Articles

The Tropicana has become our hangout. It’s got good espresso, Internet, courtesy flags, a gluten free sensitized owner and is very cruiser friendly. Add to that the fact that Lisa(the owner) is our goto girl for local information and you start to see why we stop in every time we walk down the street. So yesterday we were walking down the street, the kids were doing well, and we had a few hours to kill before the laundry would be ready (or so we thought). I realized that it was high past time to get that haircut I had been talking about for the last 6 months. Knowing that Lisa would be able to point me in the right direction, I popped my head in and asked the question. “…the guy in the back is a barber,” she answered, turning back to her bookkeeping. ...

The aluminum tour boat pulled along side Convivia at nine am on a cool wet morning. It was the first gloomy day in 5 days and we wished we could change our reservation. Unfortunately we had put our money down and were committed. As the drizzle pelted our eyes the Operator (guide) gave us the spiel and implored us to help keep a lookout for whales. I got the kids settled and poked my head out into the spray to keep watch. I was struck by how fast we were moving. The boat’s 20 knots could have been 100. After moving no faster than 9 knots for weeks, it felt like we were flying. Soon we saw our first spout and doubled back to take a closer look. ...

I should have known that I would eat my words… We left Samoa this morning under a bright blue sun filled sky. The wind was fresh enough to move us along nicely and so we decided to go between Upolu and Savai’i (the two main Islands of Samoa) on our way to Tonga. As we rounded Upolu and started South I said to Vick “Shoot, I think we may have missed out by not going inland a bit.” It’s true, I’m sure. I can only justify so much with the tired “we had so much work to get done” line. In retrospect though we did end up loving Samoa in spite of some of it’s odd officials. We had one of the absolute best meals we have ever eaten (Vick compared it favorably to the Slanted Door, our old favorite) at Tatua Bistro in Apia. Our friends Mark and Jenny on Condessa took care of the kids for the night so we could have a downright sinfully slow meal. Great food, perfect service and personal attention from the owner (when he found out I was GF and wanted to make sure everything was prepared safely for me) made it a night to remember. ...

When I visit a new country I tend to see all the ways in which its culture is different first. A week or so into my visit the similarities with my native culture overtake the differences and I am overwhelmed (for a time anyway) by the beauty of our world’s diversity. Here on Samoa (pronounced Sa’ moa) I have yet to move fully into the second stage. Every time I feel like I am close, something alien is revealed to me that sets me back to seeing the differences. This (two) island nation is gorgeous. Its people are, by and large, incredibly outgoing and proud of their heritage, and they share a (second) language. I had expected this (amongst other things) to make it easy for me to fit in and feel welcome here. Not so much. ...

We arrived in Apia, Samoa early in the morning yesterday. Thankfully the internet was fast enough here to upload a few photos.

We have looked at the gribs (graphical weather predictions), the surface analisys, and read the tea leaves. All data clearly shows that tomorrow morning would be the best possible time to leave if we wanted a quick and comfortable passage to Samoa. Normally that would be all we needed to know to set us on our merry way. But we aren’t going. Not yet anyway. Suwarrow is all of those things that I said it was in the previous post. It’s also something more. None of us have tried to articulate what it is, but there is something deeply special about this place and the way our family has reacted to it. ...

This is what I have been waiting for. Suwarrow is the dream that calls so many sailors into a cruising lifestyle. Remote, lush, pristine, and virtually unpopulated Suwarrow offers its raw self to its few annual visitors to explore, inhabit, and love. To put a finer point on this we have been cooped up in the boat for six straight days while the island has received (I would guess) more than its annual expected rainfall. In the few sunny moments we hop in the dinghy, bail it out for 10 minutes (all that rain could sink a dinghy) and rush to shore. ...

Mo’orea and Huahine are my favorite islands in the Societies and close to my favorite in French Polynesia. They both have a laid back air and, as much as any of these heavily visited islands, seem less fatigued by the demands of tourism than I would have expected. All that being true, what really made these spots shine was the social life. After the Rendevouz lots of boats hung around and made their ways, more or less together, through the remaining islands. In Cooks bay a few of us centered our daily activities around the Bali Hai Club. We sat by the pool while the kids ran and swam, made new friends, and generally took it easy for almost a week. We even got a rental car for an afternoon and toured the island. ...

The idea was to get off the boat and stretch our legs. We had been to swim with the rays the day before, but that doesn’t really count. Our feet hadn’t touched land in a few days and we thought a little walk would do us good. The Mo’orea Agricultural Center looked like it was close to the head of the cove we were anchored in, so we hailed Wondertime and met at the beach in our dinghies. ...

