Was Our Pacific Crossing Typical?

So, you may be wondering if our trip across the big blue was typical, or if others had a much different experience. Prior to leaving Mexico, there was A LOT of discussion and speculation about an El Nino year, and the increased possibility of storms and higher winds. Although winds were said to be higher than usual, we didn't notice any adverse affects. Our crossing from the Galapagos Islands to the Marquesas in French Polynesia was a quick trip of 23 days, and we didn't hear of any boats who had trouble finding the wind on their way across. Most boats accomplished the crossing in fewer days, although in our defense, we are smaller than most boats! Of course, those who departed directly from Mexico, had to endure the ITCZ, referred to by some as the 'doldroms', but a few hundred miles of uncertain wind seems quite normal for that route also.

A summary was published in the Latitude 38 magazine, as they do each year. I find it interesting to look at the stats for a few of the boats and see how many days they were at sea, how many fish were caught, the types and sizes of boats, and what equipment broke! You can check out the summary of this year's fleet by downloading the September 2010 issue of the magazine here. Lat 38 also publishes profiles of the crews who are planning to make the crossing each here. Our profile was in the March 2010 issue, which can also be downloaded from the Lat 38 website.

You can also view the summaries from the past years on the Pacific Puddle Jump website here.

Our first sight of land after 23 days at sea. The Marquesas Archipelago, at last!! May 1, 2010.

Ahhh....so that's why they call it viral...

It's been a while since I checked out the blog stats...how many people check out the blog, where they come from, what they look at, etc. An unexpected surprise. Lots of visitors have been coming to the site, thanks to links from fellow cruisers' blogs...especially our friends on Totem, Ceilydh, and Pisces. Thanks guys!! I've now put a list of friends blogs on the side of the page, so that while we're sitting at home with very little sailing news to report, our readers can check out the lives of our friends who have continued on their journeys!

And...this webpage is also sending a surprising number of web surfers our way...it has a long list of sailing related sites, including tons of sailing blogs...http://cruisenews.net/db/discoveries.php. Who would have guessed?

Cruising Guidebooks - Mexico

Without a doubt, our favorite book while cruising in Mexico was the Sea of Cortez, A Cruiser's Guidebook - by Shawn Breeding and Heather Bansmer. We loved this book for many reasons, but primarily because of the fabulous chartlets. The charts for Mexico were terrible quality, so this guidebook made a big difference for us. When we were cruising in the Sea during the 2009/10 season, we heard that Heather and Shawn were cruising the mainland doing research for a guidebook for Mainland Mexico. I'm sure that will be equally good.

Of course, we also used Charlie's Charts for this area, and found it to be excellent also. It covered the west coast of the Baja Peninsula, which wasn't included in Heather and Shawn's book, and had some different information for some areas. Very useful.

Cruising Guidebooks - French Polynesia

We had a hard time choosing cruising guidebooks before we left. We wanted to wait until we talked with other people to find out which guidebooks were really useful, but that wasn't always possible. Luckily, we managed to pick up a wide assortment of books along the way....and this is a summary of a few of our favorites:

 

This Guide to Navigation and Tourism in French Polynesia had fabulous little chartlets, and good information for some of the areas we saw. We found it to be the most useful of all our guidebooks for this area. It wasn't completely up to date, but no guidebook can be. It didn't cover all of the atolls in the Tuomotos (after all...there are hundreds of atolls), so we had to look elsewhere for some of the atolls that we wished to visit. It was a hard book to find, not available in many marine or online stores. We lucked out and got ours from a cruiser in Mexico whose plans had changed. 

We also used the Charlie's Charts Guidebook for this area, and between the two books, we felt we had as much information as we could handle. We had several other guidebooks, including many pdf documents given to us by other cruisers, but we rarely had time to reference ALL of our sources. These two were enough. (I can't find a link to Charlie's at either Amazon or West Marine, but we bought ours at West Marine). 

We also had the above two books that we had picked up on ebay, but we didn't use them very often. Both were outdated, and had very little specific information on the anchorages that we wished to visit. There was some general info that was good pre-departure reading.

