SOUTH PACIFIC POSSE 
FLEET UPDATE 

May 28, 2022

TOP NEWS THIS WEEK

1) ROYAL SUVA YACHT CLUB 🇫🇯   FIJI 
2) SY LEEANNE RUDDER FAILURE 
 
 

1) ROYAL SUVA YACHT CLUB 🇫🇯 FIJI    
SPONSORS THE SOUTH PACIFIC POSSE

 FREE 1 MONTH Honorary Membership for South  Pacific Posse 

If
any members of the Pacific Posse arrive at Suva I am happy to inform
you that the RSYC will recognize them as a bonafide member of a club and
grant them the privileges as if they were members of a Yacht/Marine
Club!

Patrick Todd  

R•S•Y•C

 http://www.rsyc.org.fj/

+679 992 2921

gm@rsyc.org.fj

Suva Harbor, Fiji  on the other side of the Dateline 

2)  SY LEEANN RUDDER FAILURE 

The Story:

You
may have noticed we are back in Mexico and not in our original
destination, French Polynesia. As it is a bummer we didn’t make it, we
are so happy to be back with ourselves and the boat in one piece! Long
story short, we were about 500 miles out and found our rudder tube was
cracked and leaking seawater. The fiberglass tube was delaminating from
the hull of the boat. Not good. Trip over. Luckily we noticed the
problem right before we made it to Clarion island which is the last
possible place to stop for another 2000 miles so we pulled over to get a
good look. It was determined by our shoreside support network of expert
sailors that our only course of action was to drop our rudder, epoxy
the leaks, fiberglass some wood gussets around the tube for support, and
sail 550 nautical miles home with no rudder. And that’s what we did.
Luckily we have a @hydrovane that has its own little rudder that we
could use to help get us home. We could not get it to self steer without
the input of a main rudder so Carson and I had to hand steer the little
windvane rudder two hours on, and two hours off, for 5 days and 550
miles under constant threat of the tube breaking and sinking us the
whole way. This is the very very short version of the story, we will
eventually do a full write up of the whole thing soon. We have a lot of
people to tag and thank for helping us through this which will come with
a full write up. We just wanted to get a short explanation out to all
our friends on here who are wondering what’s going on with us! We are
safe, the boat is safe, and most importantly we are happy as ever! 

 We
have spent the last few days doing repairs so that we can safely sail
back the 550 nautical miles.it will take us roughly 5-6 days and we will
continue to update daily. We thank you all for your support through
this journey.

We are docked! After 17 days we have arrived safely back in La Cruz, MX .

Yes,
we did have issues with our rudder. We started to hear “knocking” from
our rudder post near the top bearing about a day and a half from clarion
island so we stopped there to wait for better wind and do some
inspections. When we took a look down at our rudder post we found that
the fiberglass tube was delaminating and was seeping seawater. So, with
our team of experts we all agreed that the rudder had to come out. With
the help of the Mexican navy, we were able to successfully drop the
rudder in the water at clarion island. Then we built gussets to
stabilize the tube and fiberglassed all around the tube. Once that was
set and the tube was more stable, we got towed out to sea, set the
sails, and sails back to PV using only our Hydrovane rudder. We had to
had steer 2 hours on 2 hours off for 5 days. The seas were big and we
fought the boat rounding up every few minutes. We used dragging devices
and had the sails reefed the entire time. We are now resting in a hotel
in PV getting some much needed sleep!

We
are now headed to London!! A big pivot from our South Pacific plans but
we are determined to make the best of it! Getting in a lil belated
honeymoon trip exploring Europe over the next few weeks 🥳 SV LeeAnn
will be hauled out next week, repairs done, put back in the water and we
will return to her whole again! 
We can’t wait to explore a new place! 

With love, 

With love, 

SY LEEANN 🇺🇸  Jamie & Carson - Beneteau Oceanis 46′

3) ENTRY INTO GALLEY GOD(DESS ) AWARD

Thought I’d send through some pics for Galley Goddess Award.

Below is Pizza cooked on the Cobb at Punaruku, Makemo, and above Fried Chicken on the Cobb, Fakarava.

