SIMMER'S BLUE WATER VOYAGE

5-1-99  Offshore in the South Pacific - Lat 08° 28' S/Lon 130° 38' W.   Last night a gorgeous full moon rose up out of the ocean looking like a huge, round butterscotch candy.  It seemed only a couple miles way on the horizon behind us and we could reach out and touch it.  Ethereal Celtic music was playing down below at the time, and the moon ascended in tune with a tin whistle.  It was spectacular.   We've seen the moon rise up out of the ocean before, coming from the Jersey Shore, but never felt like it came up just for our personal enjoyment, like out here.  We fully appreciate the beauty of Mother Nature being totally surrounded by her, with no other distractions.  We're getting anxious to spot land now, both of us want to be the one to say "Land Ho!" after so many days at sea, but it'll be a few more days.  For the last 1,000 miles or so, we've had the 15-20 knot winds directly behind us and have been sailing  "wing & wing".  This describes the position of the sails, meaning the forward sail, the jib, is held out to one side of the boat by a pole and the mainsail is held out on the opposite side of the boat with the boom, appearing like two large, white wings.  This allows maximum surface area for the wind to fill the sails and push us along from behind.  It is fast, but at times a bit rolly in the 8-10 ft. ocean swells.  SIMMER has been performing what we call rhythmic rolling, with every 6th or 7th set of waves, where the boat rolls from side to side.  It makes everyday tasks, such as cooking, eating, showering and sleeping an Olympic event.   Luckily neither of us have a problem with motion sickness, but we're sure once we get to land, we'll walk like drunken sailors after all this motion.  French Polynesia is comprised of 4 distinct South Pacific island groups:   Marquesas, Australs, Tuamotus and Society Islands and extends over 1,500 square miles with 118 islands and atolls.   Atolls are volcanic islands in origin and evolve when the volcano's cone collapses or erodes below the ocean surface.  The coral reef that encircles the submerged island grows fast enough to stay at or above the water level, creating a ring of motus and lagoon within.  There are passes in the coral ring, between motus, for boats to enter and anchor in the lagoon.  Can't wait to see our first Pacific atoll.  Some of the atolls in the southern Tuamotus are famous for controversial  nuclear testing by France.  We sure won't visit those specific atolls, but we do want to see some of the Tuamotus, also famous for South Pacific black pearls. The Marquesas are the furthest east in this area and where we'll make our first landfall into French Polynesia.

5-5-99  Offshore in the South Pacific, Lat 9° 05'S, Lon 138° 35'W.  Happy Anniversary to us, we're celebrating 15 years of wedded bliss today.  (Pat says it seems like more than 15 yrs after these 23 days at sea together).  We're celebrating with dinner reservations onboard SIMMER and the menu is:  fresh grilled dorado, rice, garlic bread, something chocolate for dessert and maybe even a glass of Merlot.   We're breaking our rule (again) of not drinking while on a passage, but such a special occasion deserves at least a toast - like we did crossing the Equator.  We're less than 100 miles from our landfall - Nuku Hiva Island in the Marquesas.  We should be there early tomorrow morning.  We thought we might make it in for our anniversary, but the winds lightened up the last few days and we've slowed down considerably.  The last 500 miles seem to be taking forever to get there!  We both love the water, but we're looking forward to seeing some land again.  The Marquesas consists of 6 large islands and 6 small islands, ranging in height from 1,400 to 4,000 ft and are covered with a layer of deep and fertile soil.  The principal inhabited islands of the Marquesas support a population of just over 6,800.  The fish are supposed to be plentiful and the waters in the area contain a variety of enormous sharks - can't wait to get there.......

5-6-99  We arrived Nuku Hiva early this morning.  We had to slow down last night by reducing sail so we would make landfall in the daylight.  We're anchored in Taiohoe Bay, Lat 08° 56'S/Lon 140° 30'W, and it feels GOOD.  We can't describe the relief and sense of accomplishment after a 24 day passage.  These volcanic islands are phenomenal - rising up thousands of feet (3,888 ft. at Nuku Hiva) above the ocean surface.  They were easy to spot from over 50 miles away yesterday, as we passed a few smaller islands on our way to Nuku Hiva.  This bay in Nuku Hiva is a valley surrounded by lush and majestic mountains.  The picture of the boat with the mountains in the background doesn't do them justice,  it's difficult to capture their magnificence on film.   We cleared customs and immigrations for all the islands in French Polynesia here, luckily many of the locals speak English, since we don't speak much French beyond "bonjour", "merci" and "s'il vous plaît".  Hopefully we'll learn more words during our 3-4 month stay in French Polynesia.  French Polynesia has a strict policy concerning visiting yachts.  They want to ensure that yachties don't come here with no money and become an expense to the locals.  In order to do this, each crew member has to post a bond when clearing in, equal to the cost of a one-way airline ticket to their home country, Los Angeles, CA in our case.  The bond amounts to alot of money - $1,660 for the two of us.  The money is returned, minus the exchange rate, when we clear out of French Polynesia which will probably be Bora Bora in 3-4 months .... the price of paradise.  Tonight we're having a wonderful French Polynesian baguette and a bottle of Merlot for dinner to celebrate our arrival.  We then plan to crash for a 12-14 hour continuous sleep after 24 days of sleeping in short 3-4 hour shifts!  The baguettes are 3 feet long and costs 50 Colonial Franc Pacific (CFP) - which translates to 46 cents US.  We'll be consuming alot of baguettes while we're here for sure!  We plan to stay in the Marquesas for 3 weeks or so, visiting several different anchorages around the islands.   From here we'll sail to the Tuamotus Atolls (500 miles away) and spend 4-5 weeks .   Next stop from the Tuamotus is the Society Islands (200 miles from Tuamotus) -Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora for 4 weeks or so.  We are allowed a 4 month stay (visa) in French Polynesia and we hope to see alot of the islands,  people and cultures during that time.  What a beautiful area of the world.

