S/v Convivia

Krister summed it up pretty perfectly over margaritas the other night, “This place is like a joke, it’s like they said let’s take all the money the US spends on the military and spend it on public services.” Nail, meet hammer. Brisbane has free museums, free multi-city-block-long-swimming-lagoon-with imported sand, free public transportation in and around the city center, free bikes to ride, reliable water fountains, tons of live music, and a government mandate that building owners provide public facing art installations. This place is like a joke, and I love the punchline. ...

During one of our last days of our Pacific crossing Tucker and I sat in the cockpit remembering out loud each and every stop since we’ve been out cruising. Convivia sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on October 1, 2011 and took a few weeks sailing down the coast of California. We spent five months in Mexico and in the spring of 2012 we began crossing the Pacific. We left Banderas Bay, Mexico on March 19th, 2012 and arrived in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia on November 16, 2012. Since we left North America we spent 60 overnights at sea (I didn’t count the days or parts of days for those passages) and had 23 additional day sails. We zig-zagged north and south moving from colder to warmer and back until making landfall last Friday in Australia. ...

We are in Tanna Vanuatu. Last night we drove on a dirt road that was cut through a rain forest. It was just unbelievable that they could make a road at all here , and it certainly required 4 wheel drive. Krister and I stood in the bed of the pickup with Olive and Ruby standing between our arms, staring up over the hood as it deftly negotiated lava rock, mud and volcanic dirt, up and over impossible hills all the way to our destination. ...

As we made our way across the Pacific we were perpetually asking “can we spend a little more time here?” After ~10 years of putting off today’s desires in favor of tomorrow’s dream it was finally time to say “Yes, why not!” The down side to this was that we knew that every extra day we spent in today’s paradise would be borrowed from tomorrow’s. You can only defer for so long before the cyclone threat starts making your choices for you. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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.

Our culture kind of falls flat on celebrations of personal success and accomplishment. The Marquesans however—and in fact Polynesians in general—have a long standing tradition of recording rights of passage and personal achievement in the skin. These tattoos become a living visual history of each inked individual. Victoria and I had long known that we would participate in this tradition upon the completion of our first major ocean passage. It seemed congruous in so many ways. The adoption of this beautiful tradition, the telling of our story, and the celebration of this voyage which follows (in some small way) the spirit of Marquesan exploration. ...

I was stunned I think, when Ruby asked me why the days were so short. We were on our boat, sailing across the Pacific, from Mexico to the Marquesas, a passage that takes around three weeks (24 nights out for us) and my almost eight year old couldn’t find enough time in the day for everything she wanted to do. “The days were so much longer in La Cruz. Why are they going by so fast on passage?” ...

For many years whenever I got cold enough to warrant socks or sleeves or worse, a jacket, or if I bought a new pair of long pants that needed hemming, my solution was simple, I’d ditch all those things and head to the equator. So when I was actually on my way to the equator you can imagine I was pretty darn happy to lose the layers and finally warm up! ...

When I was a boy I would sit facing the ocean, on a beach, on a breakwater, on a boat and imagine myself surrounded by its vastness. In these youthful projections, I would never tire of its endless blue. I pictured myself a captain on a small, seaworthy vessel. As a young man I would sit on that breakwater, that beach, that boat, and contemplate my insignificance. I imagined living a life where I was more free to live as I chose, where my priorities could be manifest in my daily life, where I was not beholden to the compromises that modern life demands. I looked to the sea and saw what I believed might be the final fastness of freedom. ...