CAPTAIN’S LOG                The Tuamotus 

June 3 to June 28, 2014 

The Tuamotus is an archipelago made up of 77 atolls.  Each atoll is composed of a circle of motus or islets made of coral sand and rock perched on the rim of an ancient volcano and enclosing a lagoon.    The motus are barren except for coconuts and breadfruit trees, and have a maximum elevation of about ten feet above the sea.  The only source of fresh water on these islets is rainwater.  There are no fruits or vegetables on these atolls, nor are there any indigenous animals.  There is almost no known history to these islands, but it is thought that human beings first came here from the Marquesas in 1000 AD.  The motus enclose a lagoon, the largest of which is about 20 miles in diameter.   The atolls are very beautiful and enclose a wealth of sea life that is relatively easy to access and provide some of the best dive sites in the world.  In cruising near the Tuamotus one is struck by the contrasting color of the deep blue indigo ocean, the light sand the motu shore, the green of the coconut palms, the aqua color of the lagoons, and the clouds sailing across the light blue sky.  

Passage to the Tuamotus

We left the beautiful anchorage at Fatu Hiva at 1030 headed for Fakarava 540 miles southeast, one of the more popular and larger atolls in the archipelago. The seas were calm for the first couple of hours, then we passed outside the shelter of Fatu Hiva and the swells built and built until we were in high, combing seas of ten to fifteen feet.  Waves of this size are really large and quite intimidating.  Argo did nicely, but Lyle was green and seasick and spent most of the next two days and nights on the couch in the salon trying to remain as quiet as possible.   The rest of us had varying degrees of mal de mar, but we were in pretty good shape.  After fifteen hours of somewhat miserable conditions, I began to consider alternatives to lessen our discomfort.  After a group discussion, we decided to alter to a less strenuous course and go to the little atoll named Ahe.  Just then the hydraulic alarm sounded indicating an overheating situation.  This is a critical problem for Argo as she needs her stabilizers to maintain her posture, otherwise she would roll uncontrollably in these seas.  It was pitch dark and the swells were huge.  Gus and Rebecca stood by the doors to the pilothouse trying to see the exact direction of the waves so that I could be sure to point her into them and avoid as much as possible rolling violently from side to side.  Tyler, who was now awake, rushed to the engine room to look at the impeller on the hydraulic cooling pump. We had changed it in Panama, so he knew exactly what to do.  In an amazingly short period of time he had it replaced and we resumed our course in comfort and confidence.  After things were repaired, he brought the defective impeller up to the pilothouse and I could see that it seemed to have over heated; strange for something that should be pumping water.  On our new course to Ahe the angle to the swells improved and things got a little better.  After a couple of hours Lyle started to come around and everyone seemed to perk up as the waves were still huge, but their moment lengthened allowing Argo to ride up and down rather than roll sideways off them. 

On the third day we began to feel better and almost enjoy the cruise when the hydraulic alarm sounded again (36 hours later).  This was an unwelcomed surprise.  Once again we had a potentially serious problem on our hands.  Thankfully it was daylight and the waves were somewhat better for dealing with this problem.  I turned Argo into the waves again and Tyler and Gus flew to the engine room.  Tyler checked out the strainer and then the impeller.  The strainer was clear, but all the blades of the impeller had been sheared off. We looked for an obvious reason for this unusual part failure, but nothing seemed apparent.  We replaced the impeller and things returned to normal, for a while.  We talked about the problem and concluded that the sea water strainer had begun to rust.  It looked as though small bits of it could have broken loose and made their way into the impeller shearing off the rubber blades, although this was unlikely. (Later, after consultation with experts, we learned that Globe Impellers can weaken over time.  The impellers we recently purchased were probably defective, leading to their failure. No more Globe Impellers for us!).  By 0630 we were close to Ahe and looking forward to anchoring in a calm harbor. 

Ahe Atoll

Getting into atolls can be difficult and most have only one entry pass or channel.  In the case of Ahe, its entry pass was very narrow (maybe 50 feet), very shallow (13 feet), surrounded by coral shelves, subject to very swift currents at tidal changes (9 knots), and requiring mid-channel turns.  The ocean near Ahe is over 18,000 feet deep and rises almost straight up to the motus or islands that make up the atoll like beads on a necklace.  Once inside the atoll the lagoon is comparatively shallow, crystal clear, and a beautiful turquoise color.  The motus are white sand islands covered in coconut palms.  Some of the motus have houses on them and the lagoon near them is dotted with buoys that are attached to oyster beds that are used to cultivate the famous Tahitian black pearls.  The Ahe lagoon is about 16 miles long by 8 miles wide.  At one end is a little village with a government dock at which we moored.  It was the first time since leaving Shelter Bay Marina in Panama that Argo was in a calm anchorage. 

The village was home to a couple hundred people.  They started showing up at the dock when we arrived: kids in swimsuits or underwear, adults riding three wheeled bikes, men interested in boats, the local gendarme and several transvestites.  The village had two streets and an intersection. The homes were small bungalows on paved streets surrounded by tropical plants and flowers, and each had a rainwater collection system for drinking water.  There was a Catholic Church and a Mormon Temple of sorts and the only restaurant was a hamburger stand that for $13 provided fries, a burger, and a drink (the voracious flies were complimentary!). 

The first day in port we rested and took a swim off our swim platform.  Tyler dove Argo’s bottom to see if anything was clogging the water intake for the hydraulic cooling pump or the water maker.  His report: all was in apple pie order!   Our conclusion is that the problems with the water maker and the cooling pump are the result of cavitation caused by turbulent seas.  This causes air to be sucked into the pumps, lessening their effectiveness.  The proposed solution is to install scoop strainers to the hull at our next haul out, which would force water into the intakes when we are underway and lessen or eliminate the problem.

The second day we took an eight mile excursion across the lagoon to the lovely Pension Chez Riata for lunch.  When we arrived, Riata was standing on the white sand beach, ukulele in hand singing Polynesian songs that she recorded in her youth (CDs anyone?).  The scene was picture postcard perfect.

Lunch was served after a refreshment of fresh lemonade and fried banana chips.  Riata and her husband, Willy, told us about their life on Ahe and their travels.  They come to the United States each year to visit relatives and for shopping and skiing: she shops, he skis.  Lunch began with an appetizer of thinly sliced pearl oysters marinated in garlic, oil, and lime served on an oyster shell.  These shells are rather flat and about eight inches in diameter, not like the typical New England variety.  The entre’ was fresh white fish sautéed in bread crumbs and coconut, accompanied with bread fruit, green beans, and a nice White Bordeaux.  Dessert was a fabulous yellow cake with a vanilla cream center and chocolate glaze frosting.  Rebecca doesn’t eat much, but she did eat that!

The next day, Sunday, we had hoped to move up the lagoon to anchor at Chez Riata, but unfortunately a squall line came through and it rained torrentially all day.  We tried playing cards, but soon migrated to watching movies.   The next day, Monday, the sky cleared and we got underway at 0630 for Rangiroa 75 miles to the south.  We tried fishing, but only succeeded in losing a couple of lures and catching the fattest Skip-Jack we ever saw.   It was a pleasant cruise, if not productive, and we arrived in Rangiroa about 1800.

Rangiroa

Prior to entering a harbor we study the navigation charts carefully, obtain tide information, and talk with others who have been there–sailors if possible.  Prior to coming to Rangiroa we learned that the 125 foot French Customs Military boat (made of steel with a picture on www.tischtravels.com) hit a reef nearby and sank.  This was very unsettling.  Our charts showed the path to Rangiroa as a rhumbline course through the very narrow Tiputa Pass, which required several turns in a narrow channel to avoid reefs.   We approached the pass at 1800 hours.  The sun was setting, it was getting dark rapidly, and in order to make a safe passage we needed light to see the banks of the channel.  Time was of the essence.  From the pilot house we could see a channel between two motus with white water and high surf rolling in from the ocean to the mouth of the channel.  The chart showed the channel to be surrounded by reefs and subject to strong currents.    Because the surf was high I judged that the current was outflowing, which was favorable to our entry because it would aid our steering if it wasn’t too strong (more water flowing past the rudder makes the rudder answer up faster causing the yacht to turn more responsively).  We proceeded nervously, judging that we still had enough light to see the banks of the channel.  Argo’s bow began to lurch from port to starboard as the swells pushed her from one side to the other.  She was pitching up and down about eight feet as the waves rolled under her.  I didn’t fight the movement from the helm, but let her move in a natural manner.  As we moved forward the side to side movement increased, but we seemed to have steerageway, so I maintained about 7 knots speed and hoped that we would stay online without exerting additional force which might result in a lot of unproductive maneuvering.  Slowly we moved forward and finally we began to leave the swell zone, mindful of the waves crashing on the reef to either side.  As the waves subsided our speed fell off rapidly; we had entered the narrow zone where the outgoing current is confined and focused.  As our speed dropped I increased our RPMs so as to maintain steerageway.  The current was so strong that 2100 rpms (which would normally move us at ten knots) was now propelling us at just under four and a half knots.  This was another tense moment.  We had the wing engine and thrusters ready to use if we lost headway, but after a very long two minutes we began to gain speed against the apparent six knot current.  Tyler was on the bow pulpit looking for coral heads.  When our speed reached six knots I began to ease back on the power so that we could make a 45^o turn to port and not over run the turn and slide into the next reef.  Argo didn’t turn easily because of the current and I couldn’t be sure of the accuracy of our charts in such a confined space, but in due course we made the turn, we were past the reef and safely inside the atoll.   By then it was pitch dark.  We could see the mast lights of several boats at anchor, and we began to look for a suitable place to drop our anchor.  Not all sailboats turn on their masthead lights, so I turned on our night vision to try and see them in the dark. 

Special skills are required when anchoring in an atoll or near coral formations.  The sea floor can be spotted with coral heads and rock piles.  If you anchor near any of these obstructions, the anchor chain can become entangled or wrapped around them as the boat turns in the wind.  If a swell forms and rolls under the boat it can raise the forecastle and potentially damage the boat if the chain holds it firm and makes it impossible for the yacht to answer the sea state.  In the case of Rangiroa there is a twenty mile fetch across the atoll, so large waves were possible under certain wind conditions.   The recommended way of dealing with this problem is to lay out extra scope, buoyed by a float so as to isolate the boat from a chain that is caught on a coral head. 

We used our sonar to identify an area without coral heads and wound up anchoring in 75 feet of water.  We laid out 450 ft. of chain and then enjoyed one of Rebecca’s masterpieces of galley fare: a wonderful dinner of scallops, risotto and bok choy with a lovely White Bordeaux followed by rum bananas and ice cream for dessert.   

The Rangiroa Atoll is about 75 miles in circumference and encloses the second largest lagoon in the world. It has the largest village in the Tuamotus and is also one of the world’s top dive sites.  Many divers from around the world come here, particularly Japanese divers, to experience the coral reefs at the two passes, Tiputa and Avatoru.  (The Japanese divers are the ones with large and exotic underwater cameras and multiple electronic gadgets attached to their arms and dive suits.) These reefs are large, in good condition, and home to an amazingly large variety of sea life including tuna, sharks and dolphins.  Inside of Tiputa Pass is a large lagoon reef that we circled on our way into the atoll.  It is situated in quiet water and perfect for beginner divers.  The locals call it “The Aquarium”, and for good reason; it is full of colorful fish of many species including lemon sharks, barracudas, and moray eels.  Gus, Lyle, Rebecca and I took our initial scuba qualification dives here shortly after we arrived. 

The Tuamotus are coral motus or islets and have no native edible plants other than coconut and breadfruit.  Fruits and vegetables are scarce.  Onboard we have stored fruit found in other parts of French Polynesia including a grapefruit like fruit called a pamplemousse.  This fruit is about two or three times the size of a grapefruit, but sweeter.  It’s delicious. There are a few restaurants here that offer wonderful fresh fish and New Zealand lamb and beef.  The one thing I have particularly enjoyed is tuna ceviche salad prepared in coconut milk.  It is heavenly.

The beaches are coral rock and sand, not really suitable for swimming.  They are lined with coconut palms.  The water is crystal clear with the color ranging from turquoise to indigo to cerulean blue.   It is absolutely gorgeous.  Besides tourism, the Tuamotus are home to the black pearl industry. We toured a pearl farm located just west of us that has over two million oysters under cultivation.  During our visit they operated on oysters and showed us how a blank seed (obtained from muscles raised in the Mississippi River) is inserted in the appendix of an oyster and how they graft another piece of an appendix from a sacrificial oyster to start the process of culturing a pearl.   It was very interesting and of course they had a show room with plenty of inventory.

Tyler’s objective since beginning this voyage has been to become a Master Diver, and to that end he has been diving almost every day.  One of his dives was on the outside reef at Tiputa Pass where a number of dolphins are known to come in from the sea every afternoon.  During an afternoon dive, one of them approached Tyler, rolled onto its back and closed its eyes while he stroked its stomach.   The dolphin stayed with him for a couple of minutes until an older dolphin, perhaps its mother, urged it back to the pack and they all swam out to sea together.  While Rebecca and I were diving the reef earlier in the day, we saw several dolphins including one mother with baby, which was thrilling. That experience made us feel as though we were part of the whole panoply of sea life.   While we were hovering in the current at a depth of about 75 feet and enjoying the dolphins, below us at 125 feet or so was a very large school of several hundred fish, perhaps Maori Perch or Bream.  There we saw several beautiful, spectacular, silver darts in the sea; white and black tip sharks cruising outside the school of fish and occasionally darting through them.  When a shark did so the whole school scattered like sparrows on the wind.   As we drifted along and past this area of the reef, I must admit to looking behind and over my shoulder to see if any sharks were following; an unavoidable consequence of being part of the Jaws generation.  

The nearest motu to our anchorage has a very nice hotel located on it, the Kia Ora, which features Polynesian style huts and bungalows with thatched roofs, some built over the turquoise blue lagoon, others in a village configuration.  It is a Polynesian paradise for sure and just the sort of place that is featured in everyone’s dreams of the South Pacific.  Our friends, Gus and Lyle, treated us to three days in one of these splendid over-the-water bungalows at the end of their visit on Argo.  It was just what we needed after a long voyage, and a very generous gift indeed!  We were particularly grateful to be at the Kia Ora as it had been about ten weeks since we had been in a first class restaurant with a bar.  After three days at Kia Ora, we bade a fond farewell to our good friends and returned home to Argo.  When we arrived back aboard Argo she was shinier than new.  Tyler had taken this three day respite at anchor as an opportunity to wax and clean her after months of sea time.  She looked beautiful.  At this point, after five months underway she is the only motor yacht we have seen in the South Pacific. 

