Vaiehu, Ua Pou, Marquisas, French Polynesia 24 Jan 2012 09S23 140W07

You’d think that after two years of practice, we’d be getting really good at pulling up anchor and moving on. But Newton’s laws do not go away just because we practice them lots. Some force is required to put a relatively still object (our hull) in motion. And it’s not just the force of diesel or wind propulsion, but a companion force of will is necessary to motivate us to leave behind one spot that has satisfied some need, for an unknown spot that may or may not satisfy any need. How long we’ve been in a place doesn’t seem to change the equation, inertia sets in the moment the anchor hits bottom and Silver Lining’s bow swings into the wind.

The external force was present and on hand to help us leave our laundry anchorage; you’d think I would have been eager to leave it quickly in our wake – two full washdays, every sheet clean, a new island beckoning on the horizon. But a rainy, gray, sloppy day greeted us on the morning we planned to depart for the island of Ua Pou. I was ready to stick with Nuku Hiva for a few more days. Why leave the convenience of our tropical Laundromat for the rolly anchorages across the channel. Leave it to love to always provide the equal and opposite reaction needed to accomplish any action – Frank’s diesel fired will, got us off and running, in full fowlies heading out to brave the sloppy seas. A few hours later, we arrived in the main town of Hakahau (Valley of the Government) Ua Pou, a rolly anchorage, with only a few spots protected behind a seawall, and those few, all taken. We tucked in as tight as we could and prepared to ride the swell for our stay there. Kennan was a little disappointed in the place at first, claiming that it looked kind of flat for a volcanic island. But when we stepped foot on land, the ever present clouds lifted a bit to display the most impressive basalt spire you could imagine and part of a bigger mountain behind. Frank likened it to King Kong’s lair.

The swell built enough a few days later to chase us around to another cove further west (a helpful external force). As we circled around the point, the spire was often covered, but as the clouds rode the air currents of the steep terrain, a half-dozen or more spires were unveiled, or maybe it was the same spire moving around, a ghost in the clouds? When we arrived at our new anchorage, Hakahetau, the clouds lifted enough to expose most of the spires at once – there were enough for King Kong’s harem. I hesitate to use superlatives to describe the sights we see, since there often seems to be something even more amazing around the corner – but our new anchorage, had to rate highest up in the beauty hierarchy.

Those spires, obelisks, mega-menhirs, beckoned. We could not resist their pull. It was not the force of gravity, but a pure and powerful magnetic force. A grueling 3-hour hike — through deep jungled valleys, across the forgotten stone remnants of ancient civilizations, past streams and waterfalls filled with squadrons of mosquitos, up razor sharp ridges, with razor sharp dead screwpine leaves (pandanus) slicing at our bare calves — brought us to the base of one of the shorter spires. Frank claimed we were only a few feet from the top – in plan/horizontally – but it was over a thousand feet straight up the sheer cliff face. The clouds lifted, the sun came out, and we picnicked with a view of all but the tip of the tallest of the spires, in their full vertical walled glory. As we walked along they surrounded us on almost all sides peaking through the foliage in some places, boldly exposing themselves in others. The trail was poorly marked, little used, and extremely steep, but we only got seriously lost once.

The trip back down another valley took the same amount of time (and energy) as the hard trip up. The descent had to be slow, careful and controlled. Despite the temptation to leap and roll, a slipping, sliding descent would have sent us flying with the circling swallows, fairy terns and tropic birds. We arrived back at the boat spent, bitten, scratched, sore, and profoundly moved. And so a body in motion tends to stay in motion, until an opposite force acts upon said body – exhaustion sent us into a deep sleep last night.

But this morning the swell built again, and we moved even further west and south to a quieter bay. It’s hot. It’s calm. School’s mostly out. Our reserves of energy are completely depleted. The spires are no longer in view. But the water is unusually clear here, and Logan wants to go snorkeling. It may be our last chance before our last visit to Taiohaie, and before we head for Hawaii. Which force of will could move us out of the cabin and into this pellucid water? A teen can be very persuasive – some forces can’t be resisted.

Maybe Newton was really a psychologist, his laws seem to apply so well to human behavior. On the one hand none of us is ready to stop cruising (again bodies in motion tend to stay in motion), and yet we can’t seem to find the motivation to leave the Marquesas (overcoming inertia requires the application of an external force).

Wishing you the best in your own struggles with Newton’s laws.

xoxomo

P.S. After snorkeling, as evening set (first time in months we’ve actually seen the sun hit the water), it happened, first time for me ever: GREEN FLASH!!! It is real! Frank says tonight was more of a green flash in the pan…quicker than what he’s seen…and Logan was expecting a full Hollywood flash, like in Pirates of the Caribbean, still screwpine them, it was awesome!

