Windward Passage Notes

On Thursday, November 15 we headed out the south pass of Fakarava in the Tuamotu with friend JT aboard, bound for Nuku Hiva, back in the Marquesas. Although the weather window was not ideal, we needed to get moving again as Hawaii is beckoning and she’s 2400 nautical miles or so from the Marquesas, where we plan to re-fuel, take on water, do some final provisioning, and check out of French Polynesia. And anyway, sailors’ superstition has it that you never leave on a passage on a Friday, so we had to go.  

We made landfall in Nuku Hiva two days ago, after a week at sea. We thought we’d been posting updates from that passage, but learned on arrival here that our blog was down. Here are those notes.

Weather permitting, we’ll leave next week for Hawaii. We hope to keep you posted along the way, and we’ll update photos at that point.  As always, it’s lovely to think of you reading our words as we write.  Thank you.

11/15 – Day 1 

From the ship’s log: 0800 Departing Fakarava, bound toward the Marquesas.

11/16 – Day 2

From Alma:   Happy one-third birthday Arlo, we’re going to the Marquesas! Day two, we’re heading to windward, so the forepeak [ed: where Alma and Arlo sleep] is uncomfortable. I’m a little sick of the pitching. If you’re not lying down, you feel sick in the forepeak. But other than that, things are going well (knock on wood). On deck it’s nice with the wind. We are headed for Nuku Hiva (New-koo heave-uh). It will be the third island that we have returned to. The first one was Toau (Tow-aaa-ooo) and the second one was Fakarava. I enjoy being able to picture what it will be like. And I think that I will enjoy returning to Nuku Hiva.

From Arlo:   JT’s back. We are currently heading from the Tuamotu to the Marquesas, where we will pause briefly in Taiohae, Nuku Hiva and then continue on to Hawaii. So far it has been all upwind, which means forepeak hatch is shut, and pounding into the seas. But at least there is no rolling rail to rail. My sister and I have changed from our watch of 6-9am, to a morning watch of 5:30-8am, and I am also taking a solo 12:30-2 or 2:30pm watch. At least I get to fish again on passage, although I have not caught anything since the Great Barracuda in Apataki. Earlier during watch, I spent a lot of time using the exercise bands. These bands are great for passing the time on watch.

From Jason:   After lunch. Arlo and Alma on watch and Alma singing and chatting. The aft cabin is a greenhouse. Here in the main saloon it’s cooler with the portlights open.  Sailing to windward is work! It takes such patience. The boat is so much slower when we’re close hauled. All the sails are strapped in tight and we’re just slogging into a headsea. Each drop from the peak of one wave into the face of the next feels like it stops us. We fall off and everything feels heavy and inert until slowly, slowly we gain way again. When we’re moving again, we lurch off another wave, plow heavily into the next and are stopped again. Over and over, with a leaden feeling that makes me really feel the weight of the boat. And all this slow and slogging is all in the wrong direction! Will we travel half again as far as the rhum line course? So slow in the wrong direction. It takes a whole different mindset to have that kind of patience. You have to settle into the passage and really get into that passage making mode of just doing the best you can every moment to just keep her going, and not worrying about how long it will take. You have to take the long view. I’m getting there, but I’m not there yet. Just getting some miles behind us helps, but this windward work is so uncertain.

11/17 – Day 3

From Arlo:   Fish! Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish! Today around midday I caught a good sized Skipjack Tuna. We cleaned it immediately and then marinated and baked it for dinner. It was delicious. In other news, this morning while washing dishes I spilled the entire tub of soapy water across the counter after a larger than usual swell. The weather has been mostly fair all day, except for two squalls of rain in the morning. We ran out of my favorite brand of sunscreen, so now I have to use the only other kind we have. We just fired up the engine again, because the wind just died. Just like we have been since we left Fakarava 2 ½ days ago: sailing when we can and steaming it when we can’t. With Nuku Hiva still four or more days out, we could use some favorable winds, not from dead ahead as they have been.

11/18 – Day 3

From Caitlin:  The eastern sky is paler as dawn approaches. It’s taken a couple of days to get back into the rhythms of being at sea. First, the watch schedule starts to feel like a natural cycle: Jason hands DEBONAIR to me at sunset, JT takes her at midnight, Jason’s got the mid-watch, and I am on deck by 2:30am. Arlo and Alma take over at sunrise, and Arlo is on again after lunch to facilitate naps for the rest of us.

Then there are the daily rituals: the “noon report,” prepared by Arlo or Alma, is a highly anticipated accounting of miles covered and miles made good in the last 24 hours. Jason and I send for weather and update our strategy at 7am and 7pm. After dinner, in good weather, I read aloud to the whole crew. We’ve gotten through half a dozen books this way over the year—right now we’re reading The Last Navigator, by Stephen Thomas, about traditional Micronesian navigation. Sometimes it’s lighter fare.

