What's In Your Ditch Bag??

Like most offshore sailors, we kept a ditch bag full of very important, life-saving necessities near the companionway exit when we were on a long passage. The common thinking is that if the snot really hits the fan, you can grab your ditch bag on your way to the life raft. Uh-huh.

Well, regardless of whether you'll have the time or the where-with-all to grab the bag, it's a good idea. And don't just think this only applies to those of us who live a watery existence. Back when we lived a land based life, we also kept an emergency plastic tub with a few essentials handy, just in case.

Since I’m unpacking the boat, I've brought home our ditch bag. So...here's what we put in our ditch bag. I'm curious to know what you put in yours. What are we missing??

We use a duffle bag with backpack straps to enable an easy exit and keep our hands free. Yep, we still drool over those fancy yellow bags that float and have perfectly sized partitions for all your 'stuff', but this was a better fit for our budget (ie: free). Everything is double-triple bagged in ziplocs.

Here's what's in it:

• Fancy EPIRB (Emergency Beacon with GPS)
• SPOT (another beacon to call for help, or let your friends know where you are)
• binoculars
• first aid kit, gauze, bandaids, slings, splint, tensors, suture kits, and ana pen etc.
• seasickness meds and T3s
• gps with batteries
• signaling devices: strobe light, flash lights, laser light, glow sticks, whistles
• gerber multi-tool
• copies of passports and boat papers
• waterproof notebook and pencil, playing cards
• sunscreen and emergency blanket
• sail repair thread (should have included a needle)
• hazard kit (includes foil water pouches and some type of expired food 'product', toilet paper, garbage bags, and other stuff).

Some stuff that isn't in this picture, that we usually put in the bag for our big passages:

• cash and passports
• satellite phone
• handheld vhf radio
• hard drive with photo backups (yeah, I'm a photo-crazed fool)
• sunglasses
• a book
• chocolate (most of it was eaten on our final days at sea...running out of chocolate is definitely an emergency situation aboard Renova).

We also had a second bag that was tied on that had our supply of flares. We kept a jug of water tied on deck, with a knife nearby to cut it loose. On our North Pacific passage, we put our wetsuits into a dry bag and left that near the exit also.

Radio Heaven

We've died and gone to radio heaven.

We've spent the better part of a week or so installing our new radios. First, we installed a new VHF radio. This one has AIS. The picture below shows the display that shows all the nearby vessels that are transmitting an AIS signal (commercial traffic typically), and some killer info...like how fast they are going, what direction they are headed, if and when they will collide with us. Simple things that make life SO much better. And hopefully, safer.

We toyed with getting an AIS receiver, that would plug into our chart plotter software. It would require an extra VHF antenna. No problem, we've already mounted a spare. But...when we're on a passage, we don't run our chart plotter continuously. Saving power. But we do keep our VHF on. So, this was a perfect solution.

Sadly, our old cockpit mic doesn't work with this unit, but no worries. The good folks at Standard Horizon are sending us a compatible one ASAP!!

The other uber-cool radio news is that we are working on a SSB radio!! Andy and Monica on SV Savannah sold us their old radio for a smokin' good price. We (well, mostly John) installed it in only three days (!) with a fair amount of course language that I attribute to years on job sites and fishing boats. But, bad language aside, guess what - it works, mostly!! We are still doing some testing, and it isn't perfect, but we're making great progress.

Life is good. Our projects are coming along well. Departure from Majuro is imminent.

Back in Majuro

Sorry for the radio silence.

We're back in Majuro. We left Honolulu early Monday morning, crossed the
date line, and arrived Tuesday morning. After a passage of 22 days, we
managed to cover the same distance in just 5 hours. Amazing. And no charges
for our overweight bags. Well, unless you consider the rips and tears a type
of fee.