We stood out from Rangiroa at 0730 Sunday morning June 22 bound for Tikehau, a small atoll about twenty miles west of Rangiroa.  We made Tiputa Pass at slack tide and enjoyed a glorious passage to Tikehau.  The sky was clear, the weather calm, and the day was perhaps the best of our cruise so far.  A few minutes out of the pass we were joined by a pod of the largest dolphins we have ever seen.  They swam toward Argo and jumped high in the air as if to celebrate finding us and to announce their presence.  Several of them were perhaps eight or nine feet long and three or four hundred pounds.  They were fabulous animals and a joy to see!

 Tikehau

Tikehau is a small atoll like Ahe, but known as a great dive spot.  Its most famous dive site is inside the lagoon and is a Manta Ray “cleaning station” where Mantas come to have resident fish clean them of parasites. 

We made Passe Tuheiava at slack tide and the passage through it was straight forward and uneventful.  We turned south in the lagoon, went about six miles to Village Tuherahera, home to a couple of pensions, a luxury hotel similar to Kia Ora, and a dive shop.  We called the dive shop and arranged two dives at the pass for the following morning.

At 0830 sharp the next morning (Monday) a dive boat arrived and took Tyler and me first to the reef inside the lagoon to see if any Manta Rays were in for a cleaning; unfortunately they were not.  Then we went outside the pass for two dives, one on each side of the channel.  The water was 83 degrees with a brilliant blue sky overhead, no wind, and a sea as calm as a mill pond.   We donned our scuba tanks and fell back off the aluminum boat into the sea.  Suddenly we were practically weightless and enjoying the illusion of flying over the coral reef.  As we descended to 93 feet we could see large schools of fish including Big Eye Tuna, Maori Perch, Jacks, Snappers, Barracuda, thousands of tropical fish of every imaginable color and configuration, a large White Tip Shark, and a huge emerald green and blue, domed head Napoleon fish that surely weighed in at 100 lbs and just casually floated past looking at us curiously.  It was glorious.  We arrived back at Argo at 1400 and enjoyed a lunch on the back deck.  Rebecca had stayed aboard and accomplished most of the items on her list: doing six loads of laundry, baking a couple dozen cookies, cleaning the shower, and miscellaneous other tasks.  She is a doer!

On Tuesday a squall line moved through and brought with it wind and rain, so we stayed onboard.  On Wednesday cabin fever got the best of us and we took the tender to town despite the squalls. The Village Tuherahera covers most of a small motu. It looked like home to about 1,000 people.  The roads are nicely paved, the homes are a sort of bungalow ranch style and placed on about a half-acre of land.  Some have windows, others are just open to the breeze.   Many are surrounded by beautiful tropical flowering plants.  There are two Catholic churches with large buildings for social events.  Everyone seems to have a car, truck, or motor bike which seemed surprising to us given that the motu couldn’t be more than two miles long and a few hundred yards wide.  Anyway, everyone has a vehicle.  Fanny, our dive instructor, told me that since there is no gasoline station on the motu, people ship their gasoline in from Tahiti in drums.  They need a truck to carry the barrels from the dock to their boats.  There are a couple of small restaurants, but they keep irregular hours so no one knows when they are open unless they call the proprietor on the phone (if it is working).   The village has a tiny grocery, but it has no fresh vegetables or fruit.  I don’t know what people eat here, but I do know that seafood gets a little boring after a couple of weeks.  There are no shops or stores for any other products; I suppose people go to Papeete by plane if they need something, which is 170 mile due south of here.  Maybe they order by phone or on the very slow internet and have it shipped via the weekly supply ship that comes here. Roosters strut about and crow all the time, and large eared dogs are everywhere.  Vacationers from Europe are the most frequent visitors.  There are no bars or other forms of entertainment, but there are a couple of pensions that cater to the tourists.  So it isn’t much of a place for a single person; honeymooners on the other hand, flock here.  The motu has three things going for it: beautiful pink coral beaches, magnificent sunsets, and lovely dive sights.  If you are looking for a place to vacation that’s away from it all, and I mean all, Tikehau is it!

On Thursday another squall line was passing through.  In the Tikehau Atoll, waves have a fetch of about ten miles, so they can build to a muscular size in 30 + knot winds.  Winds reached 30 MPH on Thursday and the waves at this end of the atoll reached about four feet.  Argo pitched and pulled, but her anchor held firm.  Our dingy rode the surf behind Argo and rose above our transom on the waves, which is saying something.

Friday was our lucky day.  The sun rose and presented us with a beautiful day; gone was the wind and rain.   Fanny, the charming and pretty French dive instructor, came by around 0900 with a dive boat full of tourists.  She picked us up from Argo and took us to two wonderful dive spots.  The first one was a coral head in the lagoon that Manta Rays frequent to have parasites removed by Remoras and other fish.  Rebecca and I fell off the boat into an amazing primordial scene:  huge Manta Rays with wings eight or ten feet across were floating above us over the reef.  Their top side is black and their underside is white.  They have wide set eyes placed on the end of protruding limbs on either side of its mouth, and below the limbs and eyes are articulating flaps that they use to cover their mouth or guide food.  In this case they guided juvenile fish of a specie common on the reef into their huge, gaping mouth, and the little fish went about their business of cleaning their mouth, eyes, and gills.  The little fish formed a ball of dense black living organisms within the Manta Ray.   The Manta moved slowly through the water so as not to dislodge the little critters.   Under the great fish were Remoras, members of the shark family that have a sucker apparatus on the top of their heads. They were cleaning the Manta’s underside.  Rebecca and I gazed transfixed at the scene we were privileged to witness and wondered: For how many millions of years has this been going on? 

Our second dive was on Buoy Reef, just the outside of the pass.  The water here is crystal clear and full of sea life, certainly among the best dive spots in the world.  This was Rebecca’s first dive here.  On today’s dive we saw a White Tip Shark, which was intimidating and attention getting as it swam close enough to give us a good look before abruptly turning and heading away (thank God).  We also saw a Manta Ray on this reef, which was quit lovely.   Two dangerous animals also got our attention. First was a Rock Fish, which was hiding in a hole on the reef.  They are very difficult to see as they hide deep in a crevasse and are so well camouflaged that you can’t tell them from a rock.   They sport deadly spines to keep unwelcomed visitors at bay, and they have a tongue that looks like a little fish to attract dinner guests to their table.  The other animal we saw was a Morey Eel; always a little disturbing (I suppose because it is hard to relate to them and they have teeth)!

After the dive we returned to Argo and prepared to stand out for Papeete, Tahiti, 167 miles to the south.  It was a beautiful day for a cruise; bright sunshine, a cloudless sky, a following 8 knot wind and 3 foot sea.  We don’t get enough days like this!  We started to raise the anchor, but the chain had apparently gotten caught on a coral head. We worked on it for ten or fifteen minutes and I thought Tyler might have to make a dive on the anchor, but by maneuvering the boat around and pulling as hard as seemed prudent, it eventually came loose and we were underway.   On the way out we deployed our fishing lines in the hopes of catching something in the pass.  Shortly after we cleared the pass and turned on our course, King Neptune offered up a beautiful Mahi-Mahi. 

The passage to Papeete is an overnight run.  Rebecca and I take the evening watch from 1800 to 0000.  Tyler takes the night watch from 0000 to 0700.  I take the 0700 to 1200, Tyler and I take turns as it suits us on the afternoon watch.  We all enjoy the night sky at sea which is unlike any on land, and the night sky in the South Pacific is positively spellbinding.  Out here the unobstructed vista, clear atmosphere, and lack of light pollution allows us to see things we would never otherwise see.  For example you can see the whole Milky Way down the middle of the sky with the relatively less occupied parts of the universe on either side.   The stars themselves are dazzling, brilliant and so clear as to light the heavens like an outdoor Christmas tree on a frosty winter’s evening.  We always look for the beautiful Southern Cross.  Often we see falling stars and satellites passing over.  At Fatu Hiva Gus and I saw the International Space Station fly by at tremendous speed.  Last night Rebecca and I laid on the forecastle and gazed aloft at the trillions of tiny and not so tiny bodies shining down on us. We saw several meteors entering our atmosphere, two in particular will stay in my mind’s eye; one was huge, like a comet that flashed across the sky with a tail and then disappeared, the other a streak that ended in a tiny red ball.  Of course for the whole of human history up to about 1930 people looked at the night sky in wonderment and awe.   Since the invention of electricity and television, no one looks anymore, and besides, it can hardly be seen given the light pollution.  As Argo plies the water she rolls back the sea and atop the white foam are tiny star like sparkles of phosphorescent plankton spreading out around us.  It is nights like this that I am so glad we made the decision to undertake cruising on Argo.

This morning, Saturday, we are at sea about 35 miles out of Tahiti.  The sea is calm and it isn’t much of a day for sailboaters as the wind is only 5 knots.  All our doors are open and a lovely breeze is blowing through the boat.  I have two lines out, but the ocean is very deep here and since I do not see any birds, I doubt that there is anything to catch in these parts.  We will make Papeete in a few hours and I can see the great mountains of Tahiti from here. 

We will tie up at Marina Tiana, a focal point this time of year for sailors making the passage across the Pacific.  If the internet has sufficient bandwidth in Papeete, I hope to upload some new photos of The Galapagos, The Marquesas, and The Tuamotus. 

Rebecca and I hope you are having a lovely summer and that fair winds are to your backside.

Thanks for looking in on us. 

Randy and Rebecca

CAPTAIN’S LOG                The Marquesas             May 11 to June 3, 2014  The Islands and Their History The Marquesas Archipelago consists of twelve islands lying in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 3,500 miles west of Peru and 3,500 miles southeast of Hawaii.  The Marquesas are volcanic islands formed approximately three million years ago of basalt and tuff rather than black lava.  Each island is different in appearance, yet they are all strikingly beautiful with very tall peaks that…

CAPTAIN’S LOG                The Marquesas 

           May 11 to June 3, 2014 

The Islands and Their History

The Marquesas Archipelago consists of twelve islands lying in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 3,500 miles west of Peru and 3,500 miles southeast of Hawaii.  The Marquesas are volcanic islands formed approximately three million years ago of basalt and tuff rather than black lava.  Each island is different in appearance, yet they are all strikingly beautiful with very tall peaks that rise almost four thousand feet into the clouds.  On the south side the passing clouds are caught by the mountain peaks where they discourage their rain and provide moisture to lush, green, tropical jungles accented with brilliantly colored flowers.  On the north side, the islands are generally arid during the dry season.   

For millions of years the islands were uninhabited.  Human beings arrived sometime between 500 and 300 BC.  These adventurous people were probably from Taiwan or The Philippines and were making use of the outrigger canoe that was invented in that time and made open ocean sailing possible. The islands offered little to support human habitation other than sea birds, fish, rats, breadfruit and coconuts.  There were no large mammals or raptors.  Researchers have found the remains of dogs, chickens and pigs of Asian origin, so at some point the aboriginal discoverers must have brought these animals with them to the Marquesas.  (I have often wondered how ancient people found islands out in the middle of the ocean.  It is like finding a needle in a haystack.  One of our guides told us:  pigs carried onboard ships will smell its scent and become very agitated (and we know many ships did) when they smell land (as will dogs).  If the pig is released into the ocean it will swim toward land.   On the other hand, if a dog is thrown into the water it will return to the ship. It is theorized that the original discoverers brought these animals with them on their boats or rafts.  Marquesians venerate the pig because of its roll in discovering the islands (but this doesn’t keep them from having them for dinner on special occasions).  In language and customs the Marquesian people were closely related to Hawaiians.

The original Marquesians lived in hunter-gathering societies.  Families owned the rights to land, but if you were not part of a landed family you were disenfranchised and subject to harsh living conditions.  Each island had at least one tribe, and often more.  Like other hunter-gatherer societies around the world, each tribe claimed a territory and young men proved their manhood by making war on their neighbors.  Losing a battle could very well result in an invitation to dinner: cannibalism was practiced here well into the twentieth century.  Infanticide was also practiced as a means to control the population.  We were told by our guide that incest and rape are the most common serious criminal offenses; during our visit three men were in the tiny jail in Taiohae for these crimes.  About a third of the men are thought to be homosexual and/or effeminate but are not discriminated against.  These men in the ancient days did the cooking and household chores when the women were in the “red zone” and thought to be unclean.  Today these islands have many transvestites, which is readily apparent to the casual observer.  They love to party and the term “gay” is said to have originated here by GI’s during the WWII.    

There are many archeological sites in evidence on all the islands: paepaes (pie-pies), i.e., raised stone platforms on which a grass and wood hut was built are still easily seen everywhere.  Most have a pit in place to ferment pu-poi (breadfruit).  In some places they are grouped into villages with a ceremonial stage, marriage rock, and other platforms built around a central plaza about the size of a football field. The marriage rock was a large, flat stone about the size of a king size bed on which the nuptial ceremony was performed and the marriage consummated for all to witness.  Apparently this sparked a rather erotic celebration that went on for days, and was one of the first aspects of their culture that the missionaries sought to eliminate. On Nuku Hiva the ancient village we visited had a large, deep pit used for keeping prisoners.  Prisoners usually found their way to the BBQ!

Likewise the funeral ritual had a special twist to it; ancients believed that the brain was home to the soul and that the spirit of an ancestor would continue to assist the family when consulted during times of crisis.  Archeologists have found the heads from many generations of ancestors buried in paepaes. When a person died the head was severed, the eyes and brains eaten, and the skull placed under a rock in the family’s paepae.  The body was eaten, the skin used for drum heads and other purposes, the bones carved into ornaments and fish hooks.  Grandma apparently helped with fishing too!

The islands were discovered by the Spanish in 1595.  Like other aboriginal societies around the world, the Marquesasian population was devastated by European diseases.  When Commodore Perry arrived in 1813 he estimated the population at 80,000 people, but by 1920 the population had fallen to about 2,300.  At that time the government offered land to any male willing to marry a Marquesian woman and start a family and farm.   Today, there are no native pure Marquesians left, but the evidence of the racial mixture from the sailors of whaling ships taking up the offer of land and a family is evident everywhere.  There are now about 8,000 people living in the Marquesas.

The islands are named for the parts of a house, metaphorically, all islanders living under one roof; Hiva means roof, nuku as in Nuku Hiva means roof beam, Poa as in Ua Poa means standing pole, Oa as in Hiva Oa means lateral timber, etc.

