The ARGONAUT August 18, 2014 The Passage from Bora Bora to Samoa

By on August 16, 2014 in Odyssey

CAPTAIN’S LOG      At Sea – Bora Bora to Samoa

August 5:   Fixing Argo    –     Bora Bora        –     Tuesday  

We began the day by stopping by the Gendarmerie to check out of French Polynesia and obtain our Zarpe or clearance form.  The Gendarmes were very courteous and within a few minutes we had filled out their forms and were on our way.  We needed the Zarpe to enter the next port, Apia, Samoa.  We picked up Stu Parker (the mechanic from the hydraulics company) on the ferry dock at 0900.  Stu was an affable Kiwi (is that politically correct, or should it be New Zealander?) and after the ten minute cruise in our tender across the harbor, he set to work on the stabilizer.  Fixing the problem proved more difficult than expected as the bearing on the actuator collar had seized up, which was probably the reason for the actuator seal failure.  After applying a crowbar, hammer, bearing puller, and a lot of elbow grease he got the actuator assembly apart.  Stu suspected that the cause of the failure was probably the lack of grease on the bearing, which should have been applied when it was manufactured.  Altogether it took about two hours, after which he turned his attention to repairing the seals on the manifold up forward.  Meanwhile, Rebecca and I walked the mile or so to Panda d’Or, a Chinese restaurant with take-out like nowhere else we have ever seen.

From the street Panda d’Or looks like a conventional Chinese restaurant, but around the side in the alley is an industrial roll-up door that, when opened, reveals a stainless steel counter and a hive of activity inside.   People were in motion everywhere.  Lying about on the alley pavement cooling themselves were a few dogs, a type of Pit-bull common to all the islands.  We found them a little intimidating.  At the counter were perhaps a half dozen people standing around waiting for their food orders, all dressed in shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts.  In their hands were large bowels used to bring home the stir-fry for their family’s lunch.  We stepped forward to place our order with the frantically busy owner who was fully engaged in taking orders, collecting money, and simultaneously delivering meals to the waiting and hungry customers.  He kindly handed us an English language menu from under the counter. We quickly gave him our order and he turned to the refrigerator with glass doors aside of him, selected our portion of fish, chicken or tofu from within, put each in a small stainless steel bowl and slid them across a work table behind him to a waiting chef.  So far, so good.  The surprise is the wok and chef.  I have never seen anything like it; the chef flipped a lever under the stove type apparatus that ignited a large blow torch that blasted forth from a metal collar designed to perfectly fit the wok.  It sounded like a rocket engine at launch.  It produced a huge blue/white flame and a tremendous amount of heat. With his large spoon, the chef flicked a few ounces of several magic Chinese gastronomic solutions into the wok, then at the right moment he dumped our waiting bowls into the bubbling cauldron and within seconds he had made our meal.  At the same time a couple of other chefs were working at the row of woks; then-suddenly, somewhere along the line, a flame erupted from a wok and – voila!  Another meal was ready.

We walked back to the boat with our treasures, passing little bungalows, some well-kept, others lazily shabby, and many with little backyard shrines atop the tombs of ancestors buried – perhaps recently, or maybe long ago.  Cars whizzed by on the narrow road that ran along the lagoon.  Unfortunately you cannot see the water for all the buildings that are crammed along the shoreline.  When we finally got back on the boat we laid out the nice lunch we had brought. When we finished, Stu wrapped up the repairs and inspected the entire system.   By then the time had come for him to return to the ferry dock and catch his plane back to Papeete and later Auckland.  That evening we invited Garrick Yrondi (the artist) to farewell dinner.  He is a lovely man and we both thoroughly enjoyed his company.  Rebecca made a wonderful meal and I grilled filet mignons. Garrick brought a fantastic bottle of Bordeaux.  It was a productive day and a memorable evening.

August 6:   Departing Bora Bora – Day 1 – Wednesday  

A front had moved in and it was raining cats and dogs.  Untying from the Mai Kai dock was quite an ordeal.  ARGO was tied to the dock at the stern with three lines.  There were no lines to the dock on the port side, as we were moored at the end of the dock.  The bow was initially held in place by the anchor, which was set three hundred feet off the port bow in 65 ft. of water.  The anchor and chain is not enough to keep her stationary, so bow and beam lines were set that were attached to concrete moorings placed on the harbor’s floor.  Teiva, the very helpful and energetic marina owner, scurried about in his tender/mini-tug to hand off lines and push Argo to the desired location for final tie-up.  (We didn’t need his help as a tug because we have thrusters).  Altogether we had nine lines and an anchor chain to hold us in place.  Undoing all this was quit a job, given that there was a boat tied next to us on the starboard side, it was raining heavily, and the wind was pushing us to starboard.  Once free of the lines, we needed to recover our chain and anchor; this took about ten minutes.  Meanwhile, other boats at anchor were close enough to swing into us, so Teiva pushed them about in his mini-tug until we could get free.  We then proceeded a couple of miles to the fuel dock.

Fueling the boat in the driving rain was miserable.  Tyler had caught my cold, however, he wouldn’t hear of me taking over for him on the deck.  Wet and miserable though we were, we accomplished refueling and left Bora Bora at 16:00 after taking on 5,700 liters of diesel fuel in preparation for our passage to Samoa.  Fuel prices were fairly reasonable at $4.43/gal, so we decided to use our bladder and take on an extra 500 gallons.  Our trip to Samoa was 1,200 miles, and with the fuel taken on here in Bora Bora, we should have enough to get us to New Zealand.   The weather forecast called for pleasant conditions, although the sea state in this area over the last two weeks had been in the 11-12 ft. range with winds up to 50 knots in places.  We learned of a sailboat at Surarrow Island that dragged its anchor during the high winds, went onto the reef and sank during that storm.  As we left, it was pouring rain as only it can in the tropics.  One of the young waitresses at Mai Kai Restaurant said that if you leave the island in the rain, it means Bora Bora is sad.  What a poetic thought to end our visit here.

August 7:   At Sea- Day 2 – Thursday  

It is a pleasant day, light winds, a fair sky, and low seas in the range of six feet on the port quarter.  We always feel a little sea sick on the first day out, followed by a day or two of fatigue.  By the third day we are usually into the routine of watch standing and feeling normal again.

ARGO is making about 7.5 knots, which adds up to 185 miles or so a day.   On this trip she is burning a little less than a gallon per mile.   There is no consistent ocean current to help move us along, so it will take a little more effort than on our last long passage.  No observed no other ships or sea life.

What do we do all day when we are at sea?  We stand watch, which means watching the Argo’s mechanical operations by visiting the engine room every hour, then returning to the pilot house and watching the radar and other instruments and filling out the ship’s log.  Sometimes I work on the computer writing the blog or editing pictures, reading or watching videos.  Sometimes I plan our next cruise or study charts and timetables to plan future passages.  Rebecca likes to bake, or prepare meals.  She does laundry about every other day, and reads or does CE for her professional certification.  Sometimes we take a nap, or exercise if it isn’t too hot.  We like to watch extended series like The Tudors, Breaking Bad or Dexter.  Somehow the time flies!

August 8:   At Sea – Day 3 – Friday  

The sea state is low with loping swells in the six foot range, very light winds, and a clear sky.  Overnight squalls formed in line aft of Argo and slowly spread over us.   The direction of the swells is a little confused, caused perhaps by the large fronts both north and south of us.  In any case it is a pleasant cruise.  We haven’t seen any sea life – no whales or dolphins.  Maybe the noise of our engine scares them away, but we saw plenty of whales up close when we traveled on Odyssey.  A few albatross are flying about, but not many.  There are no flying fish or squid on deck as in past passages, and no ships or boats either.  It seems to be a lonely ocean!

August 9:   At sea – Day 4 – Saturday  

Not much has changed from yesterday except that seas may have come down a little.  It is clear and beautiful.

We emptied the bladder tank into our main engine room tanks, which seems to have improved our posture on the sea and the speed we are able to make.  Since taking that 3,500 pounds of weight off the stern, we have been making over 8 knots at 6.8 gallons per hour.  The night sky this evening is nearly like daylight, with a full moon pouring its beautiful silvery beams on the black ocean. 