Being back has its pros and cons. For instance...we wondered if Renova
always smelled like this? A bit musty. Even mildew-y. Did her woodwork
always have these worn patches here and there? I suspect so. We've simply
been spoiled with the wonderful new-ness of MY Laysan. Even so, after almost
two months of neglecting Renova, we're glad to be home, and after our
initial day of rest, we're already in frantic cleaning mode. We're anxious
to begin exploring the reputedly phenomenal outer islands of this country.
And...it feels good to give Renova some love.

Renova in a state of disrepair, as we do a mad clean

So far, we've scrubbed, de-cluttered, installed a new VHF (with AIS...yeah),
and dined with our fellow yachties! We've also spent time with our friends
on SV Carina, who were kind enough to help us with some sail repair while we
were away. We had noticed that some of the stitching on our 2009 genoa was
coming loose at the clew, and we had some areas of chafe. Philip and Leslie
did a fabulous job of the repairs and we've learned a lot along the way.
We've got a few more projects on the to-do list, before we leave here. SSB
installation. Alternator install. Provisioning. Immigration. Computer
set-up. And the list goes on.

Leslie and Philip from SV Carina help us with sail repair

I'm sure there are a zillion emails in our inbox. We've been very negligent.
Sorry. I need to spend a couple days tapping out our belated replies. Until
the captain sets me free from cinderella duty, please know that we are
thankful for your emails, and will respond personally asap!
If it is any consolation...I was able to take advantage of free and fast
wifi at the yacht club by uploading pics to our flickr page. I posted pics
of our time at Abemama, Tarawa, Abaiang, Majuro, Johnston and Honolulu. You
can check them out here: www.flickr.com/photos/naomit

Stay tuned...I'm keenly aware that we have more to blog about the rest of
our time in fabulous Honolulu, and some stats summarizing our trip from
Majuro to Hawaii on MY Laysan. Coming soon to a browser near you!
Pics: Leslie and Philip do a fabulous job with our sail repairs. This is
what Renova looks like in major de-clutter mode. Yep - that's my flip flop
collection at John's feet. I've made a major contribution to reducing our
gross tonnage by sacrificing two pair.

Let there be Light!!

Nov 29

We are slaves to our battery bank. When it is sunny, and the solar panels
are putting in lots of amps, we are happy campers. But (and there is always
a BUT), Majuro isn't an especially sunny spot. I know...we're in the
tropics. Crazy. But still - not sunny. Hot? Yes. Muggy? Yes. But sunny?
Well, sometimes. Good for our water tanks. Bad for our batteries. So, John
happily gets to put our new generator and battery charger to good use.

As a result of the lack of sun, we are miserly with our power usage. We have
solar lights that we use inside the cabin to read at night. And we have a
solar garden light that we use as an anchor light. Both are not so bright.

But, we've found a solution. A local yachtie sold us two strips of LED
lighting. John attached one to a long cable and velcroed (is that a verb?)
it around the mast. The second strip he fitted into our existing anchor
light fixture at the top of the mast. Now, we have SUPER bright lights, and
we can be seen at night. Which is a good thing. Especially on Sundays. When
the locals might be just a bit tipsy. And might rage through the mooring
fields. Mighty Fast. Mighty Close. Sheesh.

Here's a pic of our new light wrapped around the mast, and a pic of the boat
John took while installing the anchor light on the top of the mast.

Labels: Majuro, Marshall Islands, weather, maintenance, gear, projects

Lots of Updates...just not yet

We have lots to blog about. Like tons of awesome new gear. And fun trips. New friends. A birthday celebration. Samoan life. But...sadly, our computer has finally bit the dust. Died. *Hit the bed. So, it has been sent to Canada for a hopeful warranty replacement, and I'm now setting up our power-pig, back-up computer to be our emailing, blogging, navigating super-machine. It's not going well.

If you've sent email recently...thank you so much! Especially for all the awesome birthday greetings!! I'll be attempting to recover my email and address book, so I hope to respond to you all soon. 

