Bora Bora

This was originally intended as a short portrait of Bora Bora when we thought we wouldn't be able to post any photos. It took on a life of it's own so I split it off into a separate post and set it to load a couple of days later to spread the reading.

PPS – We’ve been trying to post this for 2 weeks now and haven’t found enough signal to make it happen. I had prepped a bunch of photos to include (made them smaller so they wouldn’t take too long to load, etc.-all the usual prep for posting), but it’s looking like we may have to share them later. At this point I’m kicking myself for not signing up for the email posting option that Keith showed me in Ua Pou (thank you Keith!) since now I can’t even get to the sign in page on the blog, but at the time we were too busy writing and skyping mom and grandma and uncle Roy to think about the blog.

 It’s looking like if we do get this posted it will be from an HTML email, so will try to paint you a bit of a picture in words of Bora Bora. We are anchored in about 100 feet of water just off the main town with a stunning view of the lagoon. In the distance, on a clear day, we can see the hills of Maupiti on the horizon to the west and just the tips of the waves crashing on the reef on the south side of the lagoon.  The water goes through many changes of color depending on the weather and time of day. You could fill an entire book with the variations of blue… aquamarine, turquoise, cobalt, sea glass… they range from almost green to cobalt tinged with purple.

On a good morning I (Jodi) have slept in til 6:30-7 or so and wake to the roosters who have been crowing for hours already. Actually, even when I wake at 2 or 3 in the morning they are crowing already! The first rays of the sun reflect off the tip of the mast of the super yacht docked at the Mai Kai Yacht Club (Tahitian for ‘the finest’ or Hawaiian for ‘towards the ocean’ or ‘good, welcoming ocean’ depending on who you ask). As they continue to tip the teeter totter whose pivot point is balanced on the tip of Mt Otemanu, they spill down the western side to spot light the entrance markers at Passe Teavanui and then the pale sands of Motu Tapu. Next comes the smaller sail boats moored in front of the Mai Kai and finally, the silver and red roofs of Vaitape.

Lifts for the fishing and excursion boats line the shore and they are hand operated with big metal wheels that are turned to raise the boat sling. There is some kind of parrot in one of the houses that you can tell has been raised here as it screeches in exactly the same tone (song) as the boat lifts!
All. Day. Long.

If it was sunny enough to make power the day before I will try pulling out the computer to check emails and try again to get on the blog and Facebook.  If it’s sunny out I might get to load the regular version of gmail to see your emails as you sent them. Otherwise, it’s an attempt at the HTML version. I save any emails received to share with Darren and by then the alarm is going off for the Poly Mag Net which gets Darren stirring.

The Polynesian Magellan Net is a cruiser net on the SSB/Ham radio at 19:30 UTC on 8173.0, it starts with a call for any emergency traffic then gives everyone a chance to check in with their positions, give info on anchorages, etc., get a daily weather forecast and chat afterwards. Think of it as a party line telephone on a schedule!
There is also a split group that are doing a new net on 8137.0 at 20:30 UTC for the people going west to Tonga, New Zealand, etc. . We usually listen to the first one (unless we’re going in to town early, or don’t have much power, or just feeling like a quiet morning, or…) and check in when we are underway or newly arrived somewhere if we are getting good reception. We aren’t sure what we will get once we head for Christmas as most of the boats are either staying here or going further west, but we’ll try to check in to one of the nets if we can hear them.

By the time the net is over it is 8:30-9 (usually depending on who is running the net that day!) and Darren has been sufficiently roused to get up and make hot water for tea or coffee. HOT water you say? Yes, it is the middle of winter here you know ;-) … I am using the fleece snowboarding blanket mom made me a good portion of each night and we even wore coats one night in Raiatea a couple of weeks ago! Darren got out his puffy vest for the occasion, Joe would be so proud.

Where were we? Oh yes, tea and a couple of bananas with rice and maybe papaya for breakfast. Or an egg sandwich if there is baguette left from the night before. Or if Darren is feeling especially awake and has rowed in for a fresh one. At only 53 cents each, we get one almost every day, it’s a nice break from our usual rice three meals a day. We are also enjoying the fresh local bananas, starfruit, lettuce, eggs, etc while we can. Rumor has it the eggs are $14 dollars a dozen on Christmas!!!

