Tag Archives: spinnaker

Passage: French Polynesia to Fiji

It feels like we have been preparing for this long passage for months.  Way longer than the actual passage.  But it’s all in the preparations to make for a smooth and easy sail.

Matt posted “live blogs” during the passage (which took place in June 2022) so I will try not to duplicate him, but if you are interested in reading them (he is super funny).  Click here to read the first of his 12 posts during our passage.

We left from Bora Bora and our friends from Askari managed to get a departing photo with the Bora Bora caldera in the background.

Departing Bora Bora

Departing Bora Bora

Trip Details

  • Departure Date and Time: Saturday, 4 June 2022 at 12:30pm
  • Miles to Destination (as the crow flies): 50
  • Engine Hours: Port: 4213 and Starboard: 4374
  • Estimated Arrival Time: 19 June 2022 (Fiji is 22 hours ahead of Tahiti so we lost a day)

Shifts:

Matt and I do 3 hours on and 3 hours off for passages.  Basically, Matt works the 8p-11p shift, I work the 11p-2a, Matt is back up 2a-5a and I am up from 5a-8a.  During the day we rotate however we want (sort of light schedule).   Averaging 5 hours of broken sleep a night is challenging at best.

Day 1

We purposely picked this weather window because it had light winds for the first few days.  This is crucial for me because I am prone to sea sickness.  Having light winds allows me to slowly get my “sea legs.”   Weather predictions are really guessing as they are often wrong.  But usually the first 3 days are somewhat accurate.  Four different forecasts had us going way North increasing our cross track to over 100 miles (meaning we went over 100 miles out of our way to ensure we stayed in the wind zone).

Forecasts Routing

Forecasts Routing

We flew wing on wing (main sail on port and jib on starboard) and then tried to fly the parasail.  We lost sight of land at dark, just a mere 6 hours after we started our passage.

Day 2 & 3

Lovely days with light winds.  We flew the parasail for most of the day and managed to maintain a 6.5 boat speed.  Another boat showed up on AIS (radar) called Moondance.  They were mirroring us which was odd.  We headed to port, then they did, we headed to starboard, then they did.  We eventually lost them and left them in the dust.

Parasail

Parasail

We leave French waters and enter Cook Islands territory.  The closest island is Suwarrow which is south and still over 300nm away (2-2.5 days).

Crossing into Cook Islands

Crossing into Cook Islands

Day 4:

A rather large squall came through in the wee hours of the morning bringing over 35kts of wind and super strong, large rain drops.  Just as we finished dropping all the sails, the winds picked up to 35kts and the rain pelted us.  It was a downpour and both Matt and I were soaked to the bone.  We motored during the worse part of the storm and then it left us with no wind when it passed.   Drat, we ended up using the motors for close to 20 hours.  Since it was a motor day, I made chocolate chip mint cookies.  We need all the sugar and caffeine we can get to keep us awake during the night shifts.

Day 5

We finally broke the 1000nm mark.  Yeah what a relief.  In addition, we reduced our cross track bringing us closer to our destination.

Medium Spinnaker 150m

Medium Spinnaker 150m

At night we rely a lot on our instruments.  We are running weather forecasts on Matt’s computer, we have radar on (bottom circular diagram), Vesper Marine, and B&G instruments all running at the same time.  In addition, we have 2 iPads that are running different charts.

Day 6

Two things to celebrate: (1) We reached the half way mark of 832 nm to go.  Of course, that is as the crow flies and does not take into account that we have to sail around islands (vs through them).  The second thing we celebrated was a beautiful pod of whales.  I saw a spout and thought was that a spout or just the wind kicking up sea spray?  It turned out to be a spout.  At least 4 whales played around Sugar Shack for about 20 minutes.  One came alongside our boat and then went under the boat.  Super cool, but holy h3ll that could have been disastrous if he breached the surface while under Sugar Shack.

The photos are not very good as I was frozen in place when they breached.  But they were there, I promise.

Day 7-8

We alternate between our medium spinnaker, the parasail, and the working sails.  Depends on the winds and gusts.  We had particularly calm weather and decided to swap out our sails.  As we hoisted the medium spinnaker a gust came up and made a slight tear at the top.  We had to bring her down to avoid total destruction.  Matt was able to repair the sail and get it back in the rotation a few days later.

On a good note, we caught (2) male mahi mahi in the afternoon.  The first line went “zing” and as we went to pull in the other lines a 2nd line went zing!

These are the winning lures that caught our tasty fish.

Day 9:

We enter the waters of Tonga.  I sure wish Tonga was open but alas she is shut down due to Covid still.  So, we sail on through longingly looking at the beautiful islands from a far.  Kidding we can’t see anything as it is way too far away.  But the longing is still there.