Introducing...MUFFIN

Our new dinghy. A West Marine special. Super small. Super floaty! Hurray. We have to patch a couple holes, but in the meantime, John is just enjoying it on the dock. Alec is looking pretty pleased too. 

Catch me now...

Here's our new Yamaha 4hp Outboard. And John whipping around the marina with it's newly installed carburetor. Happy guy. 

A New Ride

So, if you've been following along with this blog...or if you know me a little... you may know that I've been jones'in for a folding bike for some time. A small bike would be the perfect get-around vehicle for these small islands, where the anchorage isn't always beside the bank and/or grocery store. 

As luck would have it, our dive charter company had a couple of small folding bikes for their employees, and they were going to upgrade to mtn bikes!! Hurray for me. He sold one of them to me for $300 tala. About $120 CDN. And the best part...it is blue! It is pretty small, not at all well-fitting, single speed, poorly equipped, but worth every penny. Apia is about a 10-15 minute walk, so the bike makes little errands super easy. And...there aren't many bikes here, so the locals get a kick out of seeing me with my little bike. I'm just as happy as can be.

More Outboard Engine Repair

I know. You're scratching your head, wondering what is wrong with that picture. Yet another pic of John tinkering with our outboard. But wait a minute. That isn't a 70's era Evinrude?? I KNOW!! :O)

We noticed our next-door-boat had this tiny outboard on his stern, and a great big dinghy, with a good sized outboard. We decided to investigate. Turns out...he isn't using this one. It doesn't run, but hasn't been used
too much and isn't very old, and he's happy to sell it to us, if we can get it running. Well... You can only imagine the monstrous grin on John's face!

John's in his happy place. Cleaning fuel lines. Rebuilding the carbarator. Going for laps around Renova. Happy guy.

Chart-plotting Heaven

Yep...that is where we are. In chart plotting heaven. Before leaving home, I downloaded a new open-source charting program (OpenCPN), and I was able to install it today on our navigation computer. The fabulous part is it is compatible with a variety of electronic chart file types, so we have chart coverage for most of the world. I've managed to get it up and running, link it to our GPS receiver, and we're happily playing with a variety of different route options. Very cool.

Fixed....sorta

After an evening of cocktails aboard Lady Meg, with Australia 31, we all came up with a number of possible culprits for our outboard problems. Before breakfast the next morning, John had her running again.

Mark, you were right, that guy can fix anything!!

So, once again, we can get to shore, and to visit other boats. We still can't idle, and we're a one-speed show, but for now, we're happy with that.

Quiz Time

Our courtesy flags arrived in the mail today. Just in time! I challenge you to see how many of these countries and/or territories you can name!

Ok, I'll give you one hint. The blue and white triangle is our yacht club ensign. You're on your own for the rest.

Reconnecting with Cruising Friends

Yesterday, I was thrilled to take a trip to Victoria to meet up with cruising friends we met in Mexico. Liz and Mike were kind enough to check out a second hand sail in Seattle for us...and then offered to deliver it to us via the Clipper Ferry! I met them in Victoria and we had a great afternoon catching up!

Back in November, John and I rendezvoused with Jacob and Julia - our friends from Pisces - also in Victoria. We met them last year in La Paz, and buddy-boated with them. They are now settled in Seattle, and their fabulous Jason 35 "Pisces" is for sale.

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!

Blown away by Apataki

We were blown away by the atoll of Apataki. Literally. But, I'll start at the beginning...

Our last day on Toau was spent at the northern end of the atoll, close to the pass, so we would have a shorter passage to Apataki - our next destination. We left Toau before slack tide, and had the excitement of dealing with the current opposing the winds as we exited the pass, creating large standing waves. The current was in our favour, so we were traveling quickly, but the large swell made it uncomfortable, even if only for a few minutes. We were soon out of the pass, hoisted our sails, and set our course to Apataki.