Although this weather is perfect for a motor yacht, it won’t be welcomed by our friends with sailboats who headed out for Samoa or Tonga this week from Bora Bora; the wind is so light they will have to motor, which makes them less stable than if they were under sail.  When full, the sails hold them to the waves, which keeps them from bouncing around, although they would be hove to an angle.  In this weather they will have to motor so they will be bouncing around in the swells and traveling at a much lower speed then they are accustomed.  We hope to see quite a few of our sailor friends in Samoa.

I think we will put out the fishing gear tomorrow and see what Poseidon has for us!

August 10:   At Sea – Day 5 – Sunday  

Another pleasant day at sea, a repeat of yesterday’s beautiful weather.  It is 940 with humidity to match.  We made 185 miles yesterday.  We had radar targets of two Chinese trawlers (I suspect) at 16 miles.  I wouldn’t have noticed them except that they broke radio silence on VHF, which is unusual for them.  They don’t use AIS, so it is unclear exactly who they are.   From what a Polynesian told me, the Chinese bought the fishing rights to many island countries such as Tonga.  The agreement, so I was told, precludes locals from fishing.  The Chinese send in their fishing fleet and strip the waters over time.  They build processing plants on the islands and if the people want to buy fish, they must do so from the Chinese.  The locals aren’t used to working as hard as the Chinese expect, so Chinese workers are brought in from the mainland to work the plants.  The locals then become unemployed, except for young women who earn money providing companionship to the Chinese workers.  Not a pretty story if it is true. 

We set our clocks back one hour, so we are now -11 hours from GMT or – 7 hours from Eastern Time.  Samoa is -12 hours.

August 12:   At Sea– Day 6 – Tuesday  

Yesterday we made 205 miles.  Today is another beautiful day, just like yesterday and all of the days of this passage so far.   As required we emailed via our Iridium phone a notification to the authorities in Samoa of our pending arrival. 

Although we are not yet at the International Dateline (Longitude 1800), Samoa’s calendar and clocks are set to correspond to New Zealand plus one hour.  We decided to advance our calendars today (so we skipped August 11), which is why it isn’t shown above.

We hooked a beautiful Wahoo late this afternoon.  It fought hard for about twenty minutes.  I brought it up to the boat toward Tyler, who was standing on the swim platform ready to land him.  Suddenly the great fish leaped up in the air toward Tyler.  I was very concerned for Tyler’s safety considering those razor sharp teeth.  The fish then settled back in the water and moved toward the port rub-rail, ready to be ushered aboard.  Sliding in the water next to Argo, we could see what a gorgeous creature he was; about 5 feet long, a beautiful brownish tiger stripped fish, magnificent to see in action in the water.   Suddenly a lurch, the lure flew about 10 ft. up into the air toward Tyler, and he was gone.  Oh well.  He was too beautiful for us anyway, but he was the biggest Wahoo I almost caught!

August 13:   At Sea/ Arriving Apia, Samoa – Day 7 – Wednesday  

Another perfect cruising day.  The sea came up a little overnight and is now in the 7-8 ft. range on our beam, but it is confused and mixed with a long moment, so it is comfortable despite its size.  Argo is running perfectly.  We run the generator almost 24/7 so that we can keep the temperature and humidity comfortable onboard.  The rugged peaks of American Samoa can be seen off to our port about 25 miles away.  We’re skipping it because of its ridiculously high immigration fee on motor vessels.  Samoa is another 85 miles further west and we should be anchored in Apia Harbor about 21:00 this evening.  Neptune gave up one of his own this afternoon, a nice Mahi Mahi. 

We anchored in Apia Harbor at 21:00, safe and sound after a long voyage.  We will be here about five days, then move on to Vava’U, Tonga.

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Hippies, Cowboys and Bikers, The American Trilogy

By on August 16, 2014 in Furthur


This summer has opened the door to America and its people, wonderful people. From coast to coast i traveled in the company of people from three sub cultures, lived in their worlds and been to their parties, oh what parties!

My hippy roots, long smothered by adulthood and other adventures came out in tie died glory. I went to the hippy Garden of Eden, the source, the primeval pool from which it sprang, the bus. No where could one find the real deal closer than on Ken Kesey’s Furthur, and the followers of the Grateful Dead, all which migrated to the Gathering of the Vibes. i was on the pilgrimage to Hippy Mecca riding on Ganesh, the sacred elephant God of the Hindus.

There i found the ones who had salvaged and cultivated the dreams of the 60’s. Few of us there had been around in that challenging era and those of us who had were treated as respected elders. I found community and family, joy and sharing, love of art and expression and profound love. I found a dedication to the lifestyle, the freedom and of course “the music” as the music of the Grateful Dead is called.

i found the lost young entrepreneur i had feared extinct. Hard working, industrial and clever travelers peddling their wares from festival to festival. i found children, oh so many, who loved clowns, ferries and my balloon animals and the loving people who cared for them like they held the future in their hands. I found music, so much good music not heard on MTV or commercial outlets.

In my trek across the West, i found the Old West, and the cultural icon that keeps it alive, the Cowboy. Again i found a covet of all old, and a love of the young. At the center point of all things Cowboy, we went to the Cody Wyoming Rodeo, my first one in decades. Not much had changed, the ritual and the traditions and the love of country thrives on today. The traditions are cradled in the hands of the young, the twelve year old girl calf roper, the junior bull riders and the very young, covered in arena mud chasing calves. Boots hats and bandanas proudly worn by every one of them.

Nothing says America like watching the chapped cowboy gallop around the arena with Old Glory shining in the setting sun over the Rocky Mountains. Chills ran up my spine and a tear in my eye as the Star Spangled Banner was sung by the entire crowd led by the western wobbling of a cowgirl vocalist. All the politics, current events and troubles faded away, i had no doubt where i was, i was in America.

the third defining American group i shared a path with is the biker, the lover of all things motorcycle. Again the roots stem from long ago, a time of change in America, post WWII. The returning veterans found a rigid world in the 50’s and those who did not fit really did not fit. Some banged bongos and wrote poetry some rode motorcycles. Like the rock festivals of yore, the motorcycle rallies were the breading ground of this culture. Sturgis is the motorcycle Mecca celebrating seventy four years this year. As a biker i had always heard the call but never made it until this year. It completed by American Saga.

Donning black leather and roaring down the road on a chrome wonder is the call of the wild to so many. Accountants, doctors and even yacht brokers shed their earthly drab world and ride. the biker cult has its rules, its camaraderie and its shared cultural history like the other two groups. There is a brotherhood of bikers, we all wave as we pass, stop to help downed bikers, honor those who have served our nation and love to ride in large packs. there is simply nothing like roaring down the road in a large group of bikes.

Often conflicting in the past, these groups have common DNA, the love of freedom, individualism and family. All have an inherent reverence for the past, living history. This brings an all too often forgotten respect for elders i found refreshing. The twenty something kid i told of seeing the Dead when Pig Pen (1971) was alive looked at me like i had attended the Last Supper.

In these seemingly patriarchal worlds a unique and secure even sacred place for women is found, a place steeped in history and brought to today. Women are the fastest growing motorcycle group in the country. Cowgirls flourish in a not so soft world and the hippy world has always been matriarchal. In these worlds women know their ground and stand it, always with un relenting respect.  

So the American dream continues, freedom, family and sharing a good times along with bad. The Hippies, Bikers and Cowboys of the USA live life on their terms; maybe escaping reality but i think just cheating it a bit. Each will go home, go to work, pay taxes and survive in the modern world but each will have a window others do not get to look out, a window to a better world.

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[KensBlog 2014-Entry-8] Everyone knows it’s Windy

By on August 16, 2014 in Sans Souci
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Welcome to Ken’s Blog!

Greetings!

Here’s an overview of the locations covered in this blog entry:

This blog entry covers our journey from Ponza to Sardinia (which is in Italy), our passage across the Bonifacio Strait, and our time in southern Corsica (which is in France!)

NOTE: CLICK THE PICTURE TO GET A CLOSE-UP VIEW

We had a very long ride to Sardinia.

