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.

Last Thursday we finally left Taiohae Bay and sailed 20 miles up around to the northeast corner of Nuku Hiva and dropped an anchor at Anaho Bay. A strong easterly was blowing, and we pounded heavily until we could turn the corner and sail on a beam reach up the east coast of the island. Then the wind died, 2 dolphins came out to say hello and everything was just great.

We were told that Anaho Bay was the best anchorage in the Marquesas, and we had to agree. We were surrounded on four sides with volcanic cliffs with sandy beaches and cocoanut groves at the water’s edge. The only other boat in the harbor was a small sloop with an older suntanned Canadian couple. We never really spoke with them, but we enjoyed watching them swim their dinghy to the beach and then paddle it back to their boat, canoe style.

With an air temperature near 100 and a sea temperature near 90, we didn’t do much on Friday except swim. The kids got to play with their snorkel gear for the first time in a year. There was coral at Anaho, but it was too deep to be interesting. 40 people live in the village there, but when we went to explore the town we didn’t see too much other than kids playing on the beach.

On Saturday we set out for adventure and the neighboring town of Hatiheu Bay. Our ATV tour guide Dofred – whose real name was Fredo, but his wife didn’t want to call him the same thing as her last 2 boyfriends so she reversed his name – suggested that if our dinghy engine was big enough we could bypass the 90 minute cliff hike to Hatiheu by simply motoring around the point separating the two bays. This involved being out in the open ocean. It was a bit of a white knuckled trip, but I am glad to report that at this point our two little ocean kids think it is completely normal to be out in 8 foot swells and chop in a small dinghy whose engine failed twice (loose fuel tank connector) completely out of sight from any sigh of other human beings, including boats and houses.

Anyway, Hatiheu was beautiful. We hiked up to the archeological tiki above town and enjoyed a picnic lunch in the jungle. We then visited the church, where the locals we laying out flowers and preparing bonfires in advance of their Easter Vigil service Saturday night. We considered going back to Sophie and taking her over to Hatiheu so we could attend, but it was too hot and logistically challenging in too short a time for us to do so.

So we did another white knuckled open ocean trip back to Anaho, where we were greeted by my best and favorite surprise so far on our trip. It turns out that Sophie increased  the amount of juice in her batteries while we were gone for the day! Her solar panels and windmills, expensive gear that added a lot of weight to her back side, so to speak, were delivering on their promise of tradewind anchorage energy conservation. The solars were generating 22 amps, and the windmills were at 15-20 depending on the gust. Steve and Kent — all of this stuff actually works. And the small red LED display that shows the amount of electricity being produced by the windmills has now replaced the ice maker as my favorite part of the boat.

The kids discovered 2 Easter baskets in the main salon on Sunday morning. They had spent a week expressing serious concern about whether or not the Easter Bunny’s coverage area included 40 person villages on the outer edges of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands. The bunny delivers, and 90 minutes after basket discovery Leo and Hazel were lying on couches complaining of stomach aches.

At that point we decided to pull anchor and enjoy an Easter Sunday sail down to Taipivai, the town where Herman Melville lived after jumping ship from a whaler at the age of 23. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we followed the sail with pork loin a la Richy — seared pork loin covered with apples and vegetables slow roasted in the oven in a Le Creuset pot with the lid on. I am not sure if it was the candy or the pork or the tropical night air or the iced cocktails, but somehow after our Sophie Easter dinner we wound up having a dance party involving increasingly outlandish costumes worn by Leo and Hazel. It was such a blast, and we have to thank our friends Chuck and Cath for their gift of music.

After the dance party, the girls crashed and Leo and I stayed up until midnight watching the film “Midway”. Leo claims I look like Cliff Robertson.

Monday saw us set out on a hike we were woefully unprepared for, a 3 hour post-dance party, post-“Midway” trek through a very hot village then up a jungle cliff to a small tiki in a field. It was a national holiday, so none of the stores that could provide the promised ice cream and cold Orangina were open. But we survived, made it back to Sophie and then motored the 6 miles to back Taiohae Bay where we anchored next to a 150 foot super sloop.

We’ll check out of Nuku Hiva today, then start sailing southeast to explore the rest of the Marquesas, including Ua-Pou, Hiva-Oa, Tahuata and Nuku-Hiva. We are having a great time, and it was a lovely and peaceful way to spend a long Easter weekend in paradise.

Greetings from Nuku Hiva.

We arrived Saturday afternoon at 1:00 PM Sophie time (UTC – 8), which means we made the passage from San Diego in 18 days and 21 hours. I am told by some of our new friends here that we had a fast passage. Personally, I am thankful that we had a great crew, no one got hurt, and nothing really broke on Sophie.