If we go into town we might stop into a few shops to look at the pretty things and chat with the locals. On our first day here we went into a pearl shop to look and ended up chatting with the ladies who gave us the name and number of a really good local tattoo artist. One of the ladies also had a scar on her foot that she had covered with a pretty ray tattoo. (Which reminds me, we haven’t shared the story of my scar, we’ll have to do that another time.). Later that day we met another woman (at another pearl shop) who had a 15 year old tattoo from the same guy and it looked so fresh it was as if it had just been done last month! Anyhow, don’t worry moms, I think we’re going to take a pass on the tattoos for now.

Most of the people in the shops here are VERY friendly, but as usual, we have our favorites. In the order we first saw them, don’t miss the ladies at Sibani Pearls, the Melanies at Tahiti Pearl Market, Hinanui at Albert Pearls and the crews of The Black Pearl Lounge/Bora Bora Originals and Deep Sea Pearl. In addition to the wonderful people, there were pretty things that really wanted to go home with us at all of those places. Our bank account said no to most of them but it was fun to look. There was also art we drooled over and wanted to take home at Bora Art, Bora Home Galerie and the local Artinisat (the coop of local artists you see on each island).

There are two supermarkets but no central vegetable market here, so we might also walk the length of town to check out the tables of fruit and veg and pick up some bananas or papayas or on a quest for the little pineapple mangoes that we are in love with. They are in the midst of doing road construction so it's a very dusty couple of kilometers that leaves us caked in mud. It’s not very far, but can take a while if we get to talking! We are reminded of some of the drier Mexican and central American towns more so than the immaculate streets and gardens of the Marquesas.

Speaking of supermarkets, these are the last big ones we expect to see for a while, so the provisioning that started in Papeete and Raiatea has continued here as we pick up ‘one more’ bag of milk powder, can of butter, coconut milk or slice of pate or cheese.

Back at the boat, some of the things you might find us doing recently are laundry, making sauerkraut, kimchee or sourdough banana muffins, reading some of the great cookbooks we just got for inspiration (THANK YOU Wairua!), looking up something in French, Tahitian or Marquesan. Outside, we might be fixing the windvane, servicing a winch, diving to scrape the prop, tightening all the screws in the dinghy, or making a new hanger for the disco ball to replace the one that broke!

Or you might catch us spending the afternoon catching up with a friend we haven’t seen in a couple of months and is leaving tomorrow for New Zealand so we don’t know when we’ll see him again.

If you had dropped in a couple of mornings ago, you would have found Jodi full on sobbing with tears rolling down her face, unable to wipe them away because her hands were covered in bananas for the sourdough muffins. All that because Darren was playing a Bearfoot Bluegrass album with the song ‘Back Home’.

“So don’t worry, you’re always on my mind,

And I’ll carry you with me wherever I roam.

When the pains of my heart tell me it’s time,

Well I know, I’ll be on my way back home.

…family took up so much space in my heart…

…miles and miles apart…”

And here’s where the dam completely burst -

“…But I love you mama,

And you’ll always be home to me…”

Tissues anyone?

Should you be listening to the same album, beware of the shuffle button. That morning it followed ‘Back Home’ with ‘Good Morning Country Rain’.

“Good morning country rain,

It’s good to be back home again…”

You guessed it. More tears, as I was transported back to Montana.

Late afternoons/early evenings might find us enjoying the ‘magic hour’ of glow on Mt Otemanu that makes the trees come alive with greens and golds and glowing orange. Or in a cockpit visiting with friends new and old, watching the sun set behind the boats moored at the Mai Kai as the va’a (outrigger canoe) guys paddle by.

If you have enjoyed this peek into our lives half as much as we treasure the pieces of yours you share in your emails, then it was worth the wait for wifi.

Love and hugs,

Jodi and Darren

See You Later Grandma (and French Polynesia)

Luna Azul...sailing into the sunrise!

The time has come. The three months we are allowed in French Polynesia are up and we have to be moving on. We have loved our time here and wish we could stay longer. It will have some bittersweet memories for us as we had a variety of experiences here. It is where the people welcomed us with open arms to beautiful communities that simultaneously eased and stoked the fires of our homesickness with their emphasis on family and community. But it is also where we were when Caleb graduated and Kodee was born. 

 Ua Pou is where we learned that Grandma was really sick and where we learned that a dear uncle has cancer, but it is also where we got to hang out with several great boats including Sadiqi, Seatime, Bonafide and where we met Edwige, Armand, Heato, Jerome, Cedric, all of the crews at the Artinesat and the Coop and Darren’s surf buddies at the river mouth wave. 

