Underway to Fakarava

Andy wants to thank everyone for the birthday wishes we received via email. He turned 41 on the 27th and we were able to celebrate it with the other boats in the anchorage. Jake wrote him a little story for his birthday and we let him do whatever he wanted (i.e. I did all the cooking, cleaning, fetching and Jake let him pick out the movies). I arranged for Yuka on Merkava to watch Jake so that Andy, Mark and I could go diving (I know, a little self serving, but Andy enjoyed it too). We saw a lion fish, a large eel and Mark get spooked by a giant nurse shark. Andy and I both laughed so hard I thought we were going to lose a regulator. Later, I took Jake to our sweet shop (the large tupperware box under the bed) and let him pick out Andy's birthday surprise. After much debate between the cake and brownies, he picked out a boxed cherry cheesecake mix I got in Santa Rosalia last summer. He insisted that would be the best thing. I was skeptical as I actually do know how to make a real cheesecake and wasn't sure if this was going to fly. It turned out to be delicious and large enough for all 7 of us to get a piece. After the latest night we've had since Nuka Hiva, we slept late and just lounged around yesterday.

Today, we finally left Tahanea after almost two weeks. It was a really enjoyable atoll and I know we probably (at least Andy could have) spent another two weeks there exploring the different areas. But Jake and I were itching to go...

So here we are, on our way to Fakarava. It is about 48 miles from Tahanea. It should be a day trip but you have to time the passes right and unfortunately, we would have to wait around a few extra days to time the slack tide at Tahanea in the a.m. with the slack tide at Fakarava in the p.m. and we didn't do that. So we left at slack tide after lunch and are trying desperately to slow the boat down so as not to arrive too much before the slack tide at 7:12 a.m. tomorrow. You don't hear that every day from a sailboat, eh (do you like the 'eh?' I got that from my Canadian friends and just couldn't help myself)? We have just a sliver of the jib out but with 15 knots of wind right on our tail, we're still doing 3 knots and should arrive around 4-5 o'clock a.m. We'll just toodle around until 7:00 fishing or something like that.

Fakarava will probably be the first atoll with the sign of a real town since we left the Marquesas, yet it's still small enough to only be called a village. There are two actually, one in the south and one in the north. We'll be coming up from the south and entering through the south pass. There, supposedly, is a small village with a hotel and maybe a dive shop and not much else. To my knowledge, there's no store. The hotel is supposed to have a restaurant and I can't wait to eat someone else's food. As I said in my last post, we're getting kind of low on the good stuff (and some basic stuff - we have plenty of food mind you, just not necessarily what we want). I'm finding it difficult to find new ways to cook canned chicken, corn and pasta/rice. I've made up a few different new sauces from some of the packets I found in Mexico, but everyone is refusing the canned peas I had left and corn doesn't always sound good in pasta so some meals we have to count my canned tomatoes or jalapenos as our veggie. The chili Andy made yesterday turned out surprisingly good with the shredded beef we had to substitute for the ground meat. Glenda, from Sudden Stops Necessary came over this morning and I traded her a few packages of gnocci (I cleaned out the Mega on several occasions in Mexico) for the rest of her flour. They're almost out of propane so she can't bake until they fill up their tanks so she had no need for the flour. I gave Mark and Yuka on Merkava some milk and he gave us some of their canned cheese today, although I have to say that was purely because we were curious as to what canned cheese tastes like, not because we're that desperate for cheese - it's not too bad by the way, kind of like a white velveeta. I wouldn't eat too much of it plain but it tasted good shredded on top of our chili today. We've also come up with a really good white bean chicken chili (but we're out of white beans), Chicken Tinga that I learned from my cooking classes in Mexico is still a hit, and we found some chinese sausages in the bildge that we bought in San Diego that are surprisingly popular down here and now we actually know a few things to do with them. But they are extremely greasy so I can only eat them in moderation (and Jake hates them so for those meals I find myself cooking twice, not a real big incentive to eat the chinese sausage).

All of this talk about food leads me to the north pass...there is supposed to be a pretty good size village with a nice store and plenty of hotels and restaurants. This is one of the more touristy atolls and we should see signs of that on the north end. We'll also have internet there. It is a good 40 miles from the south side (one of the larger atolls) so it will be a few days before we make our way up there.