Day 10:

Another beautiful day on passage.  We were changing sails from the jib to the parasail when we had another little mishap.  Matt was raising the sock (with the sail inside) as per usual.  However, I noticed that the sock looked empty so I shouted at Matt to stop, but he couldn’t hear me over the roar of the wind.  I stepped up my vocal cords and got his attention just as the entire parasail came out of the sock and into the sea.  Holy cow!

It is 3am and raining.  We are both at the bow trying to pull in the sail.  Just as we got the sail onboard, the sock goes under the boat.  You’ve got to be kidding!  We manage to salvage both the sail and the sock and bring them back to the cockpit. What happened?  Well, there is a shackle at the top of the sock that holds the sail inside.  That shackle opened up and we nearly lost the sail.  Lucky for us, an easy fix.

Day 11

We make our first land sighting at 122nm to go.  Super cool to see land after being at sea for 11 days.  The islands are far off in the distance, but you can certainly make out the beautiful mountains.  We had a very squally and rainy day today which makes it hard to fly the lighter sails (spinnaker and parasail) which make us go faster.  But we continued on averaging 5-6kts for the day.  Today was my last day as net controller on the Poly Mag Net an SSB radio net that I’ve been volunteering for over the last 2 years.  It was hard to let go.

Day 12

We arrive into the island of Vanua Levu and go to Savusavu bay to clear into customs.  We arrived around 10:30am which was 11 days and 23 hours after we picked up the hook in Bora Bora!  Not bad, not bad at all!  We had anticipated it taking 2 full weeks and we made it in 12 days.

Trip Details:

  • Miles to Destination: 1,664
  • Actual Miles Sailed: 1,777
  • Average Speed over 12 days: 2
  • Max Speed: 9
  • Engine Hours: Port: 4233 and starboard 4384

We motored about 20 hours with the majority of that time being right after the large squall on day 4.  The rest of the time we were able to sail.

Here is our track from French Polynesia to Fiji.

French Poly to Fiji Track

How did I entertained myself?

I read 3 books, I watched Season 2 of Bridgerton and S1 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and watched 2 movies.  Of course, there were lots of games of solitaire and word puzzles too.

Some beautiful moon pictures.  The moon came out during the second half of our passage and lit our way through the darkness.

And a collection of sunset photos during our passage.

Sunsets during passage

Sunsets during passage

We prepare to vamoose from French Polynesia in our blast blog.  Events from this blog occurred in early June.  Please note that our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual events.

Local performer

Waiting in Nuku Hiva

We had some time to kill while we waited on our martingale. If we had our druthers, we would have left for the southern Marquesas islands to wait for a weather window toward the Gambiers.  However, life had other plans.  We needed to follow up on our long-stay visa renewals and wait for our part.  But we are not good at waiting, so we filled our days.  So, what did we do?

Exercise

A few of my friends (Janet, Nicci, and Isabelle) and I walked almost every day.  I say, walk, but truly we did the hikes around Taihoe Bay at a moderate pace early in the morning.  There are three hikes that we rotated between:  Collette’s Bay, Gazebo Hike, and the Mare Hike.  They are each about 4-6 miles long and can take anywhere from 1-2 hours depending on how much we are talking or how fast we are walking.  This photo is from the Gazebo hike at the top overlooking the bay with Janet, Isabelle and I.

Hiking Partners

Hiking Partners

We also did a little yoga.  Isabelle recently got her yoga certification and graciously taught yoga several times a week.  Sometimes we had 20 people while other times we had 5.  Always a mixed bag, but lots of fun.  

Yoga Practice with Cruisers

Yoga Practice with Cruisers

Errands

Of course, we ran some errands.  We motored a lot with Wayne and the Melnar’s so we had to replenish our fuel.  Technically, we were not “low” but with 1000 miles to the Gambiers and another 1000 miles to Tahiti it was best to top up the tanks.  We borrowed 6 jerry cans (20 liters each) from Nuku Hiva Yacht Services.  This is in addition to our four 20-liter cans.  We made two trips to replenish our diesel and gasoline.

We also tried our best to provision.  Unfortunately, the supply ship has not visited Nuku Hiva since the middle of December (we are at the end of January).  Of course, it is scheduled to come a week after we leave.  We do not plan to be waiting on the supply ship.  So, the magasins were painfully empty.  We purchased what we could.

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  The waterline and bottom of the boat needed some lovin!  The waters here foster some interesting growth and we had a virtual science experiment growing on our boat!

Computer Work

I volunteered to re-organize the Tuamotus, Society, and Marquesas Compendiums into an easier format.  There is lots of great information in each compendium, but it is difficult to find it.  Most people submit information in paragraph form and you have to read through a bunch of junk to get an anchorage location or find the post office.  So, I am working on re-organizing each compendium (which are over 200 pages each).  The creators have been waiting patiently for me to finish these so I’ve been working hard.

Spinnaker & Para-Sailor

As you might recall, we blew out the clew (corner) of our small spinnaker on a passage.  We have tried to get it repaired and it was too much money.  We are in the process of trying to repair it ourselves but are not convinced it will hold.