This doesn't even begin to do justice to the range of colors

All dressed up and ready for Heiva

Tahiti is the only place we ever had Lil' Sass, our dinghy, stolen (from the yacht club dock and returned to Gratitouille at anchor - argh and yay!) and where Jodi  caught a nasty bug from a Typhoid Nancy that reared its ugly head about an hour into our nearly 2 day crossing to Taha’a.

A Heiva dancer

 But in between those we also got to hang out with more great boat friends including Wairua, Sunrise, Oceana, French Curve, Full Circle, Antares and more…saw Teahupoo (thanks Sunrise!), Heiva (sorry, we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the performances), shopped in huge supermarkets  (yay Carrefour!), Heiva Rimai’i (a giant arts and craft fair with live music and a carnival!), THREE bookstores (thank you Anne-Lyse), an untold number of fabric stores, the great Papeete Sunday market and had a HOT shower!

 Raiatea is where we learned that Grandma had died (apparently about the same time Jodi got sick on the crossing from Tahiti oddly enough).

It is also where we had only planned to go long enough to check out, but ended up going early to spend Darren’s birthday there. 

Swordfish, kimchee and broccoli!

Shortly after tying up to the quay we were warned by a local that we should be wary of thieves as it was near the end of the local Heiva  and there were a lot of outsiders around. This, combined with us being tired, led to us having supper on board after Darren ran over to the market and discovering… the Sauce Cucurma Gingembre by LouLou, from the Champion or Leogite markets, on some fresh grilled swordfish!

Which, along with the Carambole Chutney also by LouLou with chevre or brie, we HIGHLY recommend!

The good continued as we met the “absolutely” wonderful German and Norwegian crew of the charter s/v Colorado (and spent a great evening with them).  

As usual, farewells came much too soon.

We enjoyed meeting a few locals including our favorite artisana Dolores and getting acquainted with the guests and crew of Dutch Wanderer and Luna Azul.It's not often we run into someone from Oregon City!

The tank is empty, but will Darren explode?

We were also able to knock a couple of boat projects off the list while in Raiatea, including replacing the propane valve that broke before we even had a chance to use the fuel. (We aren't the only ones who had this issue with valves from El Salvador). Thanks to Bert on Luna Azul for the loan of his tools and muscle that made it possible!

Boat yoga...with a little help from my friends...

There is so much more of course and one of these days we will slow down enough (and get enough electricity and wifi!) to give you more details and photos. For now, we have to check out of the country, get our bond back, get fuel and water and the last minute veggies and cheese among other smaller errands! Depending on the weather and permission from the Gendarme, we are hoping to stop at Maupiti in a few days. If we arrive with…

1.       a small swell that lets us enter the pass there and…

2.       the Manaspot wifi is repaired (it hasn’t worked here for the week and a half we’ve been here– we are sending this from the café…where we still don’t have a strong enough signal for Facebook or Skype so we only have your emails to let us know how you are)

…we are hoping to spend the last of our 5 hour wifi card that we bought 3 months ago on arrival in Hiva Oa (where it also didn’t work) to send you more news.

On the chance that the stars don’t align for that, our plans are to head out from French Polynesia for Christmas Island, Kiribati (hint, it’s near the equator in the Pacific)  where we don’t know what, if any, wifi is available, so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for a while (like late November/early December).

Grandma, of course, no longer has to wait for us to get internet for an update. Where she's at now she has a front row seat to see what we're up to as it's happening.

Rest in peace Grandma

 

And even though we know that, we still miss having you here physically.

Here here (that’s ‘a whole lotta love’ in Tahitian!),

Jodi and Darren

PS – We are now waiting for weather to go to Maupiti so are enjoying a little more time with friends both old and new, and the fresh lettuce, meat, cheese and baguettes from the market while we can!

Wairua and 'touille, together again

We also did a little pre-celebration of our anniversary since we don't know what we'll have access to for the actual day.

How do you like Darren's new earring?

Spa Gratitouille - Taha'a style!

Yup, still seriously silly after all these years.

