Plus, no skeeters!

golddog - thanks for the rec, I used Airlie Beach as my base to do a GBR dive and snorkel. Went out to one of those offshore pontoons 40nm from the shore, was great! Skipped Sydney for now but will be there in about a week. Came up with the name because it was the first thing I looked at when I finally got around to making an account after being a lurker forever.

jj - the night skies at sea are indescribable. Lots of constellations become invisible because there are just so many stars out there. On clear nights, you can see the Milky Way. I've been in some extremely remote places on land, but nowhere on land is anything remotely close to being in the middle of the ocean.

pig4bill - you jest, but that's a huge benefit in my book. No bugs at all.



So I've completed the Cairns -> Melbourne leg, hung out in Melbourne a couple of days, and am now making my way across the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide. I think I'm about a third of the way or something like that. Tomorrow I'll either go surfing or on a seal kayak thing where you kayak with seals and hang out with them.


But here's another hopeless attempt to catch up to present day:


Once the passport stuff was moving forward, I had a little time to kill while waiting, so I headed to the Quito main bus station and hopped on a bus to Banos, which is the "adventure sports capital of south america" if such things are to be believed. It's right in the middle of Ecuador at the foot of an active volcano. Happening place. It's also nestled in amidst other inactive volcanoes:




and surrounded by waterfalls.

All the normal adventure sport stuff is there, with a focus on water-related stuff. There is also adventurous eating:



That's cuy, aka guinea pig. Tastes like chicken.

They also are famous for their taffy, called melcocha. You can watch it being pulled in front of the stores and they will give you a taste for free:



I opted to rent a bike and trek down the valley on various roads and trails, most of which run along a river:



They cross to either side of the valley in these little suspended carts:



which you can get a ride in for a few bucks if you like.

I headed down toward the Pailon del Diablo waterfall, and climbed up under it. That's not for the faint of heart, you are very, very close to the waterfall, and have to climb up and through crawlspaces carved into the cliff under the flow. Not for the claustrophobic, either. Also crossed one of the many suspension bridges that sway back and forth with even a single person on them. Here's a photo from the far end, looking back at the waterfall:



If you look to the right of the waterfall, you can get an idea of how it's possible to climb up under it.

While it's possible to ride back up the valley to Banos to return the bike, it's also possible to pay some dude with a truck $2 to ride back up instead:



There were about 6 of us huddled in the back, all the bikes tied together.

Bungee jumping is very popular due to all the bridges over the valley:



but after taking a look at the safety equipment, I decided to pass.


Banos was fantastic, and I'd recommend it to anyone. So much stuff to see and do if you like adventurey outdoors stuff. Also, the hotels there are super cheap. I stayed in a hotel that had free wifi, free breakfast (yogurt with fruit, omelet with mixed veggies & meat, hash browns, all kinds of juice, tea, etc), and was right in the middle of town for something like $22/night USD.

Probably would still be there if I hadn't had to go back up to Quito and jump through the passport hoops one last time. Finally got them to agree to give me a temporary passport about 2 hours before my flight departure time back down south. Being a temp, it was only good for one year:



but that was good enough for me. French Polynesia requires 6 months of remaining validity, and it would only take about a month to sail there, so anything over 8 months would be fine, though I was really hoping to get at least 18 months in order to be able to hang out in the South Pacific for a while.

Not really a jest. I don't like bugs and I really hate skeeters.

Isn't banos the spanish word for bathroom?

Any chance an embassy in Australia or wherever would give you an extended one?

chop - have you put together a map of your travels? would be interesting to see if you have.

pig4bill - Banos literally translates as "baths", but yes, most USA#1s translate it as "bathrooms". The full name of the city is "Baños de Agua Santa" which translates to "Baths of the holy waters" - refers to all the hot springs in and around the town. As far as the passport goes, the consular officer in Quito swore up and down that embassies only give 1 year max on temp passports, but my research says otherwise. My plan was to go somewhere like Australia before the 1 year ran out and see if I could get a longer term temp or a full passport. Ended up not mattering as I flew back to the US from French Polynesia and got a full passport there.

Red - Here's one I just did from one of those free online things where you click the countries you've been to:



Headed to New Zealand next week. Will start working on SE Asia next month.

chop - just a suggestion



and in hindsight, wouldn't it be interesting if you had a gps track of your travels across the globe? would be fun to see.

Lol @ greenland's absurd size in that projection.

You can check New Zealand off that list, here now for a bit. Haven't seen a kiwi bird yet, but there are a lot of sheep here.

A lot.




Before we left Ecuador, it was time to stock up on enough fruits and veggies to last us for the next 3+ weeks. We did this mostly at a local market:




Lots of root vegetables like carrots and potatoes, lots of onionesque things as well:



Those are stored in net under the ladder that leads up to the cockpit. Most of the fruits and veggies were stored in nets to keep air circulating around them in order to discourage any kind of rotting. That thing under the white cloth is a kitchen mixer. I made bread with it a few times because hey, bread hook!


