... I don't think I would be :-P ... unless I had internet at sea.