Until then, I'll be listening to my iPod and watching my movies, poking my head out every now and then making sure we're not running into anything or something isn't running into us (like a big atoll!). Andy's back is hurting and I know with our early arrival he'll let me sleep late for my next watch so he's awake for the pass, so I'm going to try to reciprocate first and stay up an extra hour...wish me luck.

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Worrying...it's getting to be a habit

Sometimes I think talking to other women sailors about sailing is like talking to
other first time moms about being a mom. We all like to pretend we have it all
figured out when what we really need is a good friend who is just as much in the
dark as we are. Contrary to how I've set this up, this has nothing to do with my sailing skills (they're getting much better), it's my coping skills I'm writing about tonight.

My father in law noted how happy we were in all of our pictures and he was very
proud of us. I love hearing his comments. He's so supportive of us when sometimes
we feel alone in all of this. But it made me think, I rarely post anything negative (and
it really is infrequent). So, if you're not up for a little whining, skip it. But here's a
little part of cruising I've never shared.

What does it mean to be out of your comfort zone? It used to mean I took on a new project at work that I didn't know anything about. Or, I went to a play date with Jake where we didn't know anyone. Or anything else that was "new."

For the current me, it's watching my son jump off the boom while the boat is rocking
or underway. It's yelling at my son to shuffle his feet in the sand to avoid stingrays
because I DO know what it feels like to get stung by one. Before we left Mexico, it was wondering what the passage to the south pacific was going to be like...flat calm? Gale storms? Will the boat tip over? What do I do with Jake during all of this?
Now it's, where are we going? Will we get a grip on the language? Will we have enough money? Here's a doozy, will any of us get bit by a shark? Lately I have this very real fear of getting knocked out by a falling coconut (it's actually statistically more likely than getting bitten by a shark). Will Jake get his hand pinched by a crab? Or worse yet, broken off by a coconut crab (they're huge).

Will we have enough food until we get to the next major port? Am I teaching my child enough? Am I pushing him too much, he's only 5? Will my parents get sick or die while I' m gone? Will Andy's parents get sick or die while we're gone? Will we know about it?

This one will make you laugh. Will Jake get pulled off the dock by a crocodile?
Seriously, I worried about that in Mexico. (It actually happened in Puerto Vallarta to another child).

So I ask again, what does it mean to be out of your comfort zone? Is that a good
thing? I used to think so. I used to pride myself on stepping out of my comfort zone.
I even used that fact about me in interviews, and it worked. These days I think it means I'm on the fast track to an ucler. Or a heart attack (given my family's health history, I'm not too young).

For the most part, cruising is everything people imagine it is, sandy beaches,
palapas, warm weather, nice people, no jobs. But that other space you have to fill
your day with for me, is worry. I've only cracked the surface here with my
worries. The concerns are far greater than any I had on land. Yeah, the odds of
getting killed by a shark are far less than getting hit by a car. I know that. But I
don't own a car anymore. However, I do swim in the Pacific Ocean. And so does my
kid. Daily. On any given day, I'm 2 days from a hospital. No, I didn't mean to say 2
hours. I meant 2 days.

I don't expect sympathy (I'm sure I'm not getting any), and I'm not trying to be dramatic... I guess I just want everyone to know that we're still normal people with normal worries. Well, maybe not normal worries, but worries all the same. It's not all whale sharks and
margaritas (though thank goodness some of it is).

I promise not to whine too often, but it's been a tough week and I needed to vent. We might be leaving here in the next few days (of course we've been saying that for a while) and heading to Fakarava where hopefully we'll get the internet again and maybe a store...we're running low on the basics now. The three cruising boats here are trading things like milk and flour with each other so some of us will be forced to leave soon!

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5/25/2011 - Still in Tahanea

Well, we're still in Tahanea. We're having a great time and have planned on moving several times but it just doesn't seem to happen. Andy has found a great dive site where he's taken more pictures than he has on our entire trip. I'm bugging him to get some sort of logo so I can get a professional website up and running and we can post them all there. Some of them are really incredible.

I've also gotten to dive and Jake has gotten in a little bottom time as well. He's learning how to clear his ears and Andy took him down to about 10 feet the other day. He's also free diving to about that depth as well... a regular little fish (or a chip off the old block).

We had a bonfire on shore the other night with two other boats here (Merkava and Sudden Stops Necessary). We had a great time. We're all relatively the same age but come from very different backgrounds so there's never a loss for conversation.

