Well, firstly let me thank my close friend Rick, I guess on seeing
that my blog wasn't updated for a couple of days after departure... he
must of instinctively knew that something had failed with my SSB
system, So he immediately contacted us on our Satellite phone & kindly
offered to text me daily weather up date & blog up dates.... AMAZING..
thank you Rick!
So... before i go any further, what exactly is an SSB ?... Prior to
our departure, i had the latest 802 SSB & proctor installed in
"Apple", the SSB stands for" single side band", these are extremely
sophisticated units that bounce radio wave literally thousands of mile
around the planet, & when linked to a PC (not Apple Mac
unfortunately! ) it allowing the user to send INTERNET from remote
locations thousands of mile.. like in the middle of the pacific
Ocean!!..Ummm? it also allow you to receive mail, weather faxes,
weather stations, contact other SSB cruisers, business, emergency
assistance, basically everything.. so loosing after one day of
departure was very frustrating.. luckily l'd also installed a sat
phone as a back up....
OK..So We arrived off the coast of Hiva Oa at around 4:30 am, after a
22 days crossing, that's very fast, the record is only 19 days & a
lot of sailors take over 2 months.... timing is everything in sailing
& picking the right month is even more... then were lucky to hit the
trade winds early, this combined with the fact that this is a "LA
Ninio year" which translates into.. stronger trades & cooler ocean ..
so less thunder & even less lightning...
back to our arrival... ummm however because there wasn't a moon, we
couldn't see the actual island, we couldn't hear the island because
the squall's were still chasing us... the only reason we knew we'd
arrived.... was because of the green blob on our radar!!... So having
read about the reef's & the subsequent amount of hungry Bull sharks
that circle them.. we waited out at sea for the "sunrise"...
The journey was completely amazing, over the 3000 mile In 22 days & we
only saw 3 other boats/ships.. a distant chinese tanker, some strange
unmarked research ship that crossed our bow's & "Hypnotically" a 50'
sailing yacht that we met in Mexico... amazing seeing other people out
there 2000 mile from La cruz... i tried to palm them off with some of
our over stocked chocolate bars, but they too had made the mistake of
buying too much chocolate.... Veronica!!
Veronica said that during her watch (2-am) around 1450 miles out, she
seen a distant "green flash" pierce the starlit sky, followed by a
sudden streak of light, like a rocket busting out of the ocean.. this
might explain the strange ship that crossed us with out communication
the following day...?
So the sun rose over the beautiful French paradise of Hiva-Oa & at 7-
am local time we anchored!, Hiva Oa remind's me of table top mountain
in south africa, massive monolithic structure that pierced the heavy
tropical clouds that hung over it... with in minutes of seeing land,
we could smell it's rich fragrance, a combination of a fruit market
combined with a sauna.....
over the last few days, the squall intensified, the souther trade
winds lived up to there reputation, so we're all totally exhausted...
so I'm off to bed...
Perhaps you'd like to set up a protocol for contact so Rick and others don't have to guess as to your status.
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