Arrival Kauehi Atoll!

15º 57.548s 145º 04.777w

Sat Jun 01 2019

Arrival Kauehi 31 May 19

We were standing off the pass into Kauehi atoll at 0700, sails stowed and both engines idling, getting a good look at the water. We observed a small fishing boat in the flow inside the atoll, and a French sailboat soon departed through the pass, hailing us to offer details of the current they observed. The tidal guestimator had suggested slack flow right around 0752. Last night on the SSB net Chuck from Jacaranda reckoned that the guestimator was about an hour late, hence our effort to be there ready to go before 0700.

To the right side of the pass were pretty sizable waves, and to the left some very busy water, but just right of the channel center things looked really mellow, so we motored forward and made our entry. It was about 0740 when we were well inside the channel, and we observed a maximum of 2.7 knots of current flowing out of the atoll, so perhaps Chuck’s recommendation was pretty darn close. In any case the entry to the lagoon was a non-event, kind of why we picked Kauehi for our first foray into atoll land. Once inside a few hundred meters we turned to starboard and aimed towards the anchored superyacht Kawil, a 112 foot monohull we had observed up at Taiohae Bay, Nuka Hiva. We figured they are fairly deep draft, nevertheless Isabel did her best on the bow, looking for any indication of shallows, including lighter colored water, brown patches that might be bommies, etc. Sunrise was at 0601 so conditions were not ideal with el sol about 40 degrees to port and still a bit low on the zenith. We took it slow and eventually decided to proceed to the Southeast anchorage as the chop was pretty big in the vicinity of Kawil. Too much fetch where they were near the Southwest part of the lagoon.

The forward scan sonar came in pretty handy today; between that and the standard depth sounder along with visual observations we felt comfortable with our progress, however we still kept it slow so that our arrival at the anchorage would happen with a sufficiently high sun angle. As we closed on the anchorage we were hailed by our new best friends Andrew and Julia on SV Hullabaloo, a beautiful Oyster 55 flying the Royal Yacht Squadron burgee. They were out in their dinghy prepared to help us spot our anchor. Over the VHF they related their own arrival experience as an example of why it’s great to have a bit of guidance. Apparently they did just fine getting in, but the following morning they found themselves a bit uncomfortable with their proximity to some bommies and elected to move a little ways. We were keen to avoid that trial by fire. I advised them that as a bug smasher pilot, I was accustomed to a golf cart with a “follow me” sign leading me to parking but would happily compromise and follow their dinghy, even with no sign. It all worked out fine, but honestly, there was no red carpet, no warm cookies fresh from the oven, no coffee! What kind of service is that?!? These guys need to fly into Coos Bay, Oregon where all aircraft are treated like the Global 6000 that our pal Andy Trygg flies. Best FBO ever!

Anyway, here we are! Anchored in 8’ of sandy bottom with around 50’ of chain out, about a 6” ripple on the water and 9 knots of gentle breeze. Sandy beaches and coconut palms a few hundred meters away, a pair of juvenile black tip reef sharks that want to adopt us, and amazingly bright little fishies all around the bommies! There’s also some rather large grouper messing about, showing no fear of us. Obviously there’s ciguatera here and nobody hunts them. Well, good for them, and we’ve got a freezer full of freshly caught tuna anyway. . .

I’m pretty sure this is the spot where they take post card pictures, or maybe they filmed the movie South Pacific here. Anyway, it’s our little piece of paradise for now. After our snorkeling event we celebrated our successful passage with a couple shots of the Don Jose super high end tequila that Ralph and Helen gave us, took a nap, had some lunch, and are gently moving into houseboat mode. We’ll join Andrew and Julia on Hullabaloo for sundowners, then look forward to a very long night’s sleep.

Our passage stats:

532.1 nm

90 hrs 55 minutes

5.9 knots average speed

11.5 knots maximum speed

12.5 hours motoring on the passage, then we stowed sails and motored through the pass and to the anchorage, about 2.5 hours altogether.

Our sail combinations for this passage included full main and jib, then full main and screecher. We reefed the main and furled part of the jib late in the night just to slow down and avoid arriving too early. Altogether it was a spectacular sailing trip with beautiful weather and overall gentle seas.

Almost there! Arriving Kauehi

16º 01.003s 145º 07.966w

Fri May 31 2019

Well, we’ve had a marvelous sail down from Ua Pou to Kauehi. We passed a smaller atoll around 2300 last night – I was pleased to see the motus painting on radar, but did note a bit of position error on the electronic chart. Not a lot, perhaps a few hundred meters, but still reminded me of a joke about horse shoes and hand grenades.

