Post 30
December 8, 2010
16:48
The jolting swell has become a way of life. We're now in day three of our passage to the white sands of the Tuamotu atolls and sailing has come to be our way of life. Each of our bodies are acclimating to their new, obtuse lives. Every hour there are less moans and groans about the pitching and rolling motion of the boat and more bruises for everyone. Also it may help that we've began to motorsail. Yesterday evening, tired of the slow beat to windward, Walk On reduced sail and kicked on her motor.
With the staysail and mainsail sheets taut, we're cruising towards our actually-decided-upon destination of Rangiroa. This atoll is bound to be the most touristy, but we're willing to make the sacrifice of ambiance as in return for its ease of approach. It's one of the most western, and thus the easiest to reach from Moorea, of the Tuamotus. We're motorsailing at more than 5 knots between Tikehau and Rangiroa to get around to Rangiroa's passes (entrances) on the north side. We'll be threading a 6 mile wide needle between the two atolls tonight, but RADAR and GPS will make sure to keep us safe.
December 9, 2010
18:10
The threading went over without a hitch. We held the atolls in our RADAR and motorsailed up between them. Rangiroa's north light house made an appearance just inside the channel and affirmed all of our technologies. We held close to Rangiroa's shore for the rest of the night until dawn illuminated the palm trees of its windward side.
A purposefully slow beat to windward followed in order to smartly arrive at slackwater. A few hours later we were looking between the motus and into the vast lagoon. It was a beam reach through the pass and it looked a little wavy, but nothing too crazy. We headed in. As the pass got narrower and the rocks closer and the small boats around more obstructive, a slight tension drifted about the boat. This sensation was promptly lifted away when the pass' dolphins joined us. An entire pod soon surrounded us and it felt as if they were guiding us through to safety. They leaped and flipped like animals trained for a show and then proceeded to follow us all the way into the anchorage before, assured that we had found asylum, they parted from our bow. Walk On anchored far off the shore in the nearly-endless waters of the lagoon.
December 10, 2010
10:38
I've had a few days to come to understand this atoll. In many ways it's similar to Kauehi, but with a paved road. It's the largest atoll in the Tuamotus and the second largest in the world, but despite its overwhelming breadth, the actual land area is minimal. This is the nature of coral atolls (the land area of the entire Tuamotu archipelago is less than that of just the island of Tahiti). The 2,800 people of Rangiroa live on a spit of land a quarter mile across and about 7 and a half miles long. There's a single paved road that runs along the windward (seaward in this case) side of the island between the two passes. Looking towards the lagoon, the flat ocean extends far beyond the horizon to the other side of the atoll.
December 11, 2010
09:00
Time is running short on our Rangiroa stay. We must continue north to get out of the cyclone belt and perhaps arrive in Hawaii sometime before 2012. There's been a forecast of a lull in the trades that we plan to take advantage of tomorrow. Under normal conditions, in order to get to the Marquesas from here, we'd have to beat and tack, beat and tack our way through the unceasing trades, but now there's a disturbance in the forces behind the winds. This is due to cut their strength in half allowing a smooth motorsail for easting to the Marquesas islands.
We have been enjoying our stay here in Rangi. Yesterday the team went for a snorkel on the broken coral Motu Nohi Nohi just inside Tiputa Pass.. On it lies a single, tradewind-whipped palm tree and off it a veritable aquarium featuring exotic reef fishes and hundreds of coral types. One must be very careful when snorkeling at this spot, though, because it lies just within one of only two passes on this huge atoll. This means the current can rip through there easily taking unwary white people out to sea. But, being the thinkers that we are, we timed our foray for slackwater when the current should be at it's weakest.
Mike and Larissa towed me over to the motu (on the yak) and then we threaded our way through the coral heads to beach our tenders. Minutes after we landed, a big ol' cumulonimbus blotted out the sun and brought a downpour. Larissa and I took proper refuge beneath the solitary palm until it passed. The sky cleared and we were in the water. This snorkel was far different from my last at Kauehi. In Kauehi we were taken to a coral motu where the locals hunted the fish. It was obvious that the fish here in Rangiroa weren't being speared. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they were being fed by the local dive shop. I no longer had the 5-meter, fish-deflecting force field around me. These scaled critters were completely unperturbed by my presence. I could dive straight down and join them in their daily swimmings. Besides the apathetic fish, the snorkel saw a few white-tips and one black-tip reef shark along with some fine coral architecture. My favorite thing that snorkel was the discovery of an expansive, homogenous field of green coral. It stretched deep into the murk like a gigantic field of grass.
December 13, 2010
07:00
We've been getting in some absolutely beautiful sailing over the past 20 hours. Although the weather break hasn't made itself shown, the winds are about 15 knots and we are able to achieve a more or less NE course out from them. All aboard have gotten used to the idea of beating, a much different experience than the typical downwind passages known to most cruisers. In order to get anywhere to windward (without motoring), the boat needs to have a fair amount of canvas up: more than is necessarily comfortable. She has to heel hard before her soft wings will generate enough lift to go upwind and since going to weather involves all the lovely parts of the Earth that we touch, she slams nearly nose-first through the waves. I must admit Walk On is a much more comfortable ride to windward than Leeway. There's something to be said for a sturdily-built, heavy, steel boat.
