Breakfast in Raivavae

We got a bag of delicious grapefruit from another boat. Almost as sweet as an orange. Breakfast this morning was strong coffee, fresh local grapefruit and baguette with butter and manuka honey. Perfect!

At Anchor in French Polynesia

The Schooner Maggie B remains at anchor in Rairua Harbor, Raivavae, Austral Islands, French Polynesia. The island is about three miles long and a mile across, with a typical barrier reef. The jagged mountains look like they were cut out from thick paper, especially at night. Mt. Hiro is the highest, at 438 meters. About 1000 people live on the island.

Rairua is the big town. It has the Mairie (Town Hall), one church, the Gendarmarie, a wharf building, a tiny medical clinic, a soccer field, and a store with no inventory. The bakery is a house about half a kilometer out of town. To get bread, one must order the day before, and wait at the end of the pier road at 0715 for Madam to drive around in her truck. The truck looks like a mobile grocery store, with Madam’s grandson (granddaughter?) scampering around the back to get the bread and find whatever else is desired. Old ladies appear out of the underbrush with crisp 500 CPF notes to buy supplies. Supposedly Madam makes petit pain au chocolate two days a week, but she is pretty scary and I haven’t asked yet about that, just being thrilled to have lovely fresh baguettes. A baguette is 60 CPF or perhaps US$0.50.

The only French or Europeans we have seen at the two policemen of the Gendarmarie National. They are very fit, young, good looking, and in perfect uniforms. But they also seem very innocent, like soldiers who have never seen a battle. Conversely the local cop is an older Polynesian, somewhat overweight, but with a happy face that has surely seen everything. I get the feeling that he is probably the high priest for the traditional ceremonies that are never seen by the Europeans.

Like many Polynesian societies, Raivavae seems to be a matriarchy. The somewhat overweight women in shapeless pareau or dresses seem to be running everything, to the extent that anything is running. Men that we have seen appear to mostly work for the Commune de Raivavae. Their work seems mostly to be to sit in the shade and discuss fishing. Church on Sunday is the big social event, with the ladies in their best, brightest dresses with huge hats decorated with flowers and ribbons.

I have some US dollars on board, but no clue how to turn them into CPF. Fortunately a friend in New Zealand gave us a few hundred CPF, so we have enough for bread. Not sure what one would buy, but we are going to walk or hitchhike into the next town which supposedly has a store. There are many trees full of grapefruit, mango, papayas, and bananas. Fields are planted in taro and cassava. Every yard has a pig tied up somewhere. The soccer field was full of dozens of chicken this morning, looking for bugs. I suspect that barter is used more than CPF.

The one surprise is that we haven’t seen a single fishing boat, large or small, though we have seen many small nets hanging from trees along shore that appear to be the kind that are thrown from shore.

Yesterday Hannah and Theresa participated in a very traditional Polynesian ritual. They rowed out at sunset to a lovely nearby motu (small island) with two Norwegians from another boat and burned our garbage on the shore while drinking beer. There is no dump or garbage pickup on the island and all burn their stuff along the side of the road. We, at least, sifted through the ashes for things that didn’t burn, not the usual practice here.

Today’s project is to solve a fuel supply problem with the genset. We bled the fuel filter as part of routine maintenance and it hasn’t been able to re-prime itself. The Onan is supposed to be self-priming, but for whatever reason, it isn’t now. We are also going to set up the Hookah air breathing system to scrub the bottom and explore — everywhere we can get up to 60 feet from the air pump.

I disappointed myself yesterday. There was a minor problem with this email program and it appeared, before two hours of hacking into the program, to be inoperative. I felt helpless and hopelessly cut off. And at the same time I felt ridiculous, being a world-girdling Blue Water Schooner Captain, who couldn’t live a day without checking my email. I was only somewhat mollified by having perfect reception for my Motorola cellphone, which texted me with an offer for special ringtones, only $1.98 each!

All is well.

Location 23° 52S, 147° 41W
Saturday Midnight, 07.28.2007

The Schooner Maggie B arrived at Raivavae Island, Australs at about midnight, 28 July, and anchored just outside the main pass until dawn. We then proceeded in Passe Mahananatoa to Rairura Harbor without incident. We are currently anchored in about 40 feet of water at (strong>23° 52S, 147° 41W. The water is warm, the sky is clear and the beaches beckon.

We have come 2287 NM from Opua. Papeete is 392 NM NNW of us. It took us about 12.5 days to make the passage, or averaging 183 NM per day or 7.6 knots, including the half day we had to go the wrong way when we had engine problems.