We had potatoes for days:



Yes, that's a pumpkin you see. They stay good for a really long time. This one unfortunately broke halfway into the trip because someone tripped on it or something, but we quickly roasted it up and had roasted pumpkin slices for lunch.

That's also a washing machine you see. It was pretty small, but could handle two sets of sheets, or maybe 7-8 small pieces of clothing. We alternated on using it. Everything was dried by hanging via clothespins on the lifelines.

Apples and oranges are a mainstay:




A view of the interior, standing on the port side of the companionway (ladder that goes up to the cockpit) and facing toward the bow:



That table rotates. It also unfolds, you can see it's folded up if you look closely. That's the kids library on the right. I read a lot of children's mysteries that trip, mostly from the A to Z Mysteries series.

Another view from the same position, but angled more to the left (port) side. All of those metal things in the floor are handles that lift up a segment of the floor to get to what is underneath. From there, it's mostly the engine:



Just past that pole (part of the mast) with the minions poster on it is the v-berth, which is the room in the bow of the ship. My berth was just on the right of the pole, behind where that mirror is.

After provisioning up, it was time to cast off lines and head to French Polynesia. We knew it would take about 3 weeks, give or take, dependent on weather. That estimate ended up being about right. It took just over 23 days. That's the longest I've ever been on a boat without getting off. We headed a little south of our starting point in Ecuador, then just meandered WSW for 23 days, averaging about 6kts/hr. We never stopped the boat, and didn't have to make many sail changes because we had great steady weather and wind the entire way. Other than the length, it was a good passage.

We also caught a ton of fish. Pretty much a fish every single day.

Here's a little skipjack tuna that we named sashimi:



He was small, but his contribution to the cause was appreciated:






We mostly caught mahi mahi:



We caught a mahi a day for the first two weeks, it was great. Mahi is a firm white fish if you haven't had it before. Also known as dolphinfish or dorado, he is a tasty fellow.

It's hard to comprehend just how in the middle of nowhere we were:



as the Pacific is so enormous.

Most of the time was spent on watch or asleep. There were 4 of us, so we divided the shifts into day/night shifts of 3 hours each. It's amazing how much of a difference it makes to have that 4th person and do 3 hour shifts instead of 4 hour ones. Having a 9 hour block of free time allows you to get a full 8 hours of sleep, which is pretty amazing. It's also safer, as everyone is usually well rested in the event anything goes wrong.

And something did go wrong.

A couple days out of Ecuador, we had a problem with one of the sails. It came undone from the line holding it up, and started to slide down the wire that it was attached to. The captain decided to try and catch it before it slid too far down, so I got woken up at 0630, about 3 hours after I went to sleep, to head up the mast. After quickly rigging up a boson's chair, they attached a line to a winch and up I went. The problem was that the sea was very choppy. Also, they were using an electric winch. Also, the mast had no ladder steps built in. Also, I was half asleep.

As they raised me up, I kept asking them to slow down the winch, because it was lifting me up faster than I could find places to hold onto the mast. I scrambled for a while, but eventually we hit a wave at the wrong time and I lost my grip. This meant I went swinging waaaaay out over the side of the ship. Then, physics being the bastard that it is, sent me swinging waaaaay back at high speed. I was able to twist my body in time to allow my thigh to be the impact point with the mast, so I didn't break anything, but I was done. I also was able to grab the mast on impact and not let go. If I had swung back out and come in for another round... well, I don't want to think about that.

After a minute or two of just clinging to the mast, they lowered me back down, and as I was basically paralyzed for the moment, I took charge of the safety line while the captain went up. He barely kept his grip and reattached the sail, then came down and we assessed my damage. Nothing visible, which puzzled him. That would change over the next couple of days as an enormous deep tissue bruise covered pretty much my entire leg. I hobbled around for about a week and the bruise itself took a full three weeks before it started to disappear. I am a little surprised I didn't break my femur given the impact.

Luckily, that was the only material injury we had. Just the usual cuts and scrapes otherwise.

Not much else of interest to report. The female crew went a little nuts and hated the other three of us one at a time for a few days each at various points of time, but everything worked out in the end.

Eventually we sighted land, the island of Fatu Hiva at the southeast tip of the Marquesas island archipelago in French Polynesia:




Fatu Hiva is the most remote inhabited island in French Polynesia. It's way, way out there. There is no airport or runway. The only way to get there is by boat. A supply ship stops by every 3 weeks to pick up copra (coconut product) and to drop off supplies. I guess a sea plane could get there, and maybe a helicopter if it could find a place to land.