To reach Sardinia from the tiny island of Ponza requires making a long, one hundred and sixty nautical-mile, twenty-hour passage. Although we have made many overnight passages we do all we can to avoid them. There are cruisers who look forward to these passages but that’s not us. With only the two of us on board we have to take shifts at the helm, and there isn’t enough time for our bodies to adjust to any kind of sleep schedule. Most people who do long passages will tell you that the first day on a long passage is usually the toughest.

Fortunately, we had a perfect forecast for an absolutely calm ride.

For the first sixteen hours of our passage we had perfectly calm seas. About four hours out from Sardinia, as it was just getting daylight, the wind started climbing. Soon it was 35 knots, directly in our face. The wind was coming from the west (the same direction we were going). Luckily though, we were close to Sardinia and the waves didn’t have time to build. We saw only three to four foot chop. The thought foremost on our minds was how lucky we were that the wind hadn’t come sooner. Had we been farther offshore, we’d have been blasted in the dark by much taller waves.

During the last couple of hours we passed a catamaran that was really getting trashed by the wind and waves. I tried to shoot a video of the catamaran, but wasn’t thinking clearly at the time (sleep deprivation) and couldn’t get the stupid camera to focus. Here’s my 15 second attempt. It’s a terrible video, but somewhat shows the seas:

Click here to see a short video showing the seas as we approached Sardinia

Our first hint that Sardinia would be different came as we were approaching the anchorage. I looked out the window with the binoculars and couldn’t believe what I saw. It was literally a megayacht parking lot! I had never seen so many megayachts in one place.

Steven, on Seabird, the Nordhavn 62 that we are traveling with, made the comment as we were approaching that we would be like “The Beverly Hillbillies” here. We suddenly felt very small…

Upon arrival at 8:30 in the morning, we dropped anchor and then everyone on both boats went to sleep. Normally we drop the tenders and go exploring, but no one was in the mood for anything. Unfortunately, what had been a calm anchorage upon arrival was soon invaded by many boats generating wake and bouncing us around. We didn’t care, though; we dined onboard and did nothing for the rest of the day.

Marinella – Our first anchorage in Sardinia…

We anchored behind a huge megayacht named Exstasea. With 20/20 hindsight, we anchored closer than we should have. We use our radar to measure distances to other boats when approaching an anchorage. I set the radar such that each ring on the radar represents 150 feet of distance, and our goal is always to drop the anchor with no other boats within three rings (450 feet) of us. Because of Exstasea’s size, I allowed for five rings (750 feet.) This seemed plenty, but a couple of days later when the wind dropped and both boats were floating freely, I discovered we were MUCH too close. When the wind is high, boats point approximately the same direction, with their anchors hundreds of feet in front of them. When there is no wind, they drift randomly anywhere their anchor chain will let them. Ecstasea departed just as I was thinking I had to re-anchor.

 

We anchored behind this boat, named Ecstasea. I looked it up on the internet and it was 282 feet. It was carrying a bunch of Hollywood celebrities who I only sort of recognized (I’m not up on the latest pop culture.) What most impressed me was the jet engine at the back. Searching the boat on the internet I discovered that it has over 43,000 horsepower of engines and can run at over 30 knots. And…it was sold a few years ago for $200 million.

   

I said to Roberta that for all the cruising we have done this year, this was the first time I had felt like we were in a “real” anchorage. It seems like all we’ve done this year is either go into port or drop anchor in a place completely open to the sea. Finally! We were able to swim and have fun. These are the times that make the difficult days worthwhile.

Our anchorage was called Marinella, and we loved being there! The first day we just lounged around the boat until we built up the energy to drop the tender (which only took about ten minutes). Then we went exploring.

We hiked along the beach and found a great beachfront restaurant with a tender dock for dinner. The approach from the water was rocky, so we tied up the tender in a marina about a mile away, and hiked with the dogs to the restaurant. There were some buoys in the water indicating the tender-approach to the restaurant, but we didn’t understand what they were telling us. I phoned the restaurant to ask for tendering-in directions but the language challenges made it impossible for them to communicate. But we wanted an excuse for a beach-hike anyway.

Once at the restaurant the buoys were explained and later in the evening we went in for dinner along with Steven and Carol from Seabird. Halfway to the restaurant Steven said, “Darn. I left my shoes on the boat.” Oops. He had fancied up, but forgot to put shoes on. We said, “No problem. They won’t care.” And, the restaurant didn’t care at all. They also provided extra chairs for our dogs to sit on.


 

We had a fantastic dinner at the restaurant Oasi Beach Murana (the white building on the beach in this photo.)

Dinners are always late here. It was nearly 10pm when we left the restaurant and the crowd was just arriving.

A side story:

When we arrived at the dock for dinner, there was a couple from another boat (a 72′ something) who noted that we were American and asked if we owned the two Nordhavns in the bay. We confessed that they were ours, not sure where the conversation was going. He said he liked Nordhavns and had even read about our boats in Circumnavigator magazine. We talked about our journey to get here and all the places we’d been. He was duly amazed at how far we had come. He then asked, “So. Do these boats ever have problems?” It was funny in that both Steven and I said simultaneously, “These are great boats!” but, then a few seconds later we both backed down on that statement and said, “Well. They are boats. And, with boats something is always broken.” Clearly the guy preferred our first answer. He pushed and said, “So. They break a lot?” We were somewhat stumped. Nordhavns are reliable for boats. But on a boat, there is always something that needs fixed. It is part of boating. We take the boats places where they get slammed around in a harsh salt water environment. The good thing about Nordhavns is that they are the best possible boat for doing what we do. But…when challenged on a boat dock as to whether or not our boats are perfect and never break …both Steven and I were at a loss for how to respond. In 40,000+ miles (each) we’ve never had to be towed to the dock, and never had the boats floating dead in the water. But, perfect? Nah. It’s a boat, and boats will be boats.

Which was a fitting discussion, because later that evening, when I was least in the mood, something broke.

After dropping off Steven and Carol at Seabird, Roberta and I returned to Sans Souci. I went to check my email and realized that there was no power in the pilot house. The lights came on, but the monitors were all black, as were all of the electronics. No satellite internet, no satellite TV, no navigation computers, etc.

Argh! I thought about putting off investigation until the morning, but knew I wouldn’t sleep until I had solved the problem.

After a bit of investigating I realized that it was the UPS for the pilot house (Uninterruptible Power Supply.) It is hidden deep beneath the pilot house settee. I tore apart the settee to get at the unit. All power to the electronics passes through the UPS, which has a battery, so that if the pilot house loses power it can keep the power on for some period of time (approx. 20 minutes).The UPS unit, when I finally got to it, had an error message, “Battery needs replacement. Contact APC.” I unplugged and replugged the unit, and the power came on. Great! Roberta and I settled in to watch TV, when about 15 minutes later, the TV went off and power to the pilot house was cut again. Crap!

I called APC (makers of the unit) to ask if there was a bypass. I was hoping I could press a button and tell the unit to not worry about the lack of a battery. APC said, “That capability is not available on your unit.” I then went about hunting for a power strip, to plug everything into that had previously been plugged into the now useless UPS unit. I’m sure there is one on the boat, but, “Where?” After a fruitless search I went to work with wire cutters, removing wire-ties, to get access to the power cables that were plugged into the UPS unit, and luckily, I was able to find alternate places to plug everything into. The power came back on, and life was good again on Sans Souci.

We watched the rest of our program on TV, hit the hot tub, and finally, at – 2 a.m. — hit the sack.

I’m not at all sure that I need the UPS unit. I need to think about it, but it seems to me that the inverters accomplish the same task. If we lose power then the inverters immediately put the boat onto the battery.

Anyway…it wasn’t a big deal, but…boating is like that. Once in a while stuff happens, and you just have to deal with it. But I’m happy it happened at anchor and not in the middle of a long dark passage.

