RAIVAVAE

This is just a glimpse of Raivavae. It was really hard to capture how untouched and pristine this island is.

SAILING EAST

I've finally got some photos for you! Here are a few from our passage from New Zealand to Raivavae back in May. But wow - it feels like a lot more time than that has passed. I'm posting this from the warm, sunny atoll of Makemo in the Tuamotu Islands... which feels like a world away. More on the past two months coming soon. In the meantime, here's a little glimpse of our long, chilly, upwind passage to the Austral Islands.

I'm always amazed at how instantaneously our perspectives and attitudes change upon arriving in a new place. When we left New Zealand, I was complaining about the fact that the lamb chops we'd ordered weren't delivered frozen. Our first day in Raivavae I was overjoyed at being given a day-old baguette and a grapefruit.


It was a very different passage than what we've been used to since leaving Panama. We spent most of our time layered up and zipped into hoodies and were never on deck without our harnesses. We barely experienced the extended periods of pleasant, downwind sailing that we’d become accustomed to in the lower latitudes. (As you'll notice, though, I took most of my photos during downwind stints. Attempting to capture the boat pitching and smashing into waves with our expensive camera was neither appealing nor safe.) It was the first time we were sailing into the sunrise instead of the sunset since we left Rhode Island in 2014, when we used to take weekend trips from Newport to the island of Cuttyhunk, 15 miles to the East. Two years later, weekends have lost a bit of their special significance and sailing is no longer a recreational, spare time activity, but a defining part of our life. What a difference a couple of years can make.

(On a side note, I just realized that there were some formatting issues with my daily updates from sea. My apologies for SHOUTING at you for paragraphs at a time.)

Passage Update: Day 19 - We've arrived!

We're here! We arrived at the entrance to the pass just as the last hints of daylight gave way to a moonless night, leaving us to navigate the channel by flashing leading marks, blinking buoys and reflective stakes. It was easy enough. What wasn't easy was waiting to crack a beer in celebration of finally arriving. Once anchored, we had a proper feast - scotch fillet steaks, sauteed onions and cabbage (our last bit of green), and crispy sweet potatoes. And then we promptly passed out. This morning we woke to find ourselves in one of the most scenic anchorages we've ever been to. The peaks, jagged and deep green, tower over the lagoon, and small motus (little islands) sit here and there on the fringing reef. We are one of six boats at anchor. There is a concrete wharf and apparently the supply ship came and went only hours before our arrival so the little shops should be well stocked. Behind the wharf are several buildings, the most prominent of which are, in true French Polynesian fashion, the mayor's office and the church. I won't be surprised if, as the morning goes on, we're able to hear the singing from where we sit.

We have a lot of cleanup on the boat today - we had a bit of a leak in the forward cabin - and as the gendarmerie is closed on Sundays we can't check in to the country until tomorrow. So we'll spend the day on the boat, enjoying stillness and the absence of whistling wind in the rigging. We can't wait to get ashore!!

At 29-May-16 4:57 AM (utc) our position was 23°51.96'S 147°41.30'W

Passage Update: Day 18

We're going on six days beating into the wind like this - never above a 50 degree wind angle - and I'm only now fully appreciative of how easy downwind sailing is. I remember our Pacific crossing last year as a series of terrifically starry nights, afternoons spent snacking on popcorn in the cockpit, and my concern about uneven tan lines. But we've learned highly valuable lessons and tactics on this trip that only come with experience. Even now, as I'm scowling at the waves and cursing the wind, I'm not sure I'd trade these conditions for that reason alone. It's hard, but it's also satisfying. At least it is now, within 100 miles of Raivavae.

Somehow today's combination of wind and waves has been especially taxing on the rig. Add to that the waves we're smashing into, continually launching bucketsfull of water all over the deck, and the 45 degree lurching slant on which try to function while we make coffee, cook, use the toilet... well, it's a far cry from the romantic image of sailing the South Pacific most of us conjure up.

