Ophelia Offshore

Misery is easy to write about – a few details of the discomfort, a dark joke – everyone laughs (I like to think). But what is there to say about a pleasant patch of sailing? A handful of days strung together of consistent wind and long period swell – the biggest happening of the day a recalculation of our arrival time at 5.5kts vs. 6 kts.

As we closed in on our destination, the level of activity on board increased. We didn’t need to retain our energy for an undisclosed number of possible future emergencies – we only needed 5 days, then 4 days, now 3 days of reserve emergency energy. Preparations had to be made for landfall. This boat of mad hatters had to appear presentable at landfall.

Sarah was reviewing the vague customs regulations over and over in a futile search for certainty. An actual excerpt of prohibited items from the regulations being “fruits, vegetables, meat, honey, etc.” she did not find the clarity she sought. We had 26 apples left. Apple sauce, apple crumble, apples for snacks, apple oatmeal all appeared on the daily menu. The extra mealy ones were employed as juggling balls, and then ceremoniously tossed overboard.

Messages were exchanged with Nuku Hiva Yacht Services – getting boat parts that broke on the crossing flown in from Tahiti. Having your exact part waiting for you when you drop anchor on the other side of the planet? At double the price, it was a steal.

The downwind sailing was luxurious. Pierre, our French autopilot, handled the course excellently. The crew, excluding Jesse, may have gone days without touching the actual helm. Who was on watch became irrelevant, even to the person on watch. The wind wasn’t changing. The swell wasn’t coming over the siderail. The boat was steering itself. There was no fishing fleet to dodge. No sails to desperately try to prevent from snapping. Nothing to do but enjoy the breeze and dream of landfall, baguettes, and French butter only a few days away. We made a batch of stovetop popcorn.

I arose from my bunk one morning and there was land. After 24 days at sea, the towering mountains of the Marquesas were on the horizon. As we drew nearer, we could smell the land – the plants, the dirt, smoke from fires. I got the camera out and took photo after photo. Every mile we drew nearer offered a new peak at the land, a slightly different exposure.

We pulled into the anchorage, agape at the sheer cliffs dropping thousands of feet directly into the anchorage, dripping with lush greenery. Tearing our eyes away from the spectacular view, we realized finding a spot in this massive anchorage would not be so easy. There were so many boats. An impossible number of boats! How were there this many boats at the edge of the world we had just sailed across an ocean to reach!? And the closer we looked, there were so many of the same boat… the same gigantic 55′ catamaran copy and pasted again and again and again across the anchorage. In every spot you wanted to drop the hook, there was another one. What was happening – were our eyes deceiving us? Once we found a spot to anchor ourselves and took another round of staring agape at the scenery, we returned to the question of the clone yachts – we realized it was the Outremer rally which we would spend the following months working to avoid.

But the beauty of Nuku Hiva, especially to the eyes of a crew who had been at sea for many days, can not be over stated. We jumped in the water, made a round of passionfruit margaritas, and shared a cheers of accomplishment that may never be over shadowed in my life again. Two newbie sailors and two non-sailors managed to move a 29 gross ton chunk of fiberglass 3,000nm across an entire ocean using glorified bedsheets lashed up to a big stick in the wind. Another round of margaritas was mixed up.