Golfe De Pavero – Our anchorage at Porto Cervo

Our next destination would be Porto Cervo. An article in Forbes last year summarized Porto Cervo this way:

“… To moor your 50-metre-plus superyacht in this super luxe port it is going to set you back up to $3,100 a night in high season – and why not, seeing that back in 1959 Prince Karim Aga Khan carved out this village as a private retreat for his wealthy friends and family. Today, it is a little different from HRH the Aga Khan’s original dream. The “village” today is made up of high-end boutiques, and designer nightspots including the nearby infamous Billionaire Nightclub. The world’s largest superyachts are often seen gracing the surrounding seas too, including the 110-metre Dilbar, and Serene, the world’s ninth largest yacht.

It was in this very town a few years back that George Clooney was refused entry into one of the exclusive nightspots….”

I emailed the port to get pricing for moorage, with no response. I also tried phoning, but my calls went unanswered. My guess is that moorage is booked a year in advance, and that I wouldn’t have liked the price anyway.


 

What does a billion dollars look like? My guess is you are seeing it here in just these megayachts. And, these are only a tiny fraction of the megayachts at Porto Cervo.

Instead, we went to anchor in a bay just southeast of Porto Cervo called Pevero.

Anchoring was a little bizarre. We entered a huge bay (perhaps half a mile across.) As we were entering the bay I thought, “This is going to be great! There’s a ton of space to anchor.” But, as I was hunting for a place to drop anchor I was approached by two guys in a tender, who said that I needed to anchor next to shore, and started guiding me to a corner of the bay.

Roberta told me to ignore them. We’ve been in many bays where there are guys waving flags who try to direct you to some private dock of theirs (or private anchorage) and they charge you money. However, these guys had uniforms and felt legit, so I decided to give them a try. They guided me to an incredibly pretty, but shallow, place near a bunch of rocks.

Seabird was behind me and didn’t like where I was being led, so they headed off to the other side of the bay.

When I was next to the guys in the tender, they pointed at where I should drop my hook. It was 17 feet of very pretty water. About 200 feet to my port side was shallow water and rocks. It wasn’t a place I’d normally drop. They insisted and said it was the safest place from the Mistral.

Mistrals are high winds from the northwest that come up suddenly here, and can go from nothing to 50 knots in an hour. They had guided me to a safe place, and I was convinced they were honest. They didn’t seem to want money. Meanwhile Steven and Carol (Seabird) had headed to the other side of the bay, and they were getting swell and wind. He realized I was in a good spot, and backtracked to where I was.

The guys were indeed good guys! I was in a great spot, and Steven dropped anchor next to me. They are apparently associated with the mooring balls in the center of this bay, and push the little guys (like me) to the side so that the megayachts have plenty of room on the mooring balls.

Being so close to the rocks I put out only 150′ of chain.

When we dropped our anchor there was only one boat near us, but within an hour other, smaller, boats invaded.

Our anchorage at Golfo Di Pevero, near to Porto Cervo.

We tendered around the bay sightseeing. The water is so clear that the depth is deceiving. This picture shows seventeen feet of depth, yet it feels like you could easily stand on the bottom and have your head above water.

Here’s a fun size comparison. The megayacht pictured is named “Dilbar.” Sans Souci is on the right side of this picture. I’ve always been told that size doesn’t matter, but I’m not sure that is true at Porto Cervo

Our intention yesterday had been to have dinner in Porto Cervo, which is only a couple miles from where we are anchored, but we spent the whole day totally surrounded by smaller boats. We were in the middle of a packed parking lot! Several were sitting in positions where if the wind should shift we’d quickly run them over. Usually, when boats anchor too close we walk out carrying large fenders, and that gets their attention. In this case, there were so many that we just hoped the wind wouldn’t shift, or that if it did, they’d be quick to start their engines and move.

By dinner time we were tired and not in the mood to go out. Roberta cooked a great meal and we ate on our upper aft deck.

Then we watched a movie and afterward hung out in the hot tub late into the night watching the tenders come and go from the megayachts around us.

Actually…here’s a story I almost certainly shouldn’t tell, but will (even though it really isn’t that interesting)…

We were sitting in the hot tub at 7 one morning drinking our coffee and admiring the view. I pointed out to Roberta that I thought maybe a nearby fancy yacht was taking an attractive young lady out for a photo shoot. She was standing on the swim step, surrounded by guys, wearing a sparkly evening dress, with purse and high-heels. It’s not what one normally wears on a swim step at 7am. I assumed she was a model, and they wanted to catch the morning light for pictures. Minutes later she was joined by three other similarly (night-club) attired young ladies.

Aha! This was not a photo shoot. It was the crew taking “visitors” back to town in the early morning. Oh well .. not that interesting of a story. But, at 7am, how many stories are there?

Anyway…we soon departed for Porto Cervo in our tender. Finding a place to dock it was easy. We hiked around and explored “the village.” Clearly, it is a community designed to target the high-end yacht crowd. Every major luxury brand you can think of had a store in town.

But being “commoners” we merely shopped at the grocery store and bought some needed provisions, and then read some menus intending to head back into town for dinner.

As seems usual this summer, our plans were defeated by a southeast wind that suddenly kicked up. In fact, I think that we may have dragged our anchor. This was particularly surprising in that we were in fairly light (15-20kt) winds. It wasn’t much of an event, in that we caught it within minutes and simply re-anchored a few feet from where we had originally dropped the anchor. We have only dragged anchor three or four times in 40,000+ miles of cruising, so it is worth noting and analyzing.

Although nothing happened, had we gone into town for dinner, the scenario may have played out much differently, perhaps even disastrously.

I mentioned earlier that I didn’t like where we were anchored. We were in a tight, shallow location with a rocky wall only a couple hundred feet behind us, and rocks poking up from the water only a couple hundred feet to our west. It was an incredible, and beautiful, place to be — but there was no margin for error. And, as I said, normally we wouldn’t anchor in such a place as we normally like deeper water with lots of space around us.

Here’s what went wrong:

In this picture, we were anchored at position “A.”

When anchoring I always have Nobeltec (our chart-plotter software) place what we call a “snail-trail” onto the chart. This track shows where the boat has been, and is the red line in this picture. I also put down a yellow boundary circle, the radius of which is the amount of anchor rode (chain) I have put out. In this picture the yellow circle is not in its original location because I re-anchored.

The etching labeled “B” is the outer limit of what was my original circle. The smaller circle you see around point “A” is a fake circle, caused by light winds. When the winds are light enough the boats tends to circle around wherever the chain happens to be sitting.

Point “C” on this picture is the one that shows the anchor starting to drag towards shore. The etchings around point “C” were steadily working their way towards shore, and were outside the yellow circle.

When we dropped anchor, the wind projection was for a west or northwest wind, which would have blown us off-shore, thus I set my anchor by backing the boat from Point “A” towards point “B.”

When the wind turned around 180 degrees and was blowing towards shore, the anchor flipped over. The anchor was dug into the sand, but the 180-degree rotation caused it to pivot and come unstuck. Normally, this is not a problem, in that the real advantage of my anchor (a Rocna) is its ability to re-set itself quickly when the boat pulls back with the wind.

In this particular case, I had set the anchor on a patch of sand, surrounded by seaweed. When the anchor came unstuck, it found itself on seaweed where it could slide. My guess is that it would have found some sand, and dug itself back in again before we hit the rocks, but I didn’t want to test the theory.

Some thoughts on anchoring in general…

Sans Souci’s anchor chain (rode) is all chain, whereas smaller boats tend to use rope to form their rode.

There are pros and cons to using an all chain rode. Chain does not stretch, unlike rope. When the wind is such that there is a straight diagonal line between the boat and the anchor, you can have a problem. That said, it takes a huge amount of wind to have an exact straight line between the boat and the anchor. The reason for this is the weight of the chain itself. The chain is heavy, and most of the time when Sans Souci is at anchor the chain drops in a straight line to the bottom, then lies on the bottom from where the boat floats to wherever the anchor sits.

