[Kyle]After clearing out of the Galápagos, you are expected to leave right away. It's not quite as strict as New Zealand, where the officer will stand there until they see you untying your lines, but allowing for a little time to get sail covers off, etc., you had better be heading smartly out of the harbor by sundown.
We managed to weigh anchor just over an hour after the officials left. My expectation was that we would then motor out of the harbor for long enough to get the engines warmed up, shut them down, and then spend days creeping away in the light, fickle winds.
Instead, when we got out into deep water, we found a nice, five-knot breeze. It was out of the southwest. We were trying to go southwest, but at least it was wind, and we could keep Begonia moving, in this case to the south-south east. The northern edge of the trade wind belt was about three hundred miles south, so it was more important at that stage for us to be getting as far south as possible, rather than west. Once we had real wind, westing should be easy.
At midnight, just as we were passing to the east of Floreana, the wind started slowly backing to the southeast. I had expected the wind shift to come after a prolonged lull, but it kept blowing the whole time. We tacked and then slowly bent around to our desired heading of southwest. Our initial expectation had been to still be within the archipelago for four or five days. By the second day, just thirty hours after leaving Santa Cruz, the hazy outline of Floreana disappeared into the darkness of the approaching night. By morning, it was well behind. It was just us and the vast sea.
We never did have to deal with any calms after all. Our seven to ten-day trip to the trade winds was completed in just four. The wind once we were there was, in fact, a little stronger than usual. With extra reefs in each sail, we had no problem romping along to the west at eight or nine knots. That was great, but the wind was accompanied by an annoying beam sea that made for a rolly, uncomfortable ride.
Long passages at sea has become just part of our life, it has its own tranquility (at least on a good weather day)
Once we were now well away from land, the behavior of the birds changed as we had expected. Instead of ignoring us, as sunset approached, we noticed a few boobies circling us as they cased the joint. An hour or so later, they returned to start their landing attempts in earnest.
Boobies are very, very conservative when it comes to landing. It is not uncommon for a bird to make twenty or thirty patient approaches before finally allowing its weight to transfer from wings to feet. They will approach from several different directions to find the most reliable path, and if there is anything that they don't like, anything at all, right up to how stable the grip of their feet is on their chosen perch, they will go around and start the whole process over.
That said, they really want to avoid spending the night either on the wing or resting duck-like on the water, so they won't give up until they have cracked the problem. Maryanne and I have long since learned we can't dissuade them, so instead, we welcome them as fellow weary travelers. The only condition is that they don't mess up the part of the boat that Maryanne and I are likely to use.
The first bird headed for the masthead, which superficially looks like the best spot, because it is high up and clear of hazards. Fortunately, the rough seas were swinging it around enough that there was no way to get hold of it. That saved me the need to go around banging on the shrouds and generally acting like a crazy ape in order to scare them off the delicate wind transducer up there.
After a while, the bird moved lower, to where the motion of the gyrating boat was milder. After fifteen or so attempts, it finally came to a wobbly rest on the windward bow pulpit. Once it had a good grip, it fluffed up its feathers, made a satisfied wag of its tail, and started to preen.
This was good. Once one booby has found a spot, all subsequent boobies will then want the exact same spot for themselves. Maryanne and I joke that we need to put a decoy in the approved landing area to help guide the first one.
Shortly after, a second bird arrived and tried to land practically on top of the first. There were thirty seconds of squawking and beak fencing before they finally both settled down shoulder to shoulder on the rail.
Much later, just as it was starting to get pretty dark, a third bird arrived. It also made several attempts at the rail to be by the other two, but couldn't seem to figure out how to make an approach work without coming too close to hitting part of the boat or getting foiled by the turbulence around the sails. It hadn't seen them land and so didn't have their example to follow. Eventually, with the light running out, it opted for a clearer path to the end of the boom.
Oh, that won't do! The end of the boom is definitely NOT an approved perching area. With the wind in its current direction, any droppings would end up all over our solar panels, the cockpit, and the parts of the deck that Maryanne and I use the most. I reached up and gave its feet a little poke in the hopes of encouraging it to give an approach to the pulpit another try.