The routines are kept interesting by the constant changing of weather and by the work to respond to that weather (genoa down, yankee up, yankee down, genoa up again, shake a reef in the main), by the maintenance work and galley chores. There are also moments each day that provide punctuation: the enormous ice crystal halo around a gibbous moon our second night out. Or yesterday afternoon, when I sat on the coach roof, leaning against the overturned dinghy and looked to windward in the perfect light of the late afternoon. Arlo and Alma and JT were working below on calculating wind speed based on the rotations of a Sprite bottle spinner the kids made. Jason was below too, replacing the water filter in our fresh water system. I only felt selfish for a moment as I watched the light on the water, on the varnished wood, on the sails, on my toes. And it seemed then that not only was this a perfect moment, but that this moment had another dimension, connecting me across years to each of the other late afternoons I have spent looking at the sea in the perfect wind and the perfect light. Those moments appeared to me all at once, unbidden: when I was six on my family’s first boat, when I was in high school mid-Atlantic, and on a schooner I worked on in my twenties.

My 3 a.m. watch this morning began under a clear sky. The moon had set already and the stars were extra bright. The milky way, which is easier to see in the southern hemisphere, glowed and Jason pointed out the “Magellanic Clouds” that are actually other galaxies. And then we sailed into squall after squall, some with wind, some with rain that came down so hard I could barely see the surface of the ocean. Some with both. By the time the sun came up, the squalls were moving past us and the clouds were shot through with rainbows in every direction.

I’m tired and also tired of going to weather. But I know how lucky I am.

From Jason:   Today over lunch (Skipjack-salad sandwiches for the fisheaters) in the cockpit, Arlo gave the noon report. He told us that it was 14,300 feet deep. That’s 2.7 statute miles! (Or 2.4 nautical miles.) That’s a lot of water. We all thought about all that water down there. JT suggested picturing a column of water under DEBONAIR, 44 feet long and 12 feet wide and 14,300 feet tall and imagining all the life in that column. Mindboggling.

I’ve gotten into the upwind groove. It still takes way more work and attention than all the rolling downwind we did on our way here, but we’re keeping the boat moving in the right direction. I’ve acclimatized to the slower speed, and if we can keep her going four knots I feel OK. Five’s better, but four’ll do for now. I’ve relaxed enough to see the endless beauty of the sea all the way around us, and the sky above. The sea and sky are always changing, the sun playing through the clouds and over the water. Last night it was clear. Once the little waxing moon set, the stars were brilliant.

We’ve been out sailing all year—long enough to notice the slow movement of the constellations and planets across the sky. On our way South, from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus back in early July, just after sunset Mars was rising over the Eastern horizon, big and bright orange. It was so bright that I mistook it for the light of a ship until it rose higher and higher in the sky. Now, in mid-November, heading back to the Marquesas, Mars is right up overhead at first dark. The Southern Cross that used to stand vertical at sunset now rises on its left side in the wee hours after midnight, pivoting up a bit before disappearing at dawn. Just seeing the sea and sky, watching them constantly and continually and infinitely changing every day all year has been such a surprising pleasure for me.

11/19– Day 4

from ALMA:  Home seems so far away, and it is. And yet our trip is almost over. Just over a month left. It is sad to leave this place, yet it is also nice to come home. As we get closer to leaving for Hawaii from these little towns on the French Polynesian Islands,, it is seeming crazier to come back to busy civilization

11/20—Day 6

From ARLO:    9:00 a.m.  Fishing line deployed. Breakfast cooked. I made eggs, toast, and pamplemousse (pomelo). Yesterday we calculated the amount of water under us as we passed over a 16,400 foot deep spot. The amount of water under us was 3,837,600 cubic feet—although it would have been more if we had calculated it at our record depth of 18,040 feet deep.

This whole going to weather thing that we have been doing this passage definitely has its downsides, such as using the engine sometimes, and a couple of now-apparant leaks in the deck.

10:00 a.m. “Fish!” J.T. yells. I come up on deck and start heaving in the 300 lb test handline. The fish has been getting dragged through the water for a few minutes, but it still has plenty of fight in it. 90 seconds later we have a 3.5’ wahoo alongside. I had the leader in my hand while JT grabbed it and swung it aboard. Dad and I cleaned it and half an hour later we had four large plastic containers and one plastic bag in the fridge, packed with fish. Wahoo steaks for dinner tonight. And the next night and maybe the night after that too.

4:00p.m. (1600)   My watch again. Dolphins sighted. They played under the bow, leaping from the water, the evening light making rainbows in the spray of their blowholes. All in all, not a bad day.

11/21—Day 7

We sighted Nuku Hiva around 0700. Spent the day trying to make easting in a confused sea. Around sunset, the seas calmed as we got cover under the southeastern point of the island. We ate lentil soup in the cockpit in the dark. Eventually Alma went below to read in her bunk and then sleep. Later that evening, we nosed our way into Taiohae harbor and anchored by the light of the almost full moon.