Although there is a small village on Apataki, there isn't a suitable anchorage at the village, so we anchored a few miles away, in front of a pearl farm with a few other sailboats. As it turns out, several of these boats had found paradise, and had stayed in the area for a couple of years! For the next four days, we wandered the beach, chatted with the locals, and tackled a few boat jobs. Pauline and Alfred live here with their parents and their children. They have a pearl farm business, and we were able to watch as they went about classifying the pearls into grades for sale and export. They've also started a boat yard, with a huge trailer and ramp. There were three boats in the yard while we were there, and one was pulled out on our last day. Although facilities were limited, it would be a great spot to haul out, if we just needed to paint the bottom! John's scraped foot was still a bit swollen (from one of his lobster 'hunting' expeditions with Strahan), so he chatted with a Doc on another boat and started a course of antibiotics, but is trying to keep it dry. Not easy.

Our friend Chris on SV Namaste had told us that the snorkeling in and near the pass at the north end of the island was fabulous, so after a few days, we moved up there to check it out. Only a couple hours after we dropped the hook, the wind started to pick up. Within only a half hour, the wind was howling. We checked our weather files, and saw a system was supposed to be developing near Tahiti, but wasn't really supposed to be this far north. Clearly the weather files were wrong. Because we were up against a lee shore, we didn't feel it was safe to remain here. So we upped anchor (with some difficulty, in the large waves that had instantly developed), and quickly made our way out of the pass into the safely of the open sea. We were sad to leave here without getting a chance to experience the snorkeling, but we looked forward to the Rangiroa, our next atoll...and the largest coral atoll in the world.

It was about 80 miles to Rangiroa, an overnight sail. Throughout the night, the winds continued to build. We don't have a wind meter on board, but we guessed it to be consistently 30 knots with gusts to 35 or so. It was the most wind that we'd seen while underway on our journey so far. It was definitely the only time that we'd had waves crash over the side of the boat and into the cockpit. We had our full BC rain slickers on! We had only a very, very, tiny bit of our genoa (head sail) out - and we still were going up to 8 knots in the gusts (3-4 knots in the lulls). And although we were worried that the furling system would buckle under the strain, we realized that our storm sails were even bigger than the tiny bit of canvas that we were flying. The boat handled the weather fine. And we made it to Rangiroa in time for the optimum tide. Although the tide was rising, and it should have been an incoming tide, we still had a couple knots of outgoing current.

As a note of interest, during times of heavy wind and waves, the current and tides in the atoll passes can change dramatically. Normally, there is an ingoing and outgoing current in the pass that roughly follows the tide. During heavy weather in some atolls, there is a lot of water pushed over and between the small motus (islets), filling up the lagoon. This can create a continual outgoing current in the passes, even when the tide should be rising!

Throughout the storm, there was chatter on the radio. Two other boats had decided to leave Apataki when we did, and there were at least three other boats en route to Rangiroa from elsewhere. It was great to know that other boats were nearby. And we also got to hear what their wind indicators were showing - winds of 30 to 35 with gusts up to 39. WOW.

Our Position (Apataki): 15°20.96'S and 146°11.66'W

New Sail!

Our new sail has arrived!! And it fits! Last night I dried out and removed the old sail, and this morning I hoisted the new sail. It looks fabulous and I can't wait to take the boat out and give it a try. Kudos to North Sails - they had the sail made and shipped to a nearby town in less than one month...and one of their staff delivered it to me right at the marina! Wow.

Look Ma...No Hands!!

We've finally had a chance to test out our newly installed Monitor wind vane. We sailed...or rather, the vane sailed... almost the entire way from our house to Rebecca Spit. As you can see in the picture, the vane is tilted by the wind, which in turn, moves the pendulum in the water. This pendulum pulls on the lines, which are led back to the wheel. MAGIC!

Now we just have to come up with a name for it. I suggested Hans ...remember Hans and Franz....here to pump you up!! Hans is also the name of the inventor.