Cheers!

Blue Heeler update on our time at Fakarava. 

Useful info if you’re heading that way. 

http://blueheelerhr39.com/2022/05/26/fakarava-tuamotos/

WALL OF SHARKS!! Fakarava Tuamotos

Vessel
leaving Passe Tiputa at Rangiroa one hour before high tide. Increased
swell in region causing strong outflow.  The guy on the bow is
having fun!

Passe Hiria de Tiputa - Rangiroa 

SY  BLUE HEELER 🇦🇺  Ally & Wayne - Hallberg Rassy 39‘

4) SUPPLY CHAIN 101
 FAKARAVA, TUAMOTUS 🇵🇫 FRENCH POLYNESIA 

This
is the Tumoana magasin in Fakarava on Wednesday morning when the supply
ship arrives.  Thirty three boats are in the anchorage are vying
for the limited fruits and veggies at this small table as each box of
items is set out.  Nearly all the fruit/veggies were gone in two
hours.   Same thing happened at the boulangerie south of town at
15:00.  Plan your arrival the evening prior to get into town early.

Inside
the atoll is a lagoon.  The atoll is comprised of coral reefs
called motus.  Between these motus are small channels that are
created by seawater coming through the atoll from the ocean.  Carl
and I spend hours snorkeling and floating from the edge of the atoll
into the lagoon.  The channels can be shallow or very deep. This
one was about 200 meters long and 30 feet deep.  Loaded with bright
coral (purple, pink, yellow) and school of brightly colored fish.
Floating with the inbound tide current over these wonders is like
flying in your dreams.  After painting from my paddle board, I dove
in.

SY SKY POND  🇨🇰   Carl & Roxy - Seawind 1160 38′

Fakarava, Tuamotus, French Polynesia is in Good Nautical

5) PICTURES OF THE WEEK 

The Ibex  Sunset Series

Tuamotus  Sunset  1 

Tuamotus  Sunset  2 

Tuamotus  Sunset 3 

Ibex and the Coconut Oil Factory 

Classic Rotosieve add coconut meat on top oil comes out of the front 

End product once packaged

SY IBEX 🇦🇹  Florian & Waltraud - Sunbeam 42′

6) SY RHAPSODY ARRIVES IN 🇵🇫 FRENCH POLYNESIA 
 

 About
3:00 am. Morning of day 20, graveyard watch as usual. Sarah mentioned
seeing skimming birds feeding at dusk last night when we were just under
100 nm. from land. Birds are always our last send off and first
greeters on passage. Also, as is usual since leaving Panama, a red
footed booby has chosen our bow rail to rest for the night. We marvel at
the flexibility and unwavering tenacity their webbed feet display in
gripping slimy, salted 1” stainless steel pipe bouncing about for hour
upon hour.

4:00
am. The chart plotter shows we are nearing our first possible glimpse
of terra firma since leaving views of San Cristobal, the western most
volcanic landscape of the Galápagos Islands, in our wake almost 3 weeks
ago. UO-HUKA, at the eastern edge of French Polynesia, is for now just a
lurking, dark, blurry shape resting nebulous on the southern horizon
under overcast and moody skies. The waxing half moon set 2 hours ago.
We’ve been getting scattered spit, drizzle, and mini squalls since
sunset causing the need to put away cushions and pillows to dry corners
only to return them minutes later.After 20 days at sea,

Over 3000 nautical miles,

5 trips by Bob into the back lazerette to fix the autopilot

One broken halyard

One Code Zero sail retrieved from the water

3 days of on and off hand steering  Land Ho! 

Exerts from their blog https://www.rhapsodyontheblue.com  

In
finishing up our passage from the Galapagos Islands to French Polynesia
I asked my family if they had any questions for us. They came up with
some great ones. My answers are in blue, and Bob's are italicized . 

What
was something that you loved that you didn’t foresee and what was
something you were worried about that you didn’t need to be? 

Although
it was not technically on this section of the passage, I loved the
Doldrums. Admittedly we had a motor and so we were not relying on the
wind to get us through, but I loved the stillness of the ocean. The
absolute glassiness of it. The things that I worried about I am not sure
that I didn’t need to concerned about. We worried about them so that we
would do everything we could to stop them from happening. 

