18-19 May 04

Tuesday, 18 May 2004

The magnificent Pacific clouds

Dear Friends and Family,

18 May?!?  You may be asking yourselves what happened to Monday.  The answer is: we threw it out.  It's one of the joys of the cruising lifestyle (and crossing date-lines).  Mondays are a drag anyway - you've just spent a couple of fine days doing exactly what you want, and then BANG! - you've got to drag yourself out of your nice warm bed at some god-forsaken, cow-milking hour and haul yourself off to be abused at work or school.  For me, Mondays often meant writing up my status report and trying to justify my existence for the last week to my boss (gotta be careful here - my boss actually receives these missives - but since she has yet to respond to one, I suspect she doesn't actually read them.  Can bosses read?)  Better to just move directly to the Goofing-off-while-trying-to-look-productive-and-important phase of the week, don't you think?

We left you yesterday as we were motoring at about 4 knots.  If we'd kept that speed up, we'd arrive at our waypoint (just North of Vava'u, about 15 miles from our anchorage) at just about daybreak.  Perfect.  Yesterday we motored for something like 20 hours before a little breeze came up at about 3pm from the SE and we jumped on it with all the canvas we could spread.  Then, at about 7pm, we approached a squall line.  So we took a reef, chose a gap in the clouds, and darted through it, getting away with only 17 knots of wind under the squall line.  But the wind didn't go away - it stayed at 17 knots, right off the beam, one of our fastest points of sail, and we were thrashing along at 6-8 knots!  At this rate, we'd arrive in the middle of the night.  So we continued to reef the sails until we were down to 3 reefs in the main and 2 in the jib, loping along at 4-5 knots.  Since the wind chop was pretty big and coming at us from the side, we had a pretty uncomfortable night.

Even on passage, school is in session

This morning, the wind backed to just about dead behind us.  We put up the chute for a bit since the conditions were perfect for it, but it pushed us along too fast, so we had to take it down again.  DANG!  I think this passage is going to be known as the "Feast or Famine" passage, as we've either had too much wind (beginning and end) or too little.

Someone asked why Green-Flash sunrises are so much rarer than Green-Flash sunsets.  While we've seen several Green-Flash sunsets on this passage, they're very rare.  We typically only see 8-10/year.  Conditions have to be perfect, with the sun setting into an absolutely clear horizon.  Also, while this is a photographable phenomenon, it's also true that more Green-Flash sunsets have been seen after a rum or 2, and I don't usually start drinking early enough to see a Green-Flash sunrise.   But the real problem is knowing where to look.  They only last for a fraction of a second.  It's easy to see where and when the sun will set, but not nearly so easy to tell where and when it will crest the horizon.  That, and the fact that most folks are still in bed then, is why Green-Flash sunset sightings are so much more common than Green-Flash sunrises.

Here are our noon stats so far:

With luck, tomorrow will be our last letter in this series, just to let you know that we've arrived safely.

Fair winds -- Jon, Sue, Chris and Amanda

Wednesday, 19 May 2004

Land HO!!  The Vava'u Group of Tonga is relatively low and flat, not volcanic

Dear Friends and Family,

Just a quick note to say we've arrived safely.  Our last day was rather tiring, as almost constant squalls and wind-shifts kept us tweaking the sails.  But at first light (about 6:30) Amanda saw the island, and by noon we were tied up to the dock and entertaining the various (extremely polite) officials to get ourselves cleared in.  We're now hanging on a mooring off the main town (which, at first glance, looks very cute).  Tomorrow we'll explore in more earnest, but for right now, I'm going to catch up on several dozen hours of lost sleep.

This will be our last newsletter for a while.  Thanks for bearing with us through the passage.

Fair winds -- Jon, Sue, Chris & Amanda, s/v Ocelot

Here are our noon stats for the trip:

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