The Islands Today

The weather here is lovely: there is a constant trade wind breeze between 15 and 20 knots, freshening the 85 degree air.  Most days are sunny, with an occasional rainy day.  Tsunamis are a concern, as Chilean earthquakes give rise to tidal waves that can sweep through the small coastal villages destroying houses and buildings. The islands are full of wild chickens and roosters, goats, and horses.    The roosters crow all the time.  They have very beautiful and varied colored plumage.  It is a lot of fun to watch them strut about crowing and demonstrating their prowess.  Dogs occasionally make a game of chasing the chicks about (perhaps for a snack if they can catch them), which sends the mother hen into a frenzy.  People here are heavy set; they like fruit and sugary foods that make them fat.  Diabetes is surely the number one public health concern.  They speak French, drive crew cab pick-up trucks, mostly Toyotas, but some Fords, they are by-and-large Roman Catholic and are family and community oriented. If they don’t work for the government, most islanders make a living selling carvings of wood or stone to the tourist stores in Tahiti, or by selling agricultural products like copra (coconut prepared for oil extraction) and other fruit. Unlike Jamaicans, Marquesasians bring their children to the beach for a swim frequently. Children are schooled in the village until eighth grade, then they are sent to Tahiti (600 miles south) for the later grades. Many never return and this is one reason why the Marquesas have such a low population. Men race outrigger canoes in the harbor every afternoon.  The out-riggers have a very thin beam, are about twenty feet long and are made of fiberglass.  There is a tiny compartment in the middle of the craft for the paddler to sit, much like a kayak.  The outrigger pontoon is rather small at about four feet long, one foot wide and deployed about four feet off to one side of the canoe on two curved rails. Some boats are designed for as many as six crew.  They are the fastest human propelled boats I have ever seen, in addition to being graceful and stable.

Our experiences

We visited five of the six inhabited islands: Nuku Hiva, Ua Poa, Tahuata, Hiva Oa, and Fatu Hiva. 

At Nuku Hiva we anchored in the bay near the village of Taiohae.  This is the largest town in the Marquesas with a population of 2,300.  The bay is formed by the crater of an ancient volcano with the sides of the volcano rising above the sea and enclosing the bay.  It is spectacular.  The walls of the volcano are covered in lush jungle, and the sun’s light changes the color and texture of the mountain every hour.  The bay is a turquoise blue, clean and deep.  When we arrived there were about twenty sailboats in the harbor.  The bay is open to the ocean, so the ocean’s swell rolled in and necessitated a stern anchor to hold Argo’s bow into the swell.  After seventeen days at sea and a very rough few hours getting into the harbor, we were anxious to go ashore.  After lowering the tender and securing Argo we went ashore.  There we found a dingy dock of sorts.  It was a stainless steel ladder attached to a quae wall about which ten or fifteen tenders were clustered.  The lower part of the ladder’s rails were unprotected, puncturing several rubber dinghies that got trapped under it during low tides during the week we were in Taiohae.  It was challenging to get ashore.  On shore we found our agent, an American named Kevin, who set us up and got us oriented. 

We spent a week here.  Argo needed a fair amount of cleaning and maintenance after our long passage.  We needed several days to walk around and stretch our legs.  Taiohae had several little restaurants, one of which was pretty good.  It offered several dishes including pizza that wasn’t too bad.  They also offered Peach Melba with homemade ice cream that I particularly liked.  We also shopped for food and souvenirs.  The most memorable thing we did on Nuku Hiva was to take a day long tour around the beautiful island.  Our tour guide was Phillip, a crusty English curmudgeon who arrived here sixteen years ago and never left.  Not many things were agreeable to Phillip, but he conducted an interesting tour and was very well informed about local customs and history.   The pictures that we will post on www.tischtravels.com when we get enough bandwidth will tell the story best, but in lieu of pictures I can say that Nuku Hiva was one of the most beautiful places on the planet.  The island has two volcanoes, one forming the bay and a larger one forming the high mountains and central plane about 1,000 feet above sea level.  It also has a number of interesting villages including Taipivai, the largest archeological site in the Marquesas’ that that had a hundred or so paepaes and ceremonial plazas, pu-poi pits and pits to store human prisoners.  We found it exceedingly interesting.  It was partially over grown with huge banyan trees and had been restored a few years ago.  Herman Melville lived in Tohua Teiviohou and wrote a novel here in 1843.  Nuku Hiva has several beautiful bays, lovely beaches, lush tropical jungles, and soring peaks that have been eroded by wind and rain into fascinating sculptures.  We shared the tour with Tom and Karen Lowe of Scottsdale, Arizona.  They are sailing these waters in a steel hulled sailing vessel.  We enjoyed their company very much. 

After six days in Nuku Hiva we bade her farewell and hoisted our anchor for Ua Poa.  It was a bumpy 28 mile passage against both wind and wave.  After about an hour at sea we could see the island at a distance; it was breathtaking.  It is an emerald green mountain island with twelve huge spires of basalt rising thousands of feet into the clouds.  Ua Poa dominates the sea and one’s imagination.  It looks like a Jurassic period gothic cathedral with spires all about, but of such an immense scale that it boggles and fascinates the mind.   We put in at Hakahau, a little bay and village of the same name on the northwest coast.  The bay was at the foot of the spires and made a fabulous view for the week we spent here. 

The harbor is tiny and had about 15 boats at anchor when we visited.  We didn’t think there was any place for us.  It has a seawall, but it’s short and doesn’t stop the swell from circling its way in.  We looked about for a place to anchor but had to settle for a spot between two sailboats that were about 50 yards apart.  We spilt the distance and anchored both fore and aft.  We were very close to these other boats, but that is the way it is done here as the harbors are often very small.  Lucky for everyone, our stern anchored worked like a charm.  For the next two days the wind blew and it was cloudy with rain, but we met several other sailors who were interesting, adventurous people that shared their stories and experiences.   

The second evening in port we dined at the Pension Puke’e’ high on a hill above the little village.  Owners Jerome and Elisa cooked up a delicious meal of sea bass (200+ lb. fish caught in 1,500 feet), yellow fin tuna prepared as ceviche in coconut milk, curried goat, scalloped breadfruit, rice, and topped off with French wine.  For desert; a lovely cake of mango and two other fruits.  Jerome and Elisa met in France where she was doing the hair of celebrities and going to the Cordon Blue School.  Jerome was a commando in the French armed forces.  Elisa is Marquesian and they married and returned to buy her mother’s pension and build the business.  The pension is an open building exposed to the wonderful breeze.  It is built in the Polynesian style and quite lovely.  After dinner we arranged with Jerome for a tour of the island.

Hakahau is a nice, clean little village that is home to about fifteen hundred people.  The streets are paved, the homes are bungalows, nicely kept, open to the breeze and surrounded by lush, flowering gardens.  The town has several little restaurants (that open when the cruise ship Ananui 3 comes in each month), four little grocery stores like we used to have in America on the corners of many streets before supermarkets became popular.   These stores have staples and processed food, some frozen meat, beer, wine and some fresh pastries.  They do not offer much in the way of fruits and vegetables because people grow them at home.  In the center of the town was an historic paepae that was formerly the home of the chief that founded Hakahau many hundreds of years ago. The paepae is now used as the stage for outdoor dances and other entertainment.  The little cruise ship came into the harbor when we were there so we got to see the Polynesian Dance show that they put on for the tourists onboard.  All the craftsmen come to town on this day and offer local goods to the few tourist who are there.  In the evening the town put on a BBQ and staged a band on the dock.  It was fun but they do not offer any beverages, only BBQ meats and rice. 

The island’s beauty is almost beyond description.  Most of the island is privately owned and there are very few roads.  In the morning we drove east to a little village and viewed an overlook of splendid beauty, and to a beach that required walking through a path sheltered by an arch of rosewood trees.  We have pictures of all this on www.tischtravels.com.  In the afternoon we doubled back on the road and went southwest past the little airstrip to the town of Hakahetau and had “dejune’ “at a little two table restaurant run by a retired French Navy Quartermaster named Perrot.  Perrot was a very jolly man and a wonderful chef.  Our menu was: a lovely French sauterne, smoked yellow fin tuna on brioche with crème fresh, barracuda in a Chinese wrap (like a spring roll), wahoo sautéed in lemon butter, rice over sautéed peppers.  Dessert was chocolate mousse.   It was delightful.  After lunch we visited the Tetahuna Archeological site and the bay at which you could see at least eight of the twelve peaks in a setting that was unbelievable.  The road back to Hakahau provided wonderful ocean vistas as well as an overview of the little town and bay.

The next morning we hoisted out anchor for the island of Tahauta, near Hiva Oa.  It had rained heavily overnight and it was a little windy in the bay, but we set out anyway.    After about two hours we had had enough; huge seas on the nose.  We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and headed back to Hakahau.  The government dock was empty so we ted up there.  As soon as we were secure, every person in town came down to the dock to look us over.  One gentleman in particular was very helpful and brought us fruit to add to our stores.  Jerome dropped down and gave us a car to use and invited us to dinner, which was very nice.  The car gave us a chance to see a little more of the island to buy some heavier items at the grocery. 

The following day an American doctor and his companion (Brian and Kim) came to the dock and said that someone had told him that I knew a lot about diesel engines and he wanted my advice.  He had run his engine out of fuel and had forgotten to change to a tank that had fuel in it.  He had been working on it for two days but couldn’t get the engine started and his sailboat was anchored in a terrible place that was exposed to the large sea swell.  We wondered how anyone managed to live on it considering how it was tossing about.   Trying to work in the boat’s tiny engine room must have been horrible.  Anyway, we volunteered to use our tender to haul his boat Albatross out of the swell and to a quieter place.  He went back to his boat and rigged a yoke that could be attached to our tender.  Once we were in place he then raised his anchor and I started to pull.  The sea swell was so large that it overwhelmed our tender’s ability to pull his much larger boat.  The wind pushed his boat around and my tender just sort of dug in at first, and then turned sideways to Albatross.  I thought we would have to abandon the project, but gradually Albatross began to move and we pulled it clear of the swell.  The next problem was to stop it before it ran into Argo.   The old saw, “No good deed goes unpunished” ran through my mind.  Brian dropped the anchor and we tugged on Albatross to stop, and it did.  The next day he got a mechanic onboard and by the afternoon he and Kim we on their way.

The next evening we were evicted from the government dock when the Navy Customs boat came into the harbor.  We had to get underway and decided to make a night passage to Tahuata.  The passage was 65 miles and at five knots we would be there at sunrise, so we set off hoping that the seas had calmed down.  Although the seas were better, it turned out to be a rough passage anyway with head seas and winds.

At sunrise we made Tahuata and beautiful Virgin Bay.  Tahauta is the baby sister of Hiva Oa.  Its main claim to fame is a trio of beautiful anchorages with beaches on the southwest coast.  We anchored there overnight to enjoy the scenery.  It was really like a page out of Robinson Crusoe; a long beautiful white sand beach lined with coconut palms and crystal clear turquoise water.    Rebecca and Tyler couldn’t resist a swim and snorkeling with the tropical fish. 

Next stop, Hiva Oa, seven and a half miles away.  This is the second largest island in the archipelago and one of two ports of entry.  Paul Gaugin is buried here as is singer Jacques Brel.  The harbor is the worst we have yet encountered.  It is very small.  The little village of Atuona is a one and one-half mile walk uphill.  There is a taxi sometimes, but it was atrociously expensive.  The harbor has no facilities other than a fuel dock.  The dinghy dock consists of steps carved in rocks or cement steps with exposed rebar (to puncture the tender) and no place to tie.  It was dangerous and damaging to our tender.  The harbor is so crowded that boats must often anchor outside the ineffectual sea wall.  The outer bay is very turbulent and the swell rolls right into the harbor.  Argo rolled around more at anchor than she does at sea!  When this harbor is full, you must anchor in the outer bay if conditions permit.  To compound matters, some of the sailors seem very inexperienced, adding to the hazards involved.  One wonders at how a port that is so necessary to sailors crossing the Pacific could have such poor services.  One can only conclude that the local people have no interest in serving the basic needs of the sailors who call here.  Today there are about thirty boats in the harbor.  About half of the boats are from European countries, the rest from the U.S. or Canada.  There are no boats from South America, India, China or most of the rest of the world.  

The little town of Atuona is much like the other villages we visited: it has a population of about 1,200. It has a couple of stores, a bank, post office, gendarmerie, two restaurants, a school, and a Catholic Church.  Tomorrow (Thursday) everything is closed because it is a religious feast day and the Friday a marathon is being conducted, so almost everything is closed.  This leaves Saturday (some businesses are open half a day) and Sunday (everything is closed).   The harbor is situated in the sunken cone of an ancient volcano.  From here you can see four other volcanoes.  It is very beautiful.  On the lush hillsides are perched lovely homes looking out on the bay and the ocean.  Our friends Gus and Lyle joined us here.  They brought 50 lbs. of parts and supplies for Argo with them.  Included were stabilizer parts needed for the repair of the port stabilizer.  Within an hour of their arrival, Gus was in shorts and working at full speed along with Tyler and me.  We were on the phone with the manufacturer’s technicians for about an hour ($2.50/minute), but finally we got things working. 

The next day we visited Atuona and its grocery store and watched the marathon being conducted that morning.  We visited the grave of Paul Gauguin and French singer Jacques Brel high on the hill overlooking the bay and Atuona.  Gauguin’s grave was macabre artistic and interesting.  During the day a small 36 ft. sailboat came into the harbor with three bedraggled young sailors aboard.  They had just made landfall after 36 days at sea!  After a day or two of rest and a couple of nice dinners at the Pearl Hotel, we took off for Fatu Hiva 45 miles away. 

Our cruise to Fata Hiva was tough; we were headed directly into the teeth of the dog, so to speak.  Although it was only 45 miles, it was a slog with waves in the ten foot range and winds up to 35 MPH.  Gus and Lyle were turning green, Rebecca, Tyler and I were in less than peak condition, but Argo pushed along, plowing through the waves at around 7 knots.  This was the first test of our recently repaired stabilizers, which thankfully were now working fine.  Once we got behind the lee of the island, things calmed own and within an hour we found the little bay of Hanavave and its fantastic cliffs and sculptured mountains.  The harbor was very deep and we laid out 450 feet of chain on a sand ridge 110 feet below.  We also deployed our flopper stoppers to dampen the roll.  The main concern for us in this harbor was the very high winds that blew down from the mountains; 45 knots were not uncommon, and the wind blew constantly.  I worried that the wind could cause us to drag our anchor and pull us off the sand shelf.  If that happened we would be in much deeper water, but our anchor held well and we didn’t move an inch over our three day visit.

