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.

One More Item for Your Grocery List

When you hit the grocery store this week, you'll definitely want to pick up a copy of the new Pacific Yachting mag. You may just see some folks you know in there!

And, thanks to Diane for the great article!!

Anxious to be in the tropics

After a several month hiatus...we're excited to return to the boat, and the warmth of the tropics. Here is a glimpse of our life:

 

 

I know...the pic doesn't look much the Pacific Northwest, does it?!? Sunny AND snowy?? Crazy. Feels a bit like we're in Edmonton....well, except for the ocean. Hmmmm.....

Oh yeah...here's a close up of the top of the flag pole (whose flag was long ago shredded in one of our chaotic winter storms):

I'm also looking forward to blogging again!! Stay tuned for more updates, as we get ready to cruise once more!

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.