Hiva Oa & Passage Stats

Saturday 4/6

This is now our 2^nd full day here and I’m still on the high…..can’t believe we are here!!!!!!!

Yesterday was a day of recovery…..I’m not sure if it was from the passage or from the celebration (hmm, bottle count…..don’t ask, don’t tell 🙂 ))))). We had internet so it was a day of downloading all the emails, updating weather and trying to go online for banking…..still have not been able to do that as the bandwidth here is very slow…..will try early in the am!!

We did indeed meet our agent and had a very easy check-in…..just fill out the form and stamp, stamp and off we go to explore the town/village/very small as in <2000 people……found some excellent wood carvings, t-shirts, pastierre – chocolate croissant…yummers…..Sim card for the phone, it does require a 3-band phone which out of our zillion phone collection the 6^th one worked…..yeah. Our phone # is 366373…..no idea how to actually dial from outside Marquesas. We did find a local place for cheeseburgers and the French Polynesian beer…..can’t remember the name but it was cold and went down just fine!!! Last night we all finally started to crash……popcorn and a movie…..just let that brain veg 🙂 ))))

Today was cleanup day for MM. The sides of the boat, up to 2’ above the waterline had a huge growth of algae and the swim transom, on top and underneath was coated. Some of the green algae were up to 6” long…yuck….good news, no barnacles!!! It took me an hour or so to tackle the top of the swim transom, then Les joined me and we did the sides…..took almost 3 hours……lots of on/off, bleach and elbow grease…..ugh!!!! The water here is pretty murky and shark infested so we used the dinghy to clean the sides…..when we move to Fata Hiva next Tuesday we will clean the underside of the swim transom there as the water is supposedly crystal clear!!

Fuel…..ugh…..we were told we could get fuel here, which is true, but it is all by jerry cans, WTH…..no dock, no fuel line. Fortunately, we had met a delivery Captain, Allen, on s/v Libby who came in after us and we met at the local burger shack and had a few beers and reminisced about the passage. He is very willing to let us borrow his 20 cans so on Monday we will do the jerry can shuffle and take on about 200 gallons, enough for a few islands and our passage up to Nuka Hiva where they do indeed have a fuel dock…..yep, another work out….don’t tell me we are living the dream 🙂 ))))

Tonight is dinner out at Hiva Oa Pearl Lodge…..GO 49’rs…….Les and Rose are paying off the bet from the 49’r win over the Packers in the playoff….yes!!!!!

Tomorrow is an all day tour of the island…..now that will be fun!!!!

Passage Stats:

We mainly had winds 10-20 kts ENE-SE off the aft port quarter, but occasionally it was 20-25 kts and <10 kts for about 20% of the time. We had one squall from behind that was 40-45 kts gusting to 50 kts for about an hour!!! I did not keep track but we had squalls/rain probably 50% of the time. The seas were also mainly off the aft port quarter, SE-ESE but became beamy for about a week. Swells ranged from 4-12′ 10-14 secs and the wind chop ranged from 2-7′. The ride was moderate to semi-rough. We could always walk around, cook and fish, but you definitely had to hold on at times! We had a favorable current for 14 days,+ 0.5-2.0 kts and a nasty counter current after we left the Galapagos for 4 days of -0.5-2.5 kts.

The stats: 19 days and 7 hours, 3003.5 nm, averaged 6.5 kts SOG, used 1350 gallons, 260 gallons left, 2.25 nmpg and 2.8 gph. We actually sped up the last 2 days to arrive before sunset in Hiva Oa. I think that used about 60 extra gallons. We were hoping to use between 1200 – 1275 gallons. While we achieved the nmpg rate thanks to a favorable current, we had a higher burn rate than we planned by about 5%. We do have the older Cummins 6CTA8.3 450 HP engine.

Boat sightings: 9 total, all fishing or fish processing boats.

Fishing: 26 total for the trip; 13 bonitos, 9 skip jacks, 4 Mahi. Caught fish everyday but 3…..now that is fishing!!

Web comments: Thanks for all the web comments and emails……they were all very special and meant a lot to us!!!