  

Of course, we also picked up a copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Tahiti and French Polynesia. This gave us more background and history of the areas we visited, and more direction on what to do once we arrived at these beautiful islands.

If you have other favorite cruising guides for this area, let me know, I'd love to hear about them.

I'll compile a similar list for our favorite books during our time in Mexico.

I'm a bad blogger

OK...truth be told...I'm a bad blogger. It's been over a month since my last post. And that was a weak one. Sorry. If you must know, being at home and working full time, has really taken the fun out of playing on the computer!

But we have managed to be somewhat productive. I've FINALLY uploaded our favorite photos from the Galapagos and French Polynesia to our photo site. And I've uploaded a new post about our time in Raiatea below.

I've also got a couple blog posts up my sleeve...or tumbling around in my head...so I hope that those will make their way onto the screen soon. If you've got questions, please feel free to send them via email, or the comments section, and I'll take a stab at answering them, while we're home, and with great internet. 

As for boat stuff...the great folks at Garmin have replaced our well-loved GPS Map 76, even though it was slightly over the warranty period. It had started to spontaneously power off. Not a big deal, but somewhat inconvenient. What a great company.

We enjoyed a fabulous potluck dinner with our fellow yacht clubbers this week, and were thrilled to find out how many of them are following this blog - THANK YOU!

Photos - from Amy and Strahan

Amy and Strahan have posted photos from their trip to visit us in the Marquesas and Tuomotus. They have some incredible images! Click here to check it out.

Home Sweet Home

Even though we were sad to be leaving French Polynesia earlier than we had hoped, we are still very happy to be home! We're not in our house, as it is rented out, but we've lucked out by staying in a beautiful waterfront suite with family. At least we don't have to be in withdrawal from not seeing the ocean each morning!

It's lovely to see friends and family after being away for a year, and finally sleep in a real bed. Delightful!! Grocery shopping is a treat...supplies are reliable, familiar and in a language that is easily understood! Hard to complain about BC cherries, peaches and blueberries!!

With all the last minute craziness of putting the boat away and coming home, I've become delinquent in my recent blog posts. I apologize. I hope to spend some time next week getting the blog up to date, and posting some pictures from our adventures! In addition, we'll continue to post about our boat-related adventures here at home. Of course, all of this in the midst of searching for a job (if you hear of anything, let me know). I hope you'll check back soon for more updates!

Disappointment in Raiatea

(Written on July 28)

We booked time in the boatyard at Raiatea Carinage some time ago and we've worked up quite a to do list while we sat on the hard. When we first pulled into the lagoon at Raiatea, we went straight to the yard, picked up a mooring, and investigated. My heart sunk. The yard was dirty, no washer-dryer in sight, and worse of all...it had only one toilet stall and a single shower. And both were beyond disgusting. I wasn't sure that I could withstand five days with such facilities. And I'm no princess. Mike and John were just a grossed out as I was. 

So, on Monday morning, when we were hauled out of the water, Mikey took a mop and a bucket of bleach to the facilities. Although it didn't look much better, at least we knew it was clean. Kind of. In any case, we were still very careful not to touch anything when being in there. EWWWWWWW....

The good news is that the stands they use to support the boat are pretty fabulous, and we feel quite secure about leaving the boat here. They've done a good job of hauling the boat, and the workers even swam below to boat, to place the straps exactly where they were needed. And the staff could not be nicer, or more helpful. Wow.

Our neighbors here in the yard have been great...Eric and Kris on SV Lady Meg are fellow Canadians and are finishing their trip around the world. They've been a great resource, as they've stored their boat in yards around the world several times to return home to Canada. There is a local family here, and the two girls, Leah and Daphine, are taking care of the litter of yard puppies...and have also been a hoot as we exchange language skills.

Our time at Raiatea went by in a blur of boat projects. Mike and John took a day off to dive a local wreck...John even saw the elusive Hammerhead Shark. I stayed on the boat, as I knew I'd want to do more diving here next year upon our return, and diving inside wrecks freak me out. Something about confined spaces, I guess! We also spent time with friends on Dillon and Escapade to check out some of the local eateries, share a few meals, and watch a local festival.

