When I think about the months, years really, that we spent getting ready to leave it makes me feel better about sitting here in Taiohae getting ready to head home for so long. The weather for the beginning of our journey, the only weather we really get to choose, has been sub-optimal to say the least. There’s been no wind or a light headwind and we don’t to motor in swell for days to get to wind. North of the equator there’s also been some really strong, cyclonic winds that we also don’t want to run into. So, we’re still here. It’s been drizzling like it does in the NW, not enough to put on a raincoat but enough to close the hatches and make the cabin feel unbearably muggy.
The exciting and entertaining bit is that Ned is here! Ned has worked with Greg at CSR and is the owner of the Mara, basically he’s family. He super helpful, silly and kind with Griffin, speaks Greg’s work language, and is lovely to hang out with. We already had him delay his arrival here after our noisy little engine shaft issue so I feel kind of bad that he’s been here 9 days now. On the other hand being stuck here isn’t so bad. We eat and sleep pretty well, swim to cool down, and now he’s had plenty of time to get to know the boat before we take off.
Ned brought lots of parts for projects and he and Greg went into full on work mode. The furler line has been remade for the third (or fourth?) time in the last 12 months and now also has a new lead whose angles have been scrupulously calculated by two riggers. The wind instrument is changed, many lines have been re-run, and lots of splicing has been going on. It’s fun to be around Greg and Ned working, they’ve done it all together and do it well. I love being around their efficiency.
The Gendarmarie is only open on Mondays and Thursdays so while Ned got here on Sunday, the weather was not to ready nor were we, to check out Monday. Then the plan was to check out Thursday, while we finished the last few projects, and then head up to the north end of the island to hang out in one more amazing spot before heading out to sea for who knows how long. But then the jib went back on after being at the sailmakers and her opinion along with ours made us think we’d benefit from having a back up sail other than our storm tri-sail. Calypso, the sailmaker, brought us one sail she had laying around, it was too long on the foot, but the second sail a few days later turned out to fit and be in good enough shape to make sense to bring with us. It took over the weekend for us to get that sail up and down without too much wind, Calypso doesn’t work on the weekend, and the weather still was no good.
So, here we are perpetually hanging out in Taiohae. It’s beautiful and awesome yet we may have lost some enthusiasm for sharing it all. We overcame that and rented a car to go for a drive around to the top of the island and Taipivai and Houmi. First stop was a walk to a site that had been restored not long ago (2023?) for a inter island festival. From there we went to lunch at our favorite burger place over Taipivai and watched the outrigger canoe race between Ua Huka and here come around the point towards the finish line. That’s about a 35nm race on the open ocean where the boats alternate between paddling up the back of waves and then surfing down the front. Check out this video if you’re curious to see the awesomeness they perform out there. From there we drove down through Taipivai and finally found a woman who we have the mutual friend of the amazing Maria Coryell-Martin. Maria stayed with her family in 2004 and it was really fun to finally find someone home and get to say hi. We walked on the beach at Houmi where we spent Christmas one more time and then made our way back to Taiohae for grocery shopping and a swim. That evening there was a big celebration event ashore that the boys went in to watch from the sidelines.
Our day-to-day looks like getting some boat projects done, running the engine to charge and make water for about an hour in the morning, an afternoon swim, Greg and Ned chatting about random Seattle/CSR boats, a walk to the grocery store for beer for the boys (how Griffin wishes he was included in that now!), and I feel like I’ve gone to the grocery store every day to grab whatever else they might have in stock that day for our passage.
A few days ago, early in the morning, a huge Volvo 70 came and anchored next to us. It provided endless entertainment and watching as the 6 crew got off and just one person was left onboard. Because they don’t have an anchor line attachment point on the bow, they stern anchor and tie it off on a backstay attachment. The rhode is kept off the sharp edges of the transom with a bumper but it still managed to wrap itself around one of the boat’s rudders. The solo guy had to get it unwound with a boathook and somehow he managed it quite well. Meanwhile, he was a little close to shore and another boat so he raised the anchor as much as he could then motored around to in a circle kind of close to shore (15′ draft!) to get to a place to re-set it. The second morning Griffin and I went over to say hi and get a closer look at the boat and were invited on board. One of the crew was there, a young woman who had hiked all over the day before and the owner/captain whose name is Johannes. He has a few of theses boats that he races in different places in the world and was so kind showing Griffin some of the crazy features of this very racing focused boat… SO different than anything else we’ve seen in the last year! Johannes came over to check out Rocket Science too, it was really nice chatting with him.
We think the weather seems to show a window where we could get North coming up so right now the plan is to check out when the gendarmerie is open next on Thursday. Then we’ll really leave Taiohae and head over to Houmi or maybe up to Anaho if some of the boats showing on the No Foreign Land app clear out. Meanwhile, we’ve found out our good friend Caroline who we spent so much time with in the last year is quite sick and is in Tahiti. She’s our Zumba inspiration and such an amazing strong woman, we are thinking of her and her husband Henk who now needs a crew member to get their boat from Fakarava to Tahiti… anyone? Take care out there and live it up when you can… we certainly will be, soon!