There are three other boats in the harbor (actually two boats and one catamaran). It looks very quiet ashore, but then it is Sunday morning. Theresa jumped in the water the minute the anchor was set, and we all will follow her soon. Hannah made pancakes for breakfast, so we might need to take a minute for things to settle. We have spotted the Mairie, so the Gendarmarie shouldn’t be too far away. Though they surely aren’t open, I’ll leave a crew list and report to keep good relations. We have our yellow “Q” flag flying as well as the Tricolor.

All is well.

Location 27° 55S, 150° 09W
Friday 12:00, 07.27.2007

At noon on July 27th, the Schooner Maggie B was at 27° 55S, 150° 09W. We are now on GMT -11. Tahiti is GMT -10, which we will switch to tomorrow. We are continuing to make good time to Raivavae, making 6.9 knots on a heading of 030 with the wind at 150 degrees at 12 knots. Our life on a broad reach! Hard to imagine why so many people consider this to be “the wrong way around.”

We have come 1998 NM from Opua and have 275 to go to Raivavae and 620 to Papeete. We should be at Raivavae about midnight tomorrow, and will stand off until dawn to enter the rather complicated pass.

Our main engine is purring along fine now, after Theresa did a third oil change to remove all the water from the crankcase.

My story yesterday brought out the following email from my friend, John Steele, owner of Covey Island Boatworks, which built the Maggie B, and former master of Marguerite, a Bristol Pilot Cutter:

“Years ago I offered to take Tom, a sailing friend – who needed it – out for a sail. I rowed him out to Marguerite and when I tried to start the engine …. damn, water locked ! I apologized and offered to take him back ashore and out for a sail another day. He said he’d rather stay and help get the motor going… a day out on a boat was as good as a sail, he needed to get out of the house.

So we did what you did last night. When the injectors were out and it was time to roll her over I put a towel over the block and turned the key….. whap !! A hot, wet towel was instantly slapped around Tom’s face as he had been above looking down. Without a second’s pause he peeled it off and proclaimed : ” Oh Yes … Yachting ! Just like I remember it ! “

John, and all at Covey have been a great support for us, all around the world. I suppose that boats a yard builds are like children: you mostly just hear from them when something is wrong.

We have a hymnal in our library. It was published in 1893 and belonged to my Great Grandmother. I was looking in it for possible tunes to be adapted for a Maggie B song. What struck me was two hymns for “Travellers by Sea”, one written in 1845 and one in 1887. One, “While o’er the deep Thy servants sail” says “Send Thou, O Lord, the prosp’rous gale.” The other “Safe upon the billowy deep” has “Mid the dark, send fav’rin gales.” We have just had a favoring gale, if not a prosperous one, which has marvelously blow us from New Zealand to the Islands. But I expect that no modern congregations raise their voices and pray for a gale. Probably not many sailors today either.

At night we are happy to see the return of well known constellations, including Orion, the Swan, the Dolphin and the Pleiades. It is a function of being a bit further north, and the time of the year. For the Maori, the first view of the Pleiades was the signal for the winter celebration. It was one of their central “sailing stars.”

All is well.

Location 29° 48S, 152° 00W
Thursday 12:00, 07.26.2007

The Schooner Maggie B was at 29° 48S, 152° 00W at noon on July 26th. We have 8-15 knot breeze from the SE to move us along on our course of about 030 to Raivavae at six or seven knots. The seas have calmed down nicely and, as of this writing, the 2/3 moon is guiding us along. We have about 440 NM to go to Raivavae.

Much of the day, however, was spent mostly stopped or going the wrong way due to systems problems. We hooked a fish at about ten o’clock this morning and went to Fishing Stations. When we tried to start the engine to be ready to maneuver, it wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even turn over. The fish spat out the hook and we got to diagnosing our problem. Hmmm — plenty of battery power, and it’s trying to turn her over and it’s not going anywhere? OMG – waterlock!

Waterlock is when water gets in the engine, all the way to the cylinders. A diesel can compress air, but not water and if a cylinder is full of water, it isn’t going anywhere, unless the starter is strong enough to break things. How does water get in? Through the exhaust. Why don’t you have something to stop it? We do, a nice Vetus Air/water separator. But it must have been overwhelmed by six days of going hull speed (the primary wave when you are going fast “climbs up” the stern, submerging the engine exhaust) and we also had big following waves pushing the water in. Isn’t there anything you can do? Yes, run the engine every day to keep up the back pressure to help the air/water separator keep the South Pacific out. I forgot to do it.

So, how do you recover? First thing is to stop the water coming in. When I pulled off one of the injectors, lots of water came gurgling out. Lots, like an open tap to the sea. So we tacked over to port tack (the engine exhaust is on the port side) and slowed the boat down. The I cracked the low point in the exhaust system and let out perhaps 10 gallons into the bilge. Then off come the four fuel injectors (shaped sort of like spark plugs, but more complicated to remove). That opened up the cylinders. We turned over the engine a few revolutions with the starter which blew out the water from the cylinders. Then reinstalled the injectors. Then changed the oil (water in the oil not good). Then prayed that nothing was bent or broken. Then started it! Yea! after a splutter or two, she (?) started right up. We ran it for a few minutes and shut down to change the oil again and tighten up the injectors. Now it is running fine. We will change the oil a third time tomorrow morning.

