Here is our final set of photos from our crossing in March. It covers our daily sailing life from the colds of San Diego to our arrival celebrations in Nuku Hiva.

And in case you haven’t noticed this yet, Jenna has taken almost every one of these photos. She throws a tremendous amount of energy, focus and care into creating these.

Enjoy!

We are taking advantage of the Wifi here in Fakarava to get caught up on some of the photos Jenna has taken during our trip. This collection covers the day when we crossed the equator on the way from San Diego to Nuku Hiva.

For starters, here is our money shot. This is the screen on our Raymarine chart plotter when it said we were exactly at the equator. Please note the 00.00.00s on the screen.

It’s a once in a lifetime moment. To celebrate, we all decided to jump into the ocean.

First the grownups.

Then the kids. Since we were dealing with a 2 knot current, we rigged a life ring on a line behind the boat so we wouldn’t lose them. (Jenna and I would also like to point out that these are excellent “before” photos of us, we are now in much better shape. 🙂 )

Then we celebrated with some sparkling grape juice. (Jenna’s wine would remain untouched until we had our anchor down in Nuku Hiva). Leo provided a wonderful toast.

And that was the equator.

We arrived in Fakarava 2 days ago. Fakarava is the second largest of the Tuamotos and will be our last stop before we get to Papeete to join Max and Becca, our first visitors since the boys left us in Nuku Hiva.

Right now we are anchored in front of the little town of Rotoava. There are four other boats here, but three of them appear to be permanent residents of the harbor. Fakarava seems to have a bit of a tourism industry going, the first we’ve really seen since our arrival in French Polynesia. In addition to the 2 stores in town, there are 3 dive shops and a snack bar. Four hotels are farther down the lagoon, and we actually see people on vacation and not from other boats wandering around town.

There is no diesel though, so we will have to mostly sail until we can fill her up in Papeete.

What Rotoava does have is Wifi. Incredibly crisp, fast, cheap Wifi. That’s the main reason why we are hanging out here for a couple of days before we go spend a week anchored off the pink sand beaches on the southern end of the island.

We had gone over two weeks without access to the Internet. But after spending a bunch of time yesterday on Facebook, email, amazon.com and boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox, I have to say that I haven’t really missed the Internet that much. I’ll be just fine next week without it while lounging on the pink sands.

On our way to Fakarava, we wound up staying in Apataki for a week, including 5 nights moored in front of Hassan’s pearl farm/boat yard. (That’s a photo of an Apataki rainbow above). A low pressure system passed through the area while we were there, bringing torrential rains and squally gusts ranging up to 25-30 knots. It seems that all of the anchorages on Apataki are marked by huge coral heads that climb over 20 feet up from the sea floor, and we heard stories of boats that sank there after their anchor chains wrapped around the coral and then broke during storms. We were very happy to be moored in a safe, protected and beautiful spot during the bad weather.

We had a great week hanging out in Apataki. The kids had good home schooling sessions. There was excellent snorkeling every day by the shore. The locals gave us coconuts, papayas and bananas, then sold us eggs that were laid that morning. We never even bothered going into the village.

But we wanted to get to Fakarava, and when we had what we thought was a good weather window we left Apataki via it’s southern pass and then sailed 20 miles upwind to the Island of Toau where we spent a night. The following day we motorsailed around the top of Toau and then sailed another 25 miles upwind to get here. During this last run, we had 2 reefs in the main and a reef in the jib due to the 20-25 knot easterly winds and 6-10 foot waves. For us, this type of open ocean sailing has now become quite normal. Sophie likes to be reefed, and Jenna and I just hung out up top and read books (Portrait of a Lady for her, the Nabokov memoir for me).

We learned in Fakarava that the small “sharks” hanging out under our boat were actually large remora fish and were completely harmless (unless they tried to attach their 6 inch head suckers to your back or thigh), so we immediately jumped back into the water around Sophie for over an hour. It’s absolutely the best way to beat the 100 degree midday heat.