Anyway, it's only comfort and I imagine we'll be pretty comfortably anchored in the lagoon by this time tomorrow. I feel like a kid on Christmas eve tonight!

At 28-May-16 4:01 AM (utc) our position was 24�37.95'S 149�17.98'W

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Passage Update: Day 17

After another night of heaving to, we are feeling fresh and well rested. While the wind howled outside, we took turns sleeping and keeping watch throughout the night. We've discussed it and decided that the only thing that would making heaving to better in those conditions would be pizza delivery.

Today has been much gentler on the boat and we're finally making some decent progress again. We're on course for Raivavae with a promising weather forecast and only 185 nautical miles left to go. If all goes well, that puts us in the lagoon in about 40 hours time. And that means we only have 40 hours to catch a big fat yellowfin. Pressure's on.

At 27-May-16 4:06 AM (utc) our position was 25°44.42'S 150°22.47'W

Passage Update: Day 16

If you've gleaned anything from these updates, it's probably that planning your route more than 24 hours in advance is nearly impossible on a passage like this because the weather forecast can change so much from day to day. Without steady trade winds to create consistent weather patterns, we are at the mercy of whatever comes our way, and there are a multitude of meteorological factors that can affect how any given system behaves. Consequently, though the forecast one day may show that we'll be motoring for a full day the next day's forecast looks drastically different and we find ourselves hove to in 35 knot winds. That's what I meant when, way back at the beginning of this passage, I said that it has the potential to be a rather difficult one. Adapting to the ever changing conditions is a challenge. At times it's fun, at other times (typically during middle of the night, rough weather watches) it's just salty and tedious. But it's always worth it in the end.

The good news is, while we're still beating into the wind, it is easterly now, which means we're actually sailing directly toward Raivavae. That alone is a big morale booster. But it is still a bit of a battle and it's slow going. It's sort of like riding a bike directly into the wind. Up a huge hill. In the rain.

At 25-May-16 11:57 PM (utc) our position was 26°44.65'S 150°56.22'W

Passage Update: Day 15

Remember when you were little and things weren't going your way in the neighborhood Kick the Can game so you just called "Time Out!" to briefly pause the unfavorable situation you were caught up in? That's sort of what we did last night. The wind and seas increased until we had steady 30-35 knots and annoying steep waves. It was uncomfortable for us, stressful on the rig, and making it very difficult to hold our 45 degree wind angle. So we decided to heave to, a tactic in which you use the mainsail and rudder to stall the boat so that it moves only very slightly at a sideways direction through the water. It prevents waves from breaking over the beam and allows you to hold your position without stressing the rig too much. Basically, we sat around until the bad weather passed.

Heaving to sounds as though you're leaving yourself vulnerable, but actually it's often much safer than continuing to sail when you're close hauled (sailing at a shallow wind angle) like we were. We were able to sleep, stay out of the rain, and avoid losing too much ground. The boat doesn't get knocked around with as much force as when you're beating into it, so we were also able to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm while eating M&Ms, fill our tanks with water, and take nice hot showers. It turned out to be a nice little break from our routine and the next time I get asked my favorite question about being at sea - Do you stop at night?? - I won't be so quick to make it seem like a ridiculous thing.

We're moving again now. Still battling NE winds, but at least we have wind for the time being. It's forecast to drop out tomorrow so we could be motoring for at least a day. The nice thing is that at 315nm from Raivavae, we have enough fuel to be within motoring range if need be. We just need the wind to be ANY direction but NE in order to make a direct course. We're certainly learning to be patient...