Tahiti and movin' on

After a week and a half of whirlwind in Tahiti, we are off to the islands of Taha'a and Raiatea. We hope to find some internet there that is better than the sloooow service here so we can share some pictures and tales of the couple of fun adventures we had with new friends and old between searching for stores and parts, doing (minor - don't worry moms!) repairs and stocking the boat for the next 4 months when we won't have access to real stores.     Love you all! ~Jodi and Darren

Fakarava

Dear Grandma,

You know all those pictures you see with the clear, clear water that is a thousand shades of turquoise and blue? They are really real! And we are there! 

 

We re anchored in Fakarava atoll in the Tuamotus, French Polynesia (16deg  03.526 South  145deg 37.299 West if you want to find it on a map easily) and the water is just so beautiful! When we look out from the boat or row into shore and look back out over the lagoon we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we aren’t dreaming. Hmmm…maybe that’s what the bruises are from…

Part of the reason for the clear water here is that there isn’t much in the way of soil for runoff to cloud the water. The land is basically dead coral and what little organic matter has accumulated on top of that. Soil is definitely a precious commodity here. We have friends who saw a bag of topsoil in a store on an atoll nearby and it was $117! For one normal size bag! Needless to say, our budget isn’t stretching to buying fresh vegetables here. So the locals have some ingenious ways of gardening. From growing tomatoes in an old broken canoe…

…to rain gutters lined up on stands and fenced against animals. 

We seem to have acquired some pets here. I threw a lime peel overboard and Darren saw something dart out from under the boat quick as lightening to check it out. It was about 2’ long, grey and thin and he wondered if it was a baby shark. We tried dunking a lure a few times to lure it back out for a better look but he was onto our games and stayed under the boat.  I was about to go for a swim and do some scraping on the hull so I looked around carefully before slowly climbing down the ladder, dipping my toes and pulling them out quickly a couple of times. Not that it was really an issue as the sharks here are mostly nurse, lemon, blacktip and greys, who couldn’t care less about us. (Darren even saw a guy standing in the water catching sharks with his bare hands the day before!) Nothing took interest so I lowered myself all the way in and peeked under the boat. There were 3 long and 2 small grey thin fish ranging from 1-3 feet long with pointed mouths clinging to our keel. 

Off to scrape the hull!

Later we described them to our friends on Peregrine and Palarran and found out that we are hosting remoras. They are a bit different from the remoras that were on our manta ray friend during the crossing from Costa Rica. Boy, are we kicking ourselves for not stocking up on more wildlife id books! It would be fun to be able to id all of the neat creatures we are seeing.

The view from the front door of one of the local churches shows more of that gorgeous water…

…and around back they have an outdoor chapel, also with shell chandeliers!

Yesterday morning before we called you, we were getting ready to go ashore when Darren spotted a fisherman trying to paddle his big speedboat into shore with what looked like a 2x6 pried from the seat of the boat! Apparently his motor had died and he was trying to get home. Darren jumped in our dinghy, rowed over to him and gave him a tow. It’s kind of funny seeing a little rowboat towing a big speedboat, but it’s not the first time we’ve had it happen!  Darren came back to get me and we went to the Boulangerie (bakery) to get our baguettes for the day. When we came back to the dinghy to go home we found a thank you gift waiting for us. Yum!

Well, we are off to the south pass of the atoll to go snorkeling and see the big full moon Marbled Grouper mating that happens there once a year.  We'll take some more pictures for you and hopefully some video too. We will write/call again when we get to Tahiti as that is the next place we expect to see internet -  probably about 1 ½  – 2 ½ weeks from now.

We love you and wish you could be here with us.

Love and hugs,

Jodi and Darren

Gratitouille finally makes it to the South Pacific!!

We made it to Hiva Oa, the Marquises, French Polynesia late May the 6th!! You've been asking about the crossing and we've been waiting to get internet and enough sun to have electricity for the computer! Here are some of the highlights (and some not so high as well).

Highs – Whales, dolphins, flying fish through the center hatch into the salon (only funny because Darren’s foulie jacket saved me from being pelted in the face by the fish!), rainbows, rain to drink and shower with, sun coronas, our dorado buddies (even though they refused every hook we offered them, they were good company), rainbow squid, the huge manta ray that drafted us for hours (though rather startling when he rammed us – there arose such a clatter, you’d think Santa and all the reindeer had rear ended us!), Sea Angel going out of their way to buzz by us – the first humans we had seen besides each other in 38 days! Thank you, what a treat!

A true Sea Angel!

Lows – Lack of wind, a morale killer and energy sapper when combined with excessive cross seas and short period chop!

