Cruising

It’s been quite a year, and I’m due for posting another entry. We’ve sailed more than 5,000 miles since January. I am amazed we’ve gone this far.

Back in January we were in back in Puerto Escondido, Mexico on the east Baja coast. We got scuba certified, after somewhat deteriorating conditions the first day of our lesson. We also enjoyed a visit from Margot’s mother.

I had a whirlwind trip to Seattle to renew my passport. While I was there I got a booster shot and picked up my mail. I got to fly back with a shiny new passport. But it’s something I really should have done before we left the states.

Then we were off across the sea to Mazatlan, as my mother and sister were visiting. We were at the cheapest marina we could find, which had an excess of character. While there I replaced our refrigerator; a warm fridge and spoiled food had plagued us for months. It couldn’t handle the Mexico heat. We flew to Mexico City and applied for our long stay visas for French Polynesia. So we handed in a stack of paperwork, €99 in pesos, and our passports to the French consulate and marked our calendar for six weeks. While there we had one of the best Valentine’s Day dinners ever, at Fogo de Chão.

Onward down to San Blas, Mexico, and one of my favorite anchorages at Matanchén. Drinking 40’s of Pacifico in a palapa on the beach, listening to the waves and seeing our boat in the distance. I regret not spending more time there, but we’ve heard some very mixed reports from other cruisers so I’m glad the experience wasn’t sullied by a stolen dinghy or a swarm of termites.

March brought us to the Puerto Vallarta area, and a too long of a stay in the marina. Our bottom paint was not holding up, so we made the difficult decision to have it stripped completely and start from scratch. After all the paint was off, I noticed some minor damage to the rudder, apparently caused by a previous owner. So we had that fixed as well, which delayed our return to the water. It was exhausting and very warm, but satisfying having a icy cold beer at the end of the day. Yes, more Ballenóns. We went out to eat often as the food was usually cheap and always delicious. We bid farewell to Lorien, who left two weeks ahead of us. And after lovely sendoff with our friends on Jubel, we departed La Cruz on April 11th.

We spent 29 days on our crossing to the Marquesas. We slept, read a lot of books and were generally very vigilant about night watches. The sailing mostly was good, it was our longest passage to date. We usually didn’t see more than 15 knots, which was just great. The first couple weeks were lazy spinnaker sailing.

The worst night at sea

Closer to the ITCZ (doldrums), early evening we started seeing lightening in dark clouds on the horizon. We saw them on on radar several miles away, but also felt the atmospheric pressure drop. By sunset radar was showing us that we weren’t going to avoid them. It was dark and disorientating, and we accidentally gybed twice as soon as the wind picked up. Fortunately our preventer held and no harm was done. Once we were on course we were seeing 30 knots sustained winds. It was a rough couple of hours of pounding rain, large waves from the port quarter, thunder, lightening. We had too much sail out, and tried to reef more, but the mainsail was to heavily loaded and Margot was only able to pull in a little. I steered by hand the whole time, I did not trust the situation to the autopilot or self-steering. Finally, the winds subsided. It was definitely our scariest sailing moment. Thankfully, nothing was broken, just wet. We continued.

French Polynesia

While on anchor I started rebuilding both this site and favignana.voyage. Unfortunately, I think I enjoy tweaking the site more than I do writing on it.

After touring the Marquesas, and Fakarava we will be staying put in Tahiti. We await the birth of our son, and I am excited about fatherhood.

Games

This year I discovered Cataclysm DDA. It’s a zombie survival roguelike. I started playing it because I had a frustrating Nethack death and wanted to try something different. It’s extremely complicated, challenging and buggy.

I bought the expansion to The Long Dark. I have not yet had a chance to download it.