Here is the view that greeted us Saturday morning after 18 days at sea.

It’s hot here at anchor in the harbor, and now that we are no longer sailing I think that the ice maker has replaced the bimini and the Kindle as my favorite thing on the boat. We’ve been going through about 5 loads of ice a day since we arrived.

Once our anchor was down, we opened a bottle of champagne and toasted our successful voyage. We then opened another bottle, and we then switched to margaritas. I broke out the barbecue and cooked a couple of pounds of sausages.

After that we all jumped into the warm water and swam around for an hour.  (We’ve since cut back on our harbor swimming because we’ve been told the gray sharks are 12-14 feet long here).

Then we all dried off and dinghied into town and went for a walk. It was really, really hot. I mean HOT. We found a store and bought a baguette and a case of Hinano (50 cl bottles) and then headed back to Sophie for another swim. Dinner was a birthday pizza party, after which I immediately fell asleep on the couch. Rich and Dan still had some gas in their tanks, so to speak, and dinghied into town after dark to attend a Polynesian masquerade ball. Rich was impressed by the drums. Overall he felt that he had a wonderful birthday.

Sunday was the first full day of our cruising life. Everyone slept really well Saturday night. We woke up and went for a swim. Jenna, Leo  and I each paddle boarded. Rich and I went into town and bought two more baguettes. Dan and Leo went fishing. We met a German couple with a 5 year old girl in town, and Katerina and Hazel were soon sitting at our aft cockpit table making puppets.

Dan caught a 20 pound fish in the harbor, but we later learned that it really wasn’t safe to eat.  So we had a tuna barbecue instead and invited the German couple along with Dave and Kathy from the Atlantic 48 “Lightspeed” over for dinner.

Monday was hot. We played around with making shades for the aft cockpit. We met Gaston, a 12 year old French boy from the steel schooner “Valhalla” that had just arrived from Chile, and he and Leo because immediate friends. Gaston joined us for a flank steak dinner followed by a sleepover.

Tuesday centered around our big ATV adventure. We rented 3 vehicles and followed the French cruiser Ofred to a beautiful valley and some quiet bays on the eastern side of the Island. We then visited an archeological site.

Afterwards Dan spent about 6 hours getting a tattoo, followed by a pizza dinner with everyone at a restaurant in town.

Finally, today we had to drop the boys off at the pier in town so they could catch their flights home. It’s a sad, quiet day for Sophie. Rich and Dan are gone.

We couldn’t have asked for better crew for the trip. They were cooks, crew, family, friends, fishermen and cleaners, all rolled into a single package. It won’t be the same without them, and both Hazel and Leo have been a little sad and grumpy today. Rich and Dan have become friends, though, and Dan is already planning a visit to Rodental for one of Rich’s summer festivals. We will miss both of them very, very much.

We’ll be a cruising family of four for the next 6 weeks as we explore the Marquesas and the Tuamatos.  We then pick up Max and Becca in Papeete in mid-May to kick off our summer social season. We’ve made it, we’re healthy, school is going well, nothing on the boat is broken, and we have an icemaker. We’re in pretty good shape.

Night Light

When we left San Diego, the moon was in it’s last quarter and was rising right before sunrise, which meant that for the first 2 weeks of the trip we basically have had no moonlight at night. For our night watches we relied on headlamps while working the boat, and had the opportunity to enjoy incredibly bright and vivid starlight.

We now have a night light. For the last couple of nights we’ve enjoyed a half moon, and it has completely changed our night vision perspective. When you come up on watch now it seems like their is a big spotlight shining brightly down on the boat (Jenna’s words). It is amazing how bright everything has become due to the new moon. We don’t need headlamps, and we can’t see as many stars. We are really looking forward to experiencing next week’s full moon.

The time of our sunrise and sunset has shifted pretty dramatically as well. When we left San Diego, the west coast was on UTC-8 time. We (I) decided to keep that time for Sophie for the entire trip, but I somehow forgot to tell everyone else. We ran into a little problem a week ago when the clock on everyone’s phone “sprang forward” with the time change, but my wrist watch and Sophie’s clocks did not. Rich, Dan and Jenna all showed up an hour early for their watches and were a little annoyed. We sorted that out, remained on UTC-8 time, but now that we are 1,000 miles west of San Diego the times for our sunrises and sunsets have shifted over an hour. It’s still pitch dark at 6:00 AM Sophie time, but in San Diego at 6:00 we had already turned off the navigation lights. All of this will change tomorrow when we switch to whatever time the Marquesas are on.

