Tahuata to Nuka Hiva

May 23
Tahauata to Nuka Hiva

We spend the next day just being lazy and visiting with other boats  We seem to do a lot of that.  In the afternoon we take a look at our poor tattered main sail.  This is the worst of all.  It is not a straight tear along a seam like the others but several rips, each about 18” long across the grain right along the reef line.  It is going to be very hard to fix.  Eventually we decide to reef it down to the second reef point.  This leave us with just a small sail but it should be enough.  We still have the little jib and the mizzen to work with.

Our next stop in Nuka Hiva, about 100 miles to the north.  This time we decide we are going to plan our trip right.  We spend several hours with charts and iPad figuring wind direction, course and points of sail.  We finally decide that If we leave at 10am tomorrow we should get there about first light the following day. 

As usual, it does not go as planned.  First of all, we are up and ready to go early.  We weigh anchor and head out of this lovely bay.  Since we need to charge the batteries, we motor for a couple of hours before putting up the sails but eventually we carefully raise the main.  Will it hold or will it tear again?  It seems to be holding fine, and we are going much faster than we should be.  Time to put the other sails up and turn the engine off.  OK, we are going 5+  knots.  This is faster than we ever did on the whole passage.  We are on a beam reach is is the fastest point of sail but we must have a current or something.  There is no way we can go this fast with just this little bit of sail but we do.  Alan is having great time.  I send him off for a nap in the afternoon so he will be rested for his night shift and then after dinner I turn in to be ready for my midnight watch.

Sometime during the night disaster strikes.  We have 2 iPads and a mini that we use for navigation.   All of them have the very expensive Life Proof cases so that we can use them in the cockpit without worrying.  Alan has one of them in the cockpit tracking our course. Unfortunately he has neglected to be sure that the charging port is closed.  A big wave scores a direct hit and it dies.  The other iPad  is not charged and he never loaded the charts on the mini.  I plug the other one into the charger and the rest of the night I hand it to him once an hour so he can check our position and then take it back inside and put it back onto the charger.  I am taking no chances with our last navigation resource.  If we use this we have to use the handheld GPS and then find our position on the paper chart.  This is fine on a long passage but not accurate enough this close to land.   

As usual the wind strengthens after dark and we just keep racing along.  We take the mizzen down but it does not make much difference.  We start to realize that we are once again going to arrive in the middle of the night, way too early.  Sure enough, about 2am we find ourselves about 5 miles off on the harbor at Nuka Hiva.  DARN.  Once again, we need to heave to in the dark and once again it does not quite work.  Alan spent part of our time in Tahauata reading up on the theory and techniques of heaving to but once again it does not work quite right.  So once again, he goes to sleep and I sit up on watch with the iPad watching us drift north.  Luckily we are just east of the island so we probably won’t hit it  and we are only drifting about 1 knot but we are getting awfully close.  At first light I stick my head out and see a very large and very rocky headlong much too close.  I get Alan up, he sets the sails and we head back towards the harbor.  Lots of wind and big seas but this time we have no trouble getting in and we are anchored about 10am. 

The harbor is filled with boats.  This is the largest town and the main check in point for the Marquesas so everyone comes here eventually.  We see lots of boats that we know.  After our traditional naps we head to shore where we find free internet and the friendliest, most helpful yacht agent ever.