The bay was bordered on three sides by huge cliffs that were covered in coconut palms on one side, a narrow rocky beach opening to a valley in the middle, and massive, high, wrinkled cliff on the third side.   Behind the sea cliffs were even higher ridges of the inside side cliffs of an extinct volcano.  The mountainsides were perhaps 3,000 feet straight up!  Above the little village were four or five tremendous rock formations; one looked like a carrot with its leaves pulled off but the stem intact, the second was a dead ringer for the largest penis I have ever seen, and one had a top that from a distance looked like a bust of George Washington. The scene was unbelievable.

We dropped out the tender and went exploring in the little village.  It was lovely and very isolated.  There were about 300 people living here in a sort of paradise.  The only way in or out of Fatu Hiva is by boat.  The village lies within a valley formed by very steep and beautiful mountains cliffs.  It was Sunday and things were pretty quiet, although Gus approached one women sitting on the stoop of her bungalow and inquired as to where there might be a restaurant.  Luckily she spoke a little English.  There aren’t any restaurants here in the sense they exist in a city, but people do cook for others in their homes.  The lady called her friend on her the cell phone who was known to make pizzas.  The pizza maker asked if we had French Polynesian Francs, what kind of pizza we wanted, how many of us were there, etc. and then said she would make a pizza for us.  We were directed down the road, past the chief’s home, around and across the bridge over the stream, and then back to that house painted blue with a corrugated steel roof… over there.  It was a very lush, green, verdant area.  When we arrived, there was a little sign out front advertising “Pizza to go” in French.  We sat in her utility room while she made our pizza in the kitchen.  Pigs were oinking in the back yard, roosters cock-a-doodled, dogs barked, and all was right with the world on Fatu Hiva.  She put a tropical fish colored oil cloth on the table and her husband brought out four plastic porch chairs.   We had wonderful, fresh, homemade lemonade to drink.  It was served in a previously used large Coke bottle.  We all enjoyed it.

That afternoon a couple we had met in Panama came cruising into the harbor on their lovely yawl named Amelit III.  Kaj and his friend Eva are from Sweden.  We entertained them on Argo in Panama, and now they returned the favor with an invitation for drinks.  It was a welcomed change from our normal routine.  Kaj showed us a video he had taken of his experience of being arrested in Venezuela.  He was cruising up a river and hit a power line.  An entire village lost its power.  He was arrested in short order and briefly put in jail.   The story was very interesting and too long for this journal, but the result was that the authorities spoke only Spanish and demanded $800,000 in damages.  He wound up settling for $5,000!  Pretty darn good negotiating I’d say.

We returned to Argo and grilled a beautiful Yellow Fin Tuna that we bought from a fisherman that morning for 10 CPF.  It was delicious.  The next morning we pulled the anchor for the Fakarava Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago 540 miles to the south.

Boating in the Marquesas

Fueling:  There are only two ports at which to take on fuel, Hiva Oa and Nuku Hiva.  It is necessary to make a reservation for the time and the amount of fuel needed.  In Nuku Hiva they were very low on fuel when we arrived and would only permit 200 liters of fuel per yacht until the supply tanker arrive a week later.  I would recommend using a fuel agent.  When checking into the country a tax free fueling certificate can be obtained for cruising yachts.  We had enough fuel to put off fueling for a couple of weeks, so we elected to take on fuel via a tanker truck in Hiva Oa.  This required a stern tie, which meant backing Argo to the dock after deploying the bow anchor, holding her into the swell until stern lines could secure her from moving side-to-side, and then tightening the whole thing up.  In our case there were two other yachts tied to the pier, so sidewise motion was a danger.  Rebecca went ashore first, Tyler manned the stern and threw lines to Rebecca, and I maneuvered Argo.  A fuel truck showed up in short order and we passed the hose via our tender to our stern and began filling our tanks.  In took about an hour to load 2,000 gallons and then we were full of fuel again. The price was about $1/gal higher than in the U.S.

Food and Other Supplies: Each island has several small grocery stores that carry the basics.  There is a limited selection of frozen veggies, only baguettes in the morning, small amounts of fruits and onions, carrots, and potatoes.  People here grow their own fruit and cultivate their own vegetables, so these items are not sold in stores.  In Nuku Hiva there was a fresh vegetable market that had tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers as well as breadfruit and almost everything else we wanted.  Nuku Hiva is unusual in this regard because it is a large island that has a large fertile plain in the center where the volcanic crater once existed, and it is at a high enough altitude and gets enough rain and has moderate temperatures to make cultivation of vegetables possible.  Beer is about $3 a bottle.  Things are expensive.

Boat Supplies:  There are no boat supplies in the Marquesas.  There are hardware sections in some stores, but if a boater doesn’t have it aboard, he is unlikely to find it here.  

Communication:  The internet is very slow, limited, and costs about $7 an hour.  Local phone service is available as is AT&T roaming.  Via AT&T you can text, snap-chat, and pick up data at a high price.  Tyler uses iMessage via the internet that keeps the cost down.

Stern Anchors:  There are no marinas and all the anchorages that we saw or knew of are exposed at least partially to the ocean swell, which means the boat is in constant motion and tends to roll from side to side unless it can be held into the waves.  This is something that we had never read about and has proven to be quite annoying and energy depleting.  The harbors are very small and at this time of the year are crowded with sailboats making the passage across the Pacific.  About 300 boats a year make this passage. We are the only motor yacht we have seen so far and the largest yacht that we have seen in any harbor, save for a one hundred and twenty foot magnificent ocean racing sloop.  In order to anchor in one of these tiny harbors you must be able to control the boat’s swing.  We use a 65 lb. Fortress anchor, which seems perfect for Argo. We deploy the forward anchor first, lay out enough scope to set it properly, then lay out an extra 100 to 200 feet and back to the desired place at which time we deploy the stern anchor.  Then we lay out enough line to hopefully get it set, and then move forward by reeling in the bow anchor until the stern is set.  Then we move farther forward to tighten the stern line.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?   It has taken us a considerable amount of time to learn to do this without scratching everything up and wearing ourselves out. 

Most boaters deploy their stern anchor with their tender, we do too on occasion.  First you load the anchor in the tender, haul it out to the desired location with enough line, and then throw it over board.  Hopefully no one has line wrapped around a leg or foot and the tender isn’t damaged by the anchor flukes.  If the anchor sets, you won’t have to pull it up and do it all over again.  In my experience, stern anchors only work well in shallow water.   In Nuku Hiva, we tried several times to set the stern anchor in 45 feet of water, we may not have had enough scope out or the bottom was too hard, in any case the anchor came loose over time and wrapped around our main anchor chain.  To untangle things we had to haul up the main anchor and spend the better part of an hour unwrapping heavy lines and chain. 

An aluminum Fortress anchor seems like a good choice for the stern anchor application.  It is relatively light, can be disassembled for easy stowage, and can be rigged with a trip line so that you can pull it up from the crown rather than the stem.  It took us quite a while to figure this out and get this system to work well.

Water-maker: We have also experienced a learning curve with this all important machine.  The water here has a lot of algae and marine life in it and in the harbors there is a lot of sand that gets churned up.  Our 5 micron filter gets clogged very quickly.  The main thing I have learned is to have patience, make water in calm seas (because of cavitation issues in rough seas that creates problems on our boat) and have a lot of filters on board.

Formalities of Checking In: We joined Pacific Puddle Jumpers which made things very easy, as they set us up with an agent and had the bond waived. The government extends a 90 day visa with a simple application; 90 days was enough time for us.  We found complying with all the formalities quite easy. Boaters normally have to post a $1,500 per person bond with a bank or show a ticket for a return flight home, but this too can be easily dealt with without posting the bond.  Customs is concerned with how much booze is aboard and they count the bottles (and cigars), but there is no duty imposed on ship’s stores.  All-in-all it was a simple, pleasant experience.

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A CAPTAIN’S LOG     Galapagos to the Marquesas’ April 24:   Departing The Galapagos – Day 1 – Thursday   0o28s/90o26w We managed to get under way from the fuel dock at 1200.  In leaving Galapagonian waters, I was very cautious in giving a wide birth to hazards, and I transited the waters mostly during the day so I could see as much as possible and avoid unmarked rocks and hazards.  Late in the day as we were passing the last reef at a distance I thought would surely be safe, I noticed that …

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CAPTAIN’S LOG     Galapagos to the Marquesas’

April 24:   Departing The Galapagos – Day 1 – Thursday   0^o28s/90^o26w

We managed to get under way from the fuel dock at 1200.  In leaving Galapagonian waters, I was very cautious in giving a wide birth to hazards, and I transited the waters mostly during the day so I could see as much as possible and avoid unmarked rocks and hazards.  Late in the day as we were passing the last reef at a distance I thought would surely be safe, I noticed that the depth sounder was reading 16ft., then 45ft., then 85ft., then 16 ft. again.  Could it be the reef?  Rocks or mountain tops just under us?  Had I missed something?  I swung Argo directly south and tried to put some distance between us and the island, although we were already six or more miles off shore.  Then I turned on our special, very sophisticated sonar and, low and behold, there it was.   I stepped outside to confirm what the sonar showed; we were enveloped in the living biomass of phosphorescent plankton thicker and denser than anything I had ever seen before.  It had emerged from the depths at sunset and was about 100 or more feet thick, so thick in fact that it fooled our sonar into thinking it was a solid mass! Outside, the ocean was all aglow as Argo pealed back the water and made its way toward the Marquesas.

Rebecca made a lovely apple bread with walnut-brown sugar crust that evening.  It was her best yet.  She loves to bake and we are her lucky recipients. 

Dinner that night was sliced sautéed chicken breasts on a green tossed salad.  Dessert: sautéed bananas with rum on soy ice cream.  Excellent!

April 25       at sea – day 2 – Friday                    2^o09s/92^o41w

Our route to Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas is 3168 miles from Baltra.  Our goal was to find the South Equatorial Current (SEC) and ride it to the Marquesas.  It will increase our speed by as much as 1 knot and save a considerable amount of fuel if I can find it.  I thought we could locate the current by heading southwest on a course of 240^o True until we reach 3^o 37 minutes south of the equator and 95^o west of the international dateline (which is roughly midway between the Meridian (Greenwich, England) and the International Date line in the western Pacific). We selected this precise course because it takes advantage of favorable currents along the way and avoids those that are adverse.  The equator is by definition located at 0 degrees and the Galapagos are 45 minutes south.  Since each degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles and each minute one nautical mile, the Galapagos are therefore 45 nm south of the Equator.  Our goal was to be 217 miles south of the Equator and then turn west on a course of about 266^o T at which point we should be in the SEC.  At 7 knots it will take us about 17 days to make the trip; at 8 knots it will take about 15 days. 

Our first day in the open ocean was very pleasant and we all agreed that if the remainder of the trip would be like this, we would be lucky and content.  The sky was clear, the breeze delightful, and sea rolled from our port bow gently under our keel.  The swells were large, perhaps eight to ten feet, but they were widely spaced and Argo rose and fell in a pleasant manner.  We were in a very favorable current, making over eight knots and burning less than 6 gallons per hour of fuel; sweet!

Rebecca made a very good Indian curried shrimp and rice dish for dinner with fresh peas from the Galapagos, presented with vegan biscuits and honey.   Dessert was fresh Galapagonian pineapple.

April 26       at sea- day 3 – Saturday               3^o53s/95^o13w   

The next day was entirely different.  A low front was moving south of us and the wind gusted up to 30 knots.  The sea boiled as eight to ten foot swells on a short moment slammed into us.  The radar showed storms all around us.  We had to adjust our course so as to handle the sea state because Argo was sliding sideways off the side of the swells at a serious angle.  Everyone was getting nauseated.  Bouncing around, in a constant state of motion is no fun and we were also a bit concerned because we didn’t know how long this would last, if it would get worse, and how much extra fuel we might consume.  I read one account of a yacht that made this passage having to put up with this sort of sea condition for most of the trip.  The thought of that was very depressing.  As the day progressed the wind rose, we continued to adjust our heading to accommodate the sea and our speed slowed considerably.  It was very unpleasant.  We didn’t eat much as the rolling of the boat precluded galley activities, and all anyone wanted to do was stay put and try to sleep through it.  Late in the day we saw a clearing ahead.  The radar showed that the storms had passed.  Shortly after sundown the seas subsided to a much more tolerable state, and we breathed a sigh of relief.

April 27       at sea – day 4 – Sunday              5^o18s/97^o27w

We awoke to a relatively pleasant day.  Swells of seven to eight feet approached from our beam to port quarter.  Winds had subsided.  We still had not found the current we were seeking, and proceeded southwest.  Many people never find a good current.  I downloaded a fresh set of weather and current charts off the sat-phone, and they confirmed our course and heading.  We were making about 6.5 knots and using 6 g.p.h. of fuel.   A Japanese freighter crossed our course about ten miles ahead of us, and we saw a whale spout.  About a dozen flying fish and squid litter our decks each day.  One wonders how they manage to get up on the boat deck, which is 15 feet above the water line.  Rebecca made a lovely tuna, okra and grits dinner.  It was tasty! 

April 28      at sea – day 5 – Monday            5^o34s/100^o15w

As we continued on our southwestern course, we finally began to see our speed increase, indicating that we had found a favorable current and that our predictions about the location of the current was correct.  Our speed increased to 8 knots or above and we glided over the swells, which were still in the eight foot range.  Later in the afternoon the seas became larger, perhaps in the ten foot range.  It is very hard to estimate the size of the swells, but when they continuously range above the tops of our salon windows that have to be big.  To me, they are frightening: huge, menacing, mindless, cold, dangerous, desolate, full of creatures with teeth that are hungry; this is no place for human beings.  Am I afraid?  Of course, you would have to be a fool not to be afraid.  But, we have planned well and overcoming the fear and trying to manage the risk is part of the adventure.  Also an important part is to understand and live with the natural world: for example; when the sun rises or sets, the sea gets very angry out here.  The swells grow larger and closer together.  After sunset they lay down somewhat.  Later in the evening, the dew point falls and the clouds release their water vapor as rain.  Storms dot the radar screen and near them the wind rises.  Overnight the sea builds and by morning the storms are mostly gone, but the high seas remain.  By evening it sometimes calms down, and then it starts all over again.  Another interesting thing to me is that the swells change all the time.  You can hit a very unpleasant area for ten or fifteen minutes or even less, and then for some inexplicable reason (at least to me) the sea takes on a different character.  The same is true of currents.