For example, let’s say that Sans Souci is sitting in 40 feet of water. The general rule of thumb with an all-chain rode is to put out five times as much chain as the water is deep; or two hundred feet. In calm conditions, the chain hangs straight down from the bow, leaving one hundred sixty feet of chain laying on the bottom, extending to the anchor. If there is wind, some amount of chain gets lifted, but not all of it. As the wind rises, more and more of the chain gets lifted. 99.9% of the time, there is some chain sitting on the bottom and there is no pull on the actual anchor. To the extent there is pull, the pull is exactly horizontal, which happens to be the best possible angle of setting an anchor for it to hold and not drag.

I’ve always wondered how much wind it takes to lift my chain off the bottom, and recently one of the readers of my blog pointed me to a webpage that had the mathematical formulas to compute the amount of wind it would take to completely raise my chain from the bottom at different levels of wind. Completely raising the chain from the bottom doesn’t automatically mean that the boat will drag anchor, but it is the first line of defense. If the full chain were stretched tight, then a sudden jerking motion caused by a wave would be transmitted all the way to the anchor, potentially pulling it, and potentially resulting in a very bad day.

Rather than bogging my blog down with a long mathematical formula, I constructed a spreadsheet, which can be downloaded from this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3tlp9t5itfo9fa/Wind%20force%20calcs.xlsx

This spreadsheet has the values for my boat. The key information to be plugged in are: length of boat, length of chain, weight of the chain, and the depth of the water.

This begs the question of, “Why not just use rope as the rode?” As I mentioned, the good thing about rope is that it stretches, acting as a shock absorber when waves hit. However, the bad thing is that it is light and lifts off the ground almost immediately. There is a compromise solution that many boaters who have all-chain rodes use, called a snubber. In addition to other benefits which are outside the scope of this blog entry to explain, the snubber (which is really just one or two pieces of rope) is stretched between two links of chain, forming a shock absorber, yielding the best of both worlds.

Anyway, I’m off-subject. My mistake here was anchoring in a place with no margin for error. I was on a small patch of sand, with no room for my anchor to catch and re-set if it came loose. The smart thing we did was to stay onboard when we noticed the wind had shifted direction and wasn’t behaving as forecast.

Lastly, below is a picture of Sans Souci floating at anchor. You’ll see that our flopper stoppers were out. This added a bit of “fun” to the equation. Bringing them in is a 15-minute process, and we were in a situation where we needed to hurry. All I could think of to do was to pull the line that goes to the fish (the dangling plates for the flopper stoppers), so that the fish would be lifted six feet into the air. Anyone watching would have thought we looked very funny. But, this took only a few seconds and allowed us to quickly re-anchor the boat.

Sans Souci at anchor near Porto Cervo

The area south of Porto Cervo is called “The Costa Smerelda.” Wikipedia has this to say about the homes in the area:

In a study released by the European luxury real estate brokerage Engel & Völkers, Romazzino Bay in Porto Cervo is the most expensive location in Europe. House prices reach up to 300,000 euros per square meter.

[1] In 2011 Costa Smeralda had the second, the 4th and the 6th most expensive hotels in the world, the Pitrizza, the Romazzino and the Cala di Volpe Hotel.

[2] In 2012 the Hotel Cala di Volpe, which is featured in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me is listed at number 7 on World’s 15 most expensive hotel suites complied by CNN Go in 2012. The presidential suite of the hotel is billed at US$32,736 per night.

This is Ken trying to look “macho” while walking a six-inch tall puppy with a pink leash and matching outfit.

As we were walking around the marina we noticed these three Maseratis. They were parked next to the Rolls Royce dealership, and near where the Bugatis were parked. Behind the dealership was a high-end wine store where we were able to buy some decent wine.

 
   

While we were tendering into Porto Cervo we saw this strange megayacht passing us by offshore. I sent the picture to a friend who “knows his megayachts” and he sent back these pictures showing this very unusual 135′ long boat (Ocean Pearl).

A Windy Anchorage As We Prepare To Depart Sardinia

After a couple of days of high wind at Porto Cervo the forecast was for a couple days of dead calm. We had been watching for a chance to cross the Strait of Bonifacio, which divides Sardinia from Corsica. It can be a nasty piece of water and we wanted the smoothest possible water for the crossing. We also wanted to position closer to the north end of Sardinia to have a shorter run across the strait.

We studied the charts and found a bay, called Porto Liscia, that seemed perfect. It looked well protected from the forecasted southerly wind and would be perfect for our jump across the strait. MAKE SURE YOU PLAY THE VIDEO BELOW TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED.

We anchored at Porto Liscia thinking we’d be well protected from the wind. However, what we didn’t realize was that Porto Liscia was the exact opposite of what we were seeking. Instead of having a nice calm anchorage we wound up in a place that was famous for its wind! This video shows what we found.

NOTE: Some email programs remove videos. If you do not see a video above, click the link below to see the video:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/103589460

Given all the wind we were nervous about our departure and made the decision to depart at daybreak, when the wind is usually the calmest. We woke at 5:30am to get the boat ready for departure (put the tenders on deck, put in the flopper stoppers, check the engine room, etc).

We were up at 5:30am for our trip across the Bonifacio Strait. It was the night of the “Super Moon.”

From Wikipedia: “A supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the lunar disk as seen from Earth.”

It’s probably a good thing that this is such a low-quality image, because I was standing on the deck to raise the tender, unshowered, unshaven, and worse of all un-coffee-d.

Despite our concern, the weather cooperated, and we had a perfectly calm ride across the strait. We arrived at a great anchorage (Sant Amanza). The “big city” on the southern end of Corsica is Bonifacio and we were almost walking distance away. I say almost, because Steven and Carol (from Seabird) decided to try walking and it didn’t turn out so well (more on that later.)

Sant Amanza, A Terrific Place To Anchor

We anchored in a large bay (Sant’Amanza) in the southeastern corner of Corsica. The bay offers perfect depths for anchoring, and most importantly protection from the winds, good holding AND multiple tender docks for getting to shore. We had been frustrated by our anchorage at Porto Liscia, in that we could see restaurants on shore, but with no tender dock we couldn’t get to them.

Roberta and I went ashore for lunch at a beach front restaurant, then took the tender exploring around the bay, swam from the back of the boat, let the dogs walk on the beach, and just had a great time.

         

The Sant Amanza anchorage on the southeastern corner of Corsica. A great place to anchor!

We had dinner with our friends from Seabird, the Argosys, at a place called “Maora Beach” which is the kind of restaurant that I have a particular fondness for (beach front, feet on the sand dining, tender dock, upscale but funky, water taxi, good food, massage, clothes-shop, chill music, etc).

At dinner the Argosys described their day, which was somewhat less fun:

We are only 3.5 miles out of Bonifacio, so they decided to walk. It turned out to be a long sweaty uphill walk on very hot, narrow roads, and turned out to be closer to 5 than 3.5 miles. Their plan was to see the city, do some grocery shopping and then taxi back. All went well and they enjoyed the city.

When it came time to taxi (via car) back to where they had parked their tender, loaded with bags of groceries, they had a hard time finding a taxi. They found one taxi driver, who refused to bring them to our anchorage. The driver didn’t speak english, and even though Steven pointed at a map on his phone, the driver just didn’t want to tangle with taking a couple of Americans to the boondocks. The driver left the taxi stand with other clients, and no new taxi appeared. Finally, Steven and Carol started the long 5-mile hike back, lugging their bags, hoping a taxi would pass by. It didn’t. Two hot sweaty miserable hours later they were back at the boat.

One of Steven’s projects in town had been to find a local internet sim card (a way of getting fast internet cheaply.) He picked up one for himself and for me. I helped him (with my struggling french) get it running, or at least I tried. The card (which cost around $20 USD) is supposed to give two days of “free” internet followed by offering you a chance to buy more days at some unknown cost. However, where we were anchored barely got a cellular signal. So, the card worked long enough to be activated, but then lost signal. Darn. So we shared my V-Sat satellite connection, which is good and gets the job done, but nothing beats fast 3g or 4g local cell service.

Bonifacio – Visiting The Port And Old Town

Roberta and I went the next day to visit Bonifacio, but given Steven and Carol’s experience with not finding a taxi, we set up a car and driver to take us there, who then waited to bring us back. It cost a lot more than walking – but — we’re here to have FUN and ten-mile walks in August heat just aren’t part of that equation.