This took about six hours.

Happily, we were able to call the Service Manager at Yanmar in Nelson, NZ and John Steele at Covey Island in Nova Scotia for advice, which was hugely important. And we had all the maintenance manuals.

In the midst of things, Ben was able to cook a tasty lunch, which was perhaps underappreciated in the stress, Hannah kept the boat in control and safe, and Theresa became expert at extracting and re-filling the oil system, which requires both strength and flexibility (read: contortionist).

But the weather is good, we all learned lots of lessons and Raivavae is only a few days away. Maybe we’ll land that fish tomorrow.

All is well.

Location 33° 02S, 158° 51W
Wednesday, 12:00, 07.25.2007

The Schooner Maggie B was at 31° 42S, 155° 02W at noon on July 25. We have started our slow turn North for the Islands, and were headed 030 degrees at seven knots in a 13-18 knot breeze from 170 degrees magnetic. The sea remains fairly large so we bang around a bit. We have shaken out the reefs and are under all plain sail. We have come 1644 NM from Opua, and have 897 to go to Tahiti.

We have come 213 NM in the last 24 hours and 1236 in the last six days. Splendid sailing!

Some patterns in the crew are beginning to take shape: Hannah’s watches always get the rain; Ben’s get the buckets of saltwater in the face; Teresa’s are slower; and the
Captain’s gets all three!

We passed a 100 foot fishing boat yesterday, going the opposite direction. It was only two miles away(!) and was only intermittently visible due to the swells. They didn’t have their radar on, so no alert from the See-Me, and it was very difficult to pick them out on the radar with the big swells and rain squalls. A sharp lookout spotted them, gray on gray.

I mentioned midnight moonsets previously. Last night it was a bit different. On a routine scan of the horizon at about 0100, I saw to my horror a big red riding light seemingly right on top of us. Like what your last view of a closing container ship might be. Right after my heart jumped out of my mouth, I perceived that it was a little glimpse of the 2/3 moon, made red by the atmosphere just as it set. Whew.

Going through stores, we found lots and lots of lentil beans, loaded back in Canada (what were we thinking?). We now have a number of jars out in sunnier spots to sprout them. We haven’t perfected the system as yet, as last night’s boisterous sea has spread damp lentil beans all over the galley.

Sailing measurement continues to puzzle and inspire. One reference book on Pacific Islands refers to anchoring areas defined as so many cables from this or that. So we go to our reference books and find that a cable is 120 fathoms or 720 feet, though sometimes shortened to 600 feet so that it would be 1/10 of a nautical mile (a new cable?). Why 120 fathoms? That used to be the length of a standard anchor warp. What’s a fathom, anyway? Six feet. Why six feet? About the spread of arms, the easiest way to measure rope on board a vessel. Fathom’s probable origin is “favn,” Norse for “armful.” But the Bible mentions fathoms in Acts 27, Paul’s great description of his shipwreck. Did the early Christians speak Norse, or is it a translation or recalibration (don’t get me started on cubits)? Posidonius (hmmm, smells fishy) apparently wrote in the 2ND century BC of a depth of 1000 fathoms. Makes you appreciate the metric system.

While we are only five days from Tahiti, we are three days from Raivavae in the Austral Islands, where we will probably call. Depends on the weather.

All is well.

Carrick Unravelled

Just to continue on the gastronomic theme, lunch today was venison sausages, in a tomato/mushroom/onion/garlic sauce on top of whole-wheat fettichini.

Lunch was washed down with a nice Central Otago Pinot Noir called Carrick Unravelled. At first I wondered if Carrick were the winemaker, but I learned it’s a name from the region of Bannockburn, NZ.

Location 33° 02S, 158° 51W
Tuesday 12:00, 07.24.2007

The Schooner Maggie B was at 33° 02S, 158° 51Wat noon on 24 July. We are headed for our turn point at 32S, 155W at hull speed, 10 knots. The weather continues favor us, as predicted, and we have a nice, steady 25 knot Southerly to drive us along. The wind is slowly backing to keep us on a lovely beam reach as we make our gradual turn for the Islands. It is now overcast again with occasional light rain showers, presumably signaling the outer reaches of this next front. The swell has steadied down to 7-10 meters from the SW, with one meter Southerly wind waves on top. Maggie B is riding comfortably with only occasional dollops of spray and occasional lurches. We are still getting occasional 13-14 knot surfs.