Better
than I thought was how fast the time passed, with special thanks to
reading.  I worried that sleep loss could become a cumulative
problem, but that wasn't really the case.

How
was your experience extending a strange alternating sleep schedule over
the long time period? Did you ever fall asleep on watch? 

Our
watch schedule is a natural extension of our typical habits. Bob tends
to fall asleep earlier than I do, and thus wake up earlier. We just push
this schedule to its limits and it works well. Bob falls asleep as
early as he can, sometimes as early as 7, then wakes up at 1 or 2 and
takes over from me. I like to stay up reading, so I just push that to
staying up later and later, then I get to sleep in the morning. There
were certainly days that our rhythms were interrupted by weather or
equipment breakage, but then we just take turns napping during the day.

My
experiences on previous passages prepared me well mentally, however on
this passage the motion of the boat was a greater challenge to both
getting and staying asleep.

What would you do differently if you did it again?

I
would download more podcasts, they are great company on nightwatch. I
thought I had done so, but most of them were gone by the time I wanted
to listen to them.

I agree with more podcasts, but if we could find the right person, another crew member would be worthwhile.

What food that you provisioned did you wish you had more of and which food did you never actually eat?

We
would have liked to have more non dairy ice cream but the freezer just
couldn't hold any more. Also more lettuce would have been nice, but it
is difficult to get it to last.

I
agree with the lettuce and ice cream, and would add more hummus. We did
not use many canned goods, but those are really provisioned for our
remaining months before large groceries in Papeete.

Did
you think about people who had made this crossing before access to
technologies you have? Anyone in particular? Did you feel connected to
past explorers and sailors in some way out in the vast open blue? 

Thank
goodness for technology! To do this without GPS, our chartplotter and
our Sat phone would have been a totally different experience,  and
not something that I believe it would have enjoyed. I did think about
those who came before us and how their experiences differed from ours.

Certainly
one cannot discount the advantages of GPS and the security that
knowledge feeds you every day you are out of sight of land. When I think
of the Polynesians, that for thousands of years, explored these same
waters by reading the waves, the wind, and determining their location by
holding their hand up to the stars, I am humbled. 

All
who have gone to sea before us, and all our fellow cruisers today
readily share information. Technology and information properly applied
keeps us safe, and allows us to continue following in the path of the
real explorers.

At what point in your crossing did you feel most isolated?

For
a while our text messaging app was not working.  When I wasn't
getting any messages from the outside world I definitely felt isolated.

When
the autopilot had troubles twice in one day, along with battery
charging issues, I felt we could be out there days longer with constant
handsteering and maybe a loss of refrigeration. But isolation is
relative when you know you just have to fix things the best you can and
keep going.

What was the most: Fun? Rewarding? Emotionally moving? Boring? Challenging? Unexpected?

Wow,
that's a lot! Boring is easy - the lack of being able to do many things
I love to do, go for a walk, make art, make music. There was just too
much motion of the boat to feel comfortable enough to do the last two.

Unexpected
would be the number of small (4-5 inches) squid that would be found on
deck in the morning at the beginning of the passage. At night I could
shine a bright light into the water and see the light reflecting in the
red eyes of the squid. They disappeared about halfway through the
passage, but on our list of things yet to do is to clean up the squid
ink on deck.

Most
fun was ten minutes with dolphins swimming along in our bow wake. Most
rewarding was finally getting to prove we could do it. Getting the
battery charger and autopilot to work again, thus avoiding minor
calamities was a real emotional lift. Most boring was the first third of
a book by William F. Buckley I gave up on. Most challenging was
remaining able bodied and more or less upright for 20 days straight on a
broken carnival ride. Unexpected, was how quickly the time passed.

Were there times when you were nervous or scared? 

