To the Tuomotus

We had fabulous wind conditions for our passage from the Marquesas to the Tuomotus. The wind was steady from the East or East-South-East for the entire passage, at 12-18 knots. Swell was manageable, between one and two meters for most of the trip. It was enough that cooking was interesting, but possible. The difference made by having Amy and Strahan aboard was huge! We were able to get so much more sleep, and share the various tasks, making life so much easier. We did our night watches in pairs, and one person on watch was able to sleep in the cockpit, on standby mode, so the two off-watch crew got in a solid stretch of undisturbed time, during which they hopefully could ignore the rocking of the boat enough to get some rest. And they handled the crossing fabulously - no one was sick!

Bursts of activity kept us on our toes in between long periods of lounging. Barely outside of the harbour, we hit a big wave and discovered the weaknesses of our over-loaded fruit hammock. We all shrieked, as the majority of our fruit bounty went flying into the clutches of Neptune...blobs of yellow, orange, and green floating in our wake. Luckily, we saved a few pamplemousse, mangoes and lemons, and our bananas were tied separately, but there were four sad faces aboard Renova.

Later that day we had a big fish hit the line, and almost spooled us, but he managed to spit the lure and swim away with his freedom. Unfortunately, the next day, another fish finished the job, and took our lure and all our line with him. Now we had to get serious with our hand lines.

Soon after, Strahan hooked a fabulous tuna on the hand line, which we ate for the following three days. Our largest yet. And it was delicious. We had tons of sashimi, sushi rolls, spicy tuna and ceviche on crackers, seared tuna with ginger sauce, and so on. It was enough tuna that we had to stop fishing, as we couldn't handle any more fish!! There goes one of our chief pastimes. Back to napping.

Interestingly, we all had small appetites, and were most happy with bland foods. The butter chicken was a total flop, virtually untouched, yet the Mr. Noodles was by far, the most popular meal. Who'da guessed?

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We listened to the SSB and the positions of our fellow cruisers as they made the crossing with us. We managed to complete the five hundred miles in four and a half days, arriving at the pass just after noon.