We had good sailing today, finally making miles towards the destination. On this trip material fatigue has started showing. Apart from the crack in the boom yesterday we had smaller things breaking. A shackle that holds down the running backstay snapped, today the sheet of the foresail ripped–nothing spectacular and all things that were quickly repaired, but it shows how hard the past few months have been on Pitufa (and her crew).
460 nm to go as the red-footed booby flies!
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2016
11
Sep
Fatigue of material
2016
10
Sep
Repairs and detours
I was catching up with sleep this morning when a shout had me stumble up on deck in record time: ‘The main boom’s broken!’ We quickly got the sail down and then Christian showed me a long vertical crack in the boom, just above the place where we had repaired it in Panama with an aluminium plate and rivets.
While I still desperately checked on the chart plotter which islands ahead were big enough to probably have a welder (a few small Cook Islands and the westernmost Australes), Christian already had the tools out for a repair. Handy smurf indeed!
Fortunately there wasn’t too much wind so Pitufa wasn’t heeling or bouncing too badly (15 knots) and handling the drill and rivet tool on deck worked out okay. We fixed three metal plates with 5 mm rivets and the boom looks like something from the Mad Max movies now, but stable enough to hold the mainsail again (a must on our course close to the wind). Keep your fingers crossed that it’ll hold out till Tahiti!
The promised wind shift to the NE still hasn’t happened and we’re blown way too far south, gaining only few miles toward Tahiti (550 nm to go as the frigate bird flies). The positive side effect of our detour is that we see islands we never expected to see, right now we’re sailing by Mangaia, one of the raised atolls of the Cook Islands chain.
2016
09
Sep
On the way to Tahiti
This morning we set sail again and this time our course on the chartplotter is set to Tahiti (620 nm as the Tropic Bird flies). We started out with wind still from the East, so for the first time on this trip East we’re tacking up and down which is quite frustrating. During the first 5 hours we sailed 31 nm to the NE, but only 20 of them were actually towards the destination. Now we’re on the tack SE and get pushed even further away from the course line, but the wind should shift more to the north soon, so our course should automatically get better.
We enjoyed both our stops in the Cooks, but the fees for stopping there are quite pricy. The check-in in Palmerston was cheaper than in other ports of the Cooks (80 Euros for the clearance, the mooring theoretically cost 10 dollars per day, but cruisers who donate mooring equipment stay for free), but the harbour fees in the bouncy harbour of Rarotonga (where you have to climb over truck tyres up the wall, no water, no electricity) are rather crazy with 1.70 Euros/metre/day (150 Euros for a week for us) and additionally each person must pay a departure fee of 47 Euros.
2016
05
Sep
Touristic Rarotonga
Rarotonga is the main island of the Cook Islands. More than 10.000 people live on 67 km²–most of them in the capital Avarua and around the island on the narrow, coastal plane, the mountainous interior remains untouched.
Today we took a bus (there’s a very convenient regular clockwise and anti-clockwise service), went around the island and stopped in a few places. The high, volcanic island reminds us landscapewise of the Society Islands of French Polynesia, but unfortunately the fringing reef is still close to shore, leaving no space for a navigable lagoon. The only exception is a small pass on the east side that leads into a mini-lagoon with 4 motus. Everybody comes to this ‘lagoon’ for kayaking, snorkeling, etc.
The island seems very touristy compared to the places we’re used to, resorts and guest houses take up most of the shore line. At least there are no big hotels, just low bungalows along the white, fine beach that fringes most of the coast.
2016
04
Sep
Article on the Pearls of the Gambier Islands in Ocean7 Magazine
Birgit Hackl, Christian Feldbauer: Die schwarzen Perlen der Südsee, OCEAN7 05 (Sept./Okt.) 2016, p. 44–48. download PDF (in German only)
2016
02
Sep
Arrived in Rarotonga
This rough and nasty leg of our passage ended quite pleasantly today when the wind finally shifted north and we reached Rarotonga at 3 in the afternoon with light winds. Putting a med mooring (bow anchor and stern line ashore) worked nicely, but the northerly waves make it into Avatiu Harbour, so we’ll spend another night in passage mode (mattress on the floor and sofa in the saloon instead of bed in the aftcabin).
2016
31
Aug
Weather forecasts
Each time we set out on a nice looking weather window it turns out that the wind is blowing much harder than predicted and also more easterly. Pitufa’s stomping bravely into the 20 and more knots of wind and lumpy seas, but we are pushed too far south so we have to make a few extra miles and a countercurrent of about 1 knot doesn’t help either.
2016
31
Aug
Goodbye Palmerston
We set out from Palmerston this morning into squally weather with strong winds and lumpy seas, caught a tuna within the first hour and did some extreme-fish-filetting (maybe a new discipline for the olympics?)