The cliffs of Bonifacio (the southern tip of Corsica.) Bonifacio has the distinction of being the southern most point of Metropolitan France.

From the old city of Bonifacio we were able to look down at the twenty-mile strait that divides Corsica from Sardinia.

   

The port of Bonifacio. You can’t really tell it in this picture, but the port is exteremely popular with tourists, particularly the French. There are dozens of restaurants lining the port, along the right side of this picture.

     

From the port of Bonifacio you can see the citadel on the hill overlooking the port. Parts of the citadel date back to the 9th century. Today its streets are lined with restaurants and souvenir shops.

Here are a couple of 3d pictures from our visit to Bonifacio:

http://photosynth.net/view/f8258917-5142-40bd-a247-49a59ee8ddd7
In the 3d picture above from the marina, if you look around, you can see the citadel on the hill, which holds the old city.

http://photosynth.net/view/12e25b84-3c89-42bc-bd0a-20794dfae944

There was one major negative at Sant Amanza. Our impression was that we were seeing the weather as calm as it gets. The wind is funneled between the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. The weather reports were for dead-calm (the weather chart literally showed zeroes for the wind all around where we were anchored.) However, we saw 10+ knots all day. We even had wind surfers and kite sailers around us every day! The forecast were predicting the wind to be 25-30 knots at Sant Amanza within a couple days. Given that winds seemed to be higher than the predictions, we knew we should get moving.

Four Days In Hell (actually Porto Vecchio)

From Sant Amanza we moved twenty miles north to Porto Vecchio, a large sheltered bay.

We knew several days of strong winds were coming and our research indicated that Porto Vecchio was the best place to ride out high winds. Actually, I’ll take that back. The best place to ride out high winds is at home, by the fireplace, watching television. But, since that was not an option, we chose Porto Vecchio.

When we first arrived at Porto Vecchio all was calm, and we could immediately see that it was perfect for what we were seeking. We dropped anchor in breezy, but nice conditions.

The anchorage itself was nearly perfect. We had sheltered land all around, and the water wasn’t very deep, but was wide and big. We anchored in only fifteen feet of water. Shallow water lessens the amount of chain we need to put out in order to safely anchor. I knew wind was coming, and there were no boats anywhere around us, so I let out 175 feet of chain, giving me a ratio of well over ten to one. We were ready to ride out a hurricane!

All of our preparations were rewarded. The expected wind did come, and then some! Whereas the weather reports predicted a steady 20 knots of wind, we had day after day of 25 to 30 knot sustained winds, with occasional long stretches of 35 to 46 knot winds. The wind did calm on two of the three nights enough that we could sleep, but we had one night where the wind stayed high around the clock.

When the wind is over 25 knots, sleep on Sans Souci becomes difficult. The wind rattles everything on the outside of the boat making a howling sound. The chain, at the bow, makes clanking and clunking noises every few minutes at it shifts position with the wind. There are fairly simple techniques to reduce the sound of the chain, so that you don’t hear it inside the boat, but I come from the opposite philosophy. I like hearing the anchor chain and knowing what it is doing. Similarly, we have a wind monitor in the master stateroom, as well as a way to view our chart plotter. On particularly windy nights, we check these things periodically, and also go up to the pilothouse regularly just to take a look around. On some occasions we have stood watch, as if we were at sea, with Roberta and I taking turns monitoring the situation from the pilot house.

The strength of wind rises exponentionally with the speed of the wind. At 10 knots the wind is at most a mild annoyance. At 20 knots, the wind can be a problem in some circumstances but is generally acceptable. At 30 knots the wind starts to become dangerous. It is the speed where boats that aren’t well anchored start to come unglued. Tender rides become very difficult or impossible. And, at 40 knots, the forces are incredible.

We were solidly anchored, so I never worried about us breaking anchor (our anchor dragging.) The problem was that we were confined to the boat. We use our tender to reach shore, and were able to visit town a couple of mornings, but most of the time the wind was too high to leave the boat.

Even if the wind would allow our tender to be used, we didn’t want to be away from the boat for long. This may seem strange given that I’ve said that I wasn’t worried about our boat dragging anchor. The problem is OTHER BOATS. As the wind increased, the anchorage around us filled with boats. The good news is that most of the boats around us were larger boats with professional crew. It was different last year in Croatia, where most of the boats around us would be chartered sailboats. These chartered boats are usually run by people who have little boating experience, and haven’t the vaguest idea how to properly set an anchor. In Croatia, with even mild winds, these sailboats would drag anchor potentially running into us. Larger boats with professional crew have better equipment and know what they are doing.

And, that is mostly how it played out. We didn’t have to wait long for boats to start breaking loose, though. Within a few hours of our anchoring at Porto Vecchio the first boat, a 40′ sailing catamaran broke loose in 35 knots of wind and narrowly missed Seabird. Steven and Carol saw it coming and were standing on their bow with large fenders in hand, waiting for the impact.

 

Sans Souci has “flopper stoppers” (big butterfly-hinged aluminum plates) dangling in the water beside our boat. We call these plates, “fish.” The fish hang from giant horizontal poles on each side of our boat. Their goal is to reduce the side to side motion of the boat while at anchor.

Because in Porto Vecchio the wind was keeping us pointed the same direction as the swell (waves) the flopper stoppers really wouldn’t be needed. When the boat’s bow is being held into the swell by the wind, there is very little roll (side to side motion). There is only pitching (up and down movement of the bow). However, from time to time there would be speedboats that would come zipping by our boat at full speed generating huge wakes. Our boat is somewhat unusual for the Med, with the strange poles hanging out the side, an American flag on the back, and a rugged, trawler look. We attract too much attention at times. Other boats like to “check us out.” They tend to forget the large wakes and the bouncing we get as they pass by.

Anyway…we had our flopper stoppers down, assisting with roll, and…

Did you see the movie “The Perfect Storm”? In that movie there is a scene which I thought was silly at the time, but suddenly felt much too real. The fishing boat in that movie had something very similar to our flopper stoppers, except that they are intended to reduce side-to-side roll while underway, whereas ours are optimized for stabilization while sitting still at anchor. In the movie, when the seas were rough, the wind grabbed the fish (the dangling plates) and they became missiles. Mark Wahlberg had to climb out on one of the poles to cut lose the fish with them flying through the air like missiles.

At 30 knots of wind, the lines that hold our fish in the water were blowing out diagonally. Whereas when we dropped them in calm conditions they were hanging straight down, sitting about eight feet beneath the water. When the excrement started hitting the fan, the lines holding the fish went so diagonal that they came very close to breaking the surface and becoming flying fish.

With the winds high I was worried about trying to pull them from the water. Steven from Seabird brought his tender over to Sans Souci and helped me pull them from the water. (which went very smoothly.) After that, we missed them, but knew we made the right decision.

This boat, a 130′ “Mangusta,” is a go-fast boat that broke anchor. In this picture the crew member on the bow is surveying the situation and thinking about what to do. The boat has just slid from 200′ in front of Seabird to 200′ behind Seabird.

With perfect timing, as we were feeling somewhat depressed about the 35 knot winds, this TRUCK drove across our bow giving us something to laugh about.

How many times in life are you going to have a truck cross your path WHILE a half-mile off shore?

This boat broke anchor very narrowly missing Seabird. It finally came to rest about 150′ behind Seabird.

No one was onboard at the time it broke anchor, but within 15 minutes the boat’s owners came blasting out from the nearby port on their tender. They jumped aboard and (I’m guessing from what I saw) discovered that their windlass was somehow damaged in the process. The windlass is the motor that raises and lowers the chain. I saw them with a little popsicle stick-sized lever trying to lift the anchor by hand. They gave up within minutes, and called for help. The coast guard arrived and helped them move the chain to a cleat, but then departed, as did the owners. The boat was still sitting at anchor two days later when we departed, so I’m not sure how they’ll ultimately get the anchor up.

Here is a video that gives a small sampling of what our life was like at anchor. The wind was high enough that it overpowered my speaking, and the production value is horrible — but, it’s worth seeing, if only for the view of the truck that passed us by.