Since boobies desperately want to stay aboard for the night, they get braver and braver as the light fades, along with their chances of making a successful landing. Birds that will startle and fly off when they see Maryanne and I moving about way back in the cockpit during the day will let us walk right up and touch them at night. The bird whose feet I poked wasn't about to take off into the darkness by then. Instead, it just let me tunneled my fingers under its feet and pick it up.
As I staggered my way forward with one less hand for steadying myself against Begonia's motion, the bird looked up at me with what appeared to be 60% worry and 40% curiosity. Once we got close to the bow and it figured out what I was doing, it happily grabbed a lifeline and started a shaky, sideways walk to join the other two on the pulpit. Then there was the usual routine of bickering, tail wagging, and then extensive preening, before they all tucked their heads under their wings for the night.
In the morning, the birds woke just as it was getting light enough to see them from the cockpit. There then commenced about an hour of preening, followed by a few test-flaps to get the blood flowing. About half an hour before sunrise, the first bird took off and did a little sixty-second warmup flight. It did a lap of Begonia, missed the rail the first time, did another lap and then touched down between the other two, much to their displeasure. This encouraged bird number two to do its warm-up lap.
After watching the first two birds with great attention, the third bird – the one I had picked up and transferred the night before – learned how they did their approaches. The trick seemed to be to circle the boat counter-clockwise, come in just above the water at a forty-five-degree angle off the starboard bow, then pull up to pass just above the beam and just forward of the jib. Then all that is needed is a slight right turn to grab the pulpit just ahead. Bird Number Three landed on the fifth attempt the first time, rested for a bit and then went again, making it after only two attempts the second try. All three birds preened for a bit more, and then finally left in earnest for a day of fishing.
Boobies are fast, agile fliers. Watching them circle Begonia and chase the flying fish flushed out of the water by our approach is like watching F-16s at an airshow. They will come in low and fast, do eighty-degree bank turns one way, then snap to the opposite as they chase the nimble fish. Sometimes they will spot a fish just behind them, pull straight up to kill their speed, spin around and dive vertically into the water. About a third of the time, when they pop back up to the surface, their beaks are clamped down on a wriggling, silver-blue fish.
As the day wore on, the three birds ventured further and further away until I occasionally thought I might be able to see one way out near the horizon. With the abnormally strong trade winds, we were going fast and I wondered how far downwind the birds would be willing to get from their islands.
Maryanne and I ate dinner together, the sun went down, and there were no birds in sight. We were now just over five hundred miles from land. I went below to brush my teeth before my night off-watch. When I returned, Maryanne had a grin on her face. She motioned toward the pulpit. In the fading light, I could make out three dark, booby-sized shapes. I couldn't tell if they were the same three birds, but the fact that there were three of them was a bit of a coincidence.
In the morning, at the end of my night watch, I went forward in the pre-dawn twilight to have a look. It sure looked like the same three birds from the night before. The fact that none of them seemed particularly startled to see me was another clue.
A low pressure trough passed us, bringing gusty winds and occasional heavy rain. In the daytime, the birds flew around the storm cells, while we, being slower, had no choice but to batten down and get overrun. At night, Maryanne and I would sit our watches inside the dry cabin using remotes and repeater instrumentation, while the birds would cling to the pulpit and get drenched by the deluge. During flashes of lightning, I could see them lined up, with their heads under their wings, looking like they didn't notice, but how could you not notice being pelted with heavy rain?
After their third night aboard, I could recognize which bird was which. I decided it was time to assign them names. Our three red-footed boobies became: "Blanca", a white morph (I decided "Whitey" was probably a bit too racist), "Brownie", a brown morph, and "Tanner," a more juvenile brown morph with lighter feathers than Brownie. He got the name because, no matter which of the other birds he was sitting next to, he was always the tanner one.
This system was working fine until late that afternoon when Brownie arrived for the night. Then he arrived again. A second Brownie! Closer examination revealed the new bird to be an older adult with feet that were a much brighter red, along with a much bluer beak. This one, I called "Bluey".
