Rangiroa to Oahu - Week 1

noon, Saturday - December 14
08 20.6S / 150.56.1W

As planned, we left Rangiroa, French Polynesia for Hawaii (Oahu) on December 7. We thought we weren't going to make our tidal gate as our windlass failed and the chain had to be pulled up manually, which, due to complications, took about two hours. Luckily, the water was still mostly slack in Avatoru Pass and we quickly made our way out to the open ocean escorted by a lively pod of dolphins. It was a relief to be away from our busy, action-packed one week stay in Rangiroa. We raised sail and enjoyed perfect sailing for the first three hours in a 13-15 knot northeasterly breeze. Then, the wind died and for the next FIVE days we didn't have any wind greater than FIVE knots. This meant we could only sail at a miserable 1-3 knot speed compared to the usual 5-7. It's not just the slow motion sailing that gets to you, it's the continual effort that needs to be put in to try and keep a steady heading, in any direction. The wind puffs, the wind gusts, the wind stops, the sails backwind, slat and bang, the rigging creaks and groans, the autopilot can't maintain its heading and starts beeping loudly. Without a cooling breeze, it gets very hot baking on the sea's reflective surface and there is no relief anywhere on the boat. Around dusk, biq squalls came through which brought too strong winds for about twenty minutes requiring a quick reefing of sails. It all wears on you including the thought that, at 1 knot, a 2200 mile passage could take as long as 100 days, not something we wanted to contemplate! Logically, of course, we knew things would change, but when? Five days bobbing along was a long time to wait. We ran the motor for about thirty hours to try and get further north to where there seemed to be more wind. Finally, the change did come, the winds increased to 9-10 knots and we started moving once more which allowed us to record an ok result for the week, 578 miles sailed, 429 made good, better than nothing. We expected this kind of weather in the doldrums, still to be crossed, let's hope that maybe we'll get good wind for that crossing, the grib forecast is looking good, so, fingers crossed for a better week 2 result.

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