NOTE: Some email programs remove videos. If you do not see a video above, click the link below to see the video:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/103513327

The next boat to break anchor was a 130′ professionally crewed Mangusta, a large luxurious go-fast boat. Steven called me on the radio just after it broke anchor and asked that I keep an eye on it. He said that the anchor looked small, and the boat seemed to be swinging back and forth in the wind too much. I gave him my theory that professionally crewed boats don’t drag, and he just said, “Just watch.”

Steven was right! Not 30 minutes later Roberta shouted from the pilot house, “There it goes!” I jumped on the radio to warn Steven that the Mangusta was heading his direction. Once again it narrowly missed Seabird and did not come to a stop until it was a couple hundred feet behind Seabird, at which time the crew came out from inside the boat looking confused.

The only boat that dragged anchor at night was a fairly small, perhaps 25′ sailboat. It dragged into the middle of the shipping channel used by the giant ferry we’d see come and go each day. At 7am a tugboat came along side it and started blasting the horn, waking the still sleeping owners, who came onto the deck half asleep and very surprised.

Roberta and I never did get to have dinner in Porto Vecchio, and the saddest of all is that it feels like the weather gods are sending us a message. When we arrived at Porto Vecchio summer was in full swing. The water was a warm swimmable 83 degrees. Passing boats were loaded with sun worshipers in bikinis (and sometimes partial bikinis). Yesterday, the water temperature had already declined to 72 degrees and passerbys were instead wearing long pants and jackets.

We are hoping that the weather will improve in Elba (which is back in Italy, Corsica was in France.) Our time on the boat is starting to wind down and I’d like at least one more burst of good weather.

And in closing…

That’s it for this issue of KensBlog… My next report will be from the island of ELBA!

Thank you for following along on our big voyage!

If you missed my prior blog entries from this season, you may view them here:

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I should also mention that this is one of two blogs that I do. My other blog is on Facebook, although you do not need to register with Facebook to view the blog. Just click on this link:

http://www.facebook.com/kensblogdotcom

My other blog is very different than this blog. I post to it almost every day, and post whatever I happen to be thinking about, without editing or filtering. I also tend to respond instantly to any questions. Check it out!

Thank you!

Ken and Roberta Williams
ken(at)kensblog.com
MV Sans Souci
Nordhavn 68
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The ARGONAUT August 18, 2014 The Passage from Bora Bora to Samoa

By on August 16, 2014 in Odyssey

CAPTAIN’S LOG      At Sea – Bora Bora to Samoa

August 5:   Fixing Argo    –     Bora Bora        –     Tuesday  

We began the day by stopping by the Gendarmerie to check out of French Polynesia and obtain our Zarpe or clearance form.  The Gendarmes were very courteous and within a few minutes we had filled out their forms and were on our way.  We needed the Zarpe to enter the next port, Apia, Samoa.  We picked up Stu Parker (the mechanic from the hydraulics company) on the ferry dock at 0900.  Stu was an affable Kiwi (is that politically correct, or should it be New Zealander?) and after the ten minute cruise in our tender across the harbor, he set to work on the stabilizer.  Fixing the problem proved more difficult than expected as the bearing on the actuator collar had seized up, which was probably the reason for the actuator seal failure.  After applying a crowbar, hammer, bearing puller, and a lot of elbow grease he got the actuator assembly apart.  Stu suspected that the cause of the failure was probably the lack of grease on the bearing, which should have been applied when it was manufactured.  Altogether it took about two hours, after which he turned his attention to repairing the seals on the manifold up forward.  Meanwhile, Rebecca and I walked the mile or so to Panda d’Or, a Chinese restaurant with take-out like nowhere else we have ever seen.

From the street Panda d’Or looks like a conventional Chinese restaurant, but around the side in the alley is an industrial roll-up door that, when opened, reveals a stainless steel counter and a hive of activity inside.   People were in motion everywhere.  Lying about on the alley pavement cooling themselves were a few dogs, a type of Pit-bull common to all the islands.  We found them a little intimidating.  At the counter were perhaps a half dozen people standing around waiting for their food orders, all dressed in shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts.  In their hands were large bowels used to bring home the stir-fry for their family’s lunch.  We stepped forward to place our order with the frantically busy owner who was fully engaged in taking orders, collecting money, and simultaneously delivering meals to the waiting and hungry customers.  He kindly handed us an English language menu from under the counter. We quickly gave him our order and he turned to the refrigerator with glass doors aside of him, selected our portion of fish, chicken or tofu from within, put each in a small stainless steel bowl and slid them across a work table behind him to a waiting chef.  So far, so good.  The surprise is the wok and chef.  I have never seen anything like it; the chef flipped a lever under the stove type apparatus that ignited a large blow torch that blasted forth from a metal collar designed to perfectly fit the wok.  It sounded like a rocket engine at launch.  It produced a huge blue/white flame and a tremendous amount of heat. With his large spoon, the chef flicked a few ounces of several magic Chinese gastronomic solutions into the wok, then at the right moment he dumped our waiting bowls into the bubbling cauldron and within seconds he had made our meal.  At the same time a couple of other chefs were working at the row of woks; then-suddenly, somewhere along the line, a flame erupted from a wok and – voila!  Another meal was ready.

We walked back to the boat with our treasures, passing little bungalows, some well-kept, others lazily shabby, and many with little backyard shrines atop the tombs of ancestors buried – perhaps recently, or maybe long ago.  Cars whizzed by on the narrow road that ran along the lagoon.  Unfortunately you cannot see the water for all the buildings that are crammed along the shoreline.  When we finally got back on the boat we laid out the nice lunch we had brought. When we finished, Stu wrapped up the repairs and inspected the entire system.   By then the time had come for him to return to the ferry dock and catch his plane back to Papeete and later Auckland.  That evening we invited Garrick Yrondi (the artist) to farewell dinner.  He is a lovely man and we both thoroughly enjoyed his company.  Rebecca made a wonderful meal and I grilled filet mignons. Garrick brought a fantastic bottle of Bordeaux.  It was a productive day and a memorable evening.

August 6:   Departing Bora Bora – Day 1 – Wednesday  

A front had moved in and it was raining cats and dogs.  Untying from the Mai Kai dock was quite an ordeal.  ARGO was tied to the dock at the stern with three lines.  There were no lines to the dock on the port side, as we were moored at the end of the dock.  The bow was initially held in place by the anchor, which was set three hundred feet off the port bow in 65 ft. of water.  The anchor and chain is not enough to keep her stationary, so bow and beam lines were set that were attached to concrete moorings placed on the harbor’s floor.  Teiva, the very helpful and energetic marina owner, scurried about in his tender/mini-tug to hand off lines and push Argo to the desired location for final tie-up.  (We didn’t need his help as a tug because we have thrusters).  Altogether we had nine lines and an anchor chain to hold us in place.  Undoing all this was quit a job, given that there was a boat tied next to us on the starboard side, it was raining heavily, and the wind was pushing us to starboard.  Once free of the lines, we needed to recover our chain and anchor; this took about ten minutes.  Meanwhile, other boats at anchor were close enough to swing into us, so Teiva pushed them about in his mini-tug until we could get free.  We then proceeded a couple of miles to the fuel dock.

Fueling the boat in the driving rain was miserable.  Tyler had caught my cold, however, he wouldn’t hear of me taking over for him on the deck.  Wet and miserable though we were, we accomplished refueling and left Bora Bora at 16:00 after taking on 5,700 liters of diesel fuel in preparation for our passage to Samoa.  Fuel prices were fairly reasonable at $4.43/gal, so we decided to use our bladder and take on an extra 500 gallons.  Our trip to Samoa was 1,200 miles, and with the fuel taken on here in Bora Bora, we should have enough to get us to New Zealand.   The weather forecast called for pleasant conditions, although the sea state in this area over the last two weeks had been in the 11-12 ft. range with winds up to 50 knots in places.  We learned of a sailboat at Surarrow Island that dragged its anchor during the high winds, went onto the reef and sank during that storm.  As we left, it was pouring rain as only it can in the tropics.  One of the young waitresses at Mai Kai Restaurant said that if you leave the island in the rain, it means Bora Bora is sad.  What a poetic thought to end our visit here.