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Hooumi, Nuku Hiva, Marquises, French Polynesia 15 Jan 2012 08S53 140W01

In writing mostly on passage, I’ve neglected to share many of the details of boat life near land. There is more to it than algebra, excursions and exotic views, but some of the more-to-it is more tedious than I’d like to admit in public. That tedium bleeds into my descriptions, making for a boring read. Descriptions of the endless tropical eye candy surrounding us would get equally boring. Admit it, all any of us really wants to read about, are the life and death moments, where fear, terror and horror, remind us of what it is to be alive, and well, and far from such dangers. But thanks to a skilled captain, a solid boat and super conservative weather watching, we’ve so far managed to avoid most of those life and death moments (twisting the tip of my finger a year ago in a bucket incident doesn’t quite qualify). Attempting to strike terror in your hearts with a description of washday may be the closest I can come to making you thankful to be alive and not cruising.

Our washing machine died early on in our voyage. Another electronics card fallen victim to the barbarous tropical climes, and another consumer fallen victim to the relentless march of electronics upgrades. Though sorely tempted we did not toss it into the Tonga Trench, but unloaded it at a NZ dump. A replacement machine with the 24in x 24in dimensions required to fit through our hatch, was nowhere to be found in the pacific. The old machine had a nasty habit of leaking on my clean clothes, and we’d struggled to satisfy its healthy appetite for electrons and H2O anyway, so when my dad and Betty came to visit us in NZ, they brought along replacement parts – an old-fashioned heavy duty laundry wringer and a special laundry washing plunger.

I can remember reading about washday in one of the Little House or Little Women books, and relishing in the struggles of those early pioneer women. I’m not sure why I enjoyed the stories so much, those gals all seemed so brave and strong and…well…pioneering. I’ve officially put all romanticized notions of washday to rest. We’re lucky (or lazy), we don’t boil our water, or beat the clothes with sticks and stones, or grind them on a washboard, and washday isn’t weekly, nor on a specific day of the week. But even though our onboard uniform is primarily bathing suits and pareos, laundry still rapidly fills the hole left by the machine (and I had such high hopes for that vacant cabinet).

Washday is scheduled based on several factors, when that pile exceeds our ability to close the cupboard, and when we’ve found a sufficient source of water to clean a washing-machine-sized pile of laundry. So far, our supply of clean clothes is still larger than our dirty clothes storage space, so that does not factor in too often. Finding water is the next big planetary struggle, and we’re getting a firsthand appreciation for how difficult that can be. We’ve carefully planned our travel to be where the weather is not, so the big rains needed to fill our tanks are rare even here. We only make water when we’re on passage, partly due to the increased particles in bays that watermakers don’t like, and partly to double up on energy efficiency; we tend to run the motor more underway and making water is an amp eater. Land based family washing machines are ideal (thanks Mijo!), and a rare coin washing machine in towns here runs about $8-$10/load (drying not included).

When we arrive at an anchorage with easy access to a spigot near a river, room on land to setup our laundromat, and healthy winds for drying, we jump at the opportunity. Hooumi, our current anchorage, has the near perfect combination. Yesterday, Frank and I assembled our laundry gear, slathered on the bug repellent and sunscrean, loaded up the kayak school bus and paddled for the spigot. There’s enough tide and enough of a swell in this bay to make a dinghy landing iffy, so the barge-like inflatable kayak was our vehicle of choice. We portaged our Laundromat to the spigot, bolted the wringer to the large ice-chest, laid out our washing-machine-sized pile for sorting, and went to town with the buckets and plungers and brushes. It’s not quite assemblyline efficiency (especially without Leo’s help), but to the local kids, it’s almost as interesting to watch. Making conversation with one curious little girl yesterday, Frank asked her if she did the laundry at her house. “No one does it, we have a machine,” was her reply. Right – rub it in kid. I think we washed and scrubbed, and soaked and rinsed and squeezed for 2-3 hours, backbreaking work in the hot tropical sun. As the pile got smaller, the odor of dirty clothes baking in the hot sun, was replaced by the scent of soap and frangipani flowers. And as the morning wore on the wind picked up, good news for the afternoon drying back at the boat, bad news for the paddle back upwind with a washing-machine-sized pile of wet heavy clothes.

Our return trip was a challenge. Loaded with an ice-chest full of gear and two 3-gallon jugs of freshwater on the stern, and 3 hours of soggy wet clothes on the nose, we managed to make it out through the small breakers without incident. Then we paddled the inflatable kayak upwind with 25-30 knot gusts. Awhile back we lost the foot-pedals for the kayak rudder; rudderless it was hard to stay nose into the wind. I gritted my teeth and paddled harder as spindrifts sent saltspray on all our hard work. I’d read a TED talk on the importance of smiling, apparently researchers found that smiling improves athletic performance. So I grinned maniacally, but the paddling didn’t get any easier, and Silver Lining didn’t seem to be getting any closer. In fact, the wind waves close to her seemed larger and larger. This was one of those times I wished I’d spent more time grinding winches; maybe if we hauled up the anchor by hand more often, Frank and I would have the Popeye arms needed for moments like this (canned spinach is not a favorite onboard). It was probably only 15 minutes of paddling, but it felt like a lifetime.