At 24-May-16 9:38 PM (utc) our position was 27°51.26'S 151°43.79'W

Passage Update: Day 13

Not much to report here, though you may be wondering why we're headed the wrong way. If we could have chosen one direction that we didn't want wind from at this point in the trip, we'd have chosen northeast. And that's what we have now. The reason we're not too excited is because Northeast is the direction we need to go, and as it happens you cannot point a sailboat straight into the wind and expect to get anywhere. So we're on a ESE course until we arrive at a point as close to due south of Raivavae as possible. That way, when we tack and turn north we'll be able to actually make some ground. In the meantime, we're on a course that, uninterrupted, would take us to Antarctica. I've heard it's very scenic. Lotta ice. But pretty.

At 23-May-16 3:47 AM (utc) our position was 28°27.63'S 152°33.45'W

Passage Update: Day 12

After all the time I've spent on the water it still amazes me how quickly things change out here. It isn't just that the ocean feels different today than it did yesterday, it actually seems like a different place. It's a perfect beach day - light winds, lots of sunshine, calm seas - and I'm reminded of late summer in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, not great sailing weather.

We've been motoring since 9pm last night and it's been slow going as we're trying to conserve fuel. But the sun has started to set, stirring up a bit of breeze, so we're enjoying a short period of quiet trying to capture as much free propulsion as possible. We're speeding along at 3.7 knots... We've been lucky not to have southeasterly trade winds this whole trip, but we'd be grateful for them now so we could set a direct course for Raivavae. Instead, we're still heading east so that when the east/northeast wind does pick up we can turn the boat north and have a reasonable wind angle for the sail up. The only part of the forecast that's changed is the wind strength. It's going to be weaker, which means we'll be doing more motoring - or drifting - than we thought.

At 22-May-16 3:27 AM (utc) our position was 28°58.03'S 153°45.16'W

Passage Update: Day 11

Another big day is just ending here - 175 miles in 24 hours. Unfortunately we're just starting to lose the wind and slow down now and will likely have to start the engine sometime after midnight. 5.5 knots suddenly feels so slow! We'll have easterly winds shifting to northeast for the last couple days, which means we'll be close hauled, but the big low pressure system that is moving this way appears to be weakening so our approach into Raivavae isn't looking as daunting as we thought.

It doesn't feel like this is our twelfth day out here. Time sort of melts when you're at sea for a while, but once you start to get close to land it seems very real again and you spend half your time counting down miles and hours. We can almost taste the baguettes and poisson cru!

At 21-May-16 5:11 AM (utc) our position was 29°23.88'S 155°41.94'W

Passage Update: Day 10

One of Matt's many sayings is, "Sometimes you're a bug, sometimes you're a windshield." I suppose it's a more descriptive and less hokey way of saying, 'You win some, you lose some," in which the "some" that you win or lose are out of your control. It usually applies to small moments in a day - hitting every red light on the main road when you're in a hurry (bug); skiing up to a closed chairlift that's been blocking access to untouched powder just as the lifty opens it (windshield); getting only cashews and almonds (ie, no disgusting hazelnuts, filler peanuts, or oafish brazil nuts) in a big handful of mixed nuts (windshield). You get the idea.

Anyway. My point is, today Tamata is a windshield. We've still got wind and sea behind us so we're not only banging out miles, but without being slammed, battered, or rolled around, we're doing so quite comfortably. It's not often that you have laundry out on the line with 20 knots of wind blowing. Just goes to show how smooth the sailing is at the moment. We have somewhere around 800nm to go, which means five or six days yet, and the forecast is still looking a bit, well, "buggy" for the last few. And that's also implicit in Matt's saying - that you can't be a windshield forever. No point in dwelling on it, though. We'll revel in these fantastic conditions while they last and deal with dodging windshields when they become obstacles.

Passage Update: Day 9

What a miserable night. The wind dropped out on us, but the short period swell didn't so we were rolling from rail to rail trying to keep pressure in the sails. It was, of course, an impossible task. The sail thwacked one way then the other with each roll of the boat, banging violently and failing to capture any of what little breeze was there. We were pretty cranky this morning. But as the sun came up, the wind increased and, after a groggy weather powwow, we decided to sail wing and wing - the jib out one side of the boat supported by the spinnaker pole and the mainsail all the way out the other - to take advantage of the west wind and giant swell behind us. We've been hauling ever since! I know I always say this, but conditions have been sooooo nice today.