Our bird visitors were our primary source of entertainment on the long passage
Despite getting almost two hundred miles farther from land every day, our four birds kept returning every night. We got to know them not only by their markings, but by their personalities. Brownie was the most athletic, aggressive flier and was almost always the first one off the boat when a fish was spotted. Blanca, although more subdued, seemed to be the best at actually catching fish, and then being the first one home for a nap. Tanner, as always, was somewhere in between. He tried so hard that on more than one occasion, I had to put the wheel hard over to keep Begonia from running over him when he was struggling with a fish he caught right in front of the boat. Bluey, despite the fact that he didn't seem to care much for the others when arguing over perches for the night, seemed to prefer team fishing, where one bird could herd the fish toward the others.
After a particularly rainy day, only Blanca and Tanner returned. I imagine the other two lost track of us as we sailed into the rain, and then couldn't find us again on the other side. In the morning, they left again, and then an hour later, Bluey arrived!
He'd been out all night, probably chasing our stern light. He landed on the prime spot, which was usually occupied by Blanca, but she wasn't there to shoo him off. He took about thirty seconds to get settled, and then spent the rest of the day sleeping. Even during brief periods between naps, if Begonia scared up a bunch of flying fish and sent them zinging by right under him, he would just tuck his head back under his wing and go back to sleep. When Tanner and Blanca returned, they even let him stay on the pulpit with them. After a while, though, the fidgeting of all three birds eventually pushed Bluey to the end, where he only had a good grip with one foot. The next big wave knocked him off and he fell to the little wedge of bow right at the point.
Initially, he struggled to fight his way back onto the rail, but quickly seemed to realize that spot was actually a much better deal. Instead of having to try to sleep while maintaining balance on a gyrating rail, he could lie down on his breast and wedge himself against the foot of the railing, which was so much more stable. For the rest of his stay, that was his spot. He would head there first, make a little show about how he was getting a raw deal down there, and then have a better night of sleep than the other two.
The big drawback of Bluey's spot was that it is closer to the water. One night during my watch, at about 2:30am, a particularly big wave hit. It doused the others, but knocked poor Bluey right off the boat. This isn't too big a deal because boobies float, plus they can swim. It's just a rude way to have to wake up. A dark shape emerged in the wake coming out from under the back of the bridgedeck and then furiously started flapping its way forward. He made several attempts to regain his little pointy corner, but kept being too high or too low, or he'd get the aim right, but he would come in too fast, bounce, and then momentum would carry him into the water again.
I couldn't take it. I went inside and switched on our deck light. It's ridiculously bright and turns night into daytime, forward of the mast. Twenty seconds later, Bluey emerged from the jib's shadow. He was just forward of the beam, climbing slightly. Then the big, red feet came down, with toes spread to act as speed brakes and, plop! He was back aboard. He gave himself a shake, and then wedged himself back up to the pulpit railing again. I was worried the light would disturb the other two birds, but their heads were under their wings and they didn't seem to notice.
By now, the three birds were so accustomed to us and the boat that they spent most of their time aboard, day or night, only leaving once or twice a day for half an hour of fishing within a few hundred meters of us. Maryanne or I could now walk right up to them and they would now ignore us if either of us was fiddling with something nearby when they wanted to land.
By now, we were entering the smallest of the three areas in the world, all in the eastern Pacific, where it is possible to be more than a thousand nautical miles from the nearest land. We have been in all three before. This was our second time in this particular one. Looking out at the sea, there was nothing to indicate how far out we were. It looked like any other place in the ocean away from the sight of land, where the water is deep enough for the waves and currents to be unaffected by shallows. Only the path taken through the sky by the sun, moon, planets, and stars revealed that we were somewhere just south of the equator, but otherwise, it was just a whole lot of water being heaped up into waves of a certain size by winds of a certain strength. It was only us, knowing where we were, that we had taken a week and a half of fast sailing to get here, and that we were still going away from land, that gave it its distinction.
By this point, the birds, if they considered the Galápagos to be their breeding/nesting grounds, would have had to fly through two or three times as much air to return, than if they went the other way toward the Marquesas. Perhaps they will be at sea for a few more weeks or months, so nudging fifteen or twenty miles a day in that direction will be easy enough for them. Every day, we expected them to finally call it quits with Begonia, and every day, they would fish nearby and then return to spend another night on their usual perches.
