What a relief! All the unforeseen events that could have happened fortunately didn’t! Or rather, some did, but were easily manageable! The generator broke down, but we managed by running the engine to charge the batteries, those few times when the energy balance was negative. Three days before arriving, the right lazy jack broke. This would have been a more difficult problem to handle, as climbing the mast with three-meter waves and the resulting rolling wouldn’t have been ideal for us to fix the broken line. Fortunately, we could wait until we were anchored to work on it easily. And we also managed to fix the generator, which wouldn’t start due to a faulty fuse connection.
Lazy jack (the blue wires)
The wind throughout the crossing was light or even too light. Sometimes it was annoying because it took us a few days longer than expected to arrive, but surely we had a weather situation infinitely better than what we could have experienced due to too much wind. However, we did get a small taste of what it could have been like on the third-to-last day when a disturbance accompanied us for three and a half hours with rain and winds at 30-35 knots. Just a taste, but telling. So, we thank everyone who needs to be thanked for how it went. It was an easy ride, including passing through the ITCZ, which overall translated into a little over a day of motoring. In the end, throughout the crossing, we used about ¼ of the diesel tank, one of the topics we wondered if we had planned resources well for.
We arrived at Hiva Oa at the very first light of dawn, in the bay of Hanaiapa, where only two other boats were anchored. By the end of the day, there were five of us, including one boat, Celestina, which followed us during the last part of the crossing. For a day, no one moved – we imagine that everyone, like us, needed to catch up on some sleep and lost rest.
In short, we are VERY happy and aware that we were VERY lucky!
Arrived in French Polynesia!
May 6th, 6:00 AM local time.
We’ve arrived at Hiva Oa! What a beauty!
What a relief! All the unforeseen events that could have happened fortunately didn’t! Or rather, some did, but were easily manageable! The generator broke down, but we managed by running the engine to charge the batteries, those few times when the energy balance was negative. Three days before arriving, the right lazy jack broke. This would have been a more difficult problem to handle, as climbing the mast with three-meter waves and the resulting rolling wouldn’t have been ideal for us to fix the broken line. Fortunately, we could wait until we were anchored to work on it easily. And we also managed to fix the generator, which wouldn’t start due to a faulty fuse connection.
The wind throughout the crossing was light or even too light. Sometimes it was annoying because it took us a few days longer than expected to arrive, but surely we had a weather situation infinitely better than what we could have experienced due to too much wind. However, we did get a small taste of what it could have been like on the third-to-last day when a disturbance accompanied us for three and a half hours with rain and winds at 30-35 knots. Just a taste, but telling. So, we thank everyone who needs to be thanked for how it went. It was an easy ride, including passing through the ITCZ, which overall translated into a little over a day of motoring. In the end, throughout the crossing, we used about ¼ of the diesel tank, one of the topics we wondered if we had planned resources well for.
We arrived at Hiva Oa at the very first light of dawn, in the bay of Hanaiapa, where only two other boats were anchored. By the end of the day, there were five of us, including one boat, Celestina, which followed us during the last part of the crossing. For a day, no one moved – we imagine that everyone, like us, needed to catch up on some sleep and lost rest.
In short, we are VERY happy and aware that we were VERY lucky!