On Monday afternoon the seas were high and I became concerned about our fuel bladder becoming unstable.  It had done very well in larger seas, but it was beginning to track around and our lines were not as taught as they had formerly been.  We had it lashed down pretty well, but still I thought it would be best to get the fuel into our tanks and off the deck, particularly if things deteriorated overnight.  We hooked up our Jabsco 20 gal/minute 120 V pump to the bladder and the other end into our port fuel tank.  In fifteen minutes we had transferred 300 gallons, and we put the rest into the starboard tank.   Argo was rolling all over the place and in the process I pulled a back muscle. I limped around for a while helping Tyler get the final fuel onboard, then he took over and cleaned things up and stowed the equipment.    With the fuel bladder and its 3,500 lb. load below decks, Argo rode the waves better. 

That evening Rebecca took my watch and recommend that I stay in bed with a heating pad and Tylenol.  That was fine with me.  I have learned through experience that the best place to be in bad weather is below decks, in bed, assuming someone competent is at the helm.

For dinner Rebecca made seared tuna with sautéed potatoes and corn.  We had ice cream and berries for dessert. 

April 29      at sea – day 6 – Tuesday               5^o49s/103^o23w

I spent all day in bed watching vacuous TV serials and reading a very interesting book, The Idea Factory.  My back was getting better, and Argo was making steady progress.  We passed the 1,000 mile milestone (from the Galapagos).  Tyler and Rebecca stood all the watches that day.  I must say that lying in bed is an excellent way to pass the time; honestly, watching these big waves approaching the boat is not pleasant.  While lying in bed you don’t think about it or know what is going on.  I prefer that, as long as someone is watching. 

Regarding our watches: we always have someone at the helm.  We don’t want to bump into anybody out here!  So far we have seen only one freighter and no sailboats.  There is nothing and nobody out here. That is a surprise to us; we thought we would encounter at least a few sailboats on the way.  Our watch involves an hourly engine room check in which we look over the engine for oil leaks, look at alternator belts, check the shaft and its drip rate and look over the hydraulic system for water cooling and leaks. We periodically check the rudder and autopilot pumps, as well as the stabilizer fin drives too. Of course we check fuel pressures and the fuel level in all tanks.  Hourly checks help to assure that if something starts to go wrong we might be able to address it before it becomes an emergency or puts the boat in jeopardy.

April 30      at sea – day 7 – Wednesday          6^o05s/105^o26w

It was a relatively pleasant day with light clouds, sunshine and blue skies.  Seas were moderate, but nothing like the beautiful, loping swells off the coast of Baja that we had pictured in our minds as characteristic of the Pacific.  There is nothing nice or loping about these waves, which are large, short period swells.  On top of the swells are wind waves of a foot or two. The good news is that they are on our port quarter.  Winds are constantly in the mid-teens and the temperature is in the mid-eighties all the time. 

My back was getting better, but I was surprised when Rebecca came into our room early that morning to ask me to get up right away.  During his hourly engine room check, Tyler had discovered that our hydraulic sea water pump wasn’t working.  The water flow indicator had stopped.  If that situation was allowed to persist, our hydraulic oil would overheat and the system would shut down. This was potentially serious.  Without hydraulics we have no stabilizers, and in these seas that is very dangerous, so I rushed to the engine room. Tyler had already cleared storage containers away from the sea water pump and was getting ready to shut off the water to the sea strainer.  If we had taken in a squid or jelly fish, it could have clogged the through hull intake or strainer and clogged things up.  I went to the bridge and moved Argo perpendicular to the swells so as to reduce the need for stabilizers and then turned off the hydraulic pumps.  Tyler examined the sea strainer; nothing.  He then took the cover off the pump and examined the impeller: it was good too.  That was a problem; no identifiable problem was a problem.  At any rate, he put it all back together and we turned things on: it worked!  We don’t know what was wrong, maybe a squid or something got sucked into the through hull opening and then fell out when we shut things down.  It was disturbing.  In fact, I am feeling the need to do an engine room check again right now!

May 1      at sea – day 8 – Thursday                6^o20s/109^o28

At 1200 we completed 7 days underway and made 1,300 miles since Baltra.  Rebecca is thawing filet mignons for a mini-celebration of our half-way point, which we will probably reach tomorrow.  We set our clocks back one hour, so we are now -7 hours from GMT, which is the same as Denver or Phoenix.  Tyler just announced that he found a squid on our fly bridge, about 15 feet above the water line.  That one was true champion; the fly bridge is a long way up and an indication of how big these waves are.  Rebecca is doing her yoga with Priscilla (on DVD) this morning.

We continued on our course of 266^o T as we had been doing for several days.  Argo plugs away, clipping along at eight nautical miles an hour.  For the last eighteen hours we have been in the South Equatorial Current, which flows east to west at a rate of about 1 knot.  For us it is a free ride; we are making eight knots and using only 5.6 gallons per hour of our precious fuel.  This is exactly what I had hoped for.  We still have wind in the mid-teens blowing at 140^o relative, and swells in the 7-8 foot range.

Tonight’s dinner: fried chicken breasts, spinach and couscous with nuts and raisins.  Dessert?  Of course: ice cream (vegan ice cream) and cherries. 

May 2      at sea – day 9 – Friday                        6^o36s/112^o39w

Today we reached the half-way point, 1550 miles at sea.  We have about 7 or 8 days to go to reach Nuku Hiva.  Rebecca broke out the filet mignons last night and we had a delicious dinner, sans red wine though: no alcohol while underway.  We are all looking forward to a brewskie in Nuku Hiva!  Everything has been going well. We thought the shaft drip was too slow or non-existent, so we loosened the collar a bit and readjusted it a couple of times.  It was fun; it gave us something different to do. 

I was standing outside trying to cool off from being in the engine room when it dawned on me that we hadn’t seen a thing since leaving the Galapagos: no airplanes, boats, porpoises …na da.   We are so far away from anything I don’t know if a plane could rescue us.  The sea is full of life though; flying fish and squid litter the decks every morning.  Albatross fly about, sometimes convening on a school of fish off in the distance. The waves are so steep at times, a life raft would surely flip over.  Well, better to concentrate on something else.  Maybe I will watch another episode of Breaking Bad.

May 3      at sea – day 10 – Saturday               6^o51s/115^o44w

Rebecca’s a champ.  I don’t know what I would do without her.  Yesterday she took the late shift, i.e., stayed up to midnight when Tyler relieved her, and then up this morning at 0650 to relieve Tyler.  She doesn’t sleep well, so despite the fact it was my turn, she got up and let me sleep in.  I don’t usually have trouble sleeping.  Anyway, now she is doing laundry, will take some private time, and then start lunch.  She is always on the move!  She never wanted to go on this trip; I think she felt very anxious about it and for good reason I might add.  Like climbing a mountain, you have to be crazy to do this.   It took a lot of guts for her to come and she is doing very well.  Like a friend of ours says about these sorts of adventures: “it’s sort of like fun, but different.”  Her fears are justified, but we are well prepared; others have done it and so will we.

When we left The Galapagos we were still having trouble with the water maker; the low pressure pump alarm again.  I considered aborting the trip, but thought we could venture out a day or two and see if we could get the thing to work.  Same old problem that I thought I fixed by tightening the bolt on the pump (which did help for quite a while).  The sea water filter is housed in a clear Lucite container that threads onto a top that is connected to the machine.  It was only partially filling with water.  I suspected a vacuum leak.  This time I taped the threads on the top of the canister with plumbers tape.  Since then we have used it almost every day with no problems.  Maybe I got it this time. 

The night sky is something to behold here.  Of course there is no light whatsoever except the stars, and last night for the first time on this cruise, a new moon.  I looked out and almost couldn’t believe my eyes as the silvery light reflected off the waves.  The moon hung in the crystal clear, black night sky, surrounded by billions of stars.  Seeing the Southern Cross is something of a benchmark in sailing for a Great Lakes fellow like me.  It is a wondrous sight to behold. 

Rebecca’s feast tonight; crab cakes with corn bread, pan-fries, and broccoli.

May 4      at sea – day 11 – Sunday               7^o07s/115^o54w

A beautiful day with 5-7 foot swells on our far port quarter.  Wind blowing 13 knots on our stern.  We checked out fuel and mileage for yesterday: 179 miles using 130 gal of fuel.  .8 GPM, just as I has planned all those months ago in Michigan.  We should be in Nuku Hiva next Sunday.  We did some yoga today, read a little, wrote in the log, and watched some Breaking Bad episodes.

Dinner tonight: Spaghetti and vegan meat balls, corn, and peaches.

May 5      at sea – day 12 – Monday                7^o21s/121^o59w

Rebecca says that we have consumed almost all our fresh stores with only apples, potatoes, onions and few other things left.  We have plenty of canned and frozen food, so we won’t starve.  In fact we probably have enough stored food to last a month or more. 

The ocean is very pleasant this morning; following seas of about two or three feet.  It is now 87 degrees with light winds.  We are well into our routine.  We fill in the ship’s log every hour and do an engine room inspection.  Rebecca and I take the 1800 to 2400 and 0700 to 1200 watch, Tyler takes the 0000 to 0700 and fills in from 1200 to 1800 as seems comfortable.  At 1200 we measure the distance traveled over the last 24 hours and measure the fuel onboard and our rate of consumption.  We use the generators for cooking, making water, laundry, and for AC at night.  We usually try to combine a few of these functions and only use our small 13.5 KW generator so as to conserve fuel. We wind up running it about 10 hours a day.  It consumes about 1 gal and hour.  On a 20 day +/- trip it adds up.  At this point it looks like we will have 800 gallons or so to spare when we drop anchor in about six days.

At this point, and surely hope I am not jinxing us, Argo has performed marvelously.  She is comfortable, quiet, economical, and roomy enough so everyone has some personal space and quiet time.  We also have air conditioning for those muggy nights!  She is a perfect boat for our purposes.  As I sit in the pilot house, all I can hear is the low drone of our John Deere engine turning the screw at 1245 rpms.  The waves make muffled sounds as Argo pushes them aside: that’s it.   She moves relentless onward about 180 miles per day.

This evening the seas have subsided to their lowest level on this cruise.  I estimate that we have 2-3 foot ocean swells separated by about 8 seconds and almost no wind waves.  The sun is bright and beginning to set.  It is 85 degrees with a 12 knot following breeze.

Dinner: Sautéed Sea Scallops, Okra, Rice with Edemame and Cashews in Coconut Milk.  Excellent.

May 6      at sea – day 13 – Tuesday                    7^o37s/125^o03w

Last night was the most beautiful night imaginable.  It was truly sublime; it was the picture in the mind’s eye that we pursue in our dreams.  The sea had settled down to the point that we had hardly any motion on the boat.  The wind was refreshingly cool, blowing gently from astern.  When the sun set and the moon dominated the sky, its silvery glow was so bright it illuminated the periphery of the sky in a blue-black glow, almost like a mini-sun was shining.  The clouds were silhouetted with the moon’s metallic light.  In the deep space over head there were so many sparkling stars in addition to the Milky Way that the blackness of the canopy seemed even deeper.  The Southern Cross to our south reminded us that we are cruising in unaccustomed waters, yet the Big Dipper on the horizon to our north reminded us of home far away. 

This morning the seas were calm and life’s good!  900 miles to go.  We’ve been doing about 8 knots all day.  The sea life over the last couple of days seems to have diminished.  We are now over the Abasyl Plane, which is the name for this area of the ocean.  It is almost three miles deep in spots, and the amount of plankton seen at night is very much smaller than we saw earlier.  We do not have any squid coming on deck, and the number of birds is way down.   For a couple of nights we had birds land on our cockpit and spend the night, much to Tyler’s annoyance, but they are gone now. 

Lunch today was the fancy meal: Rebecca broke out in a new place today, a Syrian dish;

May 7      at sea – day 14 – Wednesday           7^o50 S/127^o42 W

The sun just came up, Tyler’s off to bed, Rebecca’s sleeping in, and I am witness to the wonder of it all.  The sky is cast in pink, the puffy clouds floating in the blue sky are touched with pink, and ocean too has a pink reflection.  It is magical. The sea is clam, only a gentle small swell to move Argo rhythmically. The wind is only 5 knots, the temperature is 83.  The current here is a little more confused than we have had so far, and likely to remain so for the duration of our voyage. 

Nothing much going on, just moving at about 7.5 knots toward the Marquesas now 700 miles away;   the engine hums along, the sound of waves braking on Argo’s bow, and the Brahms Hungarian Dances to start things off this morning.  We are making about 180 miles per day and using about 150 gallons of fuel.  Last at night we saw lights in the distance; it was a fishing trawler with its nets deployed.  It moved across our bow over the next couple of hours and then disappeared over the horizon. I hailed then on the VHF, but no response, which isn’t all that unusual where fishing trawlers are concerned.  Seeing it was a bit of a surprise, at first I thought it was a star.  We haven’t seen anything since day four, eleven days ago. 

Dinner last evening: lobster stuffed ravioli with broccoli, fresh bread, and for dessert a banana chocolate moose.  Wonderful and rich.

 May 8      at sea – day 15 – Thursday           8^o05 S/130^o39 W

Same-o, same-o:  Now we are 530 miles away; about 2/1/2 days to go.  Water-maker is giving us problems again, this time a different and as yet undiagnosed problem.  When Tyler rises at noon we’ll go look into it.  The sky is blue, a high pressure system continues to dominate and the seas all but flat.  The ocean is beautifully blue.  No marine life or photo plankton to speak of.  Sort of like an aquatic desert.  The night sky was really cool: clouds had moved in and obscured the moon except for a hole someplace ahead of us.   The sea was illuminated with what appeared to be giant silvery spotlight.

May 9      at sea – day 16 – Friday              8^o23 S/134^o18 W

We caught a good current and ran about 8 knots or more overnight.  350 miles/ 1.5 days to go.  We have enjoyed 12 days of high pressure, virtually perfect weather.  However, it’s a little gray this morning: heavy cumulus clouds with some alto-cumulus mixed in.  A weak low must be passing south of us.  The winds picked up to 16 knots for a while, and the wind waves picked up too.  By 1000 it cleared pretty much and things are settling down again.  The alto-cumulus are still ahead of us, so there must be an upper level disturbance somewhere around.

