Day 20: LAND HO!

*** Totem has made landfall, but didn't get our daily blog updates posted after our radio stopped working. Here is the last of our written-but-not-posted updates sea. ***

position: 9*48' S, 139*01' W

24 hour run: 178 miles

Distance to go to Hiva Oa: it's right in front of us!

This afternoon, vague shapes from Marquesan mountains begain to take focus on the haze. We all squinted at the horizon from the deck, straining to make out a complete island sillhouette. LAND HO!

How can I explain what it feels like to see land after 20 days of nothing but water? I wondered how we'd all respond. There was euphoria on board: We all felt uplifted by these distant, hazy shapes. As my friends know, it doesn't take more than a cute puppy to make me cry so naturally I had happy tears. The kids decided this meant breaking out precious treats to share (why not!). We all had big grins on our faces! Everyone is so excited. I especially can't wait to see how this place *really* looks, and breathe in the rich earthy aromas after weeks of the simple clean air of the ocean.

We've been watching our mileage and daily progress carefully. If we make good enough time, it means the difference between arriving in daylight or in the evening. With that in mind, we've really been working ourselves and the boat the last couple of days. The nights have been tough- Jamie and Ty splitting night watch, because with my gimpy arm I'm not much help in these conditions...any sail change (and we've been doing a crazy number of reef in, reef out repetitions) would mean waking one of them up anyway. The guys took on more than their fair share without a second thought and focused on speed, speed, speed- getting us closer to our destination.

To be clear, arriving at a new port in the dark is generally a bad idea. We had heard our charts of the anchorage, unlike those of pretty much everywhere we've been in Mexico, are actually accurate. The harbor lights are working (another novelty, after Mexico...where you never knew what lights you'd find and if they'd operate remotely like the charts indicated). We have excellent moonlight- it sounds strange to say, perhaps, but it is amazing how miuch you can see under the moonlight, especially without any land-based light pollution. And of course, we do happen to have a Class A Pilot on board. That might be giving us just a bit of an extra dose of confidence!

The sun disappeared behind the surprisingly tall peaks of Hiva Oa as we came down the channel on the south side of the island. With a swell nearly on the beam and the wind coming ahead of us, we fired up the Yanmar to power in the final stretch. Sloowwwly into the harbor, then setting bow and stern anchors outside the breakwall, we settle in for our full night of sleep.

Day 19: things have been better

*** Totem has made landfall, but didn't get our daily blog updates posted after our radio stopped working. Here is another of our written-but-not-posted updates from sea. ***

position: 7*28' S, 136*30' W

24 hour run: 181 miles

Distance to go to Hiva Oa: about 200

I'm thinking back on our daily posts, and they're pretty rosy. I don't deliberately try to put the happy filter on and only share good news. The truth is that this passage really has been good. With the exception of the radio, there has been no failure of gear or equipment that we could not deal with. The conditions have been really comfortable. We have not been sick. We pass the days pleasantly, and with our superstar crew Ty on board, there are shared duties and night time watches that keep us all rested and on an even keel. There's really nothing to complain about!

That trend ends today...I'm going to whine a little. It's lumpy out. We are happy about the wind and will have excellent progress today, but it's mostly upwind (we are supposed to be in the trades on beautiful beam reaches or downwind) and the swells are confused enough that we get launched around. Just try cooking at an angle, juggling hot things on the stove.

What's really making me cranky is my shoulder. Not long before we left I was diagnosed with a rotator cuff injury. Mostly it's been fine...I take anti-inflammatories and can't use my right arm. That's correct: can't use my right arm. Not with any kind of strain, at least. This is where the seaway makes things challenging. Moving from one part of the boat to another means going handhold by handhold and pulling yourself along. As a dominant 'rightie' it's my first instinct to reach with the right arm. Can't do that!Now try cooking with one arm (you need one hand to cook, and one hand to hold yourself in one place by hanging for dear life onto the bar in front of the range). Or sleeping (it's a whole neck/arm/shoulder continuum of strain)...I usually sleep on my right side. Not any more! Never mind that it's also the most comfortable way to pack myself into a seaberth with cushions, so some rest is possible between the rolls... yeah. Not really fun.

The hard part really is that this all makes me really grumpy. I have no patience for helping the kids. I don't want to cook. I can't even do little chores like filling a bucket with water for dishes...tried that, and the arm yank was categorically bad!

Meanwhile...the boat is too small a space to be short tempered...but it's hard.

See? I can be whiny. It's not all roses.

Day 18: a semi typical day on board

position: 5*18' S, 134*22' W
24 hour run: 193 nautical miles (hoooo yeah)
Distance traveled since departing Mexico: lots
Distance to go to Hiva Oa: 375

The radio problems throw a lurch into our days. We can hear, but we cannot effectively transmit, and so we cannot request or receive weather reports or update our position. It has probably helped us focus even more closely on the radio nets we can hear: noting the position and weather of other reporting boats, and thinking about what that means for us and the weather we may experience next. It's a far cry from a grib file but s close as we can get.

