23 February 1999 -- Isla Sur, Las Aves, Venezuela
From the
cockpit I can see nine distinct shades of blue-green water. We are at
anchor in a reef-encircled bay of an island smaller than a Wal-Mart parking lot,
about 85 nautical miles north of Venezuela and at least 20 miles from anything
else. I see white-caps on the barrier reef and a thick copse of mangroves
above a tiny beach -- no other boats, no other people. Some of the clouds
are bright green in the sky -- reflecting, I suppose, the clear, shallow
Caribbean below. I have never seen green clouds before. All I can
hear are rhythmic surf, screeching sea birds, and a familiar baritone cursing
mildly in the vicinity of the forward bilge pump. This isolation is
welcome after Trinidad's Carnival frenzy. I am happy to be at sea again.
We have done
a lot of sailing the past month -- from Chaguaramas to the abandoned leper
colony at Chacachacare, to Grenada and back to Trinidad, then westward to the
Venezuelan resort island of Margarita, on to the Venezuelan marine park of Los
Roques, and finally to the very remote Las Aves -- about 600 miles all
told. This update will be posted from the next port that has a telephone,
probably Bonaire.
In the good
news/bad news department, here's the good news. We have been told that our
boat, the Hylas 54, has won a very nice award: Cruising World's Cruising Boat of
the Year (for boats over 50 feet). Our heartiest congratulations to CYC
and Hylas. We are proud as punch.
In other
wonderful news, our good friend Mickie came to Trinidad to visit and was a huge
help getting the boat back into the water and crewing on a stormy overnight
shakedown passage to Grenada. We had 35-knot winds and 15-foot seas on the
nose, and she smiled through the whole thing. Thanks, Mickie; we loved
having you with us.
Turning to
the bad news, we spent much of our time in Trinidad dealing with our computer,
which completely crashed, and our rudder, which developed a stress
fracture. Also, tragically, there will be no conch for dinner
tonight. My intrepid hunter-gatherer snorkeled for conch, found conch and
wrestled it back to the boat. But no amount of strategy, guile, or brute
force would separate that #$^%* overgrown snail from its shell. Casualties
include one screwdiver (dropped overboard), a scratch in the stern paint (from a
skidding conch shell), a gouge in the teak steps (from a misdirected hammer
blow), and Alan's pride. Our new theme song is "I Fought the Conch
and the . . . Conch Won."
Congratulations and love to Claire and Dan on the birth of Alex, and to Mark
& Kristin on the birth of Paul. Happy belated birthdays to Phyllis,
Cathy, Jean, Sarah, Judge, Brian, Ben, Scott, and the Mooz twins. Happy
anniversary to Jim & Andrea. Happy upcoming birthdays to Kurt and
Charlie.
We continue
to sail westward toward the Panama Canal, which we still hope to reach sometime
in mid-March or so. -- Love & a big hug, Liza & Alan
Photo Album February 1999
25 March 1999 -- Anchorage Area "F," Cristobal Harbor,
Republic of Panama
Well, we made
it to Panama! After successfully jumping through many bureaucratic hoops,
Alan has gone ashore to receive our schedule for transiting the Canal. I'm
aboard in "the Flats" anchorage trying to figure out a way to express
how happy and grateful I am for this past year of sailing without sounding like
a maudlin, obnoxious jerk.
This month
has been a high point of the trip. Bonaire is an underwater Disneyworld,
and Aruba is a salsa-dancing Las Vegas by the sea. We had a heck of a good
time in both places and an exhilarating passage to Panama.
After leaving
Aruba, Heartsong III arrived at the Panama Canal Zone breakwater last Wednesday,
March 17th, at 1445 EST. The 697.6-mile passage took 92 hours, just under
4 days. Our average speed was 7.58 knots. Our high speed of 10.2
knots occurred on a broad reach, with 20 knots of apparent wind and 4- to 6-foot
seas. (Yes, thank you, I already know my log-keeping is getting a
little obsessive.)
For about
half a day during the passage, the seas were 10-15 feet high on our stern and
could not have entertained me more had they been tap-dancing. I would look
high up at each approaching wave, which seemed certain -- absolutely
certain -- to break at its crest and swamp us. Never happened,
though. By some miracle, each wave would disappear beneath our stern and
lift the boat to a height that allowed me to scan the horizon briefly for other
Panama-bound traffic. Then I would look aft to watch the approach of the
next wave, and so on for the rest of my watch. In the troughs, all I could
see were the waves on either side of us. I'm thinking it was good training
for the Pacific.