In addition to her more appeasing gait, her sail plan is a breeze to work with. She's cutter-rigged, giving me two foresails to play with. Both are roller furling, a system that's basically universal on all cruising boats besides Leeway. Instead of hoisting and dousing different sized jibs according to the wind, one simply reduces or increases sail area by winching in a line while easing another to roll the sail up on it's stay. This makes "dousing" and "setting" the foresails a one-man job accomplished from the comfort of the cockpit.
There are of course some disadvantages to roller furling systems. It's a bit harder to get a perfect sail shape and to get it to maintain it's belly when it's partially furled, but we're no racing boat. A more pertinent point for cruisers is that one who uses a roller furling is putting all his trust in that one sail. If it rips (as did every single one of Leeway's) or malfunctions (a rare case due to modern design and materials), the foresail is much harder to remove and repair and can even endanger the boat in heavy weather situations. In my opinion, the few disadvantages are heavily outweighed by the utter convenience of the thing. I now enjoy trimming and playing with the foresails throughout my watch. I am roller-furling sails new biggest fan.
The weather has been curious as of late. The high atmosphere reports no moisture through cirrus formation, but the middle is frequently filled with alto-stratus and alto-cumulus. The lower air is occupied by the usual puffy cumulus with the occasional squally cumulus congestus. The fact that the alto-stratus and alto-cumulus only patchwork the sky indicates to me that no frontal system (big wind, big waves, a concern) is moving in at the moment. If this were to be the case, there would most likely be streaking cirrus high overhead which would be overtaken by progressively lower and thicker cloud types until the frontal shelf cloud appeared on the horizon. This is not indicated. Instead, I can only suspect that a change in weather is soon to come, of what type I cannot postulate.
Now of course we have satellite-transmitted weather reports that can be requested any time of the day, but good old cloud speculation will never be snatched from me. The forecast indicates something along the lines of what I guessed at. The tradewind easterlies in this area are due to be disrupted by a low pressure system from the south. We plan to take full advantage of these light winds by motorsailing due east to attain the precious miles of easting we require to arrive in the Marquesas. "Easting" is the buzzword of this passage.
11:00
The motor is on at a good RPM and we are now smashing our way east. We've pretty much cleared the "dangerous archipelago" and now have only bluewater, wind, and waves between us and the Marquesas. It will be a fairly-extensive, not-incredibly-comfortable passage, but we'll make it through. All this easting attained now should net us a relaxed passage up to Hawaii.
December 8, 2010
16:48
The jolting swell has become a way of life. We're now in day three of our passage to the white sands of the Tuamotu atolls and sailing has come to be our way of life. Each of our bodies are acclimating to their new, obtuse lives. Every hour there are less moans and groans about the pitching and rolling motion of the boat and more bruises for everyone. Also it may help that we've began to motorsail. Yesterday evening, tired of the slow beat to windward, Walk On reduced sail and kicked on her motor.
With the staysail and mainsail sheets taut, we're cruising towards our actually-decided-upon destination of Rangiroa. This atoll is bound to be the most touristy, but we're willing to make the sacrifice of ambiance as in return for its ease of approach. It's one of the most western, and thus the easiest to reach from Moorea, of the Tuamotus. We're motorsailing at more than 5 knots between Tikehau and Rangiroa to get around to Rangiroa's passes (entrances) on the north side. We'll be threading a 6 mile wide needle between the two atolls tonight, but RADAR and GPS will make sure to keep us safe.
December 9, 2010
18:10
The threading went over without a hitch. We held the atolls in our RADAR and motorsailed up between them. Rangiroa's north light house made an appearance just inside the channel and affirmed all of our technologies. We held close to Rangiroa's shore for the rest of the night until dawn illuminated the palm trees of its windward side.
A purposefully slow beat to windward followed in order to smartly arrive at slackwater. A few hours later we were looking between the motus and into the vast lagoon. It was a beam reach through the pass and it looked a little wavy, but nothing too crazy. We headed in. As the pass got narrower and the rocks closer and the small boats around more obstructive, a slight tension drifted about the boat. This sensation was promptly lifted away when the pass' dolphins joined us. An entire pod soon surrounded us and it felt as if they were guiding us through to safety. They leaped and flipped like animals trained for a show and then proceeded to follow us all the way into the anchorage before, assured that we had found asylum, they parted from our bow. Walk On anchored far off the shore in the nearly-endless waters of the lagoon.
December 10, 2010
10:38
I've had a few days to come to understand this atoll. In many ways it's similar to Kauehi, but with a paved road. It's the largest atoll in the Tuamotus and the second largest in the world, but despite its overwhelming breadth, the actual land area is minimal. This is the nature of coral atolls (the land area of the entire Tuamotu archipelago is less than that of just the island of Tahiti). The 2,800 people of Rangiroa live on a spit of land a quarter mile across and about 7 and a half miles long. There's a single paved road that runs along the windward (seaward in this case) side of the island between the two passes. Looking towards the lagoon, the flat ocean extends far beyond the horizon to the other side of the atoll.