Another boat was selling a spinnaker about the same size as our small spinnaker.  They were also selling a small parasailor which we have never sailed with before.  It would be a fun sail to try out as you can use it in stronger winds and with a wider variety of wind direction. Basically, it gives you a lot more opportunity to use it than a regular spinnaker. The problem is that it is smaller than we would have liked but it could work.

We went over to Azyu to check out both sails and were really happy with their condition.  The spinnaker is a 2014 and has some use on it, but it is in really good condition.  The parasailor has only been used two times and in even better condition.  

Spinnaker Evaluation

Spinnaker Evaluation

Azyu wanted to leave and could not stand by waiting for us to make a decision.  So, we decided to purchase both sails, try them out and keep the one we like best.  We will sell the other sail when we get back to Tahiti.  We low-balled them and they accepted.  Sweet!  Basically we got both sails for about $4500.  To give you an idea of what a screaming deal we got: a spinnaker new would be $6,500 and a parasailor new is $10,000.  Maybe waiting to repair our damaged spinnaker was a good idea?

Daniel’s Bay

We decided to get away for the weekend.  We left the “main bay” of Taihoe and went to Daniel’s bay because it is so much prettier and quieter.  Our friends on Maple are here with us and we had a blast hanging out with them before they leave for the Society Islands and then Malaysia.    We hiked to the “nada-falls”, had ice-cream at Teiki’s place and dinner on each other’s boats.

Daniel's Bay HIke

Daniel’s Bay HIke

We cross the river three times before we get to the “trickle fall”  The first time you cross can be nerve racking as you try to get solid footing.  The top photo is us goofing around while crossing.  The bottom photo is us enjoying a cool down after the 7 mile walk.

Crossing the river 3x

Crossing the river 3x

Still dry and no waterfall, but a truly beautiful setting.  Daryl (top photo) reflecting on the pool), and Janet, Ella and Iris at the bottom.

At the Nada Falls

At the Nada Falls

The local fisherman go out early in the morning and come back to the dock around 0700 to clean their catch.  It is always amazing to me how big their tuna catches are!

Tuna Catch

Tuna Catch

The fisherman toss the parts into the water for the awaiting sharks.  Always fun watching the fisherman feeding the sharks at the dock.  Yep, this is where we dock our dinghy to get to shore.  Fun times waiting for the sharks to lose interest in us.

Large sharks at the dock

Large sharks at the dock

We enjoyed lots of good dinners and happy hours on our friend’s boas.  This is Nicci from Flip Flops and Janet from Maple.

Dinner with friends

Dinner with friends

Super Bowl Sunday

Our friend Kevin from Nuku Hiva Yacht Services hosted a super bowl party on his deck.  He was able to live stream it on the internet so we could watch just off the beach.  Unfortunately, we lost the signal on the last 20 minutes of the game which is when KC came from behind to win 31 to 20!  How the heck did that happen in 20 minutes. No matter, it was a great game in good company in a lovely setting.  And the half time was spectacular with J Lo and Shakira!

Super Bowl Party

Super Bowl Party

Ladies Luncheon

One of the other cruisers organized a ladies luncheon which was fabulous.  There were 9 of us from 8 countires including a woman who fenced, a skydiver, a motor cross racer, swimmer, pilot/plane builder, and one that has raised two kids and lived on a boat for the past 25 years.  An incredibly eclectic and exciting group of women.

Ladies Luncheon

Ladies Luncheon

Hike to the Saddle

Not sure why I agreed to do this, but Sophie and I hiked to the saddle which was over 152 stories (the empire state building is 100), and almost hit 10 miles!  It was a brute of a climb, but we did it!

Sophie and I hike to the saddle

Sophie and I hike to the saddle

Lots of cruise ships came into port at the end of January and into February.  The locals would gather near the dock and give them a nice welcome with drums, singing and warm greetings.  Of course, I had to take advantage of the situation and get a photo op.

Local performer

Local performer

 

Our good friend Mike on “Easy” decided to fly back to the States for a month.  unfortunately, we will be gone when he returns and are not sure when we will see him again.  He may be sailing to Hawaii then Oregon while we are going to New Zealand.  So, it seemed like a great time to have a party.  Over 20 people came to Sugar Shack to honor Mike!

Mike's Going Away Party

Mike’s Going Away Party

Matt decided to a monstrous hike to the antennae which is almost the tallest peak of the island.  I opted to skip out as it was way too high.  It was well over 6.5 miles to the top and another to return and I think it concluded at a 14 mile hike and well over 3,000 elevation.

Above, I mentioned that I hiked to the saddle (red arrow), but Matt took it further and hiked to the blue arrow.  A huge 5-hour hike.

Matt's hike to the antennae

Matt’s hike to the antennae

View from the top of the mountain, taken by Matt

View from the top

View from the top