Speaking of the Pacific, this
is the point of no return. Once we transit the Canal, we will stop for a
few days at Balboa to do some final provisioning and pick up our mail.
Then we'll depart for the Galapagos Islands. For many years, Ecuador has
restricted small private boats to a 3-night stay in Galapagos waters. We
heard last week that the time limit may have been expanded to 20 days. If
so, we will modify our Pacific schedule to take advantage of that opportunity.
I can't close
without relating the latest misadventure of my spouse. Believe me when I
tell you: there hasn't been a dull moment since we moved aboard.
Here's the
newest tale (and it's the absolute truth). Our inflatable dinghy is our
only means of transportation when at anchor, but during passages we keep it
deflated on deck. Immediately after anchoring in Panama, we took the
dinghy -- still partially deflated -- off the deck and put it into the water in
preparation for going ashore. While we were occupied elsewhere, though,
the dinghy slipped its tether and made a break for freedom. By the time we
looked up, it had gone several hundred yards. My quick-thinking Alan,
knowing he was down to his last clean pair of shore-going shorts, stripped off
his outer clothes and dived to the dinghy's rescue. Once there, he hoisted
himself in and realized . . . that we had not yet re-equipped it with oars,
outboard engine, lines, an air pump, or anything else. He sat and
laughed his head off for a while in the empty dink, partially submerged and now
at least a quarter of a mile away. He had no way of getting it back to the
boat.
Moreover, he had
neglected to put on underwear that morning. Hence he was not only stranded
and sinking, he was also stark naked. A neighborly voyager fired up his
dinghy and towed Alan back on a fine tour across the crowded anchorage.
The anchorage, in turn, got an equally fine tour of Alan. Lest you think,
however, that his dignity was compromised, let me assure you that he has now
perfected the royal parade wave.
Hope you are
well and happy. Happy Birthday to Tom, Andrea, and Judy. Much
love, Liza
P.S.
This just in: We are scheduled to transit the Canal on Tuesday, March
30th. The Panama Canal website, at http://www.pancanal.com,
has live video from one of the locks. If all goes exactly according to
schedule (hah!), we should be at that lock between noon and 2:00pm CST on the
30th.
Photo Album
March 1999
6 April 1999 -- Balboa Yacht Club, Panama City, Republic of
Panama
Hi,
everybody! We had a successful transit of the Panama Canal last week,
thanks primarily to Alan's meticulous preparation and leadership. Each
boat with only two people aboard is required to take on a minimum of three
additional crew for the transit, and our crew did a great job. Unlike many
sailboats that have gone through this year, we had zero damage and completed the
transit in one day. The champagne flowed.
To balance
out that good fortune, our primary GPS decided to stop functioning this
morning. Since the GPS is the core of our navigation system, we will make
its repair or replacement a top priority before crossing the Pacific.
To those of
you complaining that nude-Alan-stories are getting a little old: I'm
sorry, but he never does anything funny with his clothes on.
Happy
birthday to Bill and Dan. A very happy anniversary to Mom & Jack, Kurt
& Claire, and Nancy & Naikang. Much love, Liza
Photo
Album -- April 1999
4 May 1999 -- Academy Bay, Isla Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands,
Ecuador
This is one
fabulous place -- a highlight of our trip! We have been eco-touring since
our arrival in Galapagos last week, and Alan (who used to sit up late watching
the Nature Channel) is in heaven. On Saturday he got to swim with baby sea
lions. They were afraid of him at first -- that is, until he reared up
onto a rock and made alarmingly realistic sea lion flops and honk-barks.
Then they were all over him.
So far we
have seen frigate birds, blue-footed boobies, red-footed boobies, masked
boobies, a killer whale, a 12-foot Galapagos shark, brown pelicans, a swordfish
doing air gymnastics, land iguanas, marine iguanas, sea lions, Galapagos
tortoises, sea turtles, wild canaries, Darwin finches, and all manner of fish
and lizards. To catch dinner, one need only drop a trolling line in the
water and count to ten. Alan grilled up some delicious, ultimately fresh
wahoo Saturday night. Tomorrow we leave for Isla Isabella and a tour of
its still-active volcanoes.
Our 7.5-day
passage from Panama was punctuated by doldrums and Texas-style thunderstorms,
courtesy of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. With the prevailing
southwesterly wind, we had to tack almost 300 miles out of the way in addition
to the 900-mile rhumb line. For three days, we had a 2-knot adverse
current. Then spotting land near sunset, we had to stand off until morning
light to negotiate the harbor entrance. After listening to woeful tales of
other voyagers' passages, though, we believe we had a more enjoyable time than
most.
