South Pacific 25 April 2011, 2:45 a.m. Tahiti Time 30S50 140W29
We’ve had mostly 30 knots in the 30 latitudes. We should cross over to the 20 latitudes in less than a degree now, maybe the winds will drop into the 20s too, that would be nice…as long as it’s not the 20 on the nose they’re predicting. About 300 NMi to go, but with winds predicted to clock around to the north, we may end up tacking the last bit, so our mileage may differ.
Despite the mariners tradition of avoiding even saying the word “Rabbit” on a boat, we laughed in the face of that bad luck danger, and invited the Easter Bunny himself onboard. Frank claims it’s only bad luck on wooden boats anyway (steel is apparently not good for their teeth). Of the two chocolate rabbits that Mr. E.B. left, one still has his feet, the other his ears. Logan said he was starting with the feet so it couldn’t run away. Kennan said he was starting with the ears, so it wouldn’t hear him coming. We skipped the egg cooking, the painting and the hunt. Boiling water is a challenge right now, any painting would likely result in a full interior redecoration of SL (and pastels are so passee), any eggs stashed on deck would necessarily involve a deep sea hunt, and anything inside would not stay hidden for long and could become a dangerous projectile, or alternatively would stay hopelessly hidden till we’d have to undertake the olfactory hunt(days after Easter), not recommended on a boat in the tropics…Yes it’s warmer, the wooly long johns were all officially shed yesterday. We’re still in long pants, but t-shirts on top.
Everyone is holding up fine, but cabin fever is setting in. Strange what a difference, just being able to hang out in the cockpit makes. Some of us have not set foot out there since we entered the 30s, and those that have did not come back dry. The preferred watch position is right behind the dodger in the companion way, feet inside, for the minute it takes to do a 360 degree scan. The rest of the watch is at the nav station (as if staring at the arrows on the weather charts would remove some of the intensity feathers on their tails), and even at the nav station we’ve discovered a particular angle of wave that comes along every hour or so and surprises us by turning our portal into a vaporizer/atomizer, spritzing our face with saltspray. I’ve never been a fan of facials as it is. Earlier today a particularly violent wave made it’s way past my face, all the way through to the galley wall on the opposite side. That got a “wow” out of me. The portal stays securely shut, so it’s not buckets pouring in (although with that one, it wasn’t just mist either), it’s just the gasket can’t take the pressure of a big hit, it still keeps the rain and lighter waves out. I tried explaining to it, that it’s just water, nothing to blow a gasket over…so far the gasket has stayed intact, just needs to blow off a little steam now and then. We’re trying to make short work of these latitudes. And I’m thinking storm shutters may need to be added to the list, although the rest of the stationary ports are doing pretty good, and the ones we replaced in the aft cabin (where last year’s book inundation and massacre took place), are bone dry (knock on…something).
Rapa and the Australes are so close we can almost taste them. But that then gets me thinking, remembering, reminiscing…hmmm, last year about this time, we spent 3 days in Raivavae before we could even launch our dinghy to go ashore. Then at the mayors office when we enquired about where to put our trash, the receptionist, who’s window looked directly out onto the bay peered out into the rain and said, “there’s a boat out there?” So I’m not sure if the Australes qualify as the tropics, but we’ll get slowly climatized there; after the frigid southern ocean, a direct run to Tahiti would be a huge shock to the system. And a straight run to Tahiti, would be more than another week away, and we are all soo ready to stretch our legs. And there is some history to the Australes, but I’ll save Frank’s fishing stories for another day.
xoxomo