Articles

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. ...

I’m not sure I knew that Daniel’s Bay (aka Hakatea Bay) was the site of Survivor 4 when we decided to check it out. By the end of our 5 days there it seemed to be the theme for everything. So much so that when I organized a little beach bonfire on the last night, I sheepishly touted it as the Survivor Beach Bonfire. Our stay there was nothing like the reality show though. We spent our first day on the beach, collecting limes and coconuts and generally making ourselves at home on the abandoned shore. The gendarme from Taiohae was there, which we thought was a little weird until we discovered that he was probably investigating the sensational cannibalism case* that has made the news (though thankfully not enough to catch our parents attention) lately. ...

I kind of pride myself on having a “feelings” kind of blog. You know, the kind that is more interested in how a place, or thing, or experience made me feel rather than (strictly speaking) a description of the place/thing/experience in question. Which is sort of by way of explaining why I’ve been a little short on blog posts lately. The problem, in vague terms, is that I have been feeling the same thing over and over again. This whole chapter in my life can be summed up in one short word; WOW. I feel like I’ve been sailing, hiking, and bumming around in an ever increasing state of slack jawed amazement and revelry at the immense cultural and natural beauty. And while this is certainly no regrettable state to be in, it is a little overwhelming and, well, not entirely conducive to introspection. ...

I fear I may sound like a broken record if I continue to extol the many virtues and superlatives of these remote, exotic, and vibrant islands. So rather than continue along that path, I will just share a few photos of our time in Tahuata (where we got the tattoos) and Ua Pou (where live the friendliest people in the Marquesas). Hopefully these varied snapshots will capture the essence of our last 2 weeks in a way that words can’t. ...

Well we have covered about 3000 miles since we left Mexico and as any passage maker can attest, stuff breaks. I was actually kind of surprised by what broke and, by and large, how quickly and easily it was repaired. Most of our damage was small, interior, and caused by our kids. I left a lot of the little stuff off this list because it was already getting long. A few of the breaks were avoidable, and we have learned some good preventative maintenance lessons (like don’t let the sails flog at all). The remainder was either just old boat stuff, or general maintenance. ...

I’ve been lucky to have a number of encouraging and reassuring people cross my path, people who have confirmed that what I was after was the right thing for me, and a couple of years ago I met someone who had such confidence and assuredness about his sailboat and his cruising plans that I couldn’t help but admire him . As we became friends he repeated his mantra, “it’s okay” about any worries I had about living aboard, fixing up Convivia, and sailing away. He even called us just before we untied the dock lines to remind us that everything would be just fine. I’ve tried to remember /just/ the tone of his believable voice and though I’ve repeated his words a million times, I’ve been searching for my own authentic, “it’s okay.” ...

Four days after making landfall on Hiva Oa we sailed into Baie Hanavave on Fatu Hiva, the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It is the most beautiful place I can even imagine. The hills are high and covered with a hundred colors of green. Palm trees lean toward the ocean cliffs. The grassy areas are dotted with mountain goats. The sky is a dark blue, heavy with mist, and threatens to explode into a squall or a rainbow. I wonder if rainbows are overlooked here. I can’t find a local person that can tell me what they’re called in French or Marquesan. ...