For example,
the trip did have its points of interest. Among Pacific flotsam and jetsam was a full-sized refrigerator, which floated by long before we were
tired enough to have hallucinated it. Hundreds of miles from land, we
spotted two birds bobbing by on a piece of driftwood. They looked stunned
and about to panic, as if they had accidentally fallen asleep on the subway and
ended up in Jersey. We thought about trying to get them aboard, but by my
calculations the current would get them to Colombia more quickly than our
zig-zagging could get them to the Galapagos.
The day
before landfall, we noticed a large seabird -- a red-footed booby, with its
webbed feet and bright blue bill. Wow, we thought, almost
reverently. According to the guidebook, not many people get to see one,
even in Galapagos. The bird flew down and perched on our forward
rail. Double wow, we thought. We took great pains not to disturb him
as we tiptoed and whispered to find the video camera. Then we noticed a
second booby coming in for a landing. Then they began calling their
cousins. When it started looking like a Hitchcock movie, we lost our
Greenpeace attitude and started thinking NRA. But we couldn't get rid of
them. We shouted; we waved; we luffed the sails and tacked. Their
only response was to continue making us painfully aware how very, very much they
had eaten that day. Finally, I tied garbage bags to stream and flutter on
the rails and lifelines. One by one, they departed. And we
approached Academy Bay looking like a small-town parade float with a noticeably
malodorous air. Yep, a real asset to the cruising community.
Our love to
all. Happy birthday to Judy, Michelle, Rick, Matthew, Jimmy, and John W.
French
Polynesia or bust! -- Liza
Photo Album
May 1999
8 July 1999 -- Maeva Beach, Tahiti, Isles de Societe, French
Polynesia
Hi everybody --
Our main news is that we crossed the Pacific Ocean! The three
thousand miles from the Galapagos to the Marquesas took us 16 days, 6 hours. At
halfway across we were, according to our encyclopedia, as far away from land as
one can get without leaving the earth. It felt like it, too.
I am pleased to report that all the many weeks of planning and
preparation did pay off. The trip was noticeably devoid of disasters. It was a
rough ride, though. Colliding with the normal 6-foot southeasterly white-caps
were 12- to 20-foot swells from the south. The resulting large and very confused
seas made day-to-day life something of a challenge. There is nothing more
embarrassing than being bucked off the toilet. In one of my off- watch sleeping
intervals, I was thrown straight up past the lee bumpers and off the berth onto
the floor. I kept having these vivid dreams that I was a rodeo star.
Landfall at magnificent Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas Islands was
a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This is the Land of the Gods. The huge,
towering cliff faces guarding the bay look human in the twilight. We expected
giants to appear any moment for their daily boulder tossing, or King Kong for a
sacrificial blonde. The jungle is dense with flowers and fruit. Pareo-clad
village women, their hair decorated with flowers, gracefully traded us
grapefruit ("pamplemousse") and crafts for perfume and t-shirts.
Neatly scrubbed village kids would trail us laughing wherever we went. It was
like stepping into a previous century to a place where food grows wild and
people are productive but un-driven, eager but content. God bless the isolation
that keeps these islands safe from the rest of us.
On Hiva Oa we visited the grave of Paul Gauguin. The light is
different here than anywhere else. It makes me wish I had inherited my mother's
talent for painting. In Hana Moe Noa Bay in Tahuata, we put up our brand new
hammock and didn't move for a week, except to attend a village festival where
the men sang and danced and the women played bingo (!).
After an additional 5-day voyage we reached Tahiti and
spectacularly lovely Moorea, where we will stay through the end of this month.
We hope you are all happy and well. Happy birthday to Jimmy, Brad, Charlie,
Allison, Matt, Mamaw, and Julie. Happy anniversary to Charlie & Estelle,
Charlean & Greg, Jon & Gayle, and Anne & Allan. A very special
thank-you to Jon, Gayle, Jason, Stephanie, and Brian for coming all the way to
Tahiti to see us and bring us barbecue and boat parts, and for being such fun to
have on board. I wear my new UT hat daily. By the way, Alan bought himself a
straw hat exactly like the one you took back to Jack! We miss you lots. Love,
Liza
Photo Album June
1999
August 15, 1999 — Maeva Beach, Tahiti, Isles de Societe,
French Polynesia
After spending several weeks (but nowhere near enough time) in
spectacular Moorea (pronounced Moh-oh- ray'-ah), we are back in Tahiti to
provision and re-fuel for the continued trip west. Next stop is Bora-Bora, after
which we will make the week's passage to Vava'u, Tonga. Sometime in late October
before the beginning of cyclone season, we will sail the remaining thousand
miles to New Zealand, where we have booked a slip at Gulf Harbour Marina, just
north of Auckland, for the America's Cup races this winter (their summer).