August 7:   At Sea- Day 2 – Thursday  

It is a pleasant day, light winds, a fair sky, and low seas in the range of six feet on the port quarter.  We always feel a little sea sick on the first day out, followed by a day or two of fatigue.  By the third day we are usually into the routine of watch standing and feeling normal again.

ARGO is making about 7.5 knots, which adds up to 185 miles or so a day.   On this trip she is burning a little less than a gallon per mile.   There is no consistent ocean current to help move us along, so it will take a little more effort than on our last long passage.  No observed no other ships or sea life.

What do we do all day when we are at sea?  We stand watch, which means watching the Argo’s mechanical operations by visiting the engine room every hour, then returning to the pilot house and watching the radar and other instruments and filling out the ship’s log.  Sometimes I work on the computer writing the blog or editing pictures, reading or watching videos.  Sometimes I plan our next cruise or study charts and timetables to plan future passages.  Rebecca likes to bake, or prepare meals.  She does laundry about every other day, and reads or does CE for her professional certification.  Sometimes we take a nap, or exercise if it isn’t too hot.  We like to watch extended series like The Tudors, Breaking Bad or Dexter.  Somehow the time flies!

August 8:   At Sea – Day 3 – Friday  

The sea state is low with loping swells in the six foot range, very light winds, and a clear sky.  Overnight squalls formed in line aft of Argo and slowly spread over us.   The direction of the swells is a little confused, caused perhaps by the large fronts both north and south of us.  In any case it is a pleasant cruise.  We haven’t seen any sea life – no whales or dolphins.  Maybe the noise of our engine scares them away, but we saw plenty of whales up close when we traveled on Odyssey.  A few albatross are flying about, but not many.  There are no flying fish or squid on deck as in past passages, and no ships or boats either.  It seems to be a lonely ocean!

August 9:   At sea – Day 4 – Saturday  

Not much has changed from yesterday except that seas may have come down a little.  It is clear and beautiful.

We emptied the bladder tank into our main engine room tanks, which seems to have improved our posture on the sea and the speed we are able to make.  Since taking that 3,500 pounds of weight off the stern, we have been making over 8 knots at 6.8 gallons per hour.  The night sky this evening is nearly like daylight, with a full moon pouring its beautiful silvery beams on the black ocean. 

Although this weather is perfect for a motor yacht, it won’t be welcomed by our friends with sailboats who headed out for Samoa or Tonga this week from Bora Bora; the wind is so light they will have to motor, which makes them less stable than if they were under sail.  When full, the sails hold them to the waves, which keeps them from bouncing around, although they would be hove to an angle.  In this weather they will have to motor so they will be bouncing around in the swells and traveling at a much lower speed then they are accustomed.  We hope to see quite a few of our sailor friends in Samoa.

I think we will put out the fishing gear tomorrow and see what Poseidon has for us!

August 10:   At Sea – Day 5 – Sunday  

Another pleasant day at sea, a repeat of yesterday’s beautiful weather.  It is 940 with humidity to match.  We made 185 miles yesterday.  We had radar targets of two Chinese trawlers (I suspect) at 16 miles.  I wouldn’t have noticed them except that they broke radio silence on VHF, which is unusual for them.  They don’t use AIS, so it is unclear exactly who they are.   From what a Polynesian told me, the Chinese bought the fishing rights to many island countries such as Tonga.  The agreement, so I was told, precludes locals from fishing.  The Chinese send in their fishing fleet and strip the waters over time.  They build processing plants on the islands and if the people want to buy fish, they must do so from the Chinese.  The locals aren’t used to working as hard as the Chinese expect, so Chinese workers are brought in from the mainland to work the plants.  The locals then become unemployed, except for young women who earn money providing companionship to the Chinese workers.  Not a pretty story if it is true. 

We set our clocks back one hour, so we are now -11 hours from GMT or – 7 hours from Eastern Time.  Samoa is -12 hours.

August 12:   At Sea– Day 6 – Tuesday  

Yesterday we made 205 miles.  Today is another beautiful day, just like yesterday and all of the days of this passage so far.   As required we emailed via our Iridium phone a notification to the authorities in Samoa of our pending arrival. 

Although we are not yet at the International Dateline (Longitude 1800), Samoa’s calendar and clocks are set to correspond to New Zealand plus one hour.  We decided to advance our calendars today (so we skipped August 11), which is why it isn’t shown above.

We hooked a beautiful Wahoo late this afternoon.  It fought hard for about twenty minutes.  I brought it up to the boat toward Tyler, who was standing on the swim platform ready to land him.  Suddenly the great fish leaped up in the air toward Tyler.  I was very concerned for Tyler’s safety considering those razor sharp teeth.  The fish then settled back in the water and moved toward the port rub-rail, ready to be ushered aboard.  Sliding in the water next to Argo, we could see what a gorgeous creature he was; about 5 feet long, a beautiful brownish tiger stripped fish, magnificent to see in action in the water.   Suddenly a lurch, the lure flew about 10 ft. up into the air toward Tyler, and he was gone.  Oh well.  He was too beautiful for us anyway, but he was the biggest Wahoo I almost caught!

August 13:   At Sea/ Arriving Apia, Samoa – Day 7 – Wednesday  

Another perfect cruising day.  The sea came up a little overnight and is now in the 7-8 ft. range on our beam, but it is confused and mixed with a long moment, so it is comfortable despite its size.  Argo is running perfectly.  We run the generator almost 24/7 so that we can keep the temperature and humidity comfortable onboard.  The rugged peaks of American Samoa can be seen off to our port about 25 miles away.  We’re skipping it because of its ridiculously high immigration fee on motor vessels.  Samoa is another 85 miles further west and we should be anchored in Apia Harbor about 21:00 this evening.  Neptune gave up one of his own this afternoon, a nice Mahi Mahi. 

We anchored in Apia Harbor at 21:00, safe and sound after a long voyage.  We will be here about five days, then move on to Vava’U, Tonga.

Silistra

By on August 16, 2014 in Dora Mac

Port Tomis, Constanta Romania
Salut
It poured down rain last night!  Lots of lightning.  The thunder was not so noticeable.  Actually it was a welcome relief from the awful rap/rock that was being boomed out not far from the marina.  The forecast is for more rain and thunder today, though just now there’s blue sky and the […]

Day 218…Tree Frogs

By on August 16, 2014 in Misty Moose

Welcome to day 218 of  365 photos…Tree frogs have taken over my Lantana. The other day our granddaughter, Kendra, noticed that there were numerous little frogs in the Lantana. They don’t seem to be on any of the other plants. After a bit of research, we have discovered that they are tree frogs. What we… Continue Reading

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Gin Pole Rigging Part 3

By on August 16, 2014 in She:Kon

Had to reverse the lower u-bolt that’s there for the retaining straps. Swapped it around to the backside of the Gin Pole. I knew this was gonna happen but never thought about it when I rigged it the first time. Also added a ‘kick stand’ to the pole. It…

Miami Beach Marina

By on August 16, 2014 in Istaboa

Yesterday’s long run from Marathon Marina was capped off by an unnerving and humbling attempt to back Istaboa into the strong tidal currents at Miami Beach Marina. After that aborted attempt, we took a t-head that was meant for another boat. Marina ma…

Day 217…Last Light

By on August 15, 2014 in Misty Moose

Welcome to day 217 of  365 photos…the last light of day and the color of the sky turned a pretty pink. I just can’t get enough of the sunsets around here at the Crystal Coast. Loved the reflection. Enjoying beach time with the granddaughter. Water here is approximately 80º. When she gets back to Maine… Continue Reading

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Ruse final bits

By on August 15, 2014 in Dora Mac

Tomis Yachting Club and Marina (Constanta Municipality)
Port Tomis, Constanta, Bulgaria
Salut,
Mary and I went out to find a supermarket while Randal and Rick wrestled with the wires that needed to go back up the mast.  They’re still at it now, but have had a bit of success.  Oiy!  It’s one of the reasons we’ll probably be […]