Gone are the carefree spinnaker runs. We’re reaching again, this time for landfall. And we’ve been dodging squalls for over 24 hours. Fortunately, these squalls aren’t the textbook terrors, but rather reasonable as squalls appear. Huge billowing cumulonimbus clouds, creating gusty winds as warm air rises up, condenses and becomes heavy with water vapor. Turning gray, and sometimes an ominous charcoal, these towering clouds hold onto their liquid until the weight of it causes wind to gust downwards and rain to fall in sheets.
ST (Squall Tracker, i.e., Devon) has been in action on the radar, and all of us have been part of the game of reef main, furl jib, unfurl jib, shake out reef in main, repeat. That’s why there wasn’t a blog yesterday. We were too busy working, including tacking to avoid the nastiest ones. It might sound rather dreadful, and it is true we are tired of squalls and the work they require, but we still managed to have a bit of a squall party yesterday. Devon got out a box of assorted cookies from Costco and we turned into cookie monsters between tacks. At first, we politely asked to try different kinds, pretending we were just sampling, but as the dodging of squalls continued, we kept on eating until there was not a cookie left. It was a big box.

Tonight we’ll be carefully working our way down the coast of Hiva Oa so that we are poised to enter the anchorage off of Atuona at morning light. The end of the crossing is in sight! We’ll enjoy a chocolate truffle bar tomorrow, thanks to Devon, to help us celebrate in style. Kim
Latitude 09 degrees 19 minutes South
Longitude 138 degrees 25 minutes West

Spinnaker Bliss
The wind died down the night of the 17th (day 14), and we spent the pre-dawn hours under-powered. When light first appeared we rallied the crew for an “all hands on deck” spinnaker raise. We went to our stations, and like a well-oiled machine, got the spin on deck, sheets led, pole up and spin launched without any drama. (For non-sailors reading this blog the spinnaker is the big, poofy colorful sail you often see in photos of sailboats. It can easily dance around in the wind in a most chaotic manner, causing the boat to round up out of control, heel over to fantastic degrees, and generally cause chaos aboard. With proper procedures in place, and by knowing the limits of your own boat, chaos can be avoided and the wind harnessed for sailing when other sails just won’t take you where you need to go.) Anthea went from a boat lolling in the light breeze to a racing machine, matching wind speed with boat speed. That is all sweet and comfortable when the wind speed is 5, 6, or even 7 knots. But when the wind started gusting to 12 knots, we could feel the strain on our ¾ ounce spinnaker. As we surfed down the waves into the troughs, momentarily dipping out of the wind, the spin collapsed and then snapped full of wind as we surged up the next wave. Such a thin sail, no longer crisp and new, can only snap so many times before the dreaded rip of a seam. After a quick conference we decided to change out our light weight symmetrical spinnaker for the old 1.5 ounce asymmetrical (cut narrower and smaller for heavier wind). We were bearing 150 degrees off the wind, giving us the angle we needed to fly this heavier sail, cut for a broad reach. Again, the full crew launched into action: sock down to snuff the ¾ ounce giant, halyard down, sheets switched, halyard up and sock up to lock the heavy spin in place. Anthea took off like the ocean racer she was designed to be. Soon the true wind speed was between 15 and 18 knots, but the helm was smooth and light, with no strain on the rudder, no force of rounding up from unwieldy sail to counter act, only the dance of bringing the bow down and back up in the process of surfing down the two meter waves. Anthea was sailing in the 8 knot range and surfing to 9 knots, over and over. The power and speed of the sail was in perfect harmony with the design of the hull. No stress, no drama, only the glory of speed. Anson was in ecstasy driving the boat for hours on end, at the helm of a racing beast.
We fired up the waterproof speaker and played our theme song for the crossing: CSNY’s “Southern Cross (thank you Rodney for the album)! As Anson drove the boat we sang and danced on the foredeck, reveling in the moment and feeling release from the days of hard sailing through the NE trades. We had entered trade wind sailing at its best: organized waves, steady wind, blue skies with puffy clouds. By late afternoon, with squall clouds on the horizon, we snuffed the spinnaker and raised main and jib, savoring the most blissful spinnaker run of our lives.
Currently the same spin is up – once again launched at dawn in light air conditions. Today, day 19, was the day we thought we might be motoring, as the trades lightened. And we did for one hour before dawn. But this spin launched us into the 5 knot territory, this time on a beam reach. Thus far the wind has held and strengthened, and we’re slipping along at 6 knots. May it last! If not, there is always Mr. Perkins to help us power through the calm before the trades re-build for our final days of sailing. That’s right – we’re only 317 nautical miles from the anchorage at Atuona on Hiva Oa. We’re feeling the crossing come to an end, as we flow through the rhythms of life in our sea pod. Kim
Latitude 05 degrees 06 minutes South; Longitude 136 degrees 52 minutes West