Since our last letter, we have had some fascinating wildlife
encounters. Just off the coast of Moorea, we saw our very first whale, which
sounded and flipped its flukes just like in the movies. In addition, we got to
swim with and feed a veritable herd (pod? school? bevy? flock?) of large
stingrays. They are velvety smooth and amazingly gentle and unafraid — like
soft, friendly dogs with vacuum cleaners instead of mouths. They let us pet and
ride them in return for a little tuna, which they ate out of our hands. (Alan
wanted to put some of the tuna in his ears, but I exercised the spousal veto.)
This will probably be our last letter until we reach New
Zealand sometime in November. We anticipate finding no appropriate phone line to
upload data and images between now and then. We have had difficulty
"FTP" transferring an update even here in Tahiti, the very wealthy and
urban center of commerce for French Polynesia. And for the next couple of
months, our destinations are so remote they don't even have a McDonald's!
Thank you Fran, Sam & Tommy for being such good crew. We
really enjoyed having you aboard, and thanks for bringing us so much good stuff
from home. Thanks, Scott & Allison, for taping TV shows for us. Happy
birthday to Dad, Mom, Jon, Claire, and Gayle. Happy anniversary to Scott &
Allison, Leslie & Bill, and Ray & Mayme. Love, Liza & Alan
Photo Album July
1999
24 November 1999 — Town Basin Marina, Whangarei, New Zealand
Hello from the Godzone! Or rather, g'day!
New Zealand lives up
to its reputation — crisply modern, scenically breathtaking, and small-town
friendly. Boy are we glad to be here. In the almost 21 months we have lived
aboard Heartsong III, we have sailed 12,000 nautical miles, of which more than
3000 have been logged in the last three months! It will be nice to stay put for
a while. We will be in the Auckland area until the end of February for the
America's Cup. (Oh, sorry for being such a Yank: they call it the "New
Zealand Cup" here.)
Since the August update, we have been sailing and touring in
Bora Bora; Palmerston Atoll in the Cook Islands; and the island groups of
Vava'u, Ha'apai, and Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga. I'll warn you now: this
is going to be a long letter.
Our stay in Bora Bora was extended and somewhat hampered by
our boss, the weather, which turned surly on us for several weeks. Bora Bora is
lovely and, blessedly, does not yet have a McDonald's, though I'm sure it's only
a matter of time. On our few days of clear weather, the snorkeling and diving
were exceptional, and the water as many shades of brilliant blue as there are.
Thanks to Jeff on Sea Witch, we have some spectacular underwater video of Alan
swimming with giant manta rays. We finally found a marginal weather window for
a westward departure and set sail for a rough week's crossing — 40-knot winds
and 20-foot breaking seas — to reach Tonga.
The crossing was sufficiently challenging, in fact, that after
about four days — still only halfway to Tonga — we ducked into Palmerston
Atoll for shelter and some sleep. Never was there a more serendipitous detour.
Palmerston Atoll is a group of half a dozen tiny sandbars connected by a reef
and enclosing a shallow lagoon. It is hundreds of ocean miles from anywhere and
visited only by passing sailboats and a supply ship that calls four times a
year. The 50 inhabitants are all descendants of 19th Century British explorer
William Marsters and his three Polynesian wives. They adopt all passing yachties
into the family, and we had a fascinating few days there living with them.
Theirs is a culture part traditional Polynesian -- where daily dinner is fished
and harvested, and then cooked underground in thatched huts; and part modern
Western -- where evenings are spent playing beach volleyball and gathered around
one generator-powered TV to watch videos (including our old Dallas Cowboy game
tapes, which were a big hit). I hauled the portable piano ashore, and we had one
unforgettable evening of multi-cultural music.
In the Kingdom of Tonga, we anchored at picture-perfect
deserted islands; we sailed into a pod of humpback whales, with which Alan
snorkeled and communed; we attended church in the capital Nuku'alofa to hear a
capella choral music so transcendentally beautiful that it brought me to tears
in the first 30 seconds; we listened to the single-sideband radio in horror to a
"Mayday" that ended in a fellow sailboat's being lost on Hakau'fisi
Reef and its occupants -- two people and a cat -- rescued by the Tongan Navy; we saw the king; we joined a
local family for a birthday dinner, highlighted by the compulsory eating of a
piglet's head and a "kava ceremony, " at which one must drink shots of
a face-numbing cross between swamp water and battery acid; we blew out the clew
on our jib during a storm; we herded goats; we snorkeled a reef that was like
Dallas to all previous reefs' Podunkville; and we got to spend a lot of quality
time with other voyagers in everyone's attempt to drink up their liquor and eat
up their meat in the belief that we would have to surrender it or pay import
duty on it to New Zealand customs. (We did neither, as it turned out, but our
thanks for some great parties to whoever started the rumor.)