We
have made enough smaller passages that I wasn't really nervous or
scared, but as is often the case, the most nerve-wracking is usually at
the end. In this case in the last 24 hours we had winds up to 25 knots
and 3 meter seas. We have had continuing issues with our bio growth in
our fuel and clogging the filters. We (and by we, I mean Bob) changed
the filters for safety reasons for the last hour before entering the
harbor at Nuku Hiva. The winds we gusting up to 22 knots and the waves
were 3 meters and coming at us from the side. We were motoring at this
point to get into the harbor. At the mouth of the harbor are two very
large rocks they call sentinels that we had to pass between. We were
making plans as to what to do if the engine failed at that point (pull
out the sails and turn back out to sea). For me this was definitely the
hairiest part of the passage. All ended well, the engine didn't die, we
made it past the sentinels, into the harbor and safely set anchor. 

Sometimes the way Sarah looks at me when she's handing me the hammer is pretty scary.

Favorite constellations as viewed mid-ocean? 

Transit of Venus and Jupiter every morning just before first light.

I
loved watching the Milky Way and seeing the Southern Cross, but I have
to admit that for all the hype that the Southern Cross gets, it is
pretty small in comparison to Northern Hemisphere constellations like
the Big Dipper or Orion. I think that the Souuthern Cross must have a
pretty good agent promoting it.

How did the food provisioning work out?

Our freezer is not big enough for everything that we would like to bring, otherwise excellent.

Our
chocolate stash of artesian chocolate from Chocolopagos lasted until
the very last days, then we knew it was time for landfall. We still had
some carrots, cabbage and potatoes left at the end, we did not have to
resort to a totally canned meal.

How do you navigate? Do you shoot the sun just for fun?

We
have no sextant aboard. We rely on satellite GPS, either through our
chartplotter or our handheld radios. GPS is worldwide accurate. Besides,
too many billion cell phone users, militaries, and Uber drivers need it
for it to fail. If by the strangest twist of fate GPS failed we would
fall back to our compass, paper charts, the position of stars and
planets if visible, and dead reckoning. You adapt.

We
plot a course on the chartplotter before we depart and then over the
length of this long passage we attempted to stay on course, often
correcting for the wind and the currents which seemed to want to take us
further south than we wanted to go.

What is the deepest part of the Pacific that you have crossed?

I think about 19,000 ft.

When
we are sailing over the top we can't really tell if the water is
several hundred feet deep or several thousand,  it all looks the
same. And once the numbers go over several hundred feet our depth
monitor just says: depth - - -

SY RHAPSODY's track to FP

SY RHAPSODY 🇺🇸 Sarah & Bob  - Jeanneau 49′

7) MEET THE FLEET 

Retired medical doctor sailing  with my wife Guylène from Marseille to New Zealand with our  42' aluminum sloop.

SY KAWAINE II  🇨🇭 Guylène & Jean-Dominique - C.M.P.F. – Fecamp 42′

8) SOUTH PACIFIC POSSE 
AWARDS CATEGORIES 

HERE ARE THE  CATEGORIES 

    BIGGEST FISH CAUGHT* ✔ 

    PICTURE OF THE YEAR ✔  

    SPEEDY AWARD – SEVENSTAR AWARD ✔  

    THE CAPTAIN RON AWARD ✔ 

    MOST UNWELCOME VISITOR ONBOARD ✔ 

    HIGHEST WIND RECORDED ✔ 

    SPIRIT OF EXPLORATION ✔ 

    GALLEY GOD(ESS) ✔ 

    GOOD SAMARITAN OF THE YEAR ✔  

    NEWLY ADDED – BOAT YOGA POSE OF THE YEAR ✔

*no bill-fish

50 feet visibility at anchor in Kandavu 🇫🇯  Fiji 

9) OHANA 🇵🇫 THE OTOGI PASS 
TOAU, TUAMOTUS FRENCH POLYNESIA 

Video of  Passe Otugi slack tide Toau  Tuamotus, French Polynesia

Anchored at Anse Amyot Toau, French Polynesia 15°48'10.5"S 146°09'07.7"W  TOAU

SY OHANA 🇮🇲  Aisling & Darryl - Lagoon 46′

10) CHRIS  SCOUTN SYDNEY 🇦🇺  AUSTRALIA

Meet
Chris on SeaGlub - Lead Vessel of this season's South Pacific Posse
currently scouting the Australia Routes at select whiskey bars in
Sydney 

11) MO'OREA  🇵🇫 WINDWARD ISLANDS 
FRENCH POLYNESIA

Cooks Bay,  Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia 

Mo'orea history

According to recent archaeological evidence, the Society Islands were settled from Samoa and Tonga around 200 AD. 