The relief of arriving was temporary, as we still had to juggle a safe transfer of ourselves, laundry and gear on to the mothership – AND – string lines through a washing-machine-sized pile of clean wet laundry. With winds this aggressive, clothespins are not enough to keep the shirts onboard. Every item has to be threaded through armholes or legholes onto the clothesline, the ends tied with a proper double sheet bend. The good news is we have two masts, so plenty of rigging to tie off to for a load that size. I could barely stand on deck or see as the wind whipped the laundry horizontal (at eye level). It must have been a festive and comical sight from shore; onboard we were not laughing and celebrating. If the items hadn’t bunched up so quickly, the load would have been dry before we were done hanging. They say line drying is better for your clothes, but if we had a lintscreen attached, I think we would have found the felt pad of this load to be way thicker than any machine dried load. With the beating the elastic takes from sun and wind, we may soon need to sew in some belt loops to our underwear, but the wind has whipped our t-shirts into an extra comfy, airy, lacy texture.

The folding was uneventful, if you ignore the worries of undies flying into the salty, murky, shark-infested bay as you shake the zigzagging chaos of laundry off the line into the cockpit. If you were looking for more of a life or death struggle to peak your interest, I did manage to get a fat lip from a mosquito bite (invention idea: bug repellent lip balm). That should strike terror into the hearts of those of you who fear dingue fever (a form of malaria here, that is usually minor, but some strains can be fatal). And the fashion conscious among you may be horror stricken to know that all our clothes are converging to one color; reds and blues and greens and purples are slowly either fading or staining to the same shade of taupe – even our cadet gray cockpit cushions are now taupe. Scary? Still nothing feels quite so good as lying down in bed when washday is over. Sleep comes quickly after good exercise in floral scented air (lots of air), and with the guiltless satisfaction of having among the smallest carbon footprints a family of four could have in the western world. Sorry, I can’t help it; I like happy endings, and a day later romanticizing comes easy.

Are you surprised that no one is jumping onboard for that second load of sheets and towels this morning, the load that’s been on our beds and on our towel racks for a month (maybe more…). It’s even windier today, Frank is now immersed in a movie, the kids are pretending to do school, I’m typing away, and to distract us from the remaining task at hand, you get to read the longest washday post ever. Laura would have been up early this morning to bale some hay or milk a few cows. Guess I won’t be making Life Magazine’s top 100 list of pioneering women. If I go for the second load today, would anyone nominate me?

xoxomo

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Taiohae, Nuku Hiva, Marquises, French Polynesia 11 Jan 2012 08S55 140W05

We said our goodbyes to our guest Leo last week after a month of epic explorations, good conversations, and even some quiet contemplation. It was good to have a girlfriend onboard to balance our slight list to the masculine side. And it was definitely a vacation month – even though we did skip the holidays. We’ve now rolled up our sleeves, and are tackling our chores, readying ourselves for a departure to Hawaii end of the month or so. For the kids that’s finishing the final days of their math book – Yoopie! No rest for the weary though…I already have the next book waiting in the wings. For Frank and I the big chores are polishing the fuel tank (OK that one is Frank’s), resetting the salon windows, (a.k.a. ports), and tenderly patching our 20 plus year old sails and taking tedious measurements for new ones. We’re hoping these sails will see us through another 2100 miles or so (distance from here to Hawaii). The jib and the staysail are showing signs of extreme stress in the clew corner. You may recall we popped a clew on the jib last year; Frank’s softclew replacement repair has held together beautifully for 8200 miles, but little lacy stretchmarks are appearing in a radial pattern a couple feet above the clew on both sails. So yesterday we slapped on a couple big sail patches with 5200 (flexible silicon glue), and are hoping to baby these sails along a bit longer. We didn’t want to sew the patch on, fearing a line of little needle holes might behave too like perforations on a pad of paper and we’re on our last sheet of the pad for sure.

Frank has a story from when he was a kid of a cat they had on board who loved to sleep in the sail locker. One day they brought out the spinnaker and sent it flying. As the spinnaker filled with air and rose against the sky, he recalls seeing a million little holes just before a Fourth of July explosion. The spinnaker ripped along all those little perforated lines sending spinnaker confetti flying into the sky. You can just imagine the content little feline kneading her nest in the softest sail in the pile. He’s told the tale often enough, that I have a very clear picture in my mind of what that would look like, and unfortunately the image comes to mind more and more often when we unfurl our jib and staysail. Needless (or needleless) to say, I dislike the notion of needles and piercing these delicate, suncooked, but reliable old rags. We already reinforced the entire leech edge of the main, and we do have our stormsails as a backup, but we wouldn’t go very fast with those, course we don’t usually go much faster than jogging speed anyway. Still and all these sails have pushed and pulled our 20 tons an impressive distance these past two years, roughly 18,000 mostly carbon neutral miles – too bad we can’t sell carbon credits to replace our sails.

Is it true that 2012 snuck up on us a little over a week ago? Happy New Year!

xoxomo

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