I tugged on Isabel’s foot around midnight and as she came on watch we agreed she should aim to be at the waypoint designated as our IAF (initial approach fix) at 0500. There we would have to turn about 90 degrees to starboard, then proceed about another 9 miles towards the channel entrance. Timing the arrival is important, as we need to motor through the pass at slack water then turn on towards our anchor point. The wind had piped up around 2100 and I finally decided to put a reef in the main to slow us down a bit, as a timely arrival would be better than arriving too early. Getting to a holding position outside the channel in the dead of night, then having to hold position outside the channel for hours just seemed so yukky.

The tidal charts for the Tuamotus are pretty sketchy, but we’ve got a “tidal guestimator” spreadsheet that another cruiser put together, and it crunches tides and currents for each atoll’s particular entrance channel. Think of an atoll as a kettle and the channel as the spout; as the tide goes in and out there’s whole lot of water that has to move through the channel, so the incoming or outgoing current can get pretty extreme, and standing waves can build near the channel entrance making for some really sporty conditions. If the wind is howling in the wrong direction it can further aggravate the situation, so there moving through the pass at slack water is kind of important.

Isabel played with the jib, winding it in and out, and when she awakened me to signal the arrival at the IAF waypoint it was exactly 0500. Wow that woman is good! We jibed JollyDogs and rolled up the jib, and now we’re sailing gently along and should be at the waypoint just outside the channel entrance right on schedule. In the meantime, we’ve absorbed one squeezy pot of coffee, and I’m thinking there may need to be at least another cup in my near future to ensure clear thinking for the upcoming navigational tasks. Lucky for us Thad left behind heaps of Starbucks Via instant coffee packets!

We experienced a variety of sailing conditions during this 3 ½ day passage including winds under 3 knots prompting us to motor a total of around 13 hours. We got plenty of practice making JollyDogs go in very light airs (she does great with the screecher up), and we had some spectacular flat sea and beam wind conditions allowing fast and smooth going without any bouncing about. It really doesn’t get much better than this! Now the sun is a bit above the horizon, we can see a couple of the motus, and we’re looking good for our arrival time. The sky is mostly clear with some little puffies about, and the forecast is for a pretty nice day. The next trick will be getting through the pass, then evaluating the visibility and lighting conditions inside the atoll. We’ll need to move away from the pass and the strong currents, then decide if the sun angle will allow us to see down into the water. There be bommies (large coral heads rising from the sea floor) down there, and if we hit one of those we’ll get to use the life raft. It looks so much better in the valise!

We’re excited and slightly apprehensive, but conditions are ideal and we did have enough sense to pick one of the easiest atolls for our first landing approach. Kawil, a 112’ superyacht is anchored just inside to the right of the entrance, probably so their guests have quick access to spectacular snorkeling, and we’re thinking we may wander over to their general area and drop the hook. With any luck we can chat with their captain and get a local briefing and perhaps their own secret set of waypoints. Navigating that big sailboat with her deep draft through an atoll must be pretty interesting indeed!

There’s cold beer (even lousy local lager tastes pretty good after a passage) and a hammock ride in our near future, along with some killer snorkeling. White and black tip sharks will become our new dive buddies today; let’s hope they don’t consider us part of their food chain!

JollyDogs communications gear

14º 43.253s 143º 41.979w

Thu May 30 2019

In the old days folks didn’t have any way of knowing what kind of weather they would find until they got out here. Our pal Gary Webb on SV Sparkle built his own steel sloop complete with timber spars and traditional stays made from galvanized steel cabling treated with tar or whatever. Either his financial circumstances or his desire for simplicity kept all but a VHF radio off his boat. Several years ago his son Spike, an amazing sailor, boat technician and unmanned aircraft designer helped me sail JollyDogs from La Paz back up Baja California to Ensenada. Coming North up the Baja can be quite a slog and having access to detailed weather data and someone with a lot of experience in that region can greatly reduce the risk you might be caught out. When Spike was a kid growing up on Sparkle, they had no cell, SSB radio or Iridium, and simply had to “stick their nose out into it” to find out if conditions were good for sailing towards their destination. They spent a lot of time “hove to” if they couldn’t return to a sheltered anchorage.

