Day 1: Nuku Hiva towards Raroia
Moonshiner
Sun 2 Jul 2023 22:47
SOG 7.5 COG 190
TWS 18 TWD 70
We pulled up the anchor at 7.30am yesterday and headed out through the very bumpy passage and out to sea once more leaving the beautiful Marquesas behind us, fairwell, for you have been truly magnificent!
The previous evening we’d met some very interesting folk. One yacht named ‘Cannonball’ arrived in the anchorage. We saw her in Panama initially, she’s a 73ft mini-maxi race boat designed in 1987 (good year) and was the yacht to beat in her time. We went over to say hi and got invited on for a tour and a beer. The owner is an experienced yacht racer and bought her for cruising/racing, hiring crew along the way. Amazing to get a tour of her, built from aluminium, she felt solid but with a surprisingly luxurious interior.
We also met another sailor called Jeanne Socrates from Suffolk who’s sailing her Najad 38 solo at the age of 81! Turns out she holds the record for the oldest person to circumnavigate the world via the great capes, non stop and unaided (aged 77). That put our trip into perspective…I’ll remember her when I’m moaning about a night watch or struggling to winch in the Jenny!
The forecast was for 15kts on the beam, but as ever, we had 27kts forward of the beam and a nice chunky sea to go with it. One boat that we’d befriended in the anchorage who set off an hour in front, radioed us with his intentions to pull in at the next island and wait for the conditions to ease, but then decided to carry on as the wind eased slightly. Dosed up on antisickness we were pretty happy with the conditions, 2 reefs in the main and a reefed Yankee, moonshiner felt very comfortable rolling smoothly over the waves. We caught the other boat up after 2 hrs and realised we were carrying twice as much sail as him, perhaps we were a tad over canvased so we rolled away the Yankee and put out the stay sail.
After putting the second reef in, I noticed the batton had come away from its car (we’ve got a harken track), it didn’t seem to upset the sail so we hope we can fix it when we arrive. The second thing to break was the table foot fitting, Ben got thrown into it which ripped out 2 of the screws. So now we have to tip toe around the table without touching it before we can fix it on arrival!
First night went with ease, we’ve covered 165nm in the first 24hrs with 285 to go.