Along the Watery Way....

Vanuatu 🇻🇺 to New Caledonia 🇳🇨 320 nautical miles. 2.5 days. Day 1 - We left Port Vila in the mist and motored until sunset. Altered course north to save fuel and beat less into the wind. An arriving ship's captain radioed the local port pilot over Channel 16 every five minutes for three hours 🤯 trying to establish contact. Gotta hand it to him for persistence! I don't know where the pilot was, but the port office is a big smear down the hillside, a casualty of the last earthquake. I reeled in a baby swordfish and then five minutes later, a mahi with cookie cutter shark scars on it. Let them both go - the swordfish was too beautiful and the mahi too big. Incredible phosphorescence tonight...like ploughing through a field of stars. Day 2 - Sleeping exceptionally well and trying to eat up all the fresh food. Every bite is one that New Caledonia customs won't take. Wind is calm and all reefs are shaken out. Yellowfin tuna are jumping tantalizingly behind the boat but no b...

Fiji to Vanuatu 🇻🇺  501 nautical miles (928 kms) Day 1 - Fri, Sept 18. Checked-out from Fiji. The marina staff gave us a wreath of flowers and sang goodbye in Fijian. Very moving. We are double-handing (two sailors, two shifts), 6hrs on and 6 hrs off. Caught a wolf herring on the way out! It leaves silver glitter on your hands. Being extremely cautious with wind angle, reefing and not overpowering the sails because one of the lesser shrouds has a wire fraying. We are pointed too far north (300°), but the wind will change. Ben got soaked by rain on his watch, I got soaked by a surprise wave on mine. The sea is a washing machine, and we both puked up everything. I also have a chest cold, but spirits are good and there is gorgeous phospherence.  Day 2 - Sat, Sept 19. Beautiful winds and 3 meter swells. It's gusty with winds going from 11knts to 20-28knts and back again every few minutes. Fully reefed. Sometimes I ride them out, other times I run us downwind to take pressure of...

Minerva Reef - the Big Blue Eye Minerva is the "big blue eye," as Francois calls it, the rim of an extinct volcano, sitting in the middle of the Pacific over 800 nautical miles north of New Zealand. It emerges at low tide, and offers refuge to sailors en route to Tonga or Fiji. Stopping there is much like stepping onto a glittering alien planet, a surreal place to rest and explore. The first day at the reef, we found old shipwrecks, which mostly pre-date modern navigation technology. These ruins are slowly transforming from ships into brilliant underwater flower gardens and fish havens.  One massive ship had cracked completely in half with its bow blown 100 feet from the stern, etching a long scar into the reef where it had dragged. Someone had had a BAD night. Ben dove under to examine it, re-surfaced and made us all laugh, saying, "I see what happened here. The front fell off." We also found an industrial-sized metal anchor, completely intact, but embedded flat in...

 First Mate's Log - Minerva Reef to Fiji 🇫🇯, 433nautical miles, 3+ days. Monday, May 18 - We left at dawn, making the pass in the reef at high tide. The anchor came up with no issues, nothing wrapped around coral. And we are FLYING in perfect conditions. Swell is on our starboard quarter, 20-30 knot winds from the same all day, which means smooth conditions. We cautiously but successfully ate curry & rice for dinns. We are surfing the crest of 4 meter waves - my heart skips a beat each time we get lifted up and flung forward. It's been half a day and we have covered 100miles. Go, Kintaro! Tuesday, May 19 - We've slowed down a little, but the winds and swell are still in our favour. We poled out the jib to starboard and the mainsail to port, sailing "papillon" or wing-on-wing. All reefs are shaken out, it's smooth and beautiful, and not much to report other than the odd seabird. We pass the time by reading. Dinner of leftover curry (How is boat food so go...

Translation of newbie's notebook : Sunday, May 3rd – Sunday, May 10th: inside Kintaro’s belly, out on the Pacific Well, the rough start never stopped being rough. Me, I’m on the 2-to-6 watches. Daytime. Nighttime. During my first watch, everybody stays on deck because nobody’s feeling too great. Ben says seasickness meds are kinda shit anyway, and they slow your body adapting. So me, being the good little sailor, I do what the captain does. Except the captain starts puking everywhere. Jesus Christ. Three heaves and a bucket. Celery puke too. Fucking nasty. Me, I’m holding up… kinda… while Lizzie struggles to dump the contents of the bucket overboard. I’m proud of myself though — I make it through my watch. At 6 p.m., Ben takes over. The swell calms down exactly zero percent. Proper 5–6 meter stuff. Chaotic as hell. Waves straight in the face. The bastards. Me, I need sleep, so I crawl into my bunk. But to do that you’ve gotta climb down into Kintaro’s belly. And inside Kintaro’s be...

First Mate's Log - New Zealand to Minerva Reef 🔱. 871 nautical miles, 7 days and 2 hours. Sunday, May 3 - We checked out at NZ customs and said goodbye to this warm, welcoming country. Bumpy as heck, headed out on a starboard haul into the wind. It is cold, but each day we head north gets warmer. Monday May 4 -  A blur. Beating hard into 3 meter seas, and we can only stomach crackers. The guys decided to power through without seasickness pills. I take a Gravol. They throw up a lot. I am the only one with sea legs right now. Francois throws up in a bucket, I dump it in the bathroom sink, Ben fills the sink with water. We get smoked by waves. The bathroom is spattered all over -- teamwork! I ban them from the area and disinfect it. Tuesday, May 5 - Still living off crackers mostly and the occasional apple. At some point during the night we briefly reached low gale force winds (37 knots), but it died down. With the heel and bounce of the boat, Francois and I cannot stay in our bun...