We did have a bit of a tragedy here the other night. I accidentally dropped my beloved tactical flashlight — the Chinese-made, lithium ion powered device that Karl Riebeling gave me — into the water off of Sophie’s back step. I was tossing a small piece of raw tuna into the water to see what kind of fish action I could get (remoras, of course) when the flashlight slipped out of my hand. I watched it blink as is descended the 50 feet down to the ocean floor below us, then watched it blink down there for the next 2 hours before I finally went to bed. It’s probably still down there, blinking forever.

Jenna and I are both a week in to 7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups. We are both sore. I’ve lost 20 pounds since San Diego. Hazel is learning how to be a blonde. Leo’s hair as it gets longer has developed curls matching those of Shirley Temple in her prime. Jenna looks fabulous.

From a food perspective, we are doing quite well. Last night we had organic chicken breasts with roasted red peppers and onion in a Trader Joe’s Thai Red Curry Sauce. We’ve been working on some of the tuna we’ve caught and have had that a few times in the last week. Jenna made a carbonara with some of the farm fresh eggs, and we also had a pesto.

We provisioned almost 2 months ago, and I think we have enough food to make it to Papeete. In the freezer there is still a pork loin, 3 pounds of organic hamburger, 4 nights of tuna and a couple of chicken breasts. There is one remaining hamsteak in the fridge. (We started out with 6). We have enough pasta, rice, crackers, canned olives, fruit and veggies along with various boxes of “Pomi” brand tomato sauces to last us for the next 2 years.

We also have decided that Jenna’s wine collection that is now on the boat will go bad within the next year due to the tropical heat. So we have to drink it. I have to say it’s kind of ridiculous to open the bilge and sort through various bottles of Leonetti and Opus One to determine which one goes into the fridge to cool down before dinner.

Beer here is expensive, so we are not drinking too much of that. I did buy a couple of cartons of local fruit juice, and they contributed to some nice Mai-Tai’s the other night.

Jenna says the ice maker has transformed the tropical boating experience for her. We run it for a couple of hours every other day. It draws only 12 amps from the batteries. We then have these beautiful ice cubes whenever we want them. It makes a material difference in our 90-degrees-in-the shade lives.

We’ve only been gone for 2 months, but it feels like 2 years. Tahiti, the Cooks, Tonga and Fiji all lie before us. It keeps getting better.

Well, we’ve been in Apataki for 4 nights now, and it looks like we will be here for at least a few more. Our general plan is to sail from here to Fakarava and its famous pink beaches before doing an overnight sail to Tahiti in advance of the arrival of Max and Becca on May 12. The only problem is that Fakarava lies 50 miles to the southeast from us, which is exactly where a 16 knot breeze will be blowing for the next few days. We don’t have enough fuel or desire to pound through the waves to get there. Tahiti is to the southwest, so we always have the option of heading there whenever we want.

So we are forced to sit and wait. Bummer.

We are moored (yes, moored) off of the Motu of Totoro in the lagoon here where the Assam family has their pearl farm and little boat yard. There are 3 other boats moored here, along with an extended family living on shore. There is no town, store, wifi, or boat traffic. It is extremely quiet. We are surrounded by coral heads, each with hundreds if not thousands of fish. The snorkeling is fantastic.

We were playing on the beach yesterday when Assam’s son wandered up, asked if we wanted some coconuts, then proceeded to hack the tops of 3 green ones so we could have a cool drink. He then asked if we wanted some papayas and gave us 5 big ones.

Hazel and I took a break from schoolwork yesterday to hop into the water and immediately saw a 4 foot shark swimming under Sophie. It wouldn’t go away and in fact kept swimming closer. We got out. I need to learn how to swim with sharks.

We discovered last night that the sliding glass window to the aft cockpit makes an excellent puppet theater. It even has the curtain. We used socks as puppets and now have a new art project for the kids lined up.

There is a school of pink perch-like fish that gathers under Sophie at sunset. They are 8-12 inches long and hit our blue steel minnow lure within 5 seconds of it going into the water. We have to ask the family if they are OK to eat. Hazel enjoyed reeling in a couple.