From the southern tip of Tonga, the crossing to New Zealand
was fast and relatively easy. We logged our best noon-to-noon distance so far of
215 miles and our fastest speed so far of 12.1 knots. The 1150-mile passage took
just under 6 days. We kept in touch with 20 or so boats, all similarly underway,
via single-sideband radio, though as usual in the Pacific we never saw another
boat until landfall.
Have I ever mentioned what I like about passages? The best
part is being alone in the cockpit on night watch, especially with clear skies
and when we are well outside commercial traffic routes. Alan is asleep below. I
see nothing but sea and sky, and at night they blend into a continuous flow.
Many is the time that an hour will go by in an instant, and that I won't have
moved from my spot, that though alert I won't have thought about anything at
all, won't have formed a thought that I can remember. Something about the sound
and motion of sailing, and perhaps the solitude, makes that happen. Whatever it
is, I am so far outside myself that the return is . . . discernible, sometimes
startling. I really, really love this life.
On the other hand, I really, really love being back in the
First World, at least for a while! Hello malls and newspapers. Hello mocha
lattes, broccoli, and gyms. Happy Belated Birthdays and Anniversaries to Claire
& Dan, Stephanie, Cory, Jessica, Fran & Dad, Ray, Jack, Anne, David,
Allan, and Kristi. Happy Birthday to Erin, Robert, and Char; and Happy
Anniversary to Eric & Erika. Most of all, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! We miss your
faces. Love, Liza
Photo Album
August - November 1999
25 December 1999 -- Whangaparaoa, Auckland, New Zealand
Happy Holidays! We hope you are having a wonderful Christmas.
This afternoon we will be having a potluck Christmas dinner with some other
folks who have sailed to New Zealand this season. It will be an excellent
celebration. We are in charge of bringing mashed potatoes for 50, and a pecan
pie.
I don't know where to begin to convey the glory that is New
Zealand. The words can't capture the sweeping natural beauty in every direction
I look, and the photos don't communicate the honest good cheer and
straightforward helpfulness of the Kiwi culture. Checkout person: "Don't
buy that here, mate; it's a dollar cheaper across the street." Store owner:
"Nope, we don't carry that part, but let me bring the car 'round and drive
you down the wholesaler; no worries, mate -- you'll never find it, and anyway he
owes me a beer." Kiwis have their share of quirks, though. For example,
they put beets on their hamburgers.
Our marina is about a 30-minute drive north of downtown
Auckland and only a few minutes away from the America's Cup racecourse. We have
been enjoying the preliminary racing tremendously. The Kiwis have gone all out
at the America's Cup Village in Auckland. It looks more like an Olympics than a
sailboat race -- very festive, with shops and events, sidewalk cafes and big TV
monitors tracking the racing, and super-yachts from all over the world tied up
to the main wharf. It's fun to spend the day just walking around there. I
secretly hope New Zealand wins. They're doing a magnificent job of hosting the
event. For current standings, click here.
Where will you be for New Year's Eve? After many months of
island living, we have decided to celebrate city-style: dinner, dancing and
champagne in Auckland at the Sky Tower, from whence we will watch the Millennium
fireworks display. It took me a full hour to find my high heels in the bilge. We
will also splurge on a couple of nights in a posh hotel. After 12,000 miles of
boat showers, my first official act of 2000 will be to take a bubble bath. (I
anxiously confirmed twice with the hotel that our room indeed has a bathtub, an
actual bathtub; in unmoved Kiwi fashion, the clerk acted as if she gets that
question all the time -- and with so many sailors here, perhaps she does.)
Wherever you are at midnight on the 31st, we hope that you
ring in a healthy, happy and prosperous new year. Merry, Merry Christmas and a
Happy 2000! And Happy Birthday to Mayme, Estelle, Sarah, Phyllis, Jean, Fran and
Ben. Love, Liza
Photo Album December 1999
Photo Album --
Gulf Harbour Christmas Dinner & Caroling -- posted December 26, 1999
LETTTERS
HOME 2000
Voyage of Heartsong III