Something else sort of remarkable happened in the middle of the night. I spotted a boat in the distance and, noting that the green light was visible (green marks a vessel's starboard side; red marks port), saw that it was going to pass on our starboard side. The next time I took a look, the boat was considerably closer without any green or red light visible. I figured it was just a huge freighter passing a long way off and the green light was shadowed by all the other yellow and orange lights that sometimes illuminate big freighters. But then it took a turn 90 degrees toward us and I realized it was a smaller boat, much, much closer than I'd originally though. And though it was moving slowly, it was now headed right for us. By this time Matt was up and he flashed the search light several times. Only then did we realize that it was a longliner - hence the not-so-linear course it'd taken - and most likely hadn't even seen us until that moment. We ended up passing in front of it, so close that we could see the guys working on deck and hear the engine rumbling. It's crazy to think that within such a large expanse of ocean, two small boats would end up in the same 400 square yards before they became fully aware of each other. And it's frightening to think that, had we not been alert, we very likely would have collided. I'd like to think that they were more surprised to see us bouncing along in the moonlight than we were to brush so close to them. But who knows.

At 19-May-16 4:14 AM (utc) our position was 30°25.21'S 162°12.97'W

Passage Update: Day 8

It's beginning to feel like we're really sailing again and not just being shoved and battered by the sea. That's not to say things are settled. The swell has grown quite large over the course of the day and the wind has been blowing steady between 20 and 30 knots. But we are sailing downwind with a more regular following sea so the roughness isn't making our lives as uncomfortable as it could. We gybed early in the day to get back on an easterly course and are sailing now with a double reefed main and just a tiny scrap of jib. All things considered, it's an awesome day out here. Big seas, wind, sunny skies, and dozens and dozens of shearwaters (and the occasional albatross) gliding and darting about in the wind around the boat.

The wind is forecast to drop off a bit over the next few hours and we should see more consistent, mellower westerly winds for the next few days. It's looking like things could get sort of tricky as we approach Raivavae (still approximately 1000nm away) as there is another, larger low pressure system moving this way. It could affect as far north as the Australes. If so, we'll probably have to rethink our plan of attack, which, it always seems, is a just a continual rethinking of our plan of attack.

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Passage Update: Day 7

We have a few reasons to celebrate today: It's been one week at sea; at noon, the 1,000 mile mark ticked over on our GPS's trip log; and finally, the wind has returned which means the engine is no longer running.

In reality we're not doing much to celebrate. In fact, the conditions are frustrating. The wind has been up and down - one minute 20 knots, the next 5 - and it's causing the sea to be rather unsettled so we're rolling around, falling off the back of one steep wave only to be jerked up by the next and pushed over onto our side by the following. It's not a nice clean series of waves coming at regular intervals from the same direction; it's just disorganized slop. The wind is slow to shift to the west, too, so we're tracking a bit further north than we'd like. What we're aiming for is to sail on an easterly course (or just north of east) on the top edge of the approaching front. We want to escape the worst of it - the 35+ knot winds at the center of the system, further south - without getting so far north that we lose the wind completely. In certain conditions, wandering some miles off course or away from the rhumbline (the straightest course from point A to point B) doesn't bother us. But today we have to be particularly attentive to any wind shifts, which affect the boat's course, and respond by trimming or changing sails, or changing the course that our self-steering wind vane is set to. And this can get tedious when the wind behaves so inconsistently. Several times in the past 12 hours we've made changes that only have to be undone a half hour or an hour later. When you're on watch alone at night, this is especially irritating. Things should start to get more regular in the middle of the night when the wind kicks up and sorts out the sea. But I don't foresee it being the most restful of nights, and we'll postpone our celebrating until after this weather passes.

