Alternate Reality!

Home in California, an alternate reality! There are so many people and so much advertising and marketing input. Walking into LAX and then out onto the curb to change terminals was a huge shock. Even Panama City didn't seem as busy. And coming into SFO there were so many lights.

In the front door and down to the basement to retrieve a bottle of wine. A glass of Taft Street Winery Russian River Chardonnay never tasted so good! Followed closely by fantastic fruit, vegetables and bread. Heirloom tomatoes, peaches, berries, and Acme bread. Wow, what my palette has been missing. Dinner last night at Bar Bocce, a new restaurant in Sausalito; outstanding!

OK, getting past that I pulled some photographs together on the plane and just uploaded them. For your viewing pleasure please see Passage to the Galapagos, Galapogos, and our Passage to French Polynesia.

More photos coming.

Vacation from the adventure

Tomorrow we're returning to California for a few weeks to catch up with friends and family. We'll be back in Tahiti in about three weeks to continue on to the leeward islands of the Societies.

I posted a few pictures of our passage from Panama to the Galapagos.

Site updates

I've published a few updates to the information on the site. Specifically:

Data Networks v2.2 diagram at the bottom of the Electronics page.
Revised the Sail & Rig Plan page.
Added a page on the Cockpit and Deck Plan.

And I'm sorting through photographs of the last five months of sailing. Hope to post those soon!

Or not...

As always we are slaves to the weather. Philippe, the harbormaster here at Taina Marina convinced me that this was not the week to go to Moorea. The French meteorology office forecasts 30kts of wind from the east, shifting to north east for most of the week. This makes the anchorages in Moorea less appealing. Since we have not yet toured Tahiti, we decided we'd take this week and tour the island.

Tomorrow we move to an inside berth where New Morning will be well protected while we make a quick trip to the states later this month. And when we get back we'll have a calm berth in which to make a few repairs. Then we'll be off to the leeward islands, or the Iles sous le vent.

Since we'll be hanging around Tahiti this week I'll make updates to the site and upload some photos from the last few months.

Off the boat

With New Morning safely tied up at Taina Marina we've been off the boat a little more time than we originally planned.

Tight on space, the marina put us on the outer wall, med moor style, with the mega yachts. Flattering, but not such a good spot when the 4+ meter waves started breaking on the reef. New Morning was really bouncing around so we decided it was time to take a break and move to the Radisson on the other side of Papeete for three days. It was excellent. It was nice to be off the boat with long showers, a big bed, lots of internet, somebody else doing all the cooking and no thoughts about the weather or the anchorage. We took the shuttle into Papeete and got our carte de sejours, bought some gifts and relaxed.

Then we learned that a good friend of Fay's was in Moorea for a month. So we were back on the boat for two nights, then off to Moorea for the weekend. A great stay in the house you see in the picture and a chance to tour Moorea by car as well and enjoy some excellent snorkeling. The back to New Morning for two more nights and time to celebrate Fay's birthday!

I had long ago made a reservation at the Intercontinental to celebrate her birthday so we've been here for the last three days. We had expected lots of celebration activities as Fay's birthday is July 14 which is Bastille Day in France and pretty analogous to the Fourth of July. But apparently the French Polynesian's relationship with France is a little strained. It was a natinal holiday, but there were no parades or fireworks. So we had our own champagne and celebration!

Tomorrow we leave the hotel and then on Sunday we'll move to Moorea, this time on New Morning.

Tahiti

The picture is of Moorea from Tahiti. It felt like the volcano was erupting.

Our passage to Tahiti was mostly uneventful. We hated to leave Rangiroa with such beautiful weather, but the forecast of winds and big swells was undeniable. We had some sailing wind the first few hours and got a nice ride from the spinnaker for 3-4 hours, but when the wind dropped and we were making only 4kts it was time to start up the engine and make some miles while the seas were still calm. We arrived in Tahiti on Friday afternoon.

Geographically, the Society Islands (Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, etc.) are sort of the sum of the Marquesas and the Tuamotus. The Marquesas rise to 3,000' directly from the ocean. The Tuamotus are atolls, the remnant of a volcano and a few thousand years of coral growrth, barely 10' above the water and only a few hundred yards wide. The Societies are like putting an island from the Marquesas into the lagoon of one of the atolls. The result are islands that rise dramatically from the ocean, but are surrounded by a fringing reef which leaves a navigable ring of water around the island, almost (more on that in a minute) entirely protected from the ocean swells.

We received permission to enter Papeete harbor through the pass (apparently quite busy), then after a plane landed, we received permission to transit around the airport to the west side of the island. The airport is right on the water and we motored past both ends of the runway. It seemed like every boat we'd met in French Polynesia was in the anchorages, and another 50 that we didn't know. The marina informed us that they had no berth for us, but fortunately Fay spotted an empty mooring ball (snag now, ask questions later) and had a line through it on our first approach. We were soon visited by Francois from the Association of Sailboats in Polynesia who advised us that 1) the owner of the mooring could return at any time and 2) there would be unusually strong winds on Sunday and we should be sure to stay on our boat.

Saturday the marina offered us a berth with the caveat that it would not be comfortable, but we figured it could be no worse than the bouncing anchorage. The waves breaking on the reef were quite impressive and some of the energy spilled into the lagoon to join the wakes from all the power boats blasting back and forth in front of the marina to make very bouncy water. Our berth was a med mooring space on the outside row facing the ocean (normally reserved for mega yachts) and we heaved up and down pretty dramatically until about 4am on Sunday morning.

Today has been much more calm as the waves have dropped in size per the forecast and there were a lot fewer power boats and jet skis. The forecasted 20kt winds have either not materialized, or we're protected here on the west side of the island. But the seas are forecast to rise again over the next few days, this time to 15' with 23kt winds.

Our outside berth is not going to offer any protection so we're going to make sure New Morning is secured, and then make a strategic retreat to a hotel. Yes, we're moving off the water for three days! Time for a break from our sailing adventure, and an opportunity to do some clothes shopping in Papeete. Cruiser attire of shorts and a t-shirt is pretty basic and not quite appropriate in the "big city". We're going to be in the Society Islands for a few months so it's time to upgrade our appearance a bit. We also need to make a visit to the High Commissioners office to obtain our long stay visa and have a few other errands we need to do in town. We'll be back.