We did 219 NM in the last 24 hours, and 1023 NM in the last five days.

We have come 1431 NM from Opua and have 1054 to go to Tahiti. We are currently anticipating stopping at Raivavai in the Australs, which is about 830 NM from our current position. Besides being well-spoken-of by many sailors, it will also give a chance to sit out what may be a big NE’erly coming in the end of the week.

The bird life around us continues to amaze. Sometimes there are perhaps 100 close by, and you think that they should have an air traffic controller to keep order, and then the skies are empty. Today’s crew included a juvenile Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans) and an adult Black-Browed (D. melanophris). Excitement was provided by several Broad-Billed Prions (Pachyptila vittata), which can even out-fly our numerous Pintado Petrels, which is saying something. The prions common name is Whale Birds, and the albatrosses, Mollymawks.

Theresa delighted us today by making lovely whole-wheat bread from a recipe from my father’s cook, Roberta Robinson. It was absolutely delicious, especially spread with NZ Manuka honey. We got the honey when we drove around the north of the Northern Island to see the Lord of the Forest (a huge Kauri tree, see the photo on the web). The honey came from a crossroad called Waiotemarama, which probably isn’t on many maps. We never met the beekeeper as it was just out on a shelf, with an Honor Box nearby. NZ$15 for a kilo! From another grower (and Honor Box, but with the cash out so you could make change!) we bought a huge pile of avocados, NZ$4 for four kilos.

Everyone on board knows when we hit 10 knots with the centerboard down. The centerboard sets up a deep, strong hum just above the threshold of hearing, rather like the sound of someone blowing across the top of a very big jug. Having the centerboard down significantly helps our stability in the more complex wave patterns.

All is well.

What We Are Reading en route to Tahiti

Frank: In Tasmania by Nicholas Shakespeare

Ben: At Risk: A Novel by Stella Rimington (ex-Head of MI-5)

Theresa: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Hannah: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

Location 33° 44S, 163° 07W
Monday 12:00, 07.23.2007

The Schooner Maggie B was at 33° 44S, 163° 07W at noon on July 23rd. We are booming along at 10 knots in a nice 20-25 knot SSW’erly. The waves have made themselves up into proper swells and are getting interesting. The swells are nice and regular, four a minute, and are 7-9 meters, somewhere between “Wow” and “Oh, shit!” The day has cleared with only occasional little rain showers marching by, leaving more rainbows than fresh-water washdowns. We did 227 NM in the last 24 hours, or 804 in the last four days. We are still riding the shoulder of the storm, keeping between 32 and 33 South, racing for our “left turn for the islands,” which is perhaps a day and a half away.

One of the Schooner Maggie B’s truly lovely characteristics is that even as we are hurtling along like this in big water and doing hull speed, we were able to have a pleasant lunch in the sun on deck (steaks with roasted potatoes, beets and garlic; salad with avocado, apple and macadamia nuts), only occasionally having to grab the HP sauce bottle as it hurtled across the table.

While generally quite dry, the Maggie B does like to occasionally pitch a bucket of water. This morning Ben was tripped up by one of our systems booby traps. Our shower’s control lever, if bumped, sprays the victim with perfect “Indiana Jones” timing. It can be neutralized by turning off an additional valve on the shower head, but that doesn’t always happen. This morning, while getting ready for watch, Ben got an unexpected and unwanted shower below. He went on deck, somewhat drenched, to complaint to Theresa. Just as his head appeared from the hatch to voice his irritation, the Maggie B finished the job with a perfectly-aimed bucket full. He got no sympathy from T’Weez.

One skill highly important for long-distance cruising, but not taught in most sea schools, is being a good librarian. Ships have endless systems: life rafts, watermakers, fuel pumps, portable VHF’s, roller furling, stove gas shut-offs, transformers, etc., etc. Everything comes with installation manuals, parts catalogs and operating instructions. If you have the paperwork and reasonable spares, you can fix most everything. Without the manuals you have to be a plumbing, electrician, diesel mechanic, rigging superman, or wait for the next port and hope. The Maggie B has a shelf about a meter long of just manuals.

Sailing in the dark on night on the shoulder of a storm can be a marvelous experience. Last night was mostly overcast, but with occasional stars shining through gaps here and there. The sea was large and boisterous, but only letting occasional mists of spray on board. The rain had ended. White caps were faintly visible in the light of the red and green riding lights. The wake could be seen briefly lit with the white stern light, rushing into the night at ten knots. Black-on-black waves intermittently blocked the faint horizon like 2-D cutouts moved back and forth in a school play’s seascape scene. Just at the setting of the half-moon, a small gap opened in the clouds to light the scene:

The setting half moon
Seen through a break in the rain:
A last kind gesture.

All is well.