It was great having Mike here, although was probably not the most relaxing end to a dream holiday for him! He's promised to write a blog post about his time on the boat, so stayed tuned for his perspective! After a few days in Raiatea, we stuffed his duffel bag full of broken boat parts, and went to see him off at the airport. We'd be following in his footsteps in a few days as we make our own way home.

Huahine - Writing Resumes in Paradise

Huahine, Society Archipelago, French Polynesia

After an easy overnight sail from Moorea to Huahine, we found ourselves at a stunning island - perhaps one of the most beautiful islands we've seen yet in this Archipelago. It is so very lush and green here, with trees lining the mountain slopes, white sand beaches, and beautiful blue waters.

Our first stop in Huahine was the town of Fare. The largest town on this island of 4000+, all the amenities that you might need can be found here - an awesome grocery store, banks, post office, trinket shops, etc. Apparently, there is also a couple of world class surf waves here, and the forecast was that they should be running in a day or two, so we may get to see some action before we leave here. Early in the evening we joined cruisers from Escapade, Dignity (www.aboarddignity.com), Kamaya, Dillon, and others at the bar for happy hour. This is the first time we've seen pints this cheap since Mexico. Beer is definitely not cheap here!! Almost as good was the steak and frites we enjoyed at the roulettes (mobile food vans) afterwards!!

For our second day we rented bikes and decided to tour the island. Even though the bikes seemed to be brand new, we had a few problems. My crank wasn't tightened, and we had to stop every few minutes to hand tighten it, or I would end up one-footed! Mike taco'ed his front wheel on a tight corner, and although he managed to make it spin, it was a wobbly ride. Even so, we had a great tour of the north end of the island, met interesting people, toured a pearl farm, and generally enjoyed ourselves. But clearly, our bike-butts need reconditioning...we just aren't accustomed to bike seats anymore!

A cool part of the day was finding ourselves at a blessing ceremony for a traditional canoe that was leaving Huahine on its way to Shanghai. We were able to witness speeches, songs, dancing, and tears, as the sailors prepared to disembark. The boat had already had some technical difficulties on its journey from Tahiti, so we hope they arrive safely! Check it out at www.upootahitiexpedition.com.

We also spent one night at the southern end of the island - Baie Avea - and it was a gorgeous spot. Unfortunately, the snorkeling wasn't very exiting...kinda like swimming in a sea cucumber farm. Yuck. We did enjoy a walk ashore, and met up with Dignity for a drink. Although, we're continually shocked at how many large resorts are closed down here. Apparently, tourism is down 70% this year.

Since we'll be home in a couple weeks, we've started to think about what we'll do for work. French Polynesia is a crazy expensive place. Almost everything costs more than at home, and in some cases, much more. Considering that everything is imported, it makes sense...but still, it sure makes a dent in our cruising kitty. So...we've been thinking about work, and have spent time trying to get online, search for jobs, and write applications!

Our Position: 16°48.70'S and 150°59.54'W

Swimming with Sting Rays in Moorea

Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia

One of the big attractions for all the honeymooners here on Moorea is to swim with the Sting Rays. Mike and I joined up with a few other cruising boats - Dignity, Scream, Sidewinder, Escapade - and took our dinghys to check it out. First, we stopped to snorkel around some tiki heads in the bay, then made our way to the 'big show'. Steve and Ben had the foresight to bring along some old tuna, and we had a great time swimming with the rays and sharks. Who would have guessed that their skin would be so silky smooth!?!?

At first, every time they came close, I was a bit jumpy (remember Steve Irwin?).... But soon enough we were enjoying the experience, and getting excited about these beautiful animals. Their skin really is as soft as the finest silk. And it was quite a surreal experience to be hanging out in waist deep water with these beauties. Just at the edge of the sand bar, the sharks lingered around, waiting for the fish head that the big tourism boats brought along. I've seen lots of reef sharks on our travels here, but it was Mike's first time and thought it was super cool.