Leaving the Marquesas

With only a few days remaining in our time allotted for the Marquesas, we were looking for a window to make the multi-day jump to the band of atolls (aka; The Tuamotus) a few hundred miles further South-West. First, we needed to resupply our food stores as well as visit the fuel situation. Taiohae is a good sized village on Nuka Hiva, and was our target for the final week-or-so we would be waiting. It would only take a couple hours of motoring from Hakatea to get there, which went fine but for some bumpiness along the way.

Taiohae offered us a few options for groceries, a marine store, and a fuel dock to tackle all the to-dos in one location. The grocery run was broken up into two days, one of which involved hauling our trusty cart to the far side of town the morning after the supply ship restocked all the shelves. It, of course, began to rain buckets the moment we were done shopping, leaving us to find shelter under an overhang for a few minutes. Eventually we just deciding to walk in the rain. It then stopped raining. The marine store ended up being a bust, with little to nothing that we needed at the time.

However, the fuel dock had exactly what we needed; another 20 gallons of diesel and a popsicle while the jugs were being filled. The large concrete dock had no mooring for our tiny sailboat leaving two options; either to med-moor (Mediterranean-moor; drop anchor away from dock and back up towards the dock and tie off only the stern) to the large dock, or shuttle over our jerry cans in the dinghy and climb up the 6 foot high concrete wall. Although I have total faith in my ability to med-moor Meriwether, Kerri did not share my confidence. So, I emptied and hauled four cans to the docks, climbed up, and walked them to the station another 100 feet further inland. This at least gave me the opportunity to have that popsicle, and in the end all went just fine getting the four full cans back into the dinghy and up onto Meriwether’s deck.

With the chores completed over a few night stay, we left the exposed bay to find some seclusion for what looked like might be a few more days before the weather window would open up for us to leave. Another couple hours of motoring brought us to Hooumi, an intimate little bay with good protection from the upcoming swell in the near future. It appeared that we needed to wait out a few-day-long blow that would be arriving in the Tuamotus in jut a few ays. But, by morning the forecast showed that the “blow” would start in 4 days and last as far into our forecast as we could see. Our choice was to leave now – right now – or have to wait at least another week. After some tense discussion we chose to leave right away… poor Kerri hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. We were hauling up anchor just 90 minutes later to begin a nearly 500 mile passage.

We pass by Ua Pou one more time on our way out of the Marquesas

The first day – Thursday – would be the roughest weather for us. The first hours of that day would truly test us. The waves were mean as snot, trying to break our marriage and turn us back, but we continued. The sails would go up only one hour into our motoring, mostly to stem some of the rolling caused by the waves. After a few hours things began to settle. It was still very rolly, but the next few days was forecast to mellow out some and it did. We would sail for the next 47 hour straight, then going to an on-again-off-again for the remainder of the five-day voyage. Our goal was to get there before that blow would arrive on Tuesday so we kept our speed up as best we could. On Monday, four nights, five days, and 481 nautical miles later we had arrived to our first atoll – Raroia – after a very mellow and easy passage.

First view of Raroia

Since we made the big crossing across the Pacific, my body has been stuck on that passage sleep schedule of 4 hours sleep, 4 awake. It had already been over a month since we arrived but I still wake every night between 1 and 3am no matter what. I haven’t heard my alarm go off in months now, and I can’t go back to sleep even after only a 4-5 hour sleep. So, at least it was easy to make the recent 4 night passage. I’m perpetually in the groove.

PS – I write this blog post a full month after this passage, and two nights this week I slept past 4am, the first two times in three months. I believe it is a mix of regular overnight passages as well as being 3 hours off from my normal wake up time of 5am Pacific.