July 12, 2010

Good bye Marquesas

Yesterday at about 3pm we waved good bye to the Marquesas. The last couple of days have been exactly like my dreams....sand castles, crystal clear water, body surfing, snorkelling, sea shell hunting, bbques.....basically laziness in the true sense of the word ;-). Unfortunately, given our timelines for reaching New Zealand it is time to move on. Our next stop is the Tuomotos!

As we left our beautiful bay and turned back around into wind to put up our newly installed old wrinkled main sail Murphy's Law was busy at work again. That reminds me.....I remember mentioning Murphy's Law to our friendly taxi driver Roger in Panama. He told me that according to Roger's Law everything goes right. I am going to start counting on Roger's law! Regardless our main sail was all jammed up in the furling gear. We tried everything we could to get it out but it became apparent that Graham was going to have to climb up the mast and go head to head with it. Luckily everything went off without a hitch and actually not that much stress. Really shocking. We have come along way baby!

We got Artemo pointed in the right direction and as if on cue....Roger's Law :-) kicked in! A huge herd of dolphins surrounded us and stayed with us for the next hour to sheppard us on our way from Marquesas. It was so beautiful. Often times when we see dolphins they move in and then move off quickly. It was so cool, to have so many around us just swimming with Artemo as if she was one of them. The kids hung their feet as far over the side as they could and almost (so close) touched them. The dolphins did this thing we hadn't see before. They jumped out of the water straight up and propelled themselves forward using their tail. This was AWESOME! Alex said, "I can't believe how lucky we are!". We are lucky. I am grateful!

After the dolphin show Graham went below and made us a fantastic meal of burger's and potatoes. I only mention them because we were all so in love with them. OMG these burger's were good. He put them on our last French baguette and we even had fresh tomatoes and onions. Ok, can you tell we are back out at sea again? All I can think about is food!!

This passage will be strange with the kids done their home schooling. I am thinking I will have Amelia fill out our log book using old position reports. We are terrible sailors and always forget to log our trips in our official book! Alex is going to be taking more watches and of course fishing! We hope to arrive in about 3 days from now. The total trip is about 570 nm.

Good bye Marquesas

2 comments:

  1. Three days will seem like nothing to you sailors. How long is the voyage to New Zealand? The dolphins sound as if they really put on a good show for you. They must have sensed you were enjoying it. Glad to hear you enjoyed the Marquesas with the bbques and sunny beach and happy hour etc.. sounds like paradise. Hopefully this next three days will go smoothly. Thinking of you all...

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  2. Sounds wonderful, you are all so lucky. I will plan to use Roger's law from now on sounds much friendlier than Murphy's Take care and have a fun sail.

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