After crossing the ITCZ (day 15) we sailed in easterly winds of 8-10 knots, slipping along the crests of organized seas. After a week of hard living below decks, life on board became pleasant, albeit sultry, once again. The sky was rapidly changing with small black clouds gracing us with cooling showers, and giving us a several knot boost in the wind as they passed gently to our west. On the 16th day our 8-10 knot wind continued, as did the benign showers and rapidly moving clouds. Windy steered us gently along at 5.5 to 6 knots, guiding us into our first night on this crossing with mostly clear skies. We folded the bimini back and tied it the backstay, turning the cockpit into a planetarium. Fast moving clouds slid along, revealing stars I’ve never seen before. Leaning back and reveling in the patterns of the night sky, I journeyed into unknown worlds. The Southern Cross, hovering in the milky way, rose across the southern sky, trailing two bright stars like a kite’s string. The Southern Hemisphere beckoned – so close, at only two degrees and a few minutes north of the equator.
Devon’s joyous cry of, “the phosphorence!” brought me back to the world of our ship; I followed his glance and saw phosphorence sparkling and shining in the dark night ocean waters. Anthea’s bow wave carried these watery stars gently along the hull, and as the combined forces of our rudder and wind vane churned the ocean, a ribbon of shining, sparkling beauty trailed in our wake. The dark of the night sky and the ocean water merged, creating the illusion of sailing in the cosmos, with only stars above and stars below. Gentle seas and a light sailing breeze carried Anthea effortlessly through this star-studded world.
Our cameras could never capture this magical scene, so I took a soul picture, willing the memory to permeate my being, summoning the physical beauty alongside the awe-filled mystery of worlds never traveled, as yet unknown. Kim
Latitude 2 degrees 53 minutes south
Longitude 136 degrees 14 minutes

PS Coming up: heavenly spin run; crossing the equator, rituals and delights

March 20, 2017 Sea Lions at Los Isoletes
We had been sailing for 4 hours, coasting along with a gentle breeze. My family had left Isla San Francisco at 12:30 after a botched kiteboarding attempt. A mile from Los Isoletes the wind died. We dropped sails and motored the rest of the way. Los Isoletes are several big, guano-covered rocks, one quarter mile off of the island, Isla Partida. The rock we visited has a vertical face about 100 feet high, a few hundred feet long, and 40 feet wide. Where it meets the water, the miniature island flattens out for twenty feet, drops down another ten, and extends again for 40 feet before steeply dropping off. On the scattered rocks at the base of the cliff there were countless sea lions, each and every one barking, moaning or fighting. We even saw some climb over each other to go to better spots! Our family hurriedly anchored a hundred feet out in 80 feet of water. Since we were so close and we were leaving soon, we couldn’t get the dinghy in the water, which meant we had to swim. As I got in the water I couldn’t help but think about big sharks and looking like a seal. The one benefit it gave me was a much faster swim.
The bottom was extremely rocky with big boulders disturbing the surface of the water. Each and every boulder was covered in a mass of barnacles. Several times I would swim up next to a barnacle infested rock and wave my hand back and forth, making their delicate, feather like feeders rush out. I saw several Moorish idle fish, whole schools of a fish with the body of emperor angelfish but with a grey body with black dots and a longer mouth. There were also many small blue fish just a few inches under the surface. They might have been blue devils, but I am not sure. Skimming over the rocks there were small, thin, almost eely fish with beautiful markings. And then there were the sea lions. Every minute there were some getting in the water in ones or twos. Often, one of them would dive down and then the other would follow, just on its flippers. They would tumble around, going in summersaults, twisting around each other and then nipping at the other’s jaws, all the while swimming towards the surface, only to dive back down. When they were alone I saw them chasing after fish or gliding over the bottom, twisting through miniature gaps. I would try to copy them and even touched a few fish myself! Unfortunately, the sun was getting low so we swam back to Anthea (Mark had swum back and up anchored so we didn’t have to swim so far), and said good bye to Los Isoletes. Devon
PS Kim here – the sea lion video was taken here; Anson was diving and playing with a sea lion while filming it.
Current position is Latitude 00 degrees 43 minutes South ; Longitude 135 degrees 27 minutes West. Coming up: blogs on blissful sailing and crossing the equator!