Out here it’s all water for hundreds or thousands of miles. Our recent passage from PV to FP took 21 days and we got well over 1000 miles from inhabited land. The weather looked promising when we departed Mexico, but a lot can change in 3 weeks. The ECMWF model available with our PredictWind subscription proved surprisingly accurate during that passage, and as we make our way from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus it remains spot on. With his access to high bandwidth data and a PredictWind Pro account, Jamie Gifford was able to offer routing tweaks that kept us in the most favorable current conditions. That really paid off, shaving days off our passage and keeping us away from the worst of the ITCZ squalls and doldrums. It’s hard to put a price on the abuse we and our equipment avoided just due to excellent routing.

Access to PredicWind routing data is available with our Iridium Go communications gear which we purchased through PredictWind along with a plan including unlimited data and 150 talk minutes per month. New weather data is available every 12 hours and things can get a bit dynamic out here, so we update when new info is available. That makes anything other than the unlimited data plan useless, as data updates can take around 20 minutes to download at the maximum 2400 baud rate.

Sending out various blog posts and email communications to friends and family have all proven to be very important to us. There are people who want to know where we are, how we’re doing, and if we’re OK. As well, it can get a bit boring and lonely during a long passage, so crew morale is boosted by maintaining a dialogue with close friends. I’ve met single handers with nothing more than a VHF radio on board. I don’t know how they do it, or why.

While in Mexico we were happy subscribers to sail mail using our SSB (single sideband) radio equipped with Pactor IV modem. It’s even slower than Iridium for moving data back and forth and is susceptible to the whims of atmospheric disturbances and sunspot activity, so not always reliable, but mostly so. It worked fine in Mexico for short emails and weather updates, but when we got over 1000 miles from San Diego we couldn’t connect any longer due to poor propagation, and for some time the Manihi based station in the Tuamotus was inoperative so we couldn’t get weather or email via SSB. Thank goodness for Iridium.

VHF is useful for ship to land and ship to ship line of sight communications only so it’s useless for long range comms of any sort, routine or emergency. In addition to our fixed 25 watt VHF transceiver, we have two 5 watt hand held transceivers. These devices are useful for dinghy or ship to shore party communications as well as backup in the event the fixed VHF radio fails.

Various SSB and HAM nets are operated by volunteers who help us all stay in touch with and look after one another. The nets encourage all participants to provide in-situ information regarding sailing or anchorage conditions, availability of fresh water, fruit or vegetables in small villages, emergency medical or other resources, in short it’s sort of a verbal social media experience. In Mexico we participated in three different nets on occasion, and once we arrived in French Polynesia we began participating in a regional net that operates 0400 and 1800 UTC, or 0800 and 1800 ship’s time. We check in with our location, course and speed, local sailing conditions, where we’re headed and when we expect to get there. It’s an opportunity to be involved with a community of like-minded people, make new friends over the air, and ask or offer assistance when necessary. Many of the participants have been sailing this region for many months or years and can provide invaluable information about local weather, provisioning or anchorages. Besides, it’s fun and actually talking to people is a much more human experience than typing messages back and forth. For us the equipment cost was a lot higher than Iridium, but it’s free to chat so we can amortize the cost over the years of use and feel just fine about it all. There’s also plenty of inexpensive used gear out there for anyone to purchase and install.

It’s not unusual now to meet new cruisers who don’t have SSB equipment on board. There are a variety of reasons for doing so, but that decision unfortunately reduces or eliminates access to a large element of the cruising community. Satellite data communications is a tremendous resource for us, but we wouldn’t give up our SSB and HAM net participation, and we’re looking forward to meeting the heaps of folks we’ve recently chatted with over the nets.

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If we’re in range of a cell tower our Google Fi services provides us with voice and data. There’s something personal about having one’s own cell phone number, so rather than have a single phone for the family, we each have our own phone and unique USA phone number for friends and family to call. Google Fi works seamlessly in most places around the world and the cost for data and voice communications is both reasonable and predictable.

We consider voice and data communications to be safety critical capabilities, so we have redundancy. We can get weather and email data via Iridium Go or sail mail over SSB. We’ve got hand held VHF radios in case the fixed VHF packs up. We’ve got the Iridium Go voice capability for emergency medical consults and to communicate with family and friends. We’ve each got a cell phone with worldwide service, and very importantly each service has more than one credit card on file. If we had to, we could make a HAM radio voice call.

One way or another, we’re going to get through to someone when we need help, or if we can offer it up.