April 28 - Final passage: to Tahiti

Blog 4.28 Sailing to Tahiti
SITUATION REPORT:
Latitude 16.5,  Longitude 149.0 W;  70 mi to Papeete, Tahiti
Wind ENE 6-9 kts, spinnaker & mainsail dead downwind (again)
Lumpy seas, partly cloudy skies, probably about 87 degrees F.

ASSTERLY WINDS
It's downwind in light winds again.  Our sailing buddy Jim Powell gave us the term "noserlies" for when the wind is always coming from the direction in which you want to sail but can't go upwind.  We are coining the term "assterlies" for the weeks and weeks we've been sailing almost dead downwind.  A sailboat prefers to have some wind angle from either side of the boat so, once again, we aren't sailing exactly in the direction we want to go straight downwind, but 15-20 degrees to starboard or port toward the wind, requiring us to tack downwind.

Dawn, April 29, Papeete, Tahiti

We did some calculations this morning, and guess that for the 45+ days we've been at sea the winds have been ideal for sailing only about 8 days.  This has been a very light wind passage, and more directly downwind than we would have liked.  So it's been lots of work to tweak the sails to keep them flying and get the most boat speed possible.  Not the Trade Wind milk run we envisioned where we were told we'd set the sails on a port tack broad reach in 18kts of wind and not touch them until Tahiti.

Waves in the Pacific Ocean come from everywhere and generally from about three directions at once.  High winds or a storm a thousand miles away can send waves that we feel on Quester.  If you have good winds the boat is steady through the waves with a motion you get used to.  But when the winds are light and especially when they're assterlies, there is little steadying effect from the sails and the boat wallows around in the lumpy seas.  Fortunately neither Jan nor I, nor Joe, Deb or Mike, are prone to seasickness!!!!  But the rocky rolly boat does make life a challenge.  Especially sleeping.

LAST DAY AT SEA
It's so hard to believe that tomorrow morning we'll be pulling into the harbor in Papeete, Tahiti.  At long last, our destination after close to 5,000 miles of sailing.
Life aboard Quester has been amazingly congenial.  We've gotten along pretty well considering our tight quarters.  We are lucky that our fellow crew accepts us with all our flaws and occasional whining about the less-than-ideal conditions.  And did we mention the heat and humidity?  Our 2-hour watch system has worked well.  We stand watch three times a day and at night enjoy the solitude of being alone with the boat, the stars and the ocean.  While we've endured weeks and weeks at sea, we've also had some fantastic island anchorages along the way to break up the voyage with fun and interesting time ashore.  The Panama Canal, Panama City, Pearl Islands, Galapagos, Marquesas and Tuamotus have all been very fun stops.

LONELY SEA
We looked at a chart of the entire Pacific yesterday and can't believe we've sailed over half way to New Zealand.  That's a big ocean.  We've sailed day and night for all these miles and it's incredible to experience the vastness of the Pacific from the cockpit of Quester.  Considering we've only seen our own little sliver as we've sailed along, and how much more ocean there is than what we've seen, and understanding that it's thousands of feet deep under our keel, it truly is unbelievable how much water there is on our planet.  How did it all get created, and what keeps it all glued so uniformly to the earth?

During our time at sea we've only seen two other Oyster sailboats and two fishing boats.  We've never seen or heard an airplane or jetliner high overhead.  Also it's amazing how little sea life you see from the boat.  Joe has been trailing a fishing line for much of this time but we've only caught four fish!  We've been welcomed at some of the islands by schools of dolphins but they're the only visible sign of sea creatures outside the harbors. We have seen birds far out at sea and wondered how on earth they survive all alone or in pairs.