Today is a very special day on Savannah. Jake finished his first Hooked on Phonics workbook (Kindergarten). We threw him a little surprise party with balloons, cookies and a small gift. We're all very proud of him. And for those mom's out there who are mad at me right now because you don't believe me... no he doesn't like it, yes he whines every day, and yes, he still stumbles on very simple words. BUT, we're still very proud and throwing him a party is part of my ploy to get him more excited about reading.

We have no idea when we're leaving here...the winds have picked up, making it a little difficult to get to the SE side of the atoll as we planned. But for now, we'll just sit tight and continue to enjoy our beautiful view.

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Top Five ways to stay entertained in the Tuamotus

I know I talk a lot about how busy we stay on Savannah and there's really not time to get bored. However, on occasion we do find ourselves looking for new types of entertainment (especially in a place like this with no people or stores or any other type of outside stimulation). I thought it might be funny to share some of them with you guys. So here goes...

5: Feed the fish left over pancakes off the stern of the boat. Specifically trying to get the giant wrass to come up to the surface so we can see his huge lips.

4: (contributed by Jake) Have pretend pirate battles by drawing different kinds of pirate ships on different pieces of paper and place them all over our map table to show what country they represent. Then battle it out.

3: Find a tide pool with tiny fish and sit really still to see if they'll come up and nibble on our bodies.

2: Go hunting on shore for coconut crabs and/or land crabs (usually done after dark). Find areas of shredded coconuts and look for the giant holes to indicate crabs. We haven't actually seen any coconut crabs yet, so far this is a hunting game, not a catching game.

And the number one way to entertain ourselves when found with too much free time...
Have Jake and I chum the waters off the back of the boat for sharks with a freshly caught grouper (well, half a grouper - some of the sharks got him early) and then watch Andy stick his camera in the feeding frenzy to take pictures.

So the next time you get bored, think of us... :).

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Diving in the Tuamotus

Diving in the Tuamotus is supposedly some of the best diving in the world...specifically, drift diving. Until today, I wasn't sure I would be able to participate in it at all and it was getting depressing.

I've already explained how you need to time the entrances into the pass when arriving in a new atoll (due to tides, amount of swell, wind, etc.). Well, as you can imagine, you need to time your dives as well. Andy went diving with our Danish friends in Roroia and they got into a bit of a hair raising fiasco getting back in the pass with our small motor on our dinghy. Had they not been able to get back, they would have had to wait 6 hours until another slack tide to get back to Savannah. Based on that experience, I had kind of resigned myself that I wouldn't be able to do a dive in any pass in the Tuamotus. Not because I was scared or nervous (I've been diving for 15 years), but because I wasn't willing to risk leaving Jake with someone and us not getting back as planned or sitting with one of us in the dinghy getting beat up by the waves while the other one dove.

Well, today turned out to be a good day. We arrived in Tahanea yesterday after motoring for about 15 hours. There was zero wind. We thought there was wind when we left only to be met with flat calm after getting out of Makemo. It was a good day for making water and electricity. The lack of wind made for an extremely simple crossing into the pass and a beautiful anchorage. Since it was still so calm, today we decided to plan a dive in the pass.

If you haven't pictured an atoll yet, picture a bunch of tiny islands made up of coral, making a circle/oval/some sort of shape (formerly the top of a volcano). The pass is one or more spaces between the islands that a boat can get through to explore the lagoon inside. Outside of the passes are lots of coral that eventually drop off into the ocean (making a nice wall - think "Finding Nemo" and the "drop off"). Today, we went to dive the wall. The way we dive is not the PADI recommended way, but it's the only way we can do it seeing as we both like to dive and we have a young child, not yet old enough to stay in the dinghy by himself, or dive with us. Andy goes down first. He has a rope tied to him that's attached to the dinghy. While he dives, Jake and I play games or do some school (spelling games or math problems) to pass the time...today we ate Froot Loops while spelling out simple words like pig and dog and playing rock, paper, scissors. When Andy comes up, I jump in and do basically the same dive while he and Jake snorkel around. In this visability, they can actually see me while I dive. The dive today wasn't incredible, but it was VERY nice. I saw many fish I've never seen before. One even had a horn (Andy said he saw a big one of the same kind). There was a current, so I didn't have to kick or anything, just drift. It was kind of like standing on one of those moving sidewalks in an aquarium where the fish swim over top of you (only I was the one swimming on top today).