And we will get there tomorrow …

Our current position is 08.09 s 137.41 w. This positions us 2717 miles from San Diego and only 151 miles to Nuku Hiva. We made 179 miles in our last 24 and have averaged 184.3 mile days over our last 6 days in our “let’s celebrate Richy’s birthday at anchor with the ice machine” push. That’s an average speed of 7.68 knots over a stretch of 1100 nautical miles. Granted, half of that involved an engine running, but have I told you lately that Sophie has 2 dishwashers and a washing machine? Speed AND comfort. This boat is SMOKING!

Not much else going on. We came within a mile of a rusty Chinese fishing boat yesterday. It was going in reverse.

Since we are so close to land we have decided it’s OK to take the electricity hit and are playing tunes on Sophie’s outdoor stereo system. The kids are dancing. Last night was Mexico night, and I made tacos with seasoned organic ground beef, organic refried beans and a black bean/corn/cilantro salad. It was our first five can meal on the trip, and I was told it was delicious. Also, we’ve received word that our SPOT isn’t working. It seems to be functioning on our end, but it might be having a weak satellite connection in this neck of the woods.

Finally, I think this will be my last blog update while underway on this leg of our little family voyage. Hopefully we can post a photo or two tomorrow from land.

Decisions, Decisions

Over the last day we’ve gone back and forth on whether to make Hiva Oa or Nuku Hiva our landfall destination. Hiva Oa’s advantage is that it’s allegedly prettier, gives the boys a chance to see two islands, and right now is 20 miles closer to us than Nuku Hiva. The downside to Hiva Oa is that we would have to do a 100 mile night sail on Monday to get to Nuku Hiva well in advance of the boys’ departure flight on Wednesday.

Well, it’s dawning on the grownups on Sophie right now that none of us have had a complete night’s sleep in almost 3 weeks. We are doing a double watch system at nights, and it is beginning to catch up to us. I think we might be a little tired. We also realized that if we hit Nuku Hiva first, we can always sail 35 miles over to the island of Ua Huka if we want to provide some island variety for the boys before they fly home. After Rich and Dan leave, Jenna and I are planning to take Sophie down to the southernmost island of Fatu Hiva and then do a leisurely east-to-west (meaning with the tradewinds) tour of the entire island group, so our landfall decision will not affect Sophie’s longer-term tourism plans here.

So we have decided to go to Nuku Hiva first.

The other big decision involves tattoos. The Marquesas have one of the richest tattoo cultures in the world, and it is quite common for cruisers to get some memorial ink to commemorate their arrival here after the long passage. Some go a little over the top … I’ve seen photos on cruiser blogs of men and women who planned to get no tattoos here and left the Marquesas with ink from their bicep to their neck.

I definitely plan to get a Marquesas tattoo. I already have some small tattoos on my legs that were used to calibrate my radiation therapy when I was undergoing treatment for cancer, and I always told myself that I would get at least one more tattoo to mark a more happy occasion. This is definitely it. I think Jenna is in and is leaning towards a tattoo of a sea turtle about a quarter of an inch across. She hasn’t told me where, yet. Dan is thinking about getting one. Rich has clearly said “no”.

Let’s see if anyone revisits their decision after we’ve had the ice machine plugged in for a couple of days. (Sigi, if you haven’t yet seen the film “The Hangover, Part 2”, then please do so.) (FYI everyone else, Sigi is Richy’s wife).

Because we most definitely plan to plug in the ice machine tomorrow night. Sophie is rocking right now. We’ve been sailing on a beam now broad reach in 14 knot tradewinds under jib and full main for over a day now and have covered 183 miles in the last 24 hours. Nuku Hiva is only 325 miles away, and it is looking increasingly likely that we will drop the anchor in Nuku Hiva’s Baie do Taiohae Saturday morning. We’ll then break out the barbecue and have a surf’n’turf birthday celebration for Rich. Then likely go to sleep.

For those of you keeping score at home, San Diego is now 2563 miles away and Seattle is only 3313 miles to our northeast.

It’s been a low key 24 hours on the boat. I lasted about 10 minutes on “the Iliad” and switched to watching the films “Captain America” and “Moneyball” on my Surface during watches last night. These were my first video watches on the trip, and they definitely helped the time go by a little more quickly than reading 150 year old translations of Homeric verse.

Last night Jenna made a warm chinois and rice salad with diced organic chicken breast, artichoke hearts, sun dried tomatoes and olives. It seems we’ve been on a Mediterranean food kick lately. It was delicious.