Sailing Classes and Adventure Sailing
Modern Sailing Academy
French Polynesia Adventure Part 2
A couple of days later it was finally time to move from the hotel to the boat! I had already met Holly, who was easily identified at the hotel as I had spied her sitting by the hotel pool reading the latest edition of Latitude 38. Always a dead give away for a Bay Area sailor. Now it was time to join the boat and meet the rest of the crew.
I already knew John from my lessons at MSA, and I had done an eight day course with him a couple of years before onboard his boat, Polaris. The crew of six included Holly, a surgeon originally from San Francisco and now living in Baltimore, Jerry, who at age 69 was a very experienced sailor originally from the Bay area but now working as an engineer at a government lab in New Mexico. Holly, Jerry and I were the only three who had significant sailing experience. The rest of the crew included Paul, a psychologist from
Late morning of March 20 we were finally underway from Nuku Hiva to Ua Pou. This was an upwind trip and we were going into 20 knots of wind and 10 foot seas. Fortunately I don’t get seasick, but three of the new crew did and were heaving over the side. All part of Adventure sailing! We were off.
Our Instructor and Skipper John Connolly and Me
We arrived in Ua Pou, where as John promised we were able to go pierside and get water. Non potable water. I very quickly learned that this is standard in the South Pacific. You buy drinking water or you have a watermaker. If you are lucky you can sometimes find hydrants a good distance from the boat where you can fill up your jerry jugs with non potable water from local cisterns. We were able to top off all our water tanks and then went back out to anchor, loaded up into the dingy, and went to dinner at this fantastic little restaurant on a hillside overlooking the harbor. It was right out of Bali Hai. The owners were French, of course, and the food worthy of a bistro on the Left Bank of
The next day we were underway from the Marquesas bound for Fakarava in the Tuomotus. For the next four days we organized into three section watches and learned how to balance watch standing, cooking, eating, sleeping, and navigating. This was really one of the primary reasons I had taken this leg of the course, to experience the 550 mile sail across open ocean. The surprising part was how quickly we all fell into our routine and how fast the time and the miles passed. I also learned that using my sextant, which I had mastered many years before as a young Ensign navigator on my first Navy ship, was quite a bit more challenging on a rolling 47 foot sailboat in the open ocean. Also, computing the results of the star sights was quite a bit different on the salon table of a pitching sailboat than in the much more stable chartroom of a warship. Lesson learned: know how to navigate by the sun and the stars, have a full set of paper charts, but invest in high quality GPS chart plotter and have a good waterproof handheld GPS stowed away for a backup as well as for that ditch bag.
The only thing more exciting than sailing away from a harbor for an extended crossing is seeing the next harbor come into view. After four days of sailing everyone was up on deck the morning of day five to catch the first sight of Fakarava on the horizon. As we neared the island, however, there was something coming over the horizon that was unlike anything I had seen anywhere in the world in my years at sea or in sailing in the Bay. We all took turns watching this unusual object through the binoculars. It looked like three huge vertical poles, all the same size. Then over the horizon came the hull and yes, there was no mistaking, it was Maltese Falcon. This is actually almost as exciting a sighting than the
As it was early in the season there were no other sailboats in Fakarava, other than Maltese Falcon, so we were actually able to go pierside in the little village. After four days at sea it was an unexpected treat to tie up and to be able to step off onto the shore. The dreaded no-no’s did not materialize, nor did any mosquitoes, so we remained at the pier for the two nights of our stay.
Now Fakarava is NOT a large established harbor like Nuku Hiva. We were berthed in a tiny little
After two days in Fakarava we were underway for Toa’u. Now this was a totally different kind of visit because Toa’u is a deserted motu. It was also very small with very tight navigation inside the pass. I was the navigator going in, and it was hairy! Very narrow channel within the lagoon. However thanks to an accurate GPS and two minute fixes we made it, and anchored off a totally deserted beach. After a short dingy ride to shore and more great snorkeling it was time to have a nice meal and some good French wine and watch the sun set over the motu. Lesson learned: when anchored off of a beautiful island in the South Pacific the only place to sleep is topside.