Yesterday (April 18), just prior to dawn, something happened to me I’ll never forget. It was near the end of my watch, about half an hour before dawn, with the predawn light illuminating the dark clouds and haze around us. I was monitoring an approaching dark cloud and associated thick wall of haze for squall signs and decided to furl the jib in case it was. Course was 200 degrees, with Windy (windvane) steering. The dark cloud came overhead, and it and the haze enveloped us. But there was no increase in wind. Instead, within five minutes the air began to feel quite different. There was a novel freshness about it. The thick, humid, sultry feeling breeze of the last many days was replaced by a slightly cooler, less humid breeze that seemed a bit refreshing. It almost smelled different. I glanced down at the instruments to confirm we were still on course and was surprised to see that we had changed course by about 50 degrees and were now heading westwards, yet Windy was still steering us at the same apparent angle to the wind as before. How could this be, I wondered. In an instant I realized what had happened – Anthea had sailed, within the space of five minutes, from the northeast trades into the southeast trades. This is not supposed to happen as usually these two huge flows of wind are separated by a 60 to 200 mile band of thunderstorms and indeterminate wind known as the doldrums (or Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone). We knew from forecasts that this band had been squeezed out of existence by a huge trough of low pressure, but never did I think that the result would be an almost unnatural co-mingling of the northeast and southeast trades. But this had indeed happened, and to our good fortune, for it eliminated one of the challenging sections of this passage – crossing the doldrums. Instead, the southeast trades had arrived, bearing with them the marks (temperature, humidity, feel) of the their own origin and route.

Other unusual things happened at this point. Anthea left the shadow of the dark cloud and emerged into a different set of cloud formations, these ones characterized by layers of cumulus, puffy clouds extending east for miles and tinged with the glow of dawn. These clouds were crisp and the sky was clear, turning a beautiful rose color in a manner we had not seen since leaving Mexico. After taking Windy off duty and hand steering to get back on course, I glanced back to where we had emerged from the dark cloud and haze. There, against the dark ceiling of the cloud, was etched a large, piercingly bright silver abstract shape, that almost looked like some sort of mythical bird. I have never seen anything like it, and afterwards, when trying to make sense of it, thought it might have been the moon until I realized that the moon was not in that portion of the horizon at that time. It was almost as if a light from another realm was projecting that image on the screen of the sky ceiling.

Next, I asked Kim and Anson to come topsides to help trim the sails given the new wind. The seas were confused and somewhat bumpy; fortunately the wind was strong enough to give us the force to drive through the confusion. As we continued to watch and observe, we were all amazed at the different feel and characteristics of the new breeze. Suddenly, Kim called, “Look, a rainbow!” Sure enough, off to starboard, near but high above us, was a complete rainbow, with a second one and even a third, though quite dim, visible above it. These rainbows were sharp, distinct and clear – almost transcendentally beautiful in the early morning light. Behind them were the puffy clouds that accompanied the new wind system. There was no sign of rain. We watched this show of nature’s beauty and felt welcomed into a new realm – that of the southeast trades, which would carry us on another 800 miles to Oceania.

This completed our transition from one of the largest wind systems of the planet to another. Instead of dodging squalls, motoring, sailing when possible and basically just trying to make tracks across the doldrums to get from the northeast to the southeast trades, we experienced an immediate shift from one to the other. This unusual juxtaposition was accompanied by the other unique phenomena described above. It was as if the close proximity of worlds generally quite distinct and separate (that of the northeast trades and that of the southeast trades) had created a restlessness that manifested in different ways; it felt to me almost like it provided a peek between worlds to realities normally obscured by the settled and normal organization of our world. When that normal organization is disrupted, we can sometimes get hints of other realms. Whether or not this was the case yesterday morning, I can definitely say it was a most marvelous and welcome way to be ushered into the southeast trade winds and the world(s) from which they are born and carry with them.

Mark (now at 1 degree 53 minutes north and 134 degrees 20 minutes west)