May 10     at sea – day 17 – Saturday          8^o32 S/136^o09 W

Wouldn’t you know it, bad stuff seems to always happen at night.  At 0200 Tyler called from the pilothouse; the water maker failed and the stabilizer alarm was sounding.  The seas had been picking up and our ride was indeed rougher.  Losing the stabilizers would be a big if not dangerous problem.  I shut the unit off and tried to restart it, thinking that might get an unknown gremlin out of the works.  That didn’t work.  Tyler and I went to the crew’s quarters and removed the lower bunk so that we could access the stabilizer unit.  The locking pin was locked in place, which it shouldn’t have been. A problem with the hydraulic system was one that I dreaded since I have the least knowledge and experience with this equipment.  We got the manuals out and looked over all the hydraulic system components as best we could.  Nothing was leaking and everything looked OK.  Finally I called the ABT tech in Ft. Lauderdale, Steve Owens.  Ft, Lauderdale was 4 hours behind us, and by this time it was 0800 there.  Lucky for us Steve answered the phone.  We spent quite a bit of $1.50 a minute phone time troubleshooting the unit.   His diagnosis; a bad locking pin assembly.  We would need about a half a dozen parts, which will be transported here by Gus and Lyle, our next guests.  In the meantime, we can get along on one stabilizer fin.  We could have gotten the fin working by removing the locking pin assembly, but this requires an extremely large Allen wrench that I didn’t have onboard.

The rest of the night was pretty nerve racking.  The waves were bigger than usual, but Argo rode them well.  Tyler and I started working on the water maker again, and although we replaced the low pressure pump with the new one Kathryn brought us in the Galapagos, it didn’t fix the problem.  We remained very worried. We were all looking forward to getting into port and out of harm’s way.  Only 100 miles to go.

May 11     at sea – day 18 – Sunday          8^o46 S/139^o05 W

0700 was the start of my watch.  I was excited to get up and see landfall at Nuku Hiva.  The pictures of it show a fabulously beautiful, exotic place.   Unfortunately I was called early to the bridge because the seas had become dangerously large.  Apparently the low pressure system that had been forming over the last day or two had intensified.  We were only nine miles from port, but we were experiencing huge and nasty seas.  The waves were somewhere north of 15 feet, and they were stacked in very short intervals, maybe 6 seconds.  Argo was tossed around like a toy; furniture was on the move, things were sliding as she rolled sideways in the storm.   With only one stabilizer working, we were all concerned.  I turned Argo so as to approach the waves at a 45⁰ angle.  We kept that course for about ten minutes.  Winds hit 40 knots.  Then it began to subside a little.  We were  90⁰ off our course and had moved a couple of miles off our rum line to port , but that distance allowed us to turn stern to, and with the lessening of conditions, we made port within the hour and our voyage was safely over. 

Nuku Hiva as immense volcano that rises thousands of feet almost straight up out of the ocean.  Its cliffs remind you of El Capitan in Yosemite, but they are hundreds of times larger. Nuku Hiva is one of the most awe inspiring geological sights on the planet.  The harbor of Taiohae where we are anchored is situated in the cone of the ancient volcano.  The sides of the mountain rise steeply all around us except of a slice of about 20⁰, which is the entrance from the sea.   The walls are nearly vertical, and they are covered in tropical plants and lush greenery.  The ocean is cerulean blue and clear.   The air is warm, the winds calm, and we have reached a paradise, safely.

We traveled 3,168 miles, burned 950 gallons of fuel, and average 7.76 knots.  Believe it or not, it all went mostly as planned.  Now we are in Taiohae at anchor.  It is a little village of 2100 people.  There are a couple of little tikki restaurants, a bank of course, grocery store, a church and a few government offices.  The bay, which is pretty large, is positioned to allow the ocean swell directly in, so Argo rocks and rolls constantly.  We will take an island tour while we are here, and spend a few days doing maintenance and poking around. 

ril 29 to May 11  
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Captain’s Log      April 10 to 24 – The Galapagos About the Galapagos Far out in the Pacific, 500 miles west of Ecuador, the low domed peaks of massive shield volcanoes rise from the depths.  Here they break the surface as the thirteen (main) islands of the Galapagos.  They are the product of one of the most active geological regions on the earth, a place where the Cocos Plate and the Nazca Plate meet at the Galapagos and Carnegie Ridges.  Here the earth’s mantle is very thin, allowing huge c…

Captain’s Log      April 10 to 24 – The Galapagos

About the Galapagos

Far out in the Pacific, 500 miles west of Ecuador, the low domed peaks of massive shield volcanoes rise from the depths.  Here they break the surface as the thirteen (main) islands of the Galapagos.  They are the product of one of the most active geological regions on the earth, a place where the Cocos Plate and the Nazca Plate meet at the Galapagos and Carnegie Ridges.  Here the earth’s mantle is very thin, allowing huge calderas to form and break the surface as eruptions:  in the last 200 years there have been 60 eruptions.  When visiting the islands you can see massive lava flows, vent tubes, unbelievably intricate and interesting formations of lava as it solidified when it met the ocean and was then, over the centuries, covered in flora such as lichens, moss or other plants.  The Islands of Isabela and Santa Cruz bear witness to incredibly violent para-plastic eruptions as boulders and rocks of all size litter hundreds of square miles of landscape.   Meanwhile the sun beats down with a fierce intensity.  There is no fresh water anywhere, only the briny sea fed by several ocean currents that converge here.  From the south flows the cold Humboldt Current, bringing nourishment from the Antarctic and the ocean’s depths; from the east, the warm Panamanian Current bringing life from Central America. 

97% of the islands are part of the Parque Nacional de Galapagos, a UNICEF World Heritage Site and part of the country of  Ecuador.

Entering the Galapagos

Entering the Galapagos Islands with a boat requires a cruising permit, a wad of cash, and a fair amount of patience.  In preparing for our trip to this port we had done a reasonable amount of research and preparation.  We were warned by other boaters that the bottom of our boat would be inspected for marine growth when we arrive in the Galapagos, so we had the bottom cleaned in Panama and pictures taken of it.  We were told stories of boats deemed to have excess marine growth on their hulls being forced to travel 70 miles off shore with a park service diver to clean them at a cost of $500.   We were also told that we needed to have Argo fumigated and obtain a certificate from a licensed company showing the chemical used.  We did this too, although the company only gave us an official looking paper, charged $100, but never actually fumigated our boat; they said it wasn’t necessary.  We also read a long list of plants and foods that couldn’t be taken to the islands.  All of this is understandable when you consider the environmental damage done to the Great Lakes by foreign ships entering without restriction, so we entered ready to comply with any demand.

About twenty miles offshore we were hailed by name by the park service on VHF channel 16.  The man didn’t speak much English, but Tyler speaks Spanish and between the three of us we managed to find out that he was instructing us to go to the wrong port.  This was a little disconcerting to me, but after being persistent, we were authorized to follow the correct heading and course and make our way into Puerto Ayora.  Our first sight of the Galapagos was of Santa Cruz Island.  Just as Darwin noted in 1835 the island was shrouded in clouds.  As we came closer, we could make out the arid, rocky, lava laced shoreline.  We nervously groped our way toward Puerto Ayora as our charts were not very detailed.  Eventually we saw the harbor and pointed Argo toward other ships at anchor.  It is a crowded harbor with no breakwater.  There were two or three small freighters offloading onto barges.  There were about ten sail boats and catamarans at anchor.  We were the largest yacht for most of the time we were there.  The other twenty or so boats were tour boats waiting for this week’s plane load of tourists to arrive from Guayaquil.  Swells roll in directly off the ocean.   Boats at anchor constantly pitch up and down and roll around despite being very close to each other.  As we gingerly picked our way between the boats and their fore and aft anchor lines we found an empty mooring ball and tied to it.  Later we deployed a stern anchor to hold us into the swell, put out our stabilizers, and dropped our forward anchor in case the mooring ball failed (often mooring balls fail because they are not properly maintained).  A few moments after we were secure, we called our agent and he arranged for the commencement of entry formalities.

To stay in the Galapagos one needs a cruising permit that can only be obtained through the Capitanea de Puerto at a port of entry.  There are effectively two ports of entry into the Galapagos; Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island and San Cristobal on San Cristobal Island. The length of stay is at the discretion of the port captain, but cannot exceed 21 days without a visa.  If a visa is desired, one must apply three months in advance of the visit. To get a cruising permit, the port captain together with a National Parks official, a police officer, an immigration officer, a health inspector, and a diver all visit to inspect the boat.  Since hardly any officials speak English, we hired an agent to help us through the formalities.   All the officials came to our boat shortly after we anchored in Puerto Ayora and completed all their inspections in about two hours.  While on board they looked through all the compartments, took pictures of our black water tank and our soap dispensers, read our trash policy, looked around the engine room, checked out our refrigerator, and, as a special request, the Port Captain asked if we would take his picture while he stood next to our helm and wooden wheel.  He said he never saw a pilot house like ours nor had he seen a wooden helm.  So we were happy to comply.   Meanwhile a diver came to the boat and inspected our hull.  After all the official business was conducted, pictures taken and departing pleasantries exchanged, the bill was presented; $2,183 for a 21 day permit.  If we wanted to travel to other islands via our boat, we would need a guide and a ranger.  This would cost about $1,500 per day including permits.  Later, in talking with other boaters, we found out that one of the boats had no black water tank and dumped sewage directly overboard (frankly, I didn’t know any boat was built or allowed to do that.)  They showed the officials a water tank and he took pictures of that.  More importantly, when we went ashore we found that the city dumped their sewage directly into the bay.  So much for all the inspections.

While all the officials were on board we received a call on our VHF.  A 52 foot Oyster sailboat from the U.S.A was calling.  They had left Costa Rica eight days before with four adults and two children aboard.  They motored all the way to The Galapagos and arrived with hardly any food or water left and only a few gallons of fuel.  They were desparate. We heard them call Ricardo, our agent, for help in getting a cruising permit, but he told them he was too busy to help them.  Unfortunately they were technically not allowed ashore until they had a permit and cleared customs.  Apparently they saw the inspection party come aboard Argo and our American flag off the stern and decided to call us to see if we could help them get the inspection party to relent and come to their boat.  Off course we asked Ricardo and he agreed.  Later they brought a bottle of Johnnie Jameson over as a token of their gratitude.   Really nice and completely unnecessary, but particularly in light of the absence of any water or nourishment on their boat!  In talking with them later, we found out that these Californians had planned to cross the Pacific just as we were doing, but I think they realized that they were not properly prepared or had insufficient experience to continue on such an ambitious journey.  A few days later they pulled up their anchor and headed back to Costa Rica. 

Puerto Ayora

Puerto Ayora is the tourist capital of the Galapagos.  The little town has about 3,000 permanent residents, a substantial commercial area, many restaurants and shops, and the Darwin Center.  We anchored Argo here for about two weeks and toured several islands by plane and stayed in local hotels.  We were very excited because our daughter, Kathryn, was flying in for a week to visit and tour the islands with us.  

The harbor was always rolling with ocean swells and Argo was in constant state of motion.  Sometimes it was very rocky, and it was always very annoying.  To get off the boat and into town we called a water taxi on VHF 14 and asked for a pick up.  The fare was 60 cents per person each way.  The taxi dropped us at a municipal dock especially constructed for the purpose.  Sometimes customers had to step over a sea lion that was resting on the gangway, or it could be found lounging completely oblivious to passersby on a park bench on the upper walkway.   A short walk past the skate board park brought us to Main Street, which was very nicely constructed of brick with wide sidewalks and newly planted trees to shade the weary walkers.  The heat at midday was really intense, perhaps 100 degrees with equivalent humidity.  It was almost unbearable, which I am sure is why siestas are popular.  Most businesses opened from 9 AM to noon, then close and reopened at 3 PM and remained open until 8 or 9 PM.   Many of the restaurants were quite acceptable and we enjoyed them frequently.  Food shopping was fun; we went to the farmers market on two Saturdays and enjoyed the bounty of the highlands amidst all the sights, smells and cultural delights of a country market.  At the waterfront we bought an 18 pound Yellow Fin Tuna for $2 a pound, a pretty good deal we thought considering Monahan’s Fish Market in Ann Arbor wants about $25 a pound.   The local mercado offered the usual packaged goods, but it also had a very good bakery that we enjoyed on several occasions.  On Good Friday we went into town for an ice cream cone and witnessed the Easter Passion Festival where hundreds of people followed the Way of the Cross complete with a Jesus dragging the cross along the route with costumed Roman soldiers and statues of several apostles carried aloft on the shoulders of devout believers.  One evening we met our tour agent and she invited us Casa del Mar restaurant for a freshly caught Tuna and Wahoo dinner (someone also brought a little goat) with friends and the Uruguanians who caught them that day.   The fish was perhaps the best I ever had, and the two Australians we met were very interesting people. 

The harbor was a little cloudy because of all the algae in the water.  It caused our water-maker filters to frequently clog.  We had to make water because they do not offer any services for yachts in that harbor and we would need a permit to leave the harbor, even if it only to make water or empty our black water tanks.  So, as we had a long trip ahead of us, I thought we better see if we could buy some 5 micron sea water filters.  Our agent Ricardo Arenas directed us to Bodega Blanco, a boating supply store about ten blocks from the taxi dock.   Rebecca and I decided to walk and even though it was only 9 AM it was already so hot that I was drenched by the time we got there.  We found what we wanted and eventually talked to the owner, who spoke perfect English.  He inquired about us and us about him; he grew up in L.A and his mother graduated from U of M in English!  It is a small world.

Touring

 Kathryn arrived and brought with her a few parts for Argo that we wanted, like a ten pound low pressure pump for the water maker.  She enjoyed a day of rest from her 18 hour flight from NYC and then we started our tour of the islands.  The first place we went was to The Charles Darwin Center on the outskirts of Puerto Ayora.  The institute raises various species tortoises for reintroduction on the appropriate islands.  Many islands have distinct species of tortoises and after a little while you can tell them apart by their shells.  Galapagos means saddle in Spanish.  It was so named because the island’s discoverers thought some of the tortoise shells looked like saddles, and indeed some do.  When Darwin arrived in 1835 there were an estimated 400,000 tortoises roaming about.  By the early 1980’s there were only 3,000 left.   At the center they have a hatchery and pens to raise the little ones until they can fend for themselves.  They have no natural enemies aside from man, but as humans have released domestic animals that in time have become feral, these dogs, cats, pigs and goats eat the little tortoises or their forage.  So, the idea is to raise tortoises in captivity until they are large enough to protect themselves from these predators.  Officials have been conducting an eradication program for some time and with some success.  The Institute also has a number of large enclosures in which are kept adult tortoises of various types.  They are very interesting and really something to see, particularly when they are eating or mating.  The Institute also has both marine iguanas and land iguanas, that latter of which is large and very colorful. 