When you think of island paradises, Fatu Hiva is it. Sparsely populated. Absolutely beautiful. Almost untouched. Waterfalls everywhere. Fruit trees everywhere. There were bananas, limes, breadfruit, etc just rotting on the ground after falling off the tree. Crystal clear waters full of fish. Friendly locals who don't really care about money one way or another. It was nice.

I've never sailed buy am studying for ASA 101 right now. What point of sail is this? At first blush i wanted to say a broad reach but the boom is trimmed all the way in so you're beating on a port tack??

In the textbooks the sail is always right above the boom. I'm confused.

YIKES! pics of enormous deep tissue bruise?

I remember hearing a story while living in the Caribbean of a woman whose husband died in an accident while working on the rigging and she couldn't get him down. She somehow managed to limp into St. Martin with him still up there.

I can't verify is this story is true or not, as there tends to be a lot of tall tales told around those parts, but your story reminded me of that right away.

"Not much else of interest to report. The female crew went a little nuts and hated the other three of us one at a time for a few days each at various points of time, but everything worked out in the end."


That was pretty damn funny!

Jay - that is an in-mast furling main. Instead of going up and down, it goes in and out. Throws everyone off the first time they see one. Port tack, yes, but not a beat. Look at how far out the sails are. Easier to see on the genoa than the main.

nn99 - No photos, and if I had one, I guarantee you wouldn't want to see it. It was pretty bad.

jsb - That tale sounds pretty tall.

Gutz - It's a lot funnier now than it was then when she was acting bat**** insane on a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean. She was giving us the silent treatment, which you just can't do on a boat with so many potential safety issues and communication needs.

chop,

Do you have a book of fish species, so when you haul one in you can see what it is? I get there'll be common ones, but even then, how did you know it was a mahi the first time? I guess someone else was like, that's mahi? Do you always catch common fish, or do you get a lot of variety?

No book.

Someone identified a mahi the first time, but I had been researching ocean pelagic fish, so I already knew. You pretty much catch the same fish once you hit open water. Mahi, tuna, wahoo, mackerel, and various billfish. You're targeting ocean pelagic predators, and those are the bulk of them. There are others out there like sunfish, scad, all the sharks, etc, but those are the ones you usually end up with.

Mahi are super distinctive, not much else looks like them so you can instantly ID them. Figuring out which kind of tuna you caught can be a little tougher because there are a lot of different tuna species. You learn to tell the difference. Yellowfin tuna you can probably guess the distinguishing characteristics of. Skipjack have horizontal stripes. Bigeye you can figure out. Albacore have white flesh. And so on.



I'm somewhere on the west coast of New Zealand's south island right now, so no fishing for me at the moment, though I do have my fishing gear with me. They eat something called whitebait here. Whitebait is juvenile fish (fry) mashed up together in burger patties and omelets and stuff like that. You eat the entire fish, bones, guts and all. Seems pretty gross but since I'm here I'll be trying it.

chopstick,

So there's "regular" fish out in the middle of the ocean?

I always imagined that fish stayed in (relatively) shallower waters because that's where the littler fish and plankton and whatnot to eat live. I had this notion (for reasons I can't explain) that the deep water only held the big guys like whales and sharks and stuff like that.

I guess I'm asking, do you catch these guys out in the deep, or only when you're kind of somewhat close-ish to land?

Great stuff, chop.

Just because there's 10,000 feet of water underneath them doesn't necessarily mean a fish doesn't wanna swim around where it is.

The pelagic predators mostly all hang out near the surface, but they don't care much about depth. We caught mahi all the way across the Pacific. Tuna are everywhere. There's probably one behind you right now.

I troll baits at or just under the surface. The depth doesn't really matter because the fish I want to catch do most of their hunting at the surface, looking for flying fish, squid, and really anything smaller than they are. What's fun is when you leave the lines out overnight and hook one of the weirdos that come up from the depths to feed at night.

That tuna is still behind you, btw.

Yeah, we used to catch bonito (the black sheep of the tuna family) on a party boat in San Diego that only went about a half-mile offshore.

They must be. I've only been sailing once, caught two dorado, and was instantly able to identify it.





How scary would it have been if you would have broken your femur that far away from anything? I am picturing a deep bruise you would get from taking a slapshot to the upper leg, but worse. Super purple and stays that way for a few week(s).

Thanks again for posting your adventures. I'm sure most of us, like me, are insanely jealous.

Cover them in breadcrumbs/batter, deep fry and, voila. Amazing with tartar sauce.

Sent from my SM-G920F using 2+2 Forums

It's a barracuda. Creepy ****.

That boat looks really wide.
Smallest mahi I've ever seen.

Did you pass through / near the pacific garbage patch?

Ha, my dad caught those on the San Diego party boat too. I think he was hooking the bait wrong. He kept catching barracuda and I kept catching bonito.