Nine
tribal principalities emerged in the enclosed valleys, which in turn
were subdivided into individual clans. The stratified society was
characterized by a hierarchical leadership whose elite combined both
political and religious power. The leading families of Mo'orea remained
linked by marriage and kinship for centuries with those of the
neighboring island of Tahiti. These connections led to important
alliances, but at other times were also the source of bloody
conflicts. 

The
marae, a stone platform, was where the gods communicated with the
Polynesians and political, social and religious decisions were made. The
marae was tapu—sacrosanct. To violate it was to call down the gods’
wrath.

On
Mo‘orea  the largest collection of maraes is in the Opunohu
Valley. More than 550 structures have been uncovered, including more
than 100 maraes. 

SY  GARGOLYE 🇨🇦  Kevin & Carla  - Beneteau 50′

12)  MARINA SPONSORS OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC  POSSE 

🇺🇸  Safe Harbor South Bay – Chula Vista - USA

🇲🇽  Marina Chiapas – Mexico   

🇨🇷  Marina Papagayo – Costa Rica   

🇵🇦  Shelter Bay Marina – Panama  

🇪🇨  Marina Puerto Amistad – Ecuador  

🇫🇯  Vuda Point Marina - Fiji 

🇻🇺  Yachting World Marina - Port Vila - Vanuatu

🇳🇿  Marsden Cove Marina - New Zealand 

🇦🇺  Rivergate Marina  - Brisbane  - Australia 

🇫🇯  Denarau Marina - Fiji 

🇫🇯  Royal Suva Yacht Club  - Fiji 

13) SAMOA 🇼🇸  

Polynesian Samoan dances in Apia 🇼🇸 Samoa

The ancient art of fire (sword) dancing originated  in Polynesia
Taking
his inspiration from the Samoan warrior, a  fire knife dancer
takes center stage twirling, tossing, catching and throwing a flaming
machete at high speeds. 

Taking
his inspiration from the Samoan warrior, a  fire knife dancer
takes center stage twirling, tossing, catching and throwing a flaming
machete at high speeds.

The
fire knife itself, called “nifo oti," is an ancient Samoan weapon that
features a 14-inch blade with a hook on the end.  Before the
addition of fire, the traditional Samoan knife dancer portrayed the
movements of the warrior at battle. The custom eventually evolved into
performance art, with the dancer slicing objects in mid-air.

Human migration  from Indonesia into Micronesia, Melanesia and  Polynesia 

During
Colonial times Samoa consisting of the islands of Upolu, Savai'i,
Apolima and Manono  was a German protectorate from 1900 until the
takeover by New Zealand forces during World War 1

The
takeover of Samoa was New Zealand's first military action in World War
I. In late August 1914 with landings by the Samoa Expeditionary Force
from New Zealand on behalf of King George V. The Samoa Expeditionary
Force remained in the country until 1915. 

Vailima,
a German-style lager brewed in Samoa here are two versions to choose
from, the normal 4.9% strength and the the export-only 6.7%.

14) HOW WE FLOAT OUR ANCHOR CHAIN 

Where and why we float the chain: 
At
anchorages with (lots of) coral heads to avoid the chain tangling on
those coral heads. If the chain would tangle on the coral heads it would
have a couple of adverse effects: the catenary effect of the chain is
reduced (or even eliminated if tangled very close to the bow of the
yacht), lifting the anchor might be difficult or even impossible without
diving, the galvanization of the anchor chain chafes off faster, more
coral gets destroyed. The adverse effect of floating the chain is
obviously to loose the friction of the part of the chain which is
floating. The way we position / deploy the buoys we end up with some 10m
chain on the seabed. There is obviously a residual risk of even that
chain tangling, but less likely given of the length of the chain
thereafter and rather stable wind direction of the trade winds.