After I came up, we made our way to the beginning of the pass and the current was going into the lagoon. So we all put on our snorkeling gear and jumped in, holding onto the dinghy and we just snorkeled the pass while drifting. Again, nothing spectacular, but it was very nice to do our first drift "dive" as a family. Jake had a great time and was begging to do it again... and he saw two sharks!

We dove the small pass today. We're going to move to the larger pass tomorrow and see if we can't dive that one. We keep hearing about "tons of sharks" and "huge fish" in the passes of these atolls, but we have yet to see them. Andy did get some pictures today, but he had his wide angle lens and as it usually turns out, he needed his macro. It doesn't matter what kind of lens he takes, Murphy (is it Murphy?) always ensures he needs the opposite.

Overall, we're still doing great. I'm getting a bit tired (laundry, school, cooking, cleaning, mommy - another blog, another day) and rather homesick (missing my own mommy), but Andy is doing a great job of keeping me entertained and picking up my slack when I fall down.

While we can't read comments when we don't have internet, we do catch up when we pull into a larger port. Keep 'em coming... I love to hear from people. We're very isolated out here and any communication from friends is welcome. It's getting close to the weekend...I hope the weather is turning warm for you guys back home and you all have a great weekend bar-b-que-ing or doing whatever it is you do! Au revoir!

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Jake's photo shoot

We made it back to the village this morning and will head out to Tahanea tomorrow (weather permitting).  Tahanea is supposed to be a national park with no village or pearl farms, just good snorkeling and diving.  It's one of the places we've really been looking forward to going.

I'm not sure where he got his poses from but it looks like Jake might have been looking through GQ recently?  Here are some of the pictures Andy took of him the other day.  I thought the grandparents would enjoy these...



This one cracks me up...



Makemo - groceries, clear water and giant mantas

We've spent three days here in Makemo and it looks like it will be another two before we head out. We didn't intend on staying this long but we're having fun and well, today it rained. This is significant because we were going to leave today to head back to the village. Only we can't do that if it's cloudy because we can't see the coral heads popping up out of the water threatening to damage the boat. So we're watching movies and collecting water (much needed as I've been on a laundry spree lately) and hoping to head back tomorrow. Once back at the village, we'll get some last minute supplies and head to Tahanea, the next Tuamotu on our list.

In the meantime, we've had a lot of fun here in the SE corner of Makemo. We've gotten into a routine of work/school in the morning and exploring/snorkeling in the afternoon. We've cleaned the entire inside (well, almost entire) as mold is starting to set in with all this rain and Jake's room smells worse than any little boy room I've ever been in (or big boy for that matter). Andy and Jake cleaned the hulls yesterday while I continued the laundry fest. For fun, we've explored the tiny lagoons that separate the motus, played in the tide pools on the ocean side, and snorkeled some of the coral heads close to the boat. A few days ago, we were finishing up our snorkeling and Andy saw some black things poking out of the water. We got in the dinghy and went for a closer look. We all jumped back in the water as we thought we were going to swim with a few manta rays. We were wrong. We were going to swim with one manta. One GIANT manta. This thing was huge...probably had a wingspan of about 8 feet...and it was just gliding through the water scooping up it's food. Probably the funniest thing was Jake trying to chase it down. He looked like a little puppy paddling over to his master. Ever since he touched the whale shark in the Sea this summer, he thinks he has a personal responsibility to find out what everything feels like. I tried to stop him (imagine watching your young child swim vigorously at something three times his size) and teach him a little "caution," but Andy was beaming with pride as he tried to explain to me that giant mantas don't eat small children, especially bony ones like the one we have.

Yesterday we set out again for some snorkeling and picture taking. I wanted Andy to take some pictures of Jake as it's been years since we had any portrait type pictures taken. And Andy wanted a picture of the giant manta. We were only semi successful with Jake pictures, for reasons anyone who's tried to take serious pictures of a 5 year old can understand, but completely unsuccessful on the manta. He was no where to be found. But Jake got to play in some of the most beautiful water I've ever seen. Reflecting on the day, I realized once again how amazing it is that we get to do the things we do here. The fact that we're different from most really sunk in when I casually told my child to "watch out for sharks," as there were baby black tips swimming close by. And he responded with "Mommy, don't worry about me. They're not the chew on you type of sharks." Oh right, of course, I forgot.

We'll be back in the village tomorrow (hopefully) with wifi, so I'll post some of the pictures of Jake for the grandparents and those who haven't seen him in a while.

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