Greetings from the fine yacht Flyer, 6 degrees south of the equator and 147 degrees west of the Greenwich Meridian! We departed Rangiroa, French Polynesia on Friday afternoon, two days ahead of schedule. Unlike previous departures, we did not struggle to leave on-time. I’m not quite sure exactly why – perhaps it was our ‘continual passage’ mode that we’ve been in since departing Nuku Hiva, or perhaps it’s our general growing comfort with being uncomfortable… or, heaven forbid, maybe we’re just getting better at this thing?
We departed ahead of our original May 10 target date because a strong frontal boundary had been approaching (and is now hitting) the Tuamotus, creating a large area of calm to the north of the archipelago – just where we needed to sail through. On Thursday a neighboring boat in the Rangiroa anchorage had heard that we were departing for Hawaii shortly as well – a 40’ catamaran named Zobra with what appeared to be a very seasoned French crew- and they confirmed our suspicions that departing as soon as we could (not on Sunday!) was a wise move.
After brief introductions from their dinghy and discussions of our plans, Zobra promptly lifted their anchor and sped off out of the pass. So we followed suit, put the pedal to the metal in Rangiroa, expedited our check-out process with the Gendarmarie (a lovely group of people hold down the fort there, thank you for your help!), and were blessed with the assistance of Olivier as our driver and local luminary to help us get provisioned quickly. We buttoned things up Friday morning, had one last French Polynesian swim, and got underway.
So far this passage has been more eventful than I had anticipated. We had one particularly memorable moment a couple of nights ago, on our 3rd day out of Rangiroa.
I was on deck getting the boat situated for dinner time. The breeze had recently died completely on the back side of a small rain cell, and Flyer was bobbing around making a meager half-knot of boat speed. Kristen was boiling seawater for pasta while the boys were catching up on their internet time (LOL). The stars were visible through a few breaks in the low level clouds. Other than the hum of our watermaker running, it was nearly silent on deck.
Between the occasional slap of a wave against the hull, I began to hear some very heavy breathing just off of our starboard side. It was a deep, low breath, clearly coming from a blow-hole, of what sounded like a very large marine mammal. I called everyone up, and with our jaws on the deck we listened as the breathing got closer to Flyer. It came to within just a few feet of the cockpit. Its large breaths were frequent, separated by only a couple seconds each. It was barely moving in the water, slowly inching along the starboard side forward towards the bow, over the period of a couple of minutes.
I was beginning to get nervous, knowing that large whales have wreaked havoc on small boats, whether out of coincidence or intent. We felt like a sitting duck, bobbing in the ocean with no engine on and no way to see what this creature was or what it was doing. I called Kristen and the boys back from the edge of the deck to stand with me under the doghouse overhang, in case something unexpected were to happen. My heart rate hadn’t been this high since I last went for a run (in Monterey, me thinks?!).
Then, in the faint glow of our starboard running light, I made out what appeared to be an extremely large porpoise! It was very light in color, had a beak, as well as a soft, medium sized curved dorsal fin a little more than half way down its back, and it was now slowly swimming towards us from just off of our starboard bow. Surprisingly it appeared much smaller than it had sounded. Given the depth of its breathing I had assumed that it was a large grey or humpback whale, easily the size of Flyer or larger. But this creature was significantly smaller than that, maybe only 15 or 20 feet in length, and more nimble.
I quickly became much more curious than cautious. We got out our high-powered flashlight, and -after setting it to low-power mode- we tried to make out the creature with more clarity. No such luck as I should have known; the glare from lights at night is more apparent than the objects you’d see underwater. But we could barely make out the light toned top of the whale as it slowly swam back towards the cockpit area and then dove beneath the boat. After appearing on our port side several seconds later, it remained next to us for another couple of minutes. Then it disappeared into the dark.
Kristen dashed to get out our copy of Marine Mammals* and I – being the only one to get a good glimpse of it- set about trying to identify it. The closest match I could find is an cetation called the Longman’s Beaked Whale. This is a very rare creature that Marine Mammals says “represents one of cetology’s gretest long-standing mysteries” whose distribution is apparently “restricted to tropical pacific and indian oceans” in waters warmer than 79 degrees F. It is “often called the ‘tropical bottlenose whale’ (which) may in fact be Longman’s Beaked Whale.”
Whether it was truly a Longman’s Beaked Whale, I’m not certain, but it’s the best possible match we can find given what we saw. No matter who this creature was, to be in the midst of this mysterious breather, in the middle of the pacific at night, was a truly magical experience we won’t soon forget.
Our general approach for this passage is to make the most comfortable yet quick passage to Oahu. This means sailing a bit ‘high’ for the first thousand miles or so, taking advantage of the slightly southern component of the southern hemisphere trade winds. Then, crossing the equator and the ITCZ with minimal thunderstorm activity, although that may prove very challenging here soon. And once we’re through the ITCZ irregularities, bear off to the NW on a more direct course to Oahu. This will hopefully make for more comfortable sailing in the stronger, more established ENE trade winds in this portion of the Pacific. All of this of course is subject to change as we see what we get. So far the wind has been more northerly than we had hoped, making our NE progress painful and difficult at times.
Sailing almost due north is an interesting thing. We’re about 400nm from the equator currently, and every night we are seeing more of the northern hemisphere’s constellations. We’re also seeing about 5 more minutes of daylight every day in these latitudes. By the time we reach Oahu, we’ll be gaining an additional 8 minutes of daylight every 24 hours. All told, we’ll have added an hour and a half of daylight to our days during the time of this passage. Pretty wild to think about, but I’m getting ahead of ourselves. We still have so many more miles to sail!
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* The National Audubon Society’s “Guide to Marine Mammals of the World” is a great reference we keep aboard.
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