Hot News

April 16, 2001 ~ April 30, 2001

April 30, 2001

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, IPO!!! We can't believe that you are 7 years old!!!

We spent most of the day cleaning (me) and repairing the sail pocket where the batten ripped through (Eric and David) pocket, but they also found that the attachment to the boom had be chafed away with all the banging. We really need a big huge sail sewing machine to repair that but their sewing job seems to be holding for now.

Julie and Barry tried to visit the two other towns further south along the coast, but the swell was too high, so they could not land their dinghy.So they were not able to purchase any bread for us. I will just have to make my own. They came over to visit about 5. We ate rather late and did another wash!

April 29, 2001

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TIBY! Hope that you had a nice day!

We left about 8:30am just as Beacon was arriving (The last few days Cap'Or, Aldebaran Ireland, Argonauta San Diego, High Drama and Someday is Here all arrived).

We caught two skipjack tuna...which were delicious!!! But still NO ahi!!! We took alot of pictures as we were leaving...a beautiful day! However, the winds were very flukey along the coast with the cliffs and we were backwinded!!! A batten slipped out of the pocket and the only way to remedy the situation was to send Eric up the mast to either push it back in (which he did not have the strength to do) or to remove it (which he did, trying to hold on in the rolling waves and to not drop the batten in the ocean). He did it perfectly...as usual.

We had a delicious lunch with the wonderful bread which we had purchased the day before in Fatu Hiva and were anchored in Baie Hanamoenoa/Hana moe noa on the island of Tahuata about 4:15pm with *Cherokee* and *Lazy Jack.* David was snorkeling and noticed *Tarquin* from Clark, Colorado. We discovered that Pete Bartoe from Ball Brothers Research Corp. in Boulder was aboard. He had been president there while I was the Technical Librarian. This is definitely a VERY small world!!!

April 28, 2001

We went back into town and traded a shirt and perfume for pamplemouse, stalk of bananas, and coconuts and purchased some delicious bread (even though we had to wait for hours for it!!!)

After lunch, Eric went spear fishing (no fish for us!) with the woodcarver's son and David and I snorkeled for almost an hour along the shore. Actually quite nice and we saw fish which reminded us of home!

The freighter/cruise ship, Aranui, arrived in the harbor, bringing in lots and lots of supplies and taking away copra, and bringing in their passengers to shop for tapa and carvings.

We had a quick dinner of rotis and did a load of wash, while we were preparing to leave in the morning.

April 27, 2001

We went over to visit with Mayer and Kathyrn on *Lady Kathyrn* at about 8:30am since they were leaving! We hope that we meet up with them in Tahiti, they are such wonderful people. We were in awe of their boat! Such a masterpiece!

We met Fred and Renee from*Aldebaran Milwaukee* and hiked to the waterfall. Peter on *Suvarro II* had written out a map for all of us to follow and then to pass on to the next hiking cruisers!!! What a wonderful hike and beautiful waterfall! We came back and exchanged money and bought cokes in the little grocery store. We traded some perfume for more pamplemouse (like grapefruit but sweeter and very delicious).

We had a delicious Marquesan dinner prepared for us by Rosa. There were 17 of us in her home eating on benches! She served us poisson cru (raw fish in coconut and lime juice), chicken in coconut and papaya, breadfruit, manioc, bananas, rice, punch and cake for dessert!!! What a wonderful ...and delicious....experience!!!!

April 26, 2001

Jeff on *High Drama* was net controller this morning for me, since we had made landfall. We cleaned and put out items to make her feel like "Home." At 10am we went into the little town (the dinghy landing was fun with a little surf on the slippery cement slipway!) with *Lazy Jack* and *Aldebaran.* We purchased two tapa cloths and she gave us another one. This is the only island where tapa cloth (which is produced from the inner bark of trees) is still being made. We purchased a turtle design on off-white bark which is from the mulberry tree and the darker brown bark is from the banyan tree. We did not purchase the medium brown which is made from the breadfruit tree. We were not able to watch how they produce the tapa cloth. No bread from the bakery although it had been ordered for us the day before! After lunch we returned and saw more wood carvings and finally purchased a female tiki with a gecko on her back from David, the winner of the competition in Tahiti. (We hope to see all of them in Tahiti at the competition from May 29-June 20 while we are there.) They carve absolutely incredible pieces of art...much too large for our little boat! We joined the nightly church service at 5:30pm as we were returning to our boat with our tiki! All the singing was so beautiful....we felt right at home! One of the song was to the music of "Hawaii Poe Nui" and all the women were wearing mumus and leis with flowers in their hair!

