Show Menu

Make Like a Pearl Farmer and DIVE!

 Two of the biggest products the Tuamotus export for the world economy are copra (dried coconut meat for use in making coconut oil) and cultured pearls. Given all we’ve mentioned here about the ecology of the atolls, these should seem a natural fit. On Wednesday we joined Fernando for a tour of his pearl farm so we could get a closer look at the business behind the clusters of buoys and stilt work-houses that dot Manihi’s lagoon. Fernando speaks limited English, and we speak virtually no French, so we were relieved when he stopped to pick up the Swiss family on Riga II, a boat we’ve encountered a few times…

Read more

Back to Basics: Adapting to life on an atoll

 Life on an atoll is a mixture of scarcity and abundance. On land, not much can grow save thickets of coconut palms, scrubby bushes and weeds. But in the water, atolls, with their abundant coral reefs, stony inshore lagoons, and steep drop offs, can manage to support a very diverse variety of sea life. With careful stewardship, this balance can support a population, so long as its size is in balance with what the atoll can bear. Our guide Fernando, who also happens to be the local leader of the Mormon church, has had the opportunity to visit cities all over the U.S., including Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Chicago,…

Read more

Making Waves on Manihi: An inshore “adventure”

 Following a great day of snorkeling in the pass (the one navigable inlet to Manihi’s inshore lagoon) with a local guide, Fernando, we decided to head out on our own snorkeling adventure to the blue lagoons at the far end of the atoll Tuesday. Manihi is 15 miles long, so it would be a 30-mile round-trip journey in the 12′ dinghy, Coconut. With the relatively flat water inside the atoll, it seemed like a good idea. We would save the $25 per person on the guide and use that money for a night dive the next day. Well, that was the plan anyway. We invited a couple from another boat…

Read more

The South Pacific You’ve Imagined: Atolls

 So we’ve landed at the first of the Pacific atolls we’ll be visiting along the way. These are the low islands, dense with coconut palms, rooted in a spit of sand, settled on top of a rocky reef, surrounded by nothing but azure blue and turquoise seas as far as the eye can see. We’re on Manihi Atoll in the Tuamotus, formed by the gradual subsidence of a volcanic mountain, whose coastal reefs grew up and up, even after the mountain sunk down into the sea. What’s left is a ring shaped reef, surface-high and capable of supporting trees and homes. Too much more glacial melting and these places will…

Read more

Weather to depart? Routing and Weather Windows

 I know I keep saying we’re leaving, but the weather doesn’t seem to be cooperating, so we’ve postponed, twice. One of the things you have to get used to when living aboard is the fact that you can’t always just go where you want to right when you want to. Because you’re depending on the wind to get you where you want to go safely and, if at all possible, comfortably, having reliable connection to weather sources is key. Learning to read what you see comes next. Most boats use one or two of a number of tools to keep track of weather systems: a weatherfax via SSB, which shows…

Read more

Detour to Nuku Hiva, then on to Manihi, Tuamotus

 So in the interest of completing some important business over the internet, we diverted to Nuku Hiva instead of Hiva Oa. Nuku Hiva is the Marquesas’ most populated island, and houses not only the best grocery selection in the Marquesas (canned foie, canned camembert, dried noodles, Orangina), but the 3rd tallest waterfall in the world, called Vaipo. We did a wander around town on day 1 and found a beautiful restored Catholic church, made of local stone and carved wood. The sanctuary is open air, and the grounds are teeming with roosters, flowers and crotons. We also restocked on a couple of key grocery items, such as bread, and we…

Read more

Cheeseburgers in Paradise

 Well ok, they had burgers, I had local fare, but we’ll get to that later. We started the day with an awesome cool mountain stream shower at the dinghy dock, then washed some clothes at the spigot in a bucket. Then, once the necessities were complete, we went for a walk just down the road to a site with some ancient petroglyphs. We brought our swimsuits along too since we were informed there’s a swimming hole at the stream just by the site of the rock drawings. The hike goes up a dirt track on a mountainside for several kilometers, and as we walked we passed all kinds of fruit…

Read more

Land Ho!

 We arrived in Hiva Oa yesterday afternoon, just over 15 days after our departure from Galapagos. The passage was relatively uneventful, minus one chafed-through reefing line and a small tear along a seam in the mainsail that was quickly put to rights through Jason and Karen’s sewing teamwork. Karen and Frank also had an incident with a flying fish that landed in their bed one night, having flown through their hatch over the bed. That one was a shocker, but if that’s the biggest thing we have to say about the longest ocean crossing we’ll likely ever make, that means things went pretty well. We motored very little on our…

Read more

8 Days In, Halfway There

 We hit our halfway mark today, officially putting us about as far away from land as man can get on this planet–smack in the middle of its largest ocean. It doesn’t feel much farther out than it feels when we’re out for a day fishing on the Gulf Stream, out of sight of land. I think the biggest difference is the size of the swells. In the middle of the Pacific, the predominant swell has been 12-14 feet, but the wave periods have been so long that when we’re sitting atop the peak of one looking down into the trough before the next, it’s like sitting on the top of…

Read more