Within a day, we passed the halfway point of our passage, and then our farthest point from land. At 1,145.5 nautical miles, we were halfway between Clipperton and Ducie islands. Both are uninhabited. The nearest inhabited island was Pitcairn, another 185 miles farther still. As Maryanne said, "This is no place to break down."
Just before the former, Blanca woke up in a mood. After the birds had their usual morning stretch and warm-up flights, she suddenly seemed to get really territorial, not just about ‘her' perch, but the whole boat. Every time one of the other birds returned to their own spot, she would make a point of going over there to push them off. Eventually, I had to go give her a stern talking to, reminding her that it was actually my boat, so that Bluey and Tanner could take their late morning nap in peace.
The birds left for their pre-dusk feed. Afterwards, only Bluey and Tanner returned for the night.
The next morning, it was Bluey's turn to be irritable. As soon as he was awake and considered himself sufficiently ready to start flying, he made a point of flying over to Tanner, who was still in the early stretching and yawning phase, and booting him off. Every time Tanner would try to return, Bluey would chase him down and harass him so that he couldn't land. Only when the fishing improved and Bluey got distracted with trying to feed himself was Tanner able to sneak back and get some rest.
With a few fish in him, Bluey returned slightly less irritated. Tanner was allowed to keep napping while he had one himself.
Just a few miles before reaching our point farthest from land, a cloud of what looked like smog appeared on the horizon ahead. Perhaps there was a fishing fleet around? As we drew closer, the cloud revealed itself to be a huge, undulating flock of birds. While they were mostly circling, they also seemed to be heading generally east. From their forms and flying style, they looked to be either shearwaters or boobies. There must have been hundreds of them. What were they all doing way out here?
Once Bluey and Tanner spotted them, they were gone, making a beeline for the flock. They were gone for a long time – several hours instead of the thirty-minute sorties they had lately been doing.
Just when I was thinking they must have joined the flock, two shadows passed over the boat, Once I no longer had to squint into the sun, I could see that they were back.
They napped until it was time for their usual last flight of the day. When they left, they started circling Begonia in their usual way, taking advantage of the flying fish startled by our approach. As time passed, they gradually wandered further and further from the boat until they were silhouettes on the horizon. Just as I was thinking they might have gone, they both surprised me by returning.
Bluey circled us a few times, but didn't land. Tanner alighted on his usual spot, stayed for a few seconds, and then circled around and did it again. The second time, I swear I could see the conflict in his feathery little head as he wrestled with the idea of another comfortable night aboard his new home at the cost of a whole day of flying to make up the lost distance. Finally, he spread his wings to feel the air, did a couple flaps, and then took off with what seemed like less urgency than his usual. He circled Begonia once to get above mast height, and then headed upwind for the horizon astern. Bluey was already halfway there. That was the last time we saw them. Tanner had spent eleven nights in a row aboard and gone almost two-thirds of the distance between the Galápagos and the Marquesas in the process.
It now seemed so dull aboard. We hadn't seen any ships or planes since we had left, and now with the departure of the last two birds we would see for a while, the sea seemed very empty indeed.
The trade winds kept blowing just a little too hard to make the sailing enjoyable. If either of us started to get too comfortable, the crash of something falling in the cabin or a dousing wave breaking over the gunwales would bring us out of our reverie. The forecasts were saying it might calm down a little in a week or so. We were both really looking forward to that.
After five days of being more than a thousand miles from land, we finally crossed the line again. This time, our closest land was the island of Fatu Hiva, in the Marquesas, ahead and slightly to our port side. To starboard, an intermittent AIS target would occasionally appear. It was going about the same speed and slowly converging. Maryanne made contact by radio and met Mike, a British seventy-eight-year-old singlehander on his way directly between Panamá and the Marquesas' second biggest island of Hiva Oa.
We were within radio range of each other for almost three days. After that, we would exchange email updates every two or three days. Mike had newer technology aboard than we do, so he always knew where we were long after we had lost his signal. He stayed close, but he explained he didn't want to be too close, because keeping a constant eye on us would cost him some sleep.
A few days later, when the trade winds FINALLY returned to a more normal range, Mike was south of us and slowly diverging. We switched to our spinnaker, which boosted our speed by thirty percent, and we left Mike behind for good.