We had an early dinner and were in bed about 8pm...we slept well, in spite of all the wind.

April 25, 2001

PEACE AND ALOHA was anchored at the Bay of Virgins at the Island of Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas at 1:30pm after 18 days and 5 hours at sea!!!!

Julius, *Argonauta, NY* was net controller today with his question concerning the famous blue gray porpoise who aided ships through a famous pass in New Zealand, while we were coming up on the net with about 30 more miles to go. We were welcomed by *Lazy Jack,* *Fair Hippolyta,* *Lady Kathyrn,* *Adelie,* *La Boatique,* *Calypso,* and *Aldebaran Milwaukee.* These were the boats that we couldn't pass! Kathyrn and Mayer on *Lady Kathyrn* came over to greet us (we hadn't met them before...really really nice couple from Australia with an absolutely beautiful boat which they built in New Zealand!) with a bag of pamplemousse (we had heard so much about the famous Marquesan ones! and the definitely are delicious!), limes, guavas and papayas!!! Such a welcome treat after 18 days at sea!

Making landfall was wonderful, especially so in such an incredibly beautiful bay! Baie Hanavave/Baie des Vierges/Bay of Virgins is on the northwest coast of Fatu Hiva. There are rocky spires near the head of the bay with dark green tree covered steep sided mountains behind. It is also rumored that the bay was originally named "Bay of Verges" (Bay of the Phalli) by early explorers because of the shape of the rocky pillars. Supposedly the missionaries disapproved, and inserted an "i" making it "Bay of Vierges" which translates to Bay of the Virgins.!" We had to anchor in about 80 feet because of the other boats closer in. Sometimes there are large swells in the bay (Hanavave means "strong surf bay" in archaic Marquesan), with gusty winds sweeping down the steep slopes causing vessels to drag. We were lucky and no one dragged while we were there.

We fixed up the boat alittle and had an early dinner of fish, rice, vegges and brownies! We toasted ourselves with a glass of Sambuca!!! A safe landfall! The completion of our passage of approximately 3,000 miles (traveling between 120-187 miles/day) in 18 days 5 hours!!! We were proud of ourselves! We were proud of *Peace and Aloha* also! The only problems we had was the Northstar not working (It stopped working again, after we thought Eric had fixed it) and the spinnaker falling down (the splice holding it inside the sock broke). We considered ourselves very thankful to have such a fast boat and to NOT have the very serious problems that many of our fellow cruisers experienced! David and Eric did an excellent job in making *Peace and Aloha* ready for such a long passage. We also did not experience the usual wind and sea conditions for this journey!

April 24, 2001

Day # 18 with 165 miles to go!!! Julius and Sally on Argonauta NY managed to fix their radio enough to be net controllers for the following two days! Their question was: where is the deepest part of the ocean and how deep is it? (Answer: Mariana Trench in the Pacific at 36, 162 feet) It is very interesting to note that on our charts depths of over 4000 meters are very common. I think the deepest our depth gauge has registered was 388 feet! Somehow, when it is deeper than 100 feet, the mind can't quite comprehend those greater depths!

I made more bread and brownies....we are going to need a crane to hoist us off, we will be so large from eating so much with no exercise! We continued with our "batwings" (Jason's nautical term for wing on wing....stay sail poled to one side and the genoa poled to other side!) and our rolling for another day. The wind was a little stronger, so we were going a little faster, which helped. We also discovered hairline fractures in the welded (in Colon) attachment of the boom vang to the mast.

We were REALLY excited about spending our LAST night on passage....and it turned out to be THE rolliest!!!!:)

April 23, 2001

Day #17 and the question for today is: what is the name of the long bone of the upper arm? (Answer: humerus. I want to know if it is the humorous, since you hit the end of it when you knock your funny bone?) We have 310 miles to go while* Lazy Jack* arrived in Fatu Hiva and *Cherokee* arrived in Hiva Oa (The Marquesas). We had another rolly, somewhat rainy day and night. Although we did see alot of stars, including some which looked like UFO's with red, green and white lights and then they shot away!!! (Been out on the ocean too long???)

April 22, 2001

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUNT BETTY!!! 94 years young!!!! We hope that your day was VERY special and you had lots of cake and ice cream to enjoy!