5-15-99  We moved to another Marquesas Island - Oa Pou (Lat 9°21'S/Lon 140°02'W), about 25 miles south of Nuku Hiva.  We caught a 30 lb. yellow fin tuna on our way here and have enough tuna in our freezer to feed the entire village here!  The Oa Pou landscape is cool,  the center of the mountainous island has super-tall 4,000 ft. pointed pinnacles, like fingers, reaching up into the hovering clouds.  The name Oa Pou translates to "the pillars".  The Marquesans are very athletic: racing outrigger canoes, swimming, playing volleyball and soccer.  The adults are also very tattooed, with beautiful Polynesian designs.   Many of the cruisers have been lured into getting a tattoo, or two!  (No, Mom .... not us!)  It's a holiday weekend here and everyone seems to be taking part in some activity.  The men paddling the outrigger canoes are mesmerizing to watch, their strokes are so graceful and perfectly in sync.  (Not to mention the great upper bodies they have from all that paddling.)  Today we watched kids play volleyball and barefoot soccer, every kid on the island must've been there, it was packed.  Four boys, ages 8-10,  had a bag of oranges and wanted to trade them for a tour of our boat (all done in sign language, since they spoke no English and us no French).  Pat obliged and loaded them into our wooden dinghy.  We had to hose them off in the cockpit, they were filthy with the black sand and mud..... boys will be boys.  They had a tour and we shared some delicious sweet, green oranges.  They called us  "madam" and "monsieur", and we tried to answer their questions about the boat using our French dictionary and phrase book.  They mostly laughed at our attempts.  One day we were hiking outside the village, on a lower part of a mountain, and a local fruit farmer called us into his garden (they export fruit to Tahiti).  He was so kind, he gave us fruit from his trees - oranges, lemons, grapefruits and bananas.  The lemon and grapefruit trees are the largest we've ever seen, loaded like Christmas trees with golden fruit.  We stuffed our backpack with fruits and Pat carried the stalk of 75 bananas on his shoulders!  Needless to say, we shared the bananas with other boaters in the harbor.  The farmer wanted no money, but we returned later in the day and brought candy and hair accessories for his 10 yr. old grand daughter.  The people here are very friendly and generous and the grapefruit ("le pamplemousse" in French) are outrageous.  The sweetest, most delicious grapefruit we have ever eaten and almost the size of a bowling ball.

5-24-99  We arrived at our first atoll in the Tuamotus - Kauehi, pronounced KAH-WAY-HEE.  Position:  Lat 15°49' S/Lon 145°07'W.  The Tuamotu archipelago consists of 78 islands and spreads across 15° south latitude, extending 1,000 miles.  These islands have been called the "Low" or Dangerous" archipelago because of their low-lying character and the surrounding dangerous reefs.  The atolls are so low, they are only visible by eye,  6-8 miles away and all of them have portions that are bare coral reefs, awash.  Kauehi was a safe one to pick for our first attempt at entering an atoll lagoon.  It is beautiful,  very heavily wooded with coconut palms and the lagoon is protected all the way around with coral reefs and motus.  "Motu" is a Polynesian word for small island, or key.  It's really neat to be inside the lagoon and think that it used to be a volcano.  We didn't even get our anchor down, when locals boated out to welcome us and trade some South Pacific black pearls.  We traded 4 cold beers for a dozen black pearls - they are farmed here within the atoll lagoon and most of them are shipped off to Tahiti for souvenirs and jewelry.  We hope to get some more here, we've started looking through our lockers for other things to trade!   (They ask most frequently for whiskey, but we don't have any onboard).   We also gave some of our many quickly-ripening bananas to a local who came out to visit us by boat.  Coconuts seem to be about the only thing that grows on this sparse and rugged coral terrain, lacking much soil.