We made it!

Our voyage began on July 16th. We hesitated to depart because we could not find our great circle chart of our trip from San Francisco to the Marquesas, but we ended up making do without it. We took off at around 5:30 am and caught the ebb tide. By the time I was fully awake we were already out the gate; it was a quick farewell. We had a beautiful first day at sea, marked by many encounters with sea life. We saw humpback whales breaching and slapping their pectoral fins on the surface of the water and a pod of dolphins came to play in our bow wave.
We headed off the coast of California, but pretty quickly started South. The winds were light as soon as we left the San Francisco Bay and remained so until just above the equator. This made for a much longer trip than we had intended. We arrived in the Marquesas early on August 8th after 24 days at Sea.
The experience of being on a boat with no land, only water in sight is quite revealing. I got used to it, but when we decided to swim for the first time, even though the winds were almost dead and the boat was going around 1 to 3 knots as soon as I jumped in the water from midship, my only focus was on the rope dragging behind the boat. The speed of the boat is deceiving. The water is so crystalline blue it is absolutely beautiful. Nevertheless it is scary. With our nighttime watches your sleep schedules were not so regular but we got used to it after a while. Nine people, trapped on a boat for three weeks breeds tension. The last few days were far from archetypal examples of cultured compromise. It was palpable that for everyone's well being, we needed land. It came.
It was truly amazing how much life is visible in the middle of the ocean. We were visited by dolphins numerous times, many of which occurred during my nighttime watches. We almost always saw bird life, and flying fish never ceased coming out of the water, frightened by the vibrations of our boat. We caught about six or seven fish on the trip. The ocean is certainly not dead, no matter how far from land you are.
We experienced some difficulties aboard. The inverter for the refrigerator draws so much power that we finally figured out that we would have to periodically turn it on throughout the course of the day because otherwise it drained our batteries. Our electronic charts on the computer took time for us to get them working, but we succeeded. We tore the head of our jib because we had a lightweight drifter up in the main track and we wanted to put up a double head rig, so we hoisted our main jib. However, the luff on the drifter was much shorter than the other jib, but we weren't aware of that, so we kept raising the sail and tore off the track tape as we pulled it past the head of the other sail. We could only blame ourselves. After a night of restitching the sail is was back in commission. Throughout the trip we ate extremely well, so that was a big plus. We anticipated a 15 day trip, but despite the extension due to light winds we had plenty of food. When we finally spotted land it was early in the morning and the islands were so picturesque. The Marquesas are volcanic islands with dramatic rocky cliffs and mountains contrasted by lush green foliage. We came into Taiohae Bay on the island of Nuku Hiva. We were so excited to see land. As soon as we went ashore, we pigged out on fresh fruit. We now have internet access so now I am updating the blog.
Giovanni