Pat on *Aldebaran Ireland* was again our net controller asking about: what is the correct name for the fear or phobia of ice/ of cold/ and of snow? (I really didn't get the answers...you can look the answers up easier than we can!...obviously, this was a day of zero points for *Peace and Aloha!*) We caught no fish! We changed our clocks again! It is quite difficult to keep everything straight (times for different nets, weather faxes, etc) when we keep changing clocks....we always have to check with others to see what time they have on their clocks when we schedule something! Keeps everyone on their toes!

April 21, 2001

Day #15 and Jeff's question was: What is a galleywoobler? (Answer: a sail used to stablize the large schooners in down-wind sailing....what we all wished that we had!!!) We were really rolling and the boom was banging hard everytime a swell caught us. I had a very queasy queasy day....who says this stuff goes away???? This is Day #15, folks!!!

*Maritime Express,* *Someday is Here,* with *Argonauta San Diego* standing by, managed to transfer Ken and Henry to *Argonauta New York* in these rough seas and they were able to bring down his forward sail and lash it to his deck. It took about three hours to accomplish all this and then* Maritime Express* stayed with them all the way to Fatu Hiva. (*Maritime Express* had also make a sail transfer to *Someday is Here* at the beginning of our passage when they blew out their sail. Maritime deserves the Hero Boat Award!!!)

Tthe STARS in the night sky were absolutely spectacular!!! Maybe that was because we had so many squally....very very black nights that this evening was so special! It was a special treat to be able to see the Southern Cross.

April 20, 2001

Jeff on *High Drama* took over the net controller job and asked: What % of the earth's surface is covered by the Pacific Ocean? (Answer: 35%) Eric spent the morning digitizing the computer after he had received the weather faxes from 8-9am. I made bread (I have been making a delicious dark whole wheat bread with raisins and nuts, given to me by Diana on *Zephyrus.*) and brownies....much to the delight of the crew!!! We caught a fish (started fishing again, since we now had room in our freezer because we had been eating rotis and fish!) and had a delicious dinner! One of my better days! We were going VERY fast with our spinnaker up! Unfortunately for *Argonauta, New York* they lost their head sail!!!

April 19, 2001

Day #12 and my question as net controller was: what is the proper attire of a woman figurehead on the bow of a ship, and why? Unfortunately, *Liberator* came on with a problem with his engine! (We already had *Maritime Express* and *Muna* with no engine power). We had another rolly day of down-wind sailing with the swell on our beam! (Answer: naked or at least bare breasted, because a naked woman aboard a ship is said to calm the angry sea!!!)

April 18, 2001

I was net controller this morning and my question was: why don't we start a passage on a Friday? We changed all our clocks...again! We also started sailing with our down-wind rig and found that we had a hole in the sail and the main sail attachment on the boom was broken. Eric managed to tied it back together as best as he could given the rolly conditions. (Answer is contained in this website several weeks ago!)

April 17, 2001

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MRS. BROWN! Hope you had a very special day!

We also heard from Shirley Wentworth that her father passed on March 17. We send all our love and compassionate prayers to Mrs. Wentworth, Shirley and Mike and all their families. He was a very special person and he will be missed.

Day #11 and our question was: what was the most and the least amounts paid for transiting the Panama Canal? (Answer: $181,000 for a large cruise liner which I can't remember the name...and 36 cents for the fellow who swam through!)

I worked diligently on this computer to write Julie all her lists. I felt pretty queasy after that since we were sailing in 8-10 foot seas with 25 knots of wind (after another rough squally night), but it was SUNNY!!!

April 16, 2001

Day #10 of our passage! We crossed our half way mark at 1,500 miles! We began a quiz as part of our morning net! The Big Fish Brain Quiz, as initiated by Pat on *Aldebaran, Ireland!* The first question was: What is the square root of 16 and 20? We had seventeen boats in our net: Lady Kathyrn (Australia), Shakti (South Africa), Stella (Canada), Maritime Express (Canada), Argonauta (New York), Cap d' Or (England), Someday is Here (US), Aldebaran (Milwaukee), Aldebaran (Ireland), Muna (England), Peace and Aloha (Maui), High Drama (Phoenix), Lazy Jack (England), Fair Hippolyta (England), Argonauta (San Diego), Liberator (Australia), and Cherokee (Texas). The net controller would roll call each boat, who would respond with their GPS position, wind speed and direction, sea height and direction, cloud cover, barometer and distance to run, how many fish caught, and of course, the answer to the question of the day!!! (Answer is 24! and we received two points towards an all expensed paid vacation in a tropical paradise!)

We also used up our last bread, so now I have to start baking! I also caught up with answering all my email!!!! That lasted for about 10 minutes....but then I got VERY behind in updating this website!