Otherwise, today has been like any other day- that is to say it is unstructured, but has a rhythm. I have the watch that bridges dawn, and love the quiet time where see the stars fade into warm yellow clouds. Ty usually comes up earlier than his 6am start, and I get ready to scribe details from the net. Jamie is up to listen in on the radio by the time the net starts at 7. Breakfast is around 8; today, hash browns with sausage and eggs. The children are up in staggered sets... last night, the motion of the boat sent Siobhan back to the aft cabin with me. With the added heel, she and Mairen otherwise become piled like puppies at one end of the forepeak.

When the radio net and breakfast end, Ty and Jamie are typically in the cockpit while I spend time below with the kids. Today, I read aloud from a book we're learning from about the history of navigation. Other days, it's been chapters of 'Stowaway', a great kids' book about a stowaway on one of Captain Cook's vessels or helping the girls with their readers while Niall dives into another book on his own. Later in the morning, an elaborate diorama of paper sea creatures was arranged on the starboard settee. Mermaids, whales, sea horses, squid, dolphins, eels and more are drawn, cut, colored, and then arranged by the girls to tell a story. We broke out the camera so they could create the sequence and play it back later.

At midday, we usually have sandwiches or a salad for lunch. If there aren't any clouds, the sextant often comes out for a noon sight. In the afternoon, Jamie, Ty and I take turns napping- making up for gaps in our sleep from the nighttime watch schedule (which shuffled a little but mostly settled at 9pm-12am, Ty; 12-3, Jamie; 3-6, me). One of them, or occasionally me, is always in the cockpit. If the movement of the boat is settled enough, games come out: everything from Candyland to chess, dominoes, cards, or puzzles. On this day, we're tossed too much for any small pieces and so the kids are coloring at the table, with boxes holding markers and pencils wedged on the settee next to them. At some point, the journals are broken out and they do their entries- I do mine as well. On settled days, this is the perfect time to sit on the rail in the shadow of the genoa with a good book. I spent hours watching jellyfish and man-of-wars drift by us in the doldrums from this perch.

Our battery bank, while not completely topped up, is doing well and we're bringing in a lot of power with all the sun and wind to feeding through the solar panels and wind generator. There's enough to run the watermaker and maintain net positive amps into the bank, so we run it for a few hours to keep our tanks comfortably full.

Later in the afternoon, we mark our daily 24 hour run. We've tracked it daily at 0:00 UTC, which coincides with 4pm for our current time zone. After looking at our progress and route, I usually put down notes for a blog post. When we could still connect our radio, the late afternoon and early evening were good times for propagation for a successful link, and I like to have it ready between the SSB net (0200 zulu, or 6pm local time) and the Pacific Seafarer's net (roll starting around 0325 zulu, or 7:25pm local time). The children are helping mark our progress on a paper chart as well.

I'm feeling a little tired, so Jamie cooks up a dinner of sautéed cabbage and shredded beef with lavender. While he's cooking, the SSB radio net is starting and once again I'm checking all the boats who report in with their position and weather. There are a number of boats who will be making landfall within a few days of us, so there's additional chatter after the roll call on the net as the boats underway quiz Eric (s/v Secret Agent Man) on everything from lights in the harbor for an evening approach to the process for signing into the country with officials. Later, I switch frequencies for the Pacific Seafarer's Net. It is astounding to me but Randy, the net control in Hawaii, can actually still pick us up. Our signal is very, very weak- the best we can do is answer "ROGER ROGER ROGER" to affirmatively respond and confirm with him that all is well on board. We believe we are essentially operating without an antenna, and are amazed that he is able to direct his antennae from about 2,000 miles away to pick us up at all. It is like a lifeline, and feels so important to know that we can be noted on their roll call as OK...just hampered by a radio problem.

After dinner, Ty and Jamie get some rest before their watches start. With the power looking good, tonight is a special treat: the children get to watch a movie together in the aft cabin, our laptop movie screen balanced on Niall's lap as they lean into pillows. They finish as Ty comes on watch, so I can tuck them in and read the girls a story before retiring with a book of my own.

Pictures from the passage

We interrupt the somewhat time-shifted updates from Totem's passage across the Pacific to bring you... pictures! A few of our favorites are below. To see more, visit our Flickr stream: you can always get to it at http://www.flickr.com/photos/giffordclan by clicking through images down the right hand side, or through most of the photos in the blog. (THANKS TIM!)

You can get to the stream by clicking through any one of these as well. Sizes are smaller to help us upload on this dribbly bit of bandwidth that's available.