We all got slightly seasick, so it seems it’s not the sailing that makes us seasick, but the breaks in between. Now I understand the motivation for these non-stop-round-the-world events.
2016
29
Aug
Lazy Sunday
We’ve just come back home from a Sunday with our host family (church, lunch, hanging out), checked the weather forecast and it looks like we’ll have a Northeasterly window from Tuesday to Thursday which should take us down to Rarotonga where we can have our next break while waiting for Southeastlerlies for our final leg up to French Polynesia.
Christian’s actually feeling better, so just now we were joking if we should change the clearance and head back to Tonga–we could always sail back if things change, now that we know the way 
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2016
27
Aug
Palmerston – an interesting little community
We are still at Palmerston atoll (Cook Islands), which unfortunately has no pass into the lagoon, but the islanders have put out 9 moorings to the west of the outer reef. The first two days we had southerly winds, which made the open anchorage very rough, but as soon as the wind turned to the Southeast the seas calmed down, even though it’s still blowing hard. In the beginning we were 4 boats here, but the other three have left westwards with the easterly winds and we’re the only ones here now.
Palmerston is a curious little community. In 1863 William Marsters, a ship’s carpenter and barrel maker, arrived on Palmerston with three Polynesian wives and annexed the uninhabited island from the British. The current population of 57 are almost all descendants of Marsters (and of course wives and husbands from other Cook islands). Even though they look Polynesian, their first language is English and they consider themselves more British than anything else. The community is well organised and equipped, there’s a big solar array for a public electricity network, a telephone network, internet, most houses have a few big freezers (they export fish), washing machines, etc. so the living standard is quite high. The only downside of their isolated location (no airfield, no regular boat service) is that it’s hard to visit other islands–a problem especially in the case of a medical emergencies. We saw quite a few graves of young children on the cemetery, even though the majority o
f the islanders lived more than 80 years.
Sailing boats who stop by here are welcomed by a host family, who monitors channel 16, comes out with the boat to take the cruisers ashore whenever they give a call and invite their guests to all kinds of activities. Our hosts Edward and Shirley had us over for lunch twice, on Sunday we’re invited to join them for church and lunch and on Monday I’ll give a ‘guest lecture’ at the local school (a taster course of Spanish) where the 24 kids of Palmerston (ranging between 6 and 18 years) get their primary and secondary education.
The supply ship only comes here twice a year, so cruisers are asked to contribute staple food (e.g. Shirley was out of flour, so we brought 4 bags over), equipment for the moorings and whatever else they can spare.
2016
24
Aug
Stopover in the Cook Islands
On our way east, the Cook Islands lie conveniently outspread to break up the long passage into small hops.
2016
23
Aug
Palmerston
We were racing all day long yesterday averaging 6 knots, but we still didn’t get to Palmerston before midnight. Fortunately a boat we know from the Marquesas and the radio net gave us the exact coordinates of the mooring here, so we managed to pick up a buoy in the dark.
2016
22
Aug
Pleasant sailing
Surprisingly enough the dreaded journey eastwards turns out to be more pleasant than the passage in the ‘right’ direction two months ago. Instead of the sickening rolling motion that we were used to downwind, Pitufa is now ploughing along in fortunately light winds (15 knots from the SSE) doing steadily 60 degrees on the wind. We’re not heeling too much and the boat seems calmer than in the anchorages in Beveridge or Niue…
Later this week strong southeasterlies followed by easterlies winds are forecast, by then we must be tucked away in an anchorage to wait until the wind clocks around again. After pondering this morning’s weather forecast we think we won’t be able to make it in time to Aitutaki, so we have set the course to the tiny atoll of Palmerston. 180 nautical miles to go!
2016
21
Aug
Good start
We set out at noon again, going through the pass with 20 knots of wind against current was quite exciting–fortunately we had all hatches closed tightly and we hadn’t lost our sea legs thanks to the bouncy anchorages… We had a humpback whale jumping next to Pitufa right after the pass, caught a big yellowfin tuna half an hour later — looks like it’s going to be a fabulous passage.
2016
20
Aug
Grib files
Looking for weather windows is an annoying pastime. Especially at times like now with a trough moving through (we have squally weather here now) the forecast models change every few hours. Today we have already requested 3 grib files via SSB radio, each time they look different and none of them is in accordance with what’s actually happening outside at the moment… We then start ‘sailing’ the cursor ahead on the map with the wind arrows, going through different options of when to head out. If you’re not familiar with grib files (we use the program zyGrib as a viewer) you can look at an online visualization of those grib files on windyty.com.
Anyway, we still don’t know whether it’s clever to sail out today as we’d get a good start followed by half a calm day, or whether we should stay until Sunday when (according to the current grib) we’d have a fast ride. But what if the gribs change in the meantime and we don’t make it to our next stop before the next wave of strong southeasterlies set in? Well, we’ll contemplate the next grib and let you know once we’re out again.