Month: August 2012

On the Road Again (Bora Bora, Society Islands)

August 28, 2012

If all goes well, we’re off today about noon, bound for Suwarrow.  We’ve been waiting for the perfect weather for the sail and gave up on that fantasy about a week ago.  Now, we’re settling for good enough – at least we hope it’ll be good enough.  We’ve hired a weather router to help us and he says go, so we will.

But first, we need to check out with the local police, do some last-minute grocery shopping and about a hundred last-minute boat chores.

Suwarrow wasn’t our first choice for a destination. We’d been planning to go to an island called Niue on the way to the island nation of Tonga but that’s a more southern route and the weather just doesn’t look good for that crossing.  Suwarrow is a tiny atoll on the way to Samoa.  It’s about a 5 or 6 day sail from here, then another 4 days or so to Samoa.  From Samoa, we’ll head to Tonga.  At least, that’s the plan for now – subject to change whichever way the wind blows.

We’ll try to send some text-only updates while underway.  On behalf of you (’cause we know you would want to), we wish us smooth seas and fair winds.  Thanks! -Rich

Final Days in Bora Bora (Society Islands)

August 25 – 28, 2012

One thing we have all learned about passages in this part of the world is that they are not to be taken lightly. Even if the winds aren’t too strong, the swells can be huge and the seas rough. There are a lot of factors to consider in planning a passage across this part of the Pacific. By now, we had been watching the weather and hearing the stories of people who’d already headed out, and I had given a name to the part of the ocean that lies French Polynesia and New Zealand: the Boiling Cauldron of Death.

A large group of us were waiting to head off from Bora Bora. Every morning there would another round of meetings or radio conferences as all the guys poured over the GRIBS* and various forecasts. Some of us, including Rich and I, had hired weather routers. These are weather experts who help you choose the best time to leave and the best route to take advantage of the winds. As if having to worry about wind speed and direction aren’t complicated enough, we now have to worry about the sea state, too: swell height and period. It seems when one thing is good, another is not. It’s always something.

Finally, one of the weather routers said something that struck Rich and I: “If you are hoping for a passage with a consistent 15 to 18 knots of wind . . . it’s just not gonna happen.” We realized we had to pick our poison: to pick the best combination of less-than-ideal options, or we would be here for weeks! So we chose the next window, which would mean leaving in 18 to 20 knots of wind. Those winds would continue for about 3 days and be accompanied by large swells, followed by a day of no wind and motoring, and then higher winds again. Our destination was Suwarrow, about a 5-day passage. We had wanted to go to Nuie and perhaps Palmerston, but the conditions for that more southerly route had been rough, were currently rough, and would be rough until, it seemed, the end of eternity. Suwarrow would be a stop en route to Western Samoa and would break up the trip.

As it turned out, Suwarrow was not to be. More on that later. -Cyndi

* GRIBS are GRIdded Binary weather files. They are generated by sophisticated weather models and are what most of us use to plan our passages. We have found them to be amazingly accurate.

(Rich: Cyndi called these weather discussions, affectionately, meetings of the “weather hysterics.” Everyone would get together with all the weather information they accumulated to discuss the pros and cons of leaving at a given time. It seems that no matter how good one source of information made the timing look, another would completely contradict that and promise a brutal beating if you were to set sail at the appointed time. Too much weather information; it’s like the guy with more than one clock who never knows what time it is.

What we came to realize is that this time of year, in this part of the Pacific, there are constant highs followed by lows marching from west to east down at about 30 degrees south latitude. The highs cause compression zones in our latitudes that bring very high winds. The lows often have fronts associated with them that generate huge seas that find their way up to our cruising grounds. It just doesn’t seem possible to pick a magical time when you aren’t hit by these effects.)

Below, a few photos from our mooring at the yacht club.