December 11, 2010
09:00
Time is running short on our Rangiroa stay. We must continue north to get out of the cyclone belt and perhaps arrive in Hawaii sometime before 2012. There's been a forecast of a lull in the trades that we plan to take advantage of tomorrow. Under normal conditions, in order to get to the Marquesas from here, we'd have to beat and tack, beat and tack our way through the unceasing trades, but now there's a disturbance in the forces behind the winds. This is due to cut their strength in half allowing a smooth motorsail for easting to the Marquesas islands.
We have been enjoying our stay here in Rangi. Yesterday the team went for a snorkel on the broken coral Motu Nohi Nohi just inside Tiputa Pass.. On it lies a single, tradewind-whipped palm tree and off it a veritable aquarium featuring exotic reef fishes and hundreds of coral types. One must be very careful when snorkeling at this spot, though, because it lies just within one of only two passes on this huge atoll. This means the current can rip through there easily taking unwary white people out to sea. But, being the thinkers that we are, we timed our foray for slackwater when the current should be at it's weakest.
Mike and Larissa towed me over to the motu (on the yak) and then we threaded our way through the coral heads to beach our tenders. Minutes after we landed, a big ol' cumulonimbus blotted out the sun and brought a downpour. Larissa and I took proper refuge beneath the solitary palm until it passed. The sky cleared and we were in the water. This snorkel was far different from my last at Kauehi. In Kauehi we were taken to a coral motu where the locals hunted the fish. It was obvious that the fish here in Rangiroa weren't being speared. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they were being fed by the local dive shop. I no longer had the 5-meter, fish-deflecting force field around me. These scaled critters were completely unperturbed by my presence. I could dive straight down and join them in their daily swimmings. Besides the apathetic fish, the snorkel saw a few white-tips and one black-tip reef shark along with some fine coral architecture. My favorite thing that snorkel was the discovery of an expansive, homogenous field of green coral. It stretched deep into the murk like a gigantic field of grass.
December 13, 2010
07:00
We've been getting in some absolutely beautiful sailing over the past 20 hours. Although the weather break hasn't made itself shown, the winds are about 15 knots and we are able to achieve a more or less NE course out from them. All aboard have gotten used to the idea of beating, a much different experience than the typical downwind passages known to most cruisers. In order to get anywhere to windward (without motoring), the boat needs to have a fair amount of canvas up: more than is necessarily comfortable. She has to heel hard before her soft wings will generate enough lift to go upwind and since going to weather involves all the lovely parts of the Earth that we touch, she slams nearly nose-first through the waves. I must admit Walk On is a much more comfortable ride to windward than Leeway. There's something to be said for a sturdily-built, heavy, steel boat.
In addition to her more appeasing gait, her sail plan is a breeze to work with. She's cutter-rigged, giving me two foresails to play with. Both are roller furling, a system that's basically universal on all cruising boats besides Leeway. Instead of hoisting and dousing different sized jibs according to the wind, one simply reduces or increases sail area by winching in a line while easing another to roll the sail up on it's stay. This makes "dousing" and "setting" the foresails a one-man job accomplished from the comfort of the cockpit.
There are of course some disadvantages to roller furling systems. It's a bit harder to get a perfect sail shape and to get it to maintain it's belly when it's partially furled, but we're no racing boat. A more pertinent point for cruisers is that one who uses a roller furling is putting all his trust in that one sail. If it rips (as did every single one of Leeway's) or malfunctions (a rare case due to modern design and materials), the foresail is much harder to remove and repair and can even endanger the boat in heavy weather situations. In my opinion, the few disadvantages are heavily outweighed by the utter convenience of the thing. I now enjoy trimming and playing with the foresails throughout my watch. I am roller-furling sails new biggest fan.
The weather has been curious as of late. The high atmosphere reports no moisture through cirrus formation, but the middle is frequently filled with alto-stratus and alto-cumulus. The lower air is occupied by the usual puffy cumulus with the occasional squally cumulus congestus. The fact that the alto-stratus and alto-cumulus only patchwork the sky indicates to me that no frontal system (big wind, big waves, a concern) is moving in at the moment. If this were to be the case, there would most likely be streaking cirrus high overhead which would be overtaken by progressively lower and thicker cloud types until the frontal shelf cloud appeared on the horizon. This is not indicated. Instead, I can only suspect that a change in weather is soon to come, of what type I cannot postulate.
Now of course we have satellite-transmitted weather reports that can be requested any time of the day, but good old cloud speculation will never be snatched from me. The forecast indicates something along the lines of what I guessed at. The tradewind easterlies in this area are due to be disrupted by a low pressure system from the south. We plan to take full advantage of these light winds by motorsailing due east to attain the precious miles of easting we require to arrive in the Marquesas. "Easting" is the buzzword of this passage.
11:00
The motor is on at a good RPM and we are now smashing our way east. We've pretty much cleared the "dangerous archipelago" and now have only bluewater, wind, and waves between us and the Marquesas. It will be a fairly-extensive, not-incredibly-comfortable passage, but we'll make it through. All this easting attained now should net us a relaxed passage up to Hawaii.
Comments
Post a Comment