Cruising kids, like kids everywhere else in the world come in all sorts of flavors, have unique personalities and in any anchorage you would be lottery-winner-lucky to find two the same age. Somehow they manage to forge the most beautiful friendships out of this seeming chaos. This little gallery captures this dynamic in a way that I have never been able to put in words. Look at each one for a moment and then flip through quickly. ...

Cue creepy music. We anchored in the north east conner of Opunohu Bay along with almost every other boat that crossed the Pacific from the Americas. (big exaggeration but it paints the right picture.) It was a tiny anchorage with reefs all around and a very squirrely wind, a perfect recipe for doom (dun dun duuuuun). As it turned out we had two lovely days there with no incident. On Sunday night somewhere around 11 the wind started to build and the rain started driving sideways from the east. I went into the cockpit to make sure everything was lashed down and stowed and stayed a little longer to watch the wind instrument. 30, 32, 35 knots; it was creeping higher. Then I looked up in time to see a massive blue hull grinding down our port side. “Holy Shit!” I yelled “we have been hit, Vick get up here.” I watched in startled terror for a moment as our outer lower shroud was plucked like a guitar string, twaaaaang then saw the dinghy (which had just been smooshed between the two boats) recoiling. A moment later the dinghy’s bow was 10’ up in the air. I rushed to the shroud to fend but the blue boat was already receding, “crap, it’s going to hit the panel” but Vick was already there, lifting the precious solar panel out of harms way. As the blue boat departed the wind caught its bow and sent the stern on one last mission of destruction. It missed our self steering vane by inches and was gone. ...

When I talk about our time in Papeete (Tahiti) I am inclined to describe it as all work and no play. When one is bogged down with projects like the Frankenfold (a.k.a the mainfold from hell), it is easy to forget that much fun has also been had. So before elaborating further on All The Fun® allow me to describe this particular bit of boat owner’s misery. Frankenfold Convivia has had numerous small fresh water leaks since we bought her. These have been dealt with more or less as they came up, and along the way I have even managed to improve on the system. On passage we started to develop a leak at the kitchen faucet, the location and disposition of which made it very difficult to fix. The short term solution was to decommission the faucet. Plumbing then took top priority on my project list. I had plenty of time to think about how best to address the situation. I wanted to remedy the existing problem and also make a substantial improvement to the overall stability of our ship’s pressurized water system. Ultimately this would have meant removing all of the hose and replacing it with Sea Tech hose. This being the middle of nowhere, I was not holding out of that. Plan B was to replace as many of the nylon fittings as I could and add a manifold as close to the pump as possible. After several (though it seemed like several hundred) trips to several hardware and marine stores, I was able to get all of the part together and complete the project. The result (as seen below) is not beautiful, but it works and solves a problem that would have been inevitable had I not taken the time. ...

I am often asked about cruising with kids. Is it difficult? I’ve overheard people talking about us. We’re brave apparently, and it’s not because of the ocean, or the remote places we go, it’s because we took our kids. We’re also crazy, according to a gal hiking behind us recently. And we love the commotion, mess, and noise of 5 little kids running around the boat, thought the gal in the slip next to us for a week in La Cruz. Most people out here have waited until their kids are grown up and from what I gather, most people are unwilling to live this closely with their kids day in and day out. ...

I’m still catching up with my thoughts on Fakarava. The passage was too short to properly transition from the fierce rugged beauty of the Marquesas to the low, almost delicate Tuamotus. Our first night on Fakarava was spent catching up with long lost friends from Estrellita. The next day was spent snorkeling and watching the kids learn how to swim on the beach in front of the White Sands Resort. This place is just too… much. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking and I’ll try to be more articulate in my next post. ...

Peer pressure was (for once) well placed when it was applied to our reluctance to hike “5 hours” to see another waterfall. We had already seen one in Fatu Hiva and it was quite magnificent. That hike was great too, but I just couldn’t motivate for a much longer hike, even if it was the 3rd highest waterfall in the world. “It’s amazing,” “It’s breathtaking,” “You’ve got to see it, really.” We heard nothing but praise and even from people who had already trekked to the one in Fatu. In the end it was Wondertime that brought us around to the hike. They hadn’t arrived yet and we didn’t want to leave for the Tuamotus without catching up with them. For so many reasons, this was the right call. ...