The next morning, the wind picked back up just enough for us to bring the spinnaker back down. Later, when conditions were back down within its range, I re-hoisted it. As I hoisted the sock covering the furled sail to let it fill, something snagged and ripped a long gash in one of the panels. After switching back to the jib and watching it pull us more slowly than I was getting accustomed, I decided to dig out our old, backup spinnaker.
When I hoisted that, the same thing happened, only worse. That spinnaker's sock shredded the sail as it retracted. Well, that's a bummer!
After a slow night watch being pulled by the jib and rolling the problem over in my head, I decided to have another look at our primary spinnaker. The problem with the sock turned out to be that one of the lines at the mouth had come undone. This allowed it to twist into a position where it was able to pinch the spinnaker fabric on its way up. I fixed that, and then had a look at the spinnaker itself. The gash was long, but discontinuous, and confined to only one panel (think Titanic). We have plenty of ripstop repair tape and Maryanne was convinced we could repair it. We rushed through our breakfast and spent the rest of the allotted time patching the sail. We didn't have enough of the matching color, so the sail looks like it has a giant Band-Aid holding it together. We got it hoisted before I went off watch and it stayed up continuously for the next five days, only needing slight adjustments to the sheet every now and then.
Spinnaker damage fixed (with at least 3 rolls of spinnaker repair tape)!
Due to the strong winds at the beginning and the perfect spinnaker conditions later, the passage was going much more quickly than our initial estimate. Now, instead of twenty-eight to thirty days, it was looking like we would be able to do it in less than twenty-five. Now that conditions were getting more comfortable, I especially was suddenly reluctant to let it end. At the far end, which was approaching rapidly, there would be days of laundry and lugging heavy bags of provisions back to the boat. We should probably also get some fuel, and Begonia's bottom paint will surely need a scrub. Even sightseeing would invariably involve a lot of climbing steep hills in the tropical heat. No doubt, it would be lovely to be in paradise, but for the moment, I was content to be gently gliding along under our own personal sun and stars.
Just after dawn on Day 22, beneath a persistent layer of clouds off our starboard bow, a barely perceptible line in the haze outlined the slightly darker area of the island of Ua Huka. Land Ho!
Over the next few hours, the contrast of the outline increased and then the dark mass inside gradually filled with color and definition, revealing a steep, craggy island covered with green. Behind it and directly ahead, another shape started to emerge from the haze. This was our destination at Nuku Hiva, the second largest island, behind Tahiti, in French Polynesia.
Nuku Hiva's main harbor of Taiohae lies at the end of a long tongue of water protected by two sentinel islands on each side. As we were approaching at a slight angle to the centerline, there were no signs of human habitation that we could see on either Ua Huka or Nuku Hiva. There were also no other boats in sight, even small, local ones. Even our AIS display was completely blank of any traffic over the horizon. It was eerie. We were sailing into the biggest harbor within a thousand miles, in the middle of the day, and we seemed to be the only ones around.
As we rounded the eastern sentinel island of Matauapuna, civilization suddenly came into view. The bay of Taiohae is at the center of a large crater. The town hugs the water's edge at the base of a bowl that increases in steepness to the nearly vertical and impassable summit of the rim. The lowest edge of the crater rim sits below sea level and makes up the harbor entrance. Inside, there were about forty boats that were either anchored or on moorings. Three quarters of them were cruising sailboats, the rest were local tour, or fishing boats. Since the middle of the harbor is deep and since we prefer to get around in the dinghy by rowing, we weaved through the fleet and anchored as close to shore as we dared. We had just enough swinging room between the boats ahead and the rocks behind. We were close enough to shore to hear the boom boxes of the people at the beach.
We were too late in the day for clearing in, so we spent one last night aboard before going ashore. It was nice for us to both sleep through the night until being awakened by the morning sun. We took the dinghy out of lifeboat mode, rowed ashore and made the two-block walk up the hill to the gendarmerie. Ten minutes later, the officer who greeted us took our passports into the back room. Then came the sound of Stamp, Stamp, Stamp, Stamp! He returned and said, "Bienvenue á La Marquises." We're in!
Approaching our anchorage in the Marquesas (French Polynesia)
Anchorage location in Nuka Hiva >> On google maps
