Nanumea to Kiribati THIS TIME WITH PICTURES Crossing the equator Dec 8, 2015 (posted from Majuro Feb 2017) Janet The bloody sails are flogging. We are in the light winds of the equatorial region. Dusk is falling. I wipe the sweat off my body with a wet flannel, carefully conserving our fresh water in case we can't catch any more before we get to the Marshalls. And did we sweat today. We very nearly didn't get far beyond Nanumea. *** You will have read David's piece on what is etched into our psyches as "The Grounding". Like him, at the time I had this clear thought "This is it, this is what its like to run aground, what now?" but before I had a chance to catastrophise and start imaging what it is like to lose your boat on a remote atoll, we were afloat again. *** "You know how we don't normally drink alcohol on passage, " I said to David, once we were underway again. "I think this deserves a couple of vodka shots." David wisely declined. Later on the radio I checked out the idea with Brian, on Clara Catherine, who had seen the grounding from inside the lagoon. "I'd have drunk half the bottle," he said. I agreed, but settled for a cup of tea and a piece of ginger crunch. *** 0100 Dec 9th Oh I hated being wrenched from my bed in the dead of the night. It took me a bleary half hour to settle into the beauty of the night, to start to enjoy the stars and the glorious solitude. I hadn't slept well. It often took time to get into the watch rhythm, and I was itching like a child with chicken pox. Wearing a life jacket and nothing else I reflected on the day's events. We were bloody lucky. Grounding at low tide you always have the chance of the tide to float you off, but grounding at high tide is nearly always fatal, leaving you permanently high and dry. Our trip would have been over. We'd have to have got everything off our boat, then I guess get it on a local ferry and back to Tuvalu. Then what? By ship to Fiji, and another from Fiji to New Zealand. It was too much effort to go down that track with all its grief. I settled for a big dose of gratitude for being able to continue on our way. Lightning and squalls danced on the horizon. Sailing at 4.5 knots and on course, yahoo. Five hours to go till my next bunktime. *** 0500 - Journal excerpt Oh what a glorious night watch. Steady 10-12 knots of wind all night. Tossing up whether to wake David at 6 or leave him a bit longer. At last he sleeps. He was up at 0400, The Grounding on his mind. But I couldn't sleep on my 6-12 off watch period and I'm cross-eyed with sleepiness, and so so itchy, so I vote for waking him on time. 280 miles to go. Divided by 3 =3D 90, about three days. Dawn is splendid and so was a night without squalls. *** 0900 As soon as I wake I look out for the other boats. How many? I can only see Carla Catherine on our starboard side, travelling at the same pace as us. We have a light easterly ghosting us along on flat seas. Slept for three hours. Bliss. Woke feeling rested at last. Its nice out here on the ocean, the day hasn't heated up fully yet. But there is always a chance we are taking on water after The Grounding. We keep checking the bilge. All good so far. On my night watch I started planning for our next port of call - Tarawa in Kiribati. Menus so I can work out shopping for a month till we get to Majuro. Fill gas, water, get to a bank, and very urgent get to internet. I have stuff bouncing in my bank, and am dying to see my email, my umbilical chord to New Zealand. *** 1530 The day started at 30 degrees and just got hotter. I constantly wash myself down. I'm still being eaten alive. David is dozing in the cockpit, probably dreaming about The Grounding. So far no water in the bilge. We are motoring again. David put up the spinnaker as a geniker, a beautiful big blue thing but there wasn't even enough breeze to hold that up. However I'm grateful for an absence of squalls. I'm tired, but its only day one out of five. Savusavu takeaways for lunch with shaved carrot and apple Thai salad. The less ingredients I have the more creative I get. One carrot left and a few leaves of cabbage. What else can I do with cabbage? Broke out some of the frozen brownie. The bilge is staying empty. *** Thursday 11 Dec Champagne sailing. We've heard about this phenomena, and can now report it happens. We've had gentle breezes and settled seas for over 24 hours. The breeze is pushing us along at three to four knots. The sun is out. A pod of 20 dolphins escorted us for a while this morning. I made a chili for lunch with a tin of Spam, tin of black chili beans, and a tin of tomatoes. Salads was, yes, cabbage again, but with apple and onion, and another with some chopped up soft coconut, capsicum from a jar and lemongrass paste. Carla Catherine are sailing along next to us. Nice to be out in the vast ocean but have someone we can call up and chat to. We talk to everyone else on the net at 0830 each the morning. "Its so different to sailing to New Zealand," I said to David, "to know we are not going to definitely get clobbered by a front with high winds." There is always a chance of squalls though. This leg has been remarkably free of them. I touch the varnished cockpit edge. The most wonderful thing is I've not had an iota of seasickness on this leg. I feel normal. So this is why other people enjoy sailing passages. We chat idly, planning Christmas, renovations