Dinner last night was grilled bluejack tuna. The night before was grilled lamb chops with homemade mac and cheese. The night before was chicken Masala. We’re not starving. I’ve started the Nabakov memoir, and Steve Speirs’s “7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups” is staring up at me from the salon table. If we hang out here for a few more days I may even have to open it.

OK, this is getting ridiculous.

Today we left Manihi and motorsailed south in basically no wind for 70 miles to Apataki, an atoll in the middle of the Tuamatos. We are now anchored in the corner of a 100 square mile lagoon. We see another sailboat anchored 4 miles away from us. Otherwise there is no one here. No one. No fishing boats, no fires on shore, no nothing. There is spectacular sky, palm trees on the shore, and 100 square miles of mirrored sea surface, just there.

It’s a little past sunset. Jenna is editing photos. I am cooking frozen Costco organic carrots, Trader Joe’s Brown Rice Medley and Double Takedown Yellowfin Tuna (thanks again Rich and Dan!). Leo is doing comparative fractions. Hazel is assembling toys into various dessert combinations. We just finished listening to Alicia Keys, and the Lumineers are now on. It’s Friday, which means Family Movie Night. It will be a musical from our Warner Brothers Musical Collection. I am leaning towards “Viva Las Vegas”, Jenna is suggesting “The Music Man” or “Singing in the Rain”. L and H want “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

We are very happy. Are only regret is that we are not sharing this in person with our friends. Friends: please get your collective acts together and come join us for as long as you’d like. You won’t regret it.

In case you were wondering, Manihi was wonderful. When we woke up after our night arrival, the Oyster at our anchorage was gone. For the next 4 days we were the only sailboat there. I had the pleasure of meeting Xavier, the retired French Navy admiral who runs the Sailmail Manihi station from his private island in the atoll. He was incredibly kind in helping us navigate safely to an anchorage at night and then showing me around the compound he has been building with his wife for the last few years. We met Fernando, the local baker/fisherman/black pearl farmer/Herbalife rep who brought a barrel of 200 liters of diesel out to Sophie, then manually siphoned it into our tanks, then took me, L and H grouper fishing outside of the pass at sunset because he’s a fisherman and “if you don’t work you don’t make money.” We caught 3 fish in 15 minutes. L pulled in 2, and H pulled in 1. There was one other boat out there, and they caught a 40 pound yellowfin. Their technique involves a baited hook at 120 feet, and when the they get a hit they release the rest of the line tied to a 20 pound piece of coral along with a big buoy. They landed the fish and were happy.

To enter a lagoon in an atoll in the Tuamotos, you have to go through a pass. Passes here can be pretty hairy, because currents can run as high as 8 knots and there can be razor sharp (meaning hull piercing) coral on either side. And there are no easily accessible tide books. So needless to say I was pretty focused as we entered the northern Apataki pass when the biggest dolphin I have ever seen jumped clear into the air 5 feet off Sophie’s port bow. If dolphins were animals, then this one was a horse. It was that big. And it had a friend. So we are motorsailing into the Apataki equivalent of Active Pass, Jenna is running for her camera to get horse-dolphin dressage shots, and Hazel suddenly appears on the trampoline. We made it through.

In terms of reading, Jenna and I just finished Jeanette Winterson’s “Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?” It’s a powerful, moving memoir from the English writer most famous for the novel “Oranges are Not the Only Fruit”. My daughter Sara gave it to us. In the book, Jeanette describes her local library reading quest through the canon of English literature via an A-Z route. When she got to “N” and started to read Nabokov, she actually went to the librarian and complained that he was so bad he didn’t deserve to be included in the category of English literature.

What’s way funny for me is that the next book on my reading list is Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir “Speak, Memory”, courtesy of my son Max. He said it’s one of the best memoirs ever written. It’s been literally sitting on top of the anti-Nabokov book on my bedside for the last 3 months. I will read it.

I love all of my children.

I do want to point out that my beloved firstborn daughter Sara decided 5 years ago that she wanted to pursue a career where she could make a difference in the world by becoming a health care professional, with a special focus on helping women. This decision required a journey involving post-BA science classes in Worcester, Mass. followed by 3 years at Yale’s nursing school. She finishes within the next month. Words can’t begin to describe how incredibly proud I am of her and what she has accomplished. The world is a better place because of her.

