On May 21, we arrived at Manihi, an atoll in the Tuamotu archipelago of French Polynesia. This place is about 280 nautical miles from Papeete, Tahiti. It took us five days to get here from Nuku Hiva, at least a day slower than I had hoped and was due to a really remarkable lack of wind during the first several days of the passage.
I first sighted Manihi at 05 50am. It appeared to the north as a series of low hummocks standing individually in the sea. By the time it was fully light at 06 00am, it was clear that Manihi is quite long at about 20 nautical miles and shaped roughly like an amoeba. Lots of Palm trees and fringing reef which is usual to this sort of volcanically-formed island.
We had to wait for low tide to transit the pass into the atoll's lagoon. So, we took a quick look at the pass to see how hard it might be to get through and then waited outside for about two hours until the tide was low and the current slack. We came through easily and anchored in about 45 feet about 3/4 of a mile from the Polynesian village here. Unfortunately, I think that I may have landed our anchor in some coral that I could not see at that depth. Tomorrow, I will free-dive as much of the rode as I can to see if the hook is trapped. If it is, there is a local diver here whom I can hire to retrieve the anchor for me.
Part of Manihi's economy is based upon farming black pearls. Before we leave here, we plan to take a tour of one of the family-owned pearl farms to see how they are operated. Should be interesting. Incidentally, the diver owns the pearl farm and is also the baker - he's a one-man conglomerate.
On May 23, we arranged to have dinner with the extended family and friends of this fellow - named Forneau. (He is the one who is his own little conglomerate.) We arrived at the Forneau house about 18 30 and were treated to an hour or so of conversation with the men of the family while seated on chairs in front of the house, more or less in the road. So, we also met a number of the islanders who passed by on what appeared to be evening paseos. The women were typically well-dressed and all were very friendly. We discussed US and Tahitian politics (the locals like McCain), relations with France (not wild about the French role in local government), the quality of fishing here (good - everything from mackerel and grouper to large tuna), etc.
There were three generations of Forneaus at dinner ranging from a four month old to Forneau himself. We had a spectacular spread with a 'poisson cru' salad, breaded and fried fish, various kinds of potatoes chow mein (a favorite here), baguettes etc., etc. etc. It was very delicious. It was also quite nice for me as it gave me a break and I did not have to cook dinner. Forneau's best friend, his wife and youngest son were there too. He is a fascinating guy who was born on a 'motu' (a little island made up of nothing but coral and it's derivatives), moved to Tahiti as a young man, started a successful construction company, was a nightclub singer, married a Frenchwoman and has 8 children (living on three continents) and 7 grandchildren. All very interesting and fun.
We will get ready to leave tomorrow morning as early as possible for Tahiti. Hopefully, we will have a good wind for the passage. Sally will join me in Papeete on June 1 and we will continue our trip together from there.

GRACE arrived in Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia in the South Pacific on May 2 after a 21 day ocean passage from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Our friends Gina and Paul from SOLACE and Dawn and Tom from WARM RAIN were in the anchorage and hailed GRACE on VHF as we approached. It was great to hear friendly voices after three weeks at sea. Within 15 minutes of dropping the anchor, Geoff and crew were treated to a visit from Paul who came by on his dinghy and dropped off 3 beers, and some of Gina's famous "ginger crunch". What a wonderful welcome!

Passage Recap:
GRACE sailed about 2,800 NM at an average speed of approximately 5.5 knots. Given that this year's winds are were often variable, I'll take that as a pretty good result. Our maximum sustained speed was around 7.8 knots and our lowest speed under sail was 0 knots. We motored for about 50 hours when the winds failed us from just North of the Equator to around 2 degrees South. Our best day was a passage of 174 nautical miles. GRACE provided a generally comfortable ride with only the usual downwind rolling that you expect in a mono hull.
We did make one interesting discovery: on a deep broad reach, GRACE will carry both her headsails poled-out (on opposite sides)as well as the full prevented main. She moves-along well under this rig with minimal slatting even when rolling. This is a very good configuration at night as we can easily shorten sail by rolling-up the jib and reefing the main when a squall comes through. We saw only a handful of ships on the passage and no yachts until we made landfall. It's a big ocean out there.

Things that went BANG in the Night :
We did have our share of breakage although none of them was beyond our ability to jury-rig a repair. Those of you who have been following this story will recall that, about a week and one-half into the passage, we bent our gooseneck. About the same time, I noticed that our Forespar boom vang had broken some of the fasteners that hold the cast aluminum end fitting to the vang's tube body. This has happened before and I have now realized that the vang is defective either in design or fabrication. Something to take-up with Forespar as this is an important piece of equipment. During the last 36 hours before our landfall in Nuku Hiva, we had three other items break: part of the deck fitting for the inner forestay let go; the whisker pole folded-up in a squall (too light a spar for GRACE); and the connection between the traveler and the mainsheet exploded. With the exception of the whisker pole, all of these failures were occasioned by the fairly heavy slatting and rolling GRACE underwent at various times combined, leading to weld failures. In fact, the failed inner forestay fitting was newly fabricated in Mexico. Turns out that the welder did not do the job correctly which the broken part now lets me see. We will get all of these things repaired permanently (I hope) in Tahiti.

Food and the Refrigerator:
GRACE still has her original refrigerator box which is now 27 years old. I am sure that it was poorly built to begin with and, after all this time, now has very soggy insulation. I had expected that the whole system might just stop working at some point. That has not happened. In fact, we still have frozen meat in the box which is a real surprise to me. Of course, the refrigeration compressor runs about 15 hours a day sucking-up tons of electricity. But, we have been able to keep-up with this demand so far. No surprise, but having three guys on a boat, none of whom is a cook, leads to a certain monotony in the menu. However, we've done OK. We have had chicken and beef for meat, rice and pasta for starch and our Romaine lettuce lasted until almost the end of our third week at sea. The cabbage is still in the fridge, untouched as yet. Those green plastic gas-absorbing bags really work for vegetables.

Nuku Hiva:
This island, our first landfall in French Polynesia, is a fairly prosperous place. I walked around one of the local neighborhoods yesterday and the houses were generally neat and in good repair. It even looks like those in the town have running water. Compared with many Mexicans, the Marquesans seem to live well. Our yacht agent here, a fellow named Moetai, tells me that life here for a Marquesans is pretty good. When they want meat, they go into the hills and hunt wild pig or cow. Fruit grows on trees and there are plenty of fish around. It seems that the economy is an interesting combination of hunter-gatherer and modern money economy.
I had heard that there was resentment of the French here. So far, I have not heard of anything like this. In my small sample of conversations with Marquesans, I have been told they understand they have no real economy and recognize that French support is essential to their life-style. I hope to hear a bit more about all this over the next week that we are here.

Sightseeing:
I am told that there are some very nice anchorages on the North side of the island. We plan to move there Tuesday morning and then to spend a few days cruising around to other anchorages before moving-on to the Tuamotus in about a week. It also looks like car rentals are not too expensive here so we might give ourselves an island tour by road, as well. There are many archaeological sites here as well as the world's third tallest waterfall. So, there's plenty to see. We're looking forward to enjoying our brief rest from the sea.