Things we didn’t expect  - Washing machine seas with violent bone jarring wave slaps that made the boat sound like it was falling apart.

Argh!

So much cloud cover – wished we had another way to make power besides solar (especially with one of our flexible panels dying). So much rain in the doldrums – after 52 days at sea we arrived with only 60 gallons less than we started with even though we showered nearly every day and in the final week used water with the abandon of drunken sailors. Such a wide band of doldrums – in the weeks leading up to our crossing it had been miniscule. After we got out it blossomed and seemed to follow us.

Things we expected but didn’t find – Big open ocean rollers without steep cross chop.

Crossing the equator – We had grand plans for this but it came at 02:22am Gratitouille time in the wee hours of Sun. April 5^th and we were both tired. The on watch person let the off watch person sleep too close to the big event and the off watch was still out of it enough that they thought they were videoing and so didn’t worry about the quality of the still shots, so we just have this blurry shot of the gps. No names named or fingers pointed, stuff happens when you’re tired. You’ll just have to trust us. We’re shellbacks!

We fed a shot of our hoarded St Martin Vanilla Banana Rum to Poseidon, split one between the two of us and changed shifts.  Apparently he doesn’t appreciate that delicacy as much as we do as he continued with the light winds and crazy cross seas. Instead of the grand plans for a feast and treats that day, we celebrated the triple fete of crossing the equator, Easter and having been out for 3 weeks by resting and catching up on our sleep as the wind came up enough to get the windvane working again! Though Darren did get his Easter Bunny milk!

Making landfall – After 52 and a half days of not motoring, we were sweating it as the wind became very light mid morning and we weren’t sure if we would make it in before dark. We started the motor just outside the breakwall and had just enough light to set the hook before the sun disappeared behind Mount Tevaitiu. Safe in Tahuku Bay on Hiva Oa Island in the Marquises, French Polynesia!!

Land ho! East tip of Hiva Oa.

Advice for future jumpers – Take several days’ worth of your queasy tummy favorites even if you don’t normally get seasick.  Remember that you’ll want ginger ale rather than Pepsi/Coke so you can sleep on your off watches.

Even if you normally make all of your food from scratch, try to find a few things that you can just dump out of a can and heat up - or just eat straight out of the can when even trying to corral a pot on the jerking stove seems too much trouble!

Last fresh green beans salad

Don’t save all your treats for tough days and take more than you would normally eat in the length of twice as long as you think your crossing will take. On the days when nothing seems to be going your way a couple of graham crackers and a marshmallow or packet of Cocanas can make your day. Use lots of treats to make a celebration of any big or little thing to keep spirits up. In our 52 days we celebrated 5 birthdays of loved ones back home, the first day of spring for the northern hemisphere, Easter, April Fool’s, May Day, Cinco de Mayo, one week out, 1, 2 and 3,000 miles, crossing the equator, seeing another boat, the last fresh green beans, not having a new low noon to noon distance…towards the end we celebrated every 10 degrees of progress! Treats that reminded us of good friends were especially cherished, be they the cherry ginger jam Jodi made with our friend Jonathan before we left Hood River or the quinoa and Toblerone from our new friends on Red Thread and Meridian. Yummy and reminders that we aren’t alone on the planet!

Non -food treats also contributed to our sanity levels. Take audio files and a player for light wind nights when you have to hand steer or are too tired to read a book and can’t stand another minute with your own thoughts. Some of our favorites include light non-fiction, French lessons (thank you Paula and Olivier!), and the talks by Tara Brach that our friend Bethany of Lilo shared with us. When we had enough power to run the big computer, ‘good luck’ and ‘news of their lives’ letters that friends had sent and we had downloaded in Costa Rica just before we jumped were especially bright spots for us!

A handful of the books that we devoured

So what did we do all day? The first few days saw us settling in, a process that took longer than it usually does for us. How much of this was the weather and how much had to do with our state of mind as we pondered options of destinations and plans, who knows? I’m sure the sadness at missing birthdays and graduations, babies being born and all of the celebrations of our friends and families that we were missing contributed to our queasy stomachs.

Eventually, we got into the groove and were able to enjoy the passing clouds, sea life and on calm days, the hour or two of each others’ company. Some days passed in a blur, when conditions had us hand steering and stumbling exhausted to bed at the end of each shift to try and sleep among the whacks, bangs and shudders of the chop tossed boat.  Or hiding below from salty splashes that coated the entire boat with a layer of salt that ranged from the ‘misting of sea salt’ on a good bag of peanuts to full on crystal gardens.