at Rawene, and what we are going to do when we cross the equator. I am one of the few amongst the fleet who hasn't crossed by boat before. I have a bottle of wine in the fridge in preparation. Alas it is still wine, we haven't seen a bottle of bubbly for months. How I will doubly appreciate good old Lindauer when we get back to New Zealand. There's lots of things I'll appreciate - fast internet, the range at supermarkets, my god we are so well served, good cheese, New Zealand wines. I won't enjoy the cooler temperatures and having to wear clothes most of the time. And oh yes I'll enjoy unlimited fresh water and long showers But meanwhile, I am contented. Really. *** December 12 (I think) 200 miles to go to Tarawa and about 100 to the equator After two dream days we are bouncing through the sea in 17-20 knots of wind. Too rough to write emails or watch movies. But its still nothing on the New Zealand passage conditions. Only got about three hours sleep, but we have two more nights to go so hopefully that will improve. I'm still being eaten by something. I slather myself with insect repellant and make David sleep in the most infested bunk, as the beasts don't seem to bother him. On the subject of bugs the cockroaches are taking over. Its depressing. Two and a half hours to go. Up till now I've had relaxing night watches, pampering myself, a movie, emailing. But tonight I've only read, and only with one eye, the other on the wind instrument and the sails. I've already accidentally tacked once, had to start the engine to get back on course, and then couldn't get the windvane set up again. David won't be happy. It'll be light in an hour. I got an email from my son Harry. I'm delighted that he is talking about doing an electrical apprenticeship. *** Next morning in the cockpit, I say to David "I thought the champagne sailing would go on for ever" "So did I" he rues. We jerk up and down as Navire gallops to windward. It's a gorgeous summer's day but I'm too tired to enjoy it. I feel seedy but have not had a drop of alcohol for days. We trawl the lines but some bloody beast is eating our lures. No fish. I fantasise. Imagine getting a tuna. Sashimi, seared steaks, tuna coconut soup... In 18 hours we will cross the equator, then Sunday we arrive in Tarawa. I check off the hours in the log book. *** David had a plan for the crossing of the equator, me being the initiate and him already a member of the guild by having done it in 1963 on a ship with his parents. All morning we watch the latitude numbers tick down. We don our outfits, me my canary yellow dress, my best despite the mildew that adorns the front of it. David drapes himself in his favourite Maori sarong and Asian hat with a selection of my plastic tikis around his neck. At the chart table David lines the camera up to catch the moment when the GPS says 00 00 001s but it rattles past and before he can click the shutter and the northern hemisphere numbers begin to climb rapidly. He snaps a shot of the boat crossing the line on the electronic chart. Time for my dunking. Out on the bow I strip, David takes great delight in sluicing me with a bucket of seawater. Back in the cockpit I pour a glass of wine and David sets up the computer to read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in its entirety. What better place surely? But nature has its own ideas. A squall bears down on us and we shut the hatch and reef the headsail. It passes, David continues the salty tale. The wine is Chilean crap and doesn't do justice to the occasion. I want a second glass but no, I need to be a responsible crew person. Lastly we do an incantation to the sea Gods Neptune, Poseidon, and Tangaroa. and thank our trusty vessel. I pour a tot of rum in the sea for luck, in the style of the eighteenth century sailors. "Coming up here has been much tougher and more intrepid than I expected," I muse.=20 "Me too" David agrees. Going to New Zealand for the summer would have been a much easier option, despite the difficult passage down there and back. The weather behaves differently up here. Mostly we ignore the windspeeds on the gribs (forecast charts). I find the wind directions moderately accurate but the speed always under reads, which is good up here as the gribs usually forecast very light winds. Its remote. There's hardly any land up here. Just a few isolated communities that get a supply ship every so often. I feel vulnerable after The Grounding. In New Zealand we would have immediately sailed somewhere and hauled the boat out to repair the damage to the keel. We check the bilge, fingers crossed. =20 Monday Dec 14 Still tired, but safely at anchor. Well relatively. David counted 14 wrecks, mostly on the reef right behind us. We hoved to on the fifth and last night of our passage to wait for daylight to traverse the pass into Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati. Dawn finally came and we hadn't drifted far. "Tarawa Radio, Tarawa Radio, this is EOS II. We would like to enter Tarawa Harbour." We hear our Aussie friends preparing to enter the pass. Tarawa Radio replies and instructs them to enter. "Tarawa Radio, Tarawa Radio, this is Free Spirit..." The fleet was arriving, they'd been hoved to around us in the dark, waiting for dawn. Our tired convoy negotiated the harbour buoys and dropped anchors near the wharf in choppy water. And went to bed.