Finding Escapade offshore, and trading fresh yellowfin tuna for cake! (I think we came out ahead)

The girls open gifts from their grandparents on the 10th day offshore

Deck bathing!

I always knew he wanted a square rigger! Jamie and Ty show off the ratlines they built for checking our our backstay connections for the radio (more fruitless troubleshooting)

Pesky little fishing net that ALMOST gave us a very, very bad day

Clouds at the equator: I could watch them for hours. I *did* watch them for hours.

Day 17: radio woes

*** Totem has made landfall, but didn't get our daily blog updates posted after our radio stopped working. here is the first of our last few written-but-not-posted updates from sea. ***

position: 3*2.5' S, 130*6.5' W
24 hour run: 170 miles
Total miles: 2360
Distance to go to Hiva Oa: 590

Jamie has gone to great lengths to troubleshoot our SSB. The bottom line is that we have no power for our transmission. This seems to point to a problem with a connection or with the ground plane. It might also be a problem with the tuner. We have gone through almost all the alternatives we have available to us on board, from swapping out cables to testing signal strength.

What is truly remarkable is that despite the supremely weak signal, we can still be picked up by Pacific Seafarer's net control, Randy (KH6RC). He can't hear us in any detail- in fact, he can barely make us out. It is enough, however, for him to verify that all is well on board. I believe he'll be able to update our data on the roll call to note that although our position could not be taken, we were in no danger.

Meanwhile, we are just screaming along and making great progress. We're definitely in the trades now and doing better every day.

Thinking about that shellback tattoo now...

Day 16: shellbacks!

*** Totem has made landfall, but didn't get our daily blog updates posted after our radio stopped working. here is the first of our last few written-but-not-posted updates from sea. ***

Current position: 01*11' S, 130*16' W
24 hour run: 150 nautical miles

At approximately 3:30 a.m. on April 17, Totem sailed across the equator and into the southern hemisphere. There was no glowing yellow line in the water...no hot dog stand, no Wall Drug style billboards...but it was a moment I'll never forget. After nights of shifting clouds in the ITCZ, we had clear skies and spectacular stars. Pointing just right of the Southern Cross (cue the Crosby Stills & Nash!), we were on a comfortable reach, making over 6 knots in about 12 knots of breeze.

We let the girls sleep, but Niall was very excited to be in the cockpit for the big moment! Since our watch change is scheduled for 3, Jamie and I were both up anyway and we got Ty up to join us. He's a veteran of arctic circle and date line crossings was looking forward to crossing this circle; now, he just has to plan a trip to Antarctica to get the full complement of rings.

At a more civilized hour, we celebrated with a big breakfast of waffles with strawberry compote and whipped cream. Decadent! Soon after, Neptune himself made a visit to Totem. He questioned our pollywog crew, then accepted us all as shellbacks. Siobhan was completely taken in by the spectre of Neptune and buried her head in my shoulder!

Ceilydh gave us a bag to open ONLY at the equator, as Maia's note emphasized. The kids had been jonesing to open it all week! Inside were treats for everyone: serrano ham (oh, joy!), a wee bottle of anejo tequila (mmmmm...how much does Neptune need?), sweet treats for the kids, a bag of buttery cookies. Best of all was a home-made coloring book based on pictures of the good times the girls had together in La Cruz. What a great stack of memories!

Although we're not quite in the southeast trades, the sailing is now spectacular. In the evening, we had dinner together in the cockpit. Jamie pointed out that this was the sailing that armchair sailors in northern winters dream about! We were on a flat, comfortable reach, moving along at 6+ knots...watching the sun set over the equatorial Pacific...enjoying a warm breeze and a delicious dinner. It really was pretty near perfect! We had Jamie's favorite meal, a farmer's plate of finger food: in addition to our treats from Ceilydh, there were green olives stuffed with blue cheese, baby corn, dried chorizo slices, sliced cheese and tomatoes, hearts of palm, and to spread on crackers- cream cheese with papaya chutney and a pate of smoked salmon. We felt utterly decadent!

The only blemish on an otherwise lovely day: our SSB radio stopped transmitting in the morning, before we had checked into the net. It's very discouraging, and the troubleshooting continues.

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Posted via radio: we have no internet access

Radio troubles - but Totem arrived safely in the Marquesas

A few hours ago, we made landfall in Hiva Oa. Our 20 day passage was beautiful, occasionally exciting, and extremely memorable! It was only marred by the failure of our radio (we think the tuner is to blame...more troubleshooting is in order) on the morning of the 17th. We'd been having issues with it since a few days after our departure but before we could crow about our equator crossing, the situation went from "minor and annoying" to "inoperable". No fun...the radio is our lifeline for communications, a key part of our safety plan, and a sanity link to other boats.

More details will dribble out here, but for now, I'm going to catch up on some sleep!