Back on Sophie, “The Music Man” won the draw for Family Movie Night tonight. H and L started out being laser-focused watching it. I am thinking of all of my Iowa friends, starting with JB. You know, I’ve still never been to that state.

By the time the movie is almost over, it’s just me and Hazel. She assumes that the more she watches, the more chocolate she’ll get. The next time she asks, I am going to offer some fish.

Well, after almost 3 weeks in the Marquesas we decided to slip out yesterday morning and sail the 500 miles to the Tuomotos. For the first time it’s just me, Jenna and the kids on an offshore passage. So far, so good, except for the multiple squalls that hit us last night. We even had to pull down the spinnaker at night in 35 knot gusts. We succeeded and are better people for it!

Since we left you last week on Jenna’s birthday, we had arrived and anchored in the main harbor of Hiva Oa. The highlight of the weekend was definitely an outrigger race involving 5 6-man boats from across the Marquesas. They paddled a 20 mile offshore course through 5 foot waves in 3 hours! The teams were amazing and nuts all at the same time. Afterwards there was a concert in town that featured Marquesan native rap singers, and it was a lot of fun.

For the next four days we anchored in Hanamoenoa Bay on Tahuata Island, and we all agreed it was the best anchorage we had ever been to in our entire lives. It featured a gorgeous white sandy beach with no no-nos — beach insects that suck the lifeblood out of you — and crystal clear water. We could see the sandy bottom 30 feet below Sophie. Best of all about the harbor was the fact that there were three other boats, and they all had families with children onboard. One was a Lagoon 500 from Germany with 2 teens, one was a steel sloop from Austria that had just completed a circumnavigation of the Americas last year (including the Northwest Passage), and the third was a cat from Australia that was on the final leg of its trip around the world. We spent hours with the other families floating in the surf, playing on the beach, picking grapefruits, and enjoying long sundowners on each others’ boats. During one spectacular sunset, we could all even see the island of Ua-Pou, almost 60 miles away.

It was an amazing and memorable experience, but eventually we had to leave and head on to Fatu Hiva, the southernmost island in the chain. It involved a 40 mile upwind slog followed by anchorage in “The Bay of Virgins”, a spectacular harbor with poor holding and 25 knot gusts that come down from a mountain. After a sleepless night there, we decided it was time to take off and head for the Tuomotus. We should arrive the day after tomorrow and are looking forward to snorkeling around coral islands.

The Marquesas are wonderful. If we didn’t have a 90 day limit on our stay in French Polynesia we would have stayed longer. We will definitely return, most likely after the Panama Canal (returning Sophie to Seattle via Hawaii and Alaska). But that won’t be for another 10 years or so. 🙂

Here’s the first wave of Jenna’s passage photos. This set focuses on some of the food we ate during our trip from San Diego to Nuku Hiva. I hope you enjoy looking at all of this as much as we enjoyed eating it! And please remember, almost all of this was prepared and consumed while we were roughing it over a thousand miles away from the nearest land.

For starters, Rich lives in Germany and he loves his frying pan. This is a little something or other he prepared with sausage, mushroom, onion, peppers and a sauce.

Grapefruit, baby spinach, and roasted nut salad.

Our first fish, some nice albacore tuna.

This is how we prepared some of the albacore.

Hazel, suffering.

Leo, doing dishes!!!

The boys.

Hazel, getting in on the dishwashing action as well.

The children, selecting their pizza toppings.

A grownup pizza on pizza night.

Pizza dough.

An apple pie Jenna prepared with the kids.

Since we limited the amount of movies the kids could watch, Leo found an alternative form of entertainment.

Kid pizza.

This is what 17 pounds of fresh raw yellowfin tuna looks like. (For those of you who have been on Sophie before, this is one of our big plastic salad bowls, probably 15 inches across).

Richy at his stove.

We tried to eat at least one meal a day, usually dinner, together as a group at the aft cockpit table.

This is Richy’s “Gratin”, about 10 pounds of potatoes, ham, cheeses, onions and other goodness. It lasted about 8 hours.

