That’s no mooring ball…

6/3-4/17

So today we get the boat organized to travel.  Deflate/Stow the dinghy.  Stow the outboard.  Clean up anything in the boat likely to fly about in a seaway.  As we motor out of the anchorage I manage to scrape a piling.  Auspicious beginning!  We take Passe Tuheiava at about 330pm.  Pretty calm today.  2.5 kts current in our favor.  Bit different than the ride in.  Then we anchor, swim, and nap.  No hurry to depart really.  Our best guess is that if we leave at 8pm we should arrive at dawn in Moorea.  No point in getting there any sooner than daylight.

Nancy made baguette sandwiches.  Awesome.  We raise the anchor just before 8 and drift off West while I secure the dinghy at the bow.  Unfurl a jib and we are off!  Predictably the seas are quite calm.  We still have Tikihau island between us and the wind.   As we get out from behind this the seas get more active.  Prediction was for 9 to 14 kts and swell 4 ft 8 seconds apart.  The waves are crazy random.  The winds peaked at 25 kts 4 hours after we downloaded our departure forecast.  Not totally impressed with Predictwind.com forecasting yet.

We sail on through the night.  Winds mostly upper teens.  Seas probably were 4 feet but the wave pattern was the worst sort of random.  But we’re moving along at 4 to 6 kts.  Historically this would have added up to Nancy’s nightmare sailing.  But tonight she is less worried about it than I am.  She has made such an effort to be here with me and deserves better conditions than this.  But I guess better conditions will come another day.  And mal de mer appears to have been crushed by Stugeron.  Thank you Nancy for making the effort to share some of this with me!  I will love her forever.  Of course I was going to anyway!  🙂

We took the 9 to midnight watch together.  I took 12 to 3 and Nancy took 3 to 6.  My watch was busy.  Squalls came along and one minute there was too much sail up and not enough the next.  Plenty of furlings and unfurlings!  Nancy had better luck.  The wind stabilized for her.

Dawn shows us a beautiful sky with many cumulus clouds.  Which one will rain on us?  Let’s just say the deck is less salty after last night.  Baguette and jam and coffee.  Boat is moving so much you can’t put your coffee down!  So I put it down me hatch…

Midmorning the seas have calmed down and so has the wind.  Now in the 8-10 zone with some risk of not keeping them filled as the boat moves about.  But it’s a fine day.  We relax and read.  Seas are now no rowdier than a windy day at anchor.  🙂

This moderate pattern continues through the day and night.  We arrive at Cook’s Bay in Moorea at about 10am.  Just in time to hit the grocery before they close at 11am.  And they had… Lots of fruit and veggies.  We are certainly not in the Touamotus/Marquesas any more.  But they were out of baguettes… the late bird  gets no baguette!

As we approach the mooring field I bark out orders!  “Grab that mooring ball Nancy!”  Well bugger all its not a mooring ball, it’s a coconut.  Good news is the anchor still works!  And a good thing I was kidding about barking at Nancy…. bad plan…