For a cool visual of what the wind is doing here (or anywhere for that matter), check out this live map: https://www.windyty.com/?-32.436,-159.126,5

On another note, we've been receiving emails from many of you. We love reading them! (Checking the email is the only non-food related highlight of my day.) Unfortunately we are only allotted 90 minutes per week on our SSB radio connection, which we also use to download weather, so we may be a bit delayed in responding to you. It's great hearing that people are reading along, though, and we'll be in touch as soon as we can.

At 17-May-16 1:42 AM (utc) our position was 32°02.17'S 167°20.12'W

Passage Update: Day 6

Our seventh day at sea starts about now, just as the wind is finally filling in. It's been a dreary day. Low clouds, no wind, misty rain. We've been doing all the rainy day things: reading, sleeping, and eating. Mostly eating.

We just put two reefs in the main, hoisted the staysail and unfurled the genoa. Going nicely at 6.4kts with 15 knots of wind from the NW. It should continue to build throughout the night and hopefully we'll see the miles start ticking away.

We've had the lines out the past two days. Still no fish though.

At 15-May-16 8:46 PM (utc) our position was 33�02.58'S 170�07.17'W

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Passage Update: Day 5

Still no wind, still motoring. Things could get a bit lively tomorrow, though, as a front is approaching. Stay tuned...

Before we left we got to catch up with our friend Kirsty. She was in New Zealand for a few weeks and one of the things she looked forward to most were peaches from the Far North. Unfortunately it was a bit late in the season for peaches, but she did get her hands on some mandarins. Lots of them. She left us with two bags as we said goodbye and I've been eating them ever since. The day before, our friends Hugh and Hera dropped off what must have been 8 lbs of golden kiwifruit. So we've been enjoying fresh fruit for the past six days at sea and it'll likely last until we arrive in Raivavae. It was especially enjoyable today, though. The sun has been out all day and we've got clothes and sheets hanging out in the dry air. Portlights are open and the cushions are out in the cockpit. I love sitting up there peeling mandarins in the late afternoon light, the cockpit smelling of citrus, and watching as an orange trail of spiraled peel disappears in our wake.

As you can tell, not much happening here.

At 14-May-16 9:15 PM (utc) our position was 33�47.84'S 172�30.73'W

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Passage Update: Day 4

With hardly any wind this morning we decided to give our spinnaker a try, but the sea was lumpy and disorganized and the wind just too light to fill the sail properly so we ended up taking it back down and starting the engine. It did give us a chance to try out our new spinnaker sock, which makes hoisting and dropping such a big sail so much easier for two people.

The noise of the engine is doesn't give ocean crossing quite the romantic notion that coasting along under sail does. But annoying as it may be, it's also a reassuring noise, and motoring through a sparkling, flat sea is better than sailing into steep swell with 25 knots on the nose.

We saw another Wandering Albatross today but he wasn't interested in us. There were also millions of tiny Portugese Man O' War jellyfish (also called Blue Bottles) drifting around, their inflated sacs scattered atop the surface of the ocean as far as we could see.

The sky is full of stars now. Pretty nice out here.

At 14-May-16 6:26 AM (utc) our position was 34�14.55'S 174�10.16'W

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Passage Update: Day 3

We had a quiet night last night and took advantage of light winds this morning to do a bit of housekeeping. Matt organized his toolboxes and I tried (unsuccessfully) to sew something. Lunch involved a can opener. All very 1950s.

The wind filled back in by midday and conditions since then have been pretty close to perfect; 15-20kts off the port quarter and calm seas. We're making good progress � nearly 500nm in three days � but the forecast is showing light winds for the next couple days. Hopefully we can keep our speed up.

The freezer is too full for fish, so the lines are still neatly coiled.

At 13-May-16 6:47 AM (utc) our position was 35�04.18'S 176�36.17'W

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