The next day we hopped a plane to the group’s largest island, Isabela.  Here is what we saw the on the afternoon of our arrival:

1. Wall of Tears, a huge wall built by prisoners from the rocks thrown out by the volcano thousands of years ago.  The wall has a sort of hideous beauty; stone by stone piled one upon another by prisoners carrying them from distant places in searing heat.   Surely many of them died, but living here would have been truly a hell on earth.  The prison was built on the site of a W.W. II U.S. base.   I believe the prison was closed in the late 60’s.
2. Marine Iguanas: They look like octopi when they swim; they are pitch black and match the color of the lava rocks on which they cling.  They have webbed feet and long claws; they spend their time going in the water to eat algae growing on the rocks, then back to shore to warm up, then back for more food, etc.
3. Lava Vent: Next our guide took us for a hike along the rocky beach to climb down into a lava vent; very interesting.
4. Vista: Next, a climb up a couple of hundred stairs to the top of a vent/hill to look over the vista of a volcanic island. Simply beautiful.
5. Tortoise breeding center, just like the one we saw at The Charles Darwin Center.  Then, back to our hotel.  

Our hotel wasn’t too bad and was located in a shabby little town with dirt streets called Puerto Villamil.  Every one of the 110,000 tourist that comes to the Galapagos annually will at some point probably find their way here.  It does have a few hotels and several restaurants.  The one restaurant we tried was horrible, although our hotel served very good food, particularly the ceviche, which was actually the best I ever had.  Kathryn was full of energy and being from NYC wanted to “go out”, so down the beach we walked toward the place she heard was the best in town.  Later we learned her recommendation came from the tour guide, and later yet we learned that his boss owned the place.  Anyway he was probably right, it turned out to be lot of fun.  It was a surf side bar complete with a sand volley ball court and, most interesting of all, a tight rope on which young beer drinkers tried their skills as wan’a-be Wollendas.  We watched them through several drinks: please make mine another Coco-Loco!

The next day was packed with very interesting things.  We were picked up early at the hotel and taken to the dock, then aboard a speed boat for an hour’s ride to an area I can only describe as “mind blowing”.  It was truly “other worldly”, in that it was formed by lava flows frozen in the most interesting and bazar configurations both above and below water.   Getting into the place required real local knowledge and skill; first we had to pass over the very large ten foot sea swells rolling in from the ocean and then maneuver between rock formations that broke the swells into surf, then around and through the maze of lava formations, all the time avoiding rocky outcroppings that could have easily broken the propellers.   We landed and offloaded on a cliff that was five or six feet above the water line.  Once we had climbed up the rocks onto a flat surface we could really appreciate why we were brought here.  The pitch black lava formed arches and bridges in an endless maze that was interwoven with the brilliant blue water of the ocean creating small lagoons that sea turtles and sharks frequented during their matting season.  It was fascinating to watch the sea turtles effortlessly glide, almost fly through the water.   Blue-Footed Boobies were everywhere.  When we first saw two of them standing together above a nesting site (a flat, black rock surface encircled by white bird poop) they just stood there and looked at us despite the fact that we were only a few feet from them.  Like all the animals we encountered in the Galapagos, they are not afraid of human beings.  The Boobies are a beautiful bird, words don’t really describe them.  Their heads are covered in small, blue-brown-white feathers, their bodies are brown and white, yellow rimmed eyes, blue-grey beak, and of course the most distinguishing feature of all, powder blue webbed feet and legs.  They are just spectacular, and when they go fishing, they form flocks and dive like arrows into the water after their prey.

After exploring the lava field we went snorkeling.  Here we got to see the underwater world: many tropical reef fish as one might expect, just an arm’s length away sea turtles (huge 4 feet by 3 feet turtles) feeding on the algae growing on the rocks, Penguins ten feet away, Sea Lions playing and dashing adroitly through the water, Marine Iguanas, Frigate Birds, Boobies, and White and Black Tip Reef Sharks tending to their young ones in a cave. We were a little cautious around those things, although it was very interesting and exciting.  Later as we headed back to the little town and our hotel, Kathryn dove with 12 foot Manta Rays in the open ocean; wow, what an experience! 

The next day we visited another lava field, this one different than the other in that it looked like nothing I had ever seen on earth before.  The lava was formed into twisted figures about three feet high and partially covered in white lichen.  It looked like a field of strange outer space beings.  Amidst all the little men were Marine Iguanas.  

That afternoon we flew back to Santa Cruz.  The flight was interesting in that we could see the rims of partially submerged extinct volcanoes rising out of the ocean as well as a vista of the entire western part of the island.  After we landed we drove to the “highlands” for lunch at a coffee farm.  The owners were the extended family of our tour operator.  Apparently Ecuador never knew quite what to do with the Galapagos until UNICEF made it a World Heritage Site.   Nothing much can be grown here commercially or mined.  It is so hot agriculture cannot be sustained on a commercial basis, there is little soil, and there is little water.  Many people tried to establish homesteads here and failed; the government used it for a prison colony for a time, but even that failed.  During the 70’s Ecuador granted 200 acres to any citizen willing to make a homestead here.  That’s how our friends got a hold of this farm land, but they couldn’t clear it all or maintain it so they gave 100 acres back to the government.  Now, in light of tourism and the fact that 97% of the land is part of the Parque Nacional, land here is very expensive and almost impossible for an outsider to acquire. Immigration to these island is no longer permitted.

On the way to the farm we stopped by a lava tube buried deep in the hillside.  It was at least 30 feet in diameter, much like a subway tunnel, but one that extended about 3,000 feet or more.  Later we returned to the farm and walked about to see the tortoises living in their natural environment.   There were many large old males and many smaller females walking laboriously about.  It was the mating season.  As we walked the paths in the lush jungle forest we could hear the grunting of the male as it was in the act of mating.  We were told that it takes about four hours to complete their mission, meanwhile the beast grunts and extends his head several feet out of his shell.  The 500 lb. male somehow climbs on top the female that is perhaps only 100 lbs.  She seems to just sit and wait for the event to end.  Meanwhile several other females were on standby nearby.  Apparently these animals live up to 200 +/- years.  We were told that females can hold the sperm of several males simultaneously for up to five years and release it into her eggs when conditions are right.  Interestingly, they walk as far as twenty miles or more over rocky and inhospitable terrain to the beach to lay their eggs in the sand (like the sea turtles).   It must be a primordial impulse, at any rate it is an incredible feat.   After leaving the tortoises we drove back to Puerto Ayora, but along the way we stopped to see two very large sunken calderas and associated lava vents.  These geological features exist at an altitude of 650 meters that supports and unusual forest of trees peculiar to the Galapagos on which hangs Spanish moss, the view of which was most interesting an unusual.

After returning to Argo, we needed to decide on a spot for dinner.  Kathryn had heard from NYC friends that had recently been here that the “Deli” had the best fish and chips anywhere this side of London.  So we tried it out together with our friends Javier and Jill, two lovely people that owned the tour company.  Kathryn was absolutely correct; these were the great fish and chips!

The next day we set out for North Seymour Island and the land of the Frigate Birds.  Once again we had to make the fifty mile trip across the island to Baltra and the boat dock that in this case would take us to North Seymour Island instead of the airport.  We made the trip in a bus along with about forty other people, but since we had a private guide we were ushered along in a pleasant manner.  From the boat dock we went by dingy to an old cabin cruiser.  Inside was a captain in full dress whites with epaulets, and a heavy set, friendly cook in the galley making lunch for the twenty or so passengers.  Our trip to the island took about an hour and during that time we had a surprisingly good sautéed Yellow Fin Tuna lunch.  It was a lot of fun. 

North Seymour Island is a flat slab of rock perhaps a mile square.  It is about twenty-five feet above sea level and volcanic in origin.  It is covered with a dwarf, grey-bark spindly tree that at the time we were there had no foliage.  Whatever grass was there was brown and dried up, and Prickly-Pear Cactus trees, also unique to the island, punctuated the rocky landscape.  It hadn’t rained in five months, but the rainy season was supposed to begin soon.  In the branches of the trees were nests, some of which held hungry chicks.  Neither the nests nor the chicks were small.  These are pretty large birds.  Mating was in the air literally as red pouched male Frigate Birds sailed overhead looking for a suitable place to inflate their mating equipment.  As we walked along the path we saw several Land Iguanas with their oddly beautiful orangey-green-gold- tan coloration.  They are much larger than their marine cousins.

We continued our walk through the strange pigmy forest looking for the male Frigate in full mating display.   The males have a flaming red sack on their throat that they inflate to attract the females.  We were able to get within a few feet of several of these birds and get some wonderful pictures.  The birds themselves are much bigger than a pheasant but smaller than a turkey, and their red display is about the size of half a football.  It is really something to see.   We spent about two hours here and it was one of the most interesting animal adventures we have had.

On the way back the boat stopped at a beach used by turtles to lay their eggs.  It was defined by black lava that spilled into the sea and solidified, the beach itself as white coral sand that rose broadly and steeply to a ridge one hundred or more yards above the water line.  It was there we found the large concave bowls dug by the turtles and in which they deposited their eggs, but further on we came to a brackish pond just over the crest of the sand.  There we could see a flamingo.  We watched the beautiful bird feed on little shrimp, its long neck moving about to allow the angled black beak to sift through the mud on the pond’s bottom.  Suddenly the magnificent bird started to run, its stick like legs and knees awkwardly gaining speed.  Then it extended its wings and began to take off; its fabulous pink plumage accented by the black feathers under its wings that make the pink unbelievably brilliant. Then the awkwardness was transformed into graceful, effortless flight.  On the beach were two Lava Gulls, the last of only two hundred known to exist.  They too were magnificent: they look like a sea gull, but their coloration is very dark grey and black to match the color of lava.  It was simply a spectacular sight to behold.

Our final Few days in the Galapagos

We returned to Argo on Friday late in the day.  Kathryn was scheduled to go home on Sunday, so we had a day for her to rest and roam around Puerto Ayora.  Saturday morning we all went to the farmer’s mercado, which was a lot of fun.  It was hot even early in the morning.  Kathryn wanted to order some Ecuadorian pastries like the one’s she had on Isabela – she’s a foodie!  We spent a couple of hours at the internet store, about the only place you can get on line there, lunch and then dinner on the boat.  We had a lovely visit and were, of course, sad to see her go as always.   

After Kathryn departed it was time for us to arrange fueling and obtain our Zarpes.  Each island in the Galapagos has a port and each port has a Port Captain.  To enter or leave a port the boat captain must contact the Port Captain and apply for a Zarpe or clearance permission form.   In the Galapagos this requires an agent, who in our case obtains a Zarpe allowing us to leave Porto Ayroa and travel 32 miles north to the Island of Baltra where the fuel docks are located.    This costs $7.81 plus an agent’s fee.  We also wanted to purchase fuel in Baltra, so the procedure here is that you have to tell the government officials how much fuel you want, pay for the fuel in advance in cash at a special office (or in our case we bought it through a fuel agent in the U.S. who arranged everything otherwise we would use our own local fuel agent).  The fuel price is set each Thursday morning and holds for one week. 

So Wednesday morning before departing for Baltra, we took a water taxi into Port Ayora and finished up our internet chores and picked up more fresh provisions.  We met our agent Ricardo Arenas who gave us our Zarpe permitting us to move the boat to Baltra.  Meanwhile Tyler was taking down our sun shades that cover the outer decks that help keep the boat cool.  When I came back, we hauled in our flopper-stoppers, a passive stabilizing system that is supposed to help keep the boat stable in a rolling anchorage.  When we finished all that and cleaned the lines that had been in the water for ten days, we called a water taxi to help us raise our stern anchor and untie from the mooring ball.  Once all that was completed, we raised the anchor and began to make our way between the densely packed boats at anchor to open water and Baltra.  It was a beautiful day.

Once out of the harbor, the vistas from Argo were simply fabulous.  Santa Cruz Island is a volcanic island, as are all the islands of the Galapagos.   The top of the volcano is shrouded in clouds, the mountain side gradually declines at five or ten degrees for the ten or fifteen miles to the sea.  The upper part of the mountain is lush and green and the mist from the clouds is the only source of water on the island.  The flora changes in type and density every few hundred meters until it gradually becomes arid near the sea.  The coast is made up of lava rock for the most part, sometimes formed in cliffs, and sometimes in lava flows that ended in the sea, punctuated here and there by coral sand beaches that are the destinations of nesting sea turtles and land tortoises during the egg laying season.  Off the coast are rock formations; these are the tops of volcanoes that once were above sea level during the ice ages, but now are partially submerged so that now only the un-eroded part of their cone remains in view.  Along the way we saw sea turtles rising for air, and tuna jumping in schools.  Galapagos Sea Lions dove and played along the way.  Frigate Birds, some males with their red mating pouch visible although deflated, rode the air pressure wave above our boat and hung there for hours.  Occasionally a Blue Footed Booby (everyone loves boobies) would come along, sometimes landing on our railings for a rest. This was maddening for Tyler, since the birds often made a mess and he is devoted to keeping Argo in Bristol condition.

Cruising around the Galapagos is somewhat dangerous as the charts are very sketchy and either don’t show hazards at all, or fail to show them at the right location.  For example, the channel between two islands as drawn on the chart as wide open, yet in looking at it one could plainly see that it was obstructed by a rocky outcropping from the island.  In another case, the chart showed a clear and navigable passage and I set our chart plotter and autopilot accordingly.  After a couple of hours we could tell that we were headed into an unmarked ancient volcano top several acres in size!  I was told by a local boat captain with whom I consulted before departing Baltra, that the charts used until the 1990’s were created by Captain FitzRoy of the HMS Beagle (the ship that brought Darwin to the Galapagos in 1835) and the current charts aren’t any better!  About 1730 we arrived in Baltra and anchored for the night.

