On est arrivé!

We made it! We actually made it to Nuku Hiva Thursday night by sunset, a passage of 23 days — and in the interim we have been so shell-shocked and not being able to process all that we have held across the ocean that posting has not been at the top of the priority list. Please excuse the tardiness!

After we crossed the equator, we had a few days of being becalmed but in pretty big swell, so we motored quite a bit (one stint was for 27 straight hours, ugh — it’s hot and noisy to have the motor on, neither of us like it, and plus we don’t exactly have our fuel consumption worked out so that was some added “fun”). And then at noon on Wednesday, the southern trade winds kicked in and Horizon just flew — we had 24 hours of golden sailing where there was about 15 knots of wind on the beam and we were screaming along between 7-9 knots. We had all our flags flying for a few hours in there (jib, staysail and main) and it felt glorious.

We finally sighted land about 50 miles out and could first see the island of Ua Huka, then about 30 miles out we could see Nuku Hiva. I rather nonchalantly called to Conor who was below, “I think I can see land” and he responded, “but have you said LAND HO” and so I yelled it loudly then to make it official! There had already been some telltale signs of land with how the birds changed — we saw some terns about 200 miles out and then I had a sunrise frigatebird come visit on Thursday about 100 miles out, each birds we hadn’t seen the whole trip so we knew we were getting close.

About 20 miles out, we had dolphins that we believe were spinner dolphins come and play by the boat for two whole hours — they would swim in our bow and then fall behind and jump out of the water by our sides. We had dolphin escorts out of California and dolphin escorts into French Polynesia, a fitting symmetry.

We motored the last 5 miles into Taiohae Bay and anchored just as the last light of sunset was nigh — it was surreal to put the boat away enough and then jump in the warm water. We’ve been waiting SO LONG to jump into warm water, and the feeling was so scrumptious. We followed our dunk by some California champagne (thank you Kim for the Yountsville visit to JCB!) on the bow in the dark and marveled at the fact that we could smell land and see car lights on shore. I think we slept a full 10 hours that night IN THE SAME BED WITH NO NIGHT WATCH.

I have to say that while I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, I think our ocean crossing is maybe the hardest, and most certainly in the top three (closing my mom’s law practice and doing a huge renovation on her home while grieving her sudden death comes to mind, as does running a US congressional campaign!). It was certainly the most intense physical, mental, and emotional 24-hour experience for 23 straight days — there is really no “off” time even though of course you’re technically off while sleeping but still not getting deep rest. Our friend and mentor Peter likens ocean crossings to having nearly all of your vital energy sucked out of you, along with the feeling of having someone throw spaghetti all over your brain and face and body that sticks for days afterwards.

So our mandate now is to allow that we are not in a place to make any big decisions about what’s next or to discuss anything existential. It helps that today was sunny after a few days of pretty intense rainstorms, we had crèpes and pains au chocolat for breakfast at the snack bar by the ocean with chickens and dogs milling about under the tables, we chatted with a guy from New Caledonia, we walked several miles (errr, we now have to think in kilometers) to walk off some of that trauma, and did some small boat work and then jumped in to the water to cool off several times in between. And bien sûr we are also enjoying some cold Tahitian bières!

Tomorrow is our day to figure out laundry and refueling. We hear that the resupply ship *might* come in Tuesday, so that could help us restock some veggies and try to head to a nearby calmer anchorage about 5 miles away. However, we also hear that while the first of two supply ships of the month comes in at its regularly scheduled time, the second ship of the month is known as the “bateau fantôme” or “ghost ship” because it comes when it wants to. So we’ll make do with whatever we can get 🙂