As many of you know, yesterday was Jenna’s birthday.

She started her day at midnight in Hakahau Bay on the Island of Ua-Pou. We were holed up there waiting for the wind to die down a bit before sailing 65 miles east (against the trade winds) to Hiva Oa. The weather forecast indicated there would be no wind that night, so we decided to do a night crossing, but it was a technically difficult anchorage to depart from. It was pitch black, there were no lights, and we were anchored within 100 feet of another big cat and a breakwater. She maneuvered the boat perfectly through the harbor in the darkness while I got the anchors up. We decided after leaving an Island harbor at night that we would NEVER try to enter one at night. But we both felt pretty good about our performance getting the boat out of there at night.

I love her madly.

We motored with no sails up in calm seas with a bit of a swell that night. There were lightning storms all around us, and at one point we motored 10 miles more to the east to get around one. Neither of us felt like getting hit by lightning, especially on Jenna’s birthday.

After the sun was up and we were in the Canal de Bordelais approaching Atuona, we came upon a large pod of dolphins. But this one appeared a little different from the pods we had seen over the years. There were dolphins jumping straight up, as if looking around, and then heading straight back down again, landing on their tails. As we got closer, we saw two mother dolphins with little babies swimming by their sides! Jenna believes she got photos of them! She said it was a wonderful birthday experience.

After that we anchored in Baie Tahauku, the small port for Atuona and the main entry point into the Marquesas for boats making the passage across the Pacific. There are 15 other boats here anchored closely together in 2 fathoms of water and a mud floor. We have our stern anchor down again and love the security it provides in tight spots like this.

There was no wind in the harbor, the humidity was quite high, and it felt HOT. Easily the hottest we had felt on the entire trip. Despite the fact that we had pulled an all-nighter, we told the kids they were going to have a movie day and we broke out a bottle of birthday champagne. Even though the bottle was chilled, Jenna requested birthday ice for her birthday champagne within 3 minutes.

Our immediate neighbor in the anchorage was a cat from Australia with a family onboard.They had come from Panama and had lost their steering during the passage. The captain/dad thinks they ran over a fishing net, because there was damage all along one of their hulls. After the incident, they stopped for 3 days in the open ocean to try to fix it. Apparently their rudder stock had bent and couldn’t move. They finally decided to rig two drogues (cloth buckets dragging behind them) as a makeshift steering mechanism and sailed 1,400 miles at 4 knots to make it to the Marqueses. They normally sail at 12-14 knots. He thinks it won’t be completely fixed until they haul the boat in Papeete.

After the champagne we put on swimsuits and paddle boarded around the harbor for a bit to meet our neighbors. They were mostly English, German, and Australian boats, including three Oysters. Oyster is a British company that makes luxury cruising monohulls, and they have organized a round-the-world-rally with 30 boats participating. We think we will be seeing most of them throughout the summer as we make our trip west across the islands.

We met an Australian family on a 30 foot sloop doing a great Pacific Circle route, and they came over to Sophie with their 2 year old boy. He watched Star Wars with Leo and Hazel while the parents enjoyed ice water in our shaded cockpit. (Ice maker anyone?)

After naps, we hiked over a hill and into town. It was very quiet, with 4 stores. They did have more art and native craft stalls than the harbor in Nuku Hiva, but overall it was a very quiet and hot Friday afternoon. We then celebrated Jenna’s birthday at the Black Pearl Lodge, a rustic French resort hotel at the top of the hill overlooking the entire southern end of the Island. It was a lovely and warm meal.

It’s now Saturday morning. (I can only write these posts when I get a reliable Internet connection). There is a big outrigger race today with teams from across the Marquesas assembled on the shore. We are listening to the pre-race ceremonial dancing and singing from across the harbor. Later, we will go our into the bay in the dinghy and watch the races. I think it will be a blast.

Finally, the best way for us to celebrate Jenna’s birthday is to share one of her passions with all of you. As you know, she loves to take photos and videos of our passage. The first four sets of photos since San Diego are now ready for sharing on this blog. Assuming we can find a good Internet connection, we’ll try to post them today and tomorrow.