Self entertainment

Other days were a wonderful flow of watching the ocean and sky with their respective beautiful creatures, checking the guide to determine which kind of dolphin or whale we had just seen, soaking it all in and treasuring being on Gratitouille time. We also enjoyed experimenting with new pressure cooker recipes and bread baking! When we were awake together we had great talks about our lives, lessons learned and possible plans, along with filling the other in on what they had missed in their off watch.

In the doldrums when we had lots of rain, we washed the cockpit, ourselves and even some laundry in between refilling tanks and shower jugs.

A calm moment

As Thor Heyerdahl says in Kontiki, “…the horizon glided along with us unnoticed as we moved and our own floating world remained always the same – a circle flung up to the vault of the sky with the raft itself as center, while the same stars rolled on over us night after night …The world was simple – stars in the darkness. Whether it was 1947 BC or AD suddenly became of no significance. We lived, and that we felt with alert intensity. We realized that life had been full for men before the technical age also – in fact, fuller and richer in many ways than the life of modern man. Time and evolution were the same today as they had always been and would always be. We were swallowed up in the absolute common measure of history – endless unbroken darkness under a swarm of stars.”

And from one of Jodi’s early morning shifts, “What had been a big dark rain cloud to the west of us has finished raining and is now a laughing pink pig, full of joy, flying on his white feathered wings. As I look closer at his wings, they transform before my eyes like an Escher drawing and what I thought was the back of the pig is the head of a turtle swimming SW to meet us. I am momentarily distracted and glance back at the head of the turtle to find it is actually a dolphin (big melon type) and when my gaze returns to the head of the turtle/dolphin, I discover that it has become a clown with a Pinocchio type nose extension that his red ball nose is perched on. Or is it Dumbo with a clown nose? I’ll never know. By the time I finished adjusting the main sheet they were all gone, replaced (or merely obscured?) by a thick storm cloud.”

Another amazing sunrise with rain ahead!

Sigh

Some of what we learned – See tips for future jumpers.  Also, from the Great Cornbread Debacle/Flying Wallenda Caper - 'If the pitch and roll is so crazy that I’m afraid to wear the safety strap for fear of being burnt by the hot oven gimballing into my legs, perhaps it is too crazy to cook without the strap!' Actually, that was a twofer as it also came with – 'Better to save the watery batter projects for calmer conditions.' In those sort of conditions, even a gimbaled counter probably wouldn’t have kept the batter from jumping over the sides of the pan!
Which led to us eating pineapple out of a can for Mom R’s birthday instead of the pineapple upside down cake that I had planned to celebrate with!

Darren claims the sweat, bruises and tears were worth it!

Another birthday celebration later that same week saw us enjoying cinnamon rolls for J’s birthday since we didn’t have cinnamon ice cream. From Jodi’s journal that day, ‘ the cinnamon rolls were going to be a treat for the next couple of days but it was too much temptation to have the rolls sitting there hot and crispy and fluffy in front of us and before we knew it the pan went from holding 8 giant puffy cinnamon rolls to only having two. Not sure where they all disappeared to so fast. My bloated stomach seems to be mumbling something about clues that I can’t quite make out.’
We just had popcorn for supper that night.

Broken stuff - Jodi’s tea mug that has survived without a scratch since she bought it in Pike’s Place Market at 16 and has moved around the country with her got chipped in the first few days. As time went on it seemed to have the worst luck of all of us as it dove off the counter again and again. Darren super glued the handle back together 3 times and then we had nearly given up on it when it was rescued by Del Viento showing up at Hiva Oa! Mike lent us some Gorilla glue and saved it from a watery grave. Three weeks later it’s still going strong, thanks Mike!

The repair on an old screw hole over Darren’s bunk opened up while we were in the rainy doldrums and a piece of clear packing tape blocked it so he could sleep till we could get somewhere drier!

A tiny leak around the mast and some line chafe rounded out our small list of ‘issues’.  We are definitely grateful for such inconsequential ‘problems’.

Of course there is more, but for now, we need to get back to work getting ready for our next crossing – to the Tuamotus! Hopefully it will be calm and sunny (for electricity) enough that we can work on a post to let you know what we’ve been up to for the past month!

Love,

Jodi and Darren