At 0800 the next morning we were called to the dock, but as our agent hadn’t arrived yet, they couldn’t start pumping fuel.  It was a Thursday morning, so this created special problems because our agent had to pay for our fuel before we could load it, and the payment office opens in Puerto Ayora at 0800, but that is an hour’s drive away from Baltra.  Once the agent arrived, he had to bring the port captain and the head of the police office aboard to inspect our yacht and fill out the same paperwork that we completed in Porto Ayora.  This port captain is the one to grant the exit Zarpe, clearing us out of the Galapagos and to the Marquesas.  Rebecca and I had to laugh as the uniformed port captain, complete with gold stripped epaulettes, carefully read with arms extended in the most officious manner the Zarpe from Port Ayora.  He must have read a document like that a thousand times before, yet here he was meticulously examining every period and colon! We concluded that if you are going to be a government official, you have to be able to read the most mundane form as though it were unique and complicated and that its meaning can only be understood in its full complexity by an anointed one.

We needed to buy as much fuel as possible since we planned to leave Baltra directly for the Marquesas, 3,000 miles away.  An expensive problem developed from the fact our fuel tank measuring system is very inaccurate; we have site gauges on each fuel tank, but they are not accurately calibrated and only provide an estimate of the fuel onboard.  I ordered 1325 gallons, but as it turned out we could only take on 1125 gallons, so we paid for 200 gallons that we couldn’t put aboard and lost over $1,000 at the fuel price of $5.25/gal.  I have never experienced a fueling procedure like the one in the Galapagos; in addition to being arcane, inefficient from a buyer’s perspective, and inconvenient, it seems, like many things here, designed to relieve Gringos of as much money as possible!   So at noon we sucked it up and shoved off for the Isle Marquesas’.  God help us (please)!

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CAPTAIN’S LOG March 25 – April 10           Panama and the Canal We departed Santa Marta at 0900 with a stiff 25 knot trade wind on starboard quarter.  It was hot and humid, a far cry from the bitter winter still gripping our home in Michigan.  We had a 386 mile – 2 ½ day cruise ahead of us.  I felt a little trepidation about this passage as the Caribbean can be a quit rough this time of year particularly at its western end near Colon.  We moved easily out of the harbor’s wide entrance, past…

CAPTAIN’S LOG

March 25 – April 10           Panama and the Canal

We departed Santa Marta at 0900 with a stiff 25 knot trade wind on starboard quarter.  It was hot and humid, a far cry from the bitter winter still gripping our home in Michigan.  We had a 386 mile – 2 ½ day cruise ahead of us.  I felt a little trepidation about this passage as the Caribbean can be a quit rough this time of year particularly at its western end near Colon.  We moved easily out of the harbor’s wide entrance, past the mountain island at its mouth, which is brightly lit at night with varying colors, past the ships at anchor and out onto the sea proper.  After an hour or so we settled into our familiar pattern: Tyler began to wash the soot off the boat, Rebecca was thinking about food shopping in Panama and provisioning for the next six months, I was checking over the equipment and setting our course.  When we leave a port we generally fill our water tanks, but in Santa Marta the dock water isn’t potable. If you want drinkable water there you have to order it in 10 gallon jugs and pour it by hand into the ship’s tanks.  Our tanks hold 500 gallons, enough to last many days if it is carefully used, but the soot in Santa Marta coated the boat with a fine coal dust created by the loading of coal onto ships nearby (ships that take Colombian coal to Jacksonville, Fl.) and so Tyler began washing the boat.  After a little while I noticed that our water supply was diminishing quickly, so I turned on our water maker.  It worked for a while, then quit working.  I went below to check things out, but nothing obvious was wrong.  Tyler and I then went back and started taking things apart, still nothing.  Meanwhile, seeing that we didn’t have enough water to take showers we reviewed our emergency plan. I called the manufacture’s technician in Fort Lauderdale via sat phone and reviewed the possibilities, and after two or three more hours in a hot engine room, still no permanent solution.  I did manage to get the unit to work for several hours; that made the difference and we were able to shower and use our water, but it put quit a scare into us.  When we got to Shelter Bay Marina at the south end of the canal, I took another stab at it.  This time I removed the low pressure pump, took it apart to see if the impeller had gone wrong, and then realized that one of eight bolts holding the thing together was loose.  That one of eight, small, loose Allen bolts allowed air to seep into the chamber and reduce the suction, denying the machine adequate water.  The lesson here is that ocean sailing is as much about keeping all the equipment working as it is about navigation and seamanship.

The cruise to Panama and Shelter Bay was more pleasant than I anticipated with calm seas as we entered Colon Harbor.  Scheduling a transit through the Panama Canal is fairly complicated and needs to be made several weeks in advance.  For the three of us and the boat, the fees totaled about $3,300.  The basic canal fee is $1,500, but an agent is required to complete formalities.  That costs $700.  The rest is made up of incidental taxes, fees, immigration visas, etc.  Often times the authorities tell you that they are experiencing a shortage of “measurers” (they send someone out to measure the exact dimensions of the vessel) or some other trade.  The choices then are either wait two weeks until they can get around to you or pay a $340 overtime charge.  There is a bundle of paper work to complete and all of the fees have to be wired to The Panamanian National Bank two weeks or so prior to transit.  Finally, when you leave your last port of call you have to email your Zarpe or departure authorization to the agent in Panama.  After all the details are in hand, the wheels grind at the canal authority and the agent calls with a transit date. 

We tied up at Shelter Bay at 1000 on March 27.  After checking in at the marina, washing the boat again, fixing the water maker, cleaning the interior and trying to use Skype to get ahold of our agent, we headed for the restaurant for a beer on a blazing hot and sultry afternoon.  There we met Charlie, a prince of a fellow and very generous guy who tells endless, interesting stories.  Charlie is an expat and has lived with his family in Cartagena for many years.  He is a lawyer who handles the import/export formalities for large shipping companies.  Charlie has traveled all over the region and when we met him he was in Panama doing work on his sail boat. 

Charlie rented a car and invited us for a tour of Colon. By ourselves we would have never gone there, but with such an invitation, off we went.  Colon is about a half hour ride requiring crossing the canal.  If a ship is passing through, you could wait an hour or more, but on this day we drove right across.  The crossing is made via a single lane bridge that falls in place when the second lock’s gates are closed.  Colon, once a pearl of the region, has descended into the darkest oblivion.  It is a squalid and dangerous place where the odds of a white person being mugged or worse rise to near certainty after dark.  Carrying a weapon for self-protection is common place here.  The buildings, however, despite their dilapidated condition cannot hide the architectural beauty of its golden age and the vibrancy that once must have been. Driving around one sees suspicious looking vagrants and unemployed people milling about, but in contrast, you see a large number of private schools with the children of all ages dressed neatly in their uniforms, white shirts and ties for the boys, dresses and bobby socks for the girls. There are also residential areas that seem quite normal and secure.   The city fathers are trying to resurrect Colon by making it a cruise ship destination and shopping mecca.  We went to its duty free zone, said to be second in size only to Hong Kong; it’s about ten city blocks square packed with hundreds of stores.  Getting in requires going into a special office at the secure entry gate, have your passports screened and if everything is in order, being granted admission for the price of for $9.  Once inside, we wondered around here for a couple of hours in sweltering heat.  It isn’t really a very nice place, and despite the heat, not a single place to buy water or a beer, much less a sandwich.  However, all was not lost as I found a very good deal on some Cuban cigars, half the price offered in Cartagena.

Once back at Shelter Bay Marina, we invited our new friends Charlie and Mark to dinner on board Argo.  Mark is an anesthesiologist from Seattle who has taken six months off to sail with his wife.  They had made it from the east coast to Panama when their boat broke down and was laid up for repairs.  Mark’s wife abandoned ship and went home to attend to family matters, leaving him to see to the boat while living aboard on the hard in humid 100 degree heat.  We thought both Charlie and Mark needed a good dinner, so we invited them over and had a heck of a good time together.   

The next day, Sunday March 30, we expected two friends, Mark and Dash, to join us onboard for a trip through the canal.  Mark is an editor for Passagemaker Magazine, an important magazine for people like us who wanted to learn about owning a boat and cruising the world.  Before we bought Odyssey, I looked forward to every issue and read it cover to cover.  It inspired me to start our own odyssey.  So when Peter Shepard, Mark’s boss called an asked it they could do an article on our passage through the canal, we thought it would be a lot of fun.  With camera and note pad in hand, Mark came aboard early Sunday morning.  Late that day Dash came aboard.  Dash is an old friend from the 80’s, when he and I attended professional meetings and executive education courses together.  We hadn’t seen each other in about 25 years, and although still in business, Dash winters at his home in Boca Del Toro, about 100 miles north of Colon.    

Our transit through the canal was scheduled for Monday.  Before leaving we needed to get four 125 foot lines and 12 fenders (tires wrapped in garbage bags) onboard.  We hired a line handler (Stanley) to assist with the transit.    We were instructed to leave the marina at 1330, anchor in the harbor and await a call on VHF Chanel 12.  As we were arriving on station, a call came and told us were to meet the pilot boat.  Around 1400 a pilot (Ricardo) came aboard, and he was a very pleasant, talkative fellow.  Our transit was scheduled for 1530, but we didn’t actually get into the lock until 1915.  The sun had set by the time we entered the first of three locks in the Gatun series.  When we entered the lock we tied up to a steel work boat that preceded us.  After it tied up to the wall, we came alongside and tied up to her.  The task appears pretty straight forward, but wind and turbulence in the lock, combined with jittery nerves, large objects confined to a small space and the possibility of jagged steel scrapping ARGO made for a little tension.   The hands threw lines forward and aft as well as two spring lines.  Argo was safe and secure, and after repeating the process through two more locks that evening, everyone felt pretty comfortable.  We cleared the last lock around 2100 and moved in total darkness to an anchorage for the night.  As we latter learned, southbound ships transit only at night, and yachts must anchor in lake overnight and proceed southbound in daylight.  We got under way with a new pilot named George (an American who has worked for the canal 42 years) at 1000.  We completed our transit about 1600 and tied up at our dock at La Playita Club at 1700.

This year is the 100^th anniversary of the opening of the canal, and it shows.  We were told by our two pilots that the cement at the locks is beginning to crumble and that major renovations and reconstruction of the existing locks will be needed soon.  New, much larger locks are under construction now that can handle larger ships, but the number of ships that can pass through the canal won’t change, and smaller ships will not be allowed to use the bigger locks.  The canal can handle 40 ships per day and each ship uses 58 million gallons of water during its transit.  The new locks will require even more water, which is a potential problem.  The canal authority uses the excess flow of the Charges River to generate electricity that it sells.  In order to operate the new locks more water from the Charges will have to be diverted, which will reduce this revenue.  Economics is a factor.  When the Americans ran the canal, they raised transit fees three times in 75 years.  The joke here is that since the Panamanians took over, they have raised prices 75 times in 3 years!  The result is that some of the canal’s largest customers, like Maersk Lines and others have notified the canal authorities that they are re-routing their ships so that they will not use the canal beginning next year because of high fees;  everything will go through the Suez Canal.   As it is they are having trouble financing the construction of the new locks.  During our transit we noticed fewer ships waiting for transit despite a stronger economy, and no cruise liners were going through because of the higher fees, now $400,000 per transit.   So, the Panamanians seem to be facing challenges. 

The former Canal Zone, once the jewel of the U.S. Army and a plumb boondoggle of a military assignment, is basically in ruins.  The Panamanians have done virtually nothing with it and the air bases that protected the zone.  What they have done is build a beautiful city, many say with laundered drug money.  However it got here, it is very impressive.  They are building a new subway that is due to open this month.  Traffic congestion should be reduced considerably. Most of the buildings are condominiums, used by Americans, Russians, and Venezuelans as a refuge from either winter, taxes, tyrants or all three.  The Cleveland Clinic has built a hospital in the midst of it all.  Rebecca and I had dinner at the Trump International in the heart of “new town”.  It is a beautiful building with a Waldorf Astoria Hotel located on the 20^th floor and above.  We dined at a restaurant on the 15^th floor that had a wonderful view of the city scape.  One couldn’t help but notice that most of the hundreds of apartments in the buildings around us were vacant; in one forty story building we counted only two apartments with lights on.  Despite it being a Friday night, no cars or people were on the street or dining at the restaurants.

Panama City also has an historic area called Casa Viejo.  Originally it had buildings like those found in Cartagena, but the area has fallen into disrepair over the years.  Many of the buildings are very lovely, and the community is in the process of redevelopment.  We dined in a lovely Habana style restaurant with our friend Dash and his friend Carolina.   Dash also took us to the best restaurant in the city, La Posta, the evening before for a truly lovely dinner in a classic ‘40s Panamanian setting.  It sure was nice to have a friend that knows the city!  When the redevelopment of Casa Viejo is complete, Panama City will have one more jewel in its crown. It will certainly be, if it isn’t already, one of the most interesting and vibrant cities in the world.

We headed out the morning of April 6^th for the Galapagos Islands, about 950 miles west of Panama.  Our course took us to the Las Perlas Islands about 35 miles out into the Bay of Panama, and then head straight for the Galapagos.  It was a beautiful, calm day and we enjoyed a delightful cruise to islands.  Islas Contadora is the main attraction; it is quiet and small but has several lovely boutique hotels and homes located on its beaches.  It looks like a great spot for a short vacation and a place I would like to return to.  

Later that night we headed out of the Gulf of Panama and past many large ships coming and going to the canal.  As we entered the Pacific Ocean proper we encountered a moderate ocean swells from the south.  For the balance of our five day passage we encountered southerly winds between 15 and 20 knots, sometimes a little more on our port bow.  In all but one of the days, the seas were moderate (6 -8 foot seas with a fairly long moment) and pleasant, but one day was a little uncomfortable.  One of the interesting things was the variability of the ocean currents: we changed course to avail ourselves of a more favorable ride.  Sometime we would be pushed along at 8-9 knots, while at others we crept along at near 6 knots, all at the same engine speed and power.  The difference is strictly caused by the direction of the ocean currents.  This area of the ocean has four large currents converging at the Galapagos, which creates a very confused sea.  On the fifth day we crossed the equator and made landfall at Puerto Ayroa on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos. 

Thanks for checking in on us.   We will try to post a blog on our Galapagos visit before we leave for the Marquesas later this week.

Randy and Rebecca

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CAPTAIN’S LOG March 15 – 31   Santa Marta to Cartagena de Indias to Bogota’ This morning we are at sea about 200 miles east of Colon, Panama.  I am on watch.  It is 0900, and my watch began at 0700.  Everyone else is asleep.  The Trade Winds are blowing us and the sea, which is a rolling three to seven feet on our starboard quarter.  I love listening to classical music at this time of day; no one is around and I can turn up the volume as much as I want.  The wind is fresh, the sky is a little…