Not Soon Enough

I should start by saying that everything is great and both ship and crew are in good working order. That said, we're in shambles. We're so close we can taste it. There are lots of birds flying around. The southern cross is bright as all hell. We've been variably coasting, scooting or careening along the southeasterlies for... I'm actually not sure. A while though. Long enough to feel like we should be there.

Our anxiousness is made worse by meals declining in freshness, quality, variety and virtually every other positive descriptor. They have become, in a word, substandard. Some have been categorically bad. Fortunately, Neptune's tastes are perfectly inverse to our own, so when we sacrifice all but three small portions of a horrific one-pot-wonder to the sea, it's a win-win.

What's more, there are signs aboard of an alarming moral decay that appears to accompany idleness and cultural confinement. Yesterday, as I haphazardly shuffled through the now mostly ragged stack of magazines my parents brought us in PV for entertainment and a taste of home, I came upon one that I hadn't yet read. It was the April 2012 issue of Gentleman's Quarterly. Excitement poured through me; a lengthy magazine such as this could keep me busy for hours. Then, realizing what I'd become, I was ashamed. GQ. I even looked at the pictures of mostly British dudes wearing ridiculous outfits. On one page, there was a short bit dedicated to the latest fashionable man bags- totes, if you will. Or, as we call them in America... I'll leave that rant off right there with the comfort of knowing my siblings will be able to infer a suitable diatribe and with that a fitting memory of their floating brother.

Seriously though, there was a man-tote that cost more than two thousand pounds (Chittick: ?That's a heavy bag.?). Shocking. But I read it and, as you can see, I absorbed it into brain capacity that I might never get back. To be fair though, there were some great and well-written articles. And the presence of poignant political and cultural commentary among pages and pages of photos of men in colorful suits, men with shoes on, men with watches on their wrists, men with hair done-up, tatooed men with salmon-colored pants, men with nice non-baseball hats, men with man-totes, makes the whole thing all the more bewildering. It's like an encyclopedia of the preceding month in British pop-culture, sort of the insecure, one-upping offspring of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. But Chittick said there would be samples of things that smell good in it, so I read on and on. I read the whole damn thing and there were no free samples that might help combat the odor that... actually, I'm not going to describe the odor.

See I've gotten off track, but the point was that I spent the bulk of a whole day reading that magazine and I was glad to do so. And now I've gone and written excessively about it, allotting even more of my time and brain-thinking-power to GQ. As I said: shambles. The last week or so has been tough. Not the type of tough where it's actually physically or mentally strenuous or anything, but the type of tough like a six-year-old trying to sleep on Christmas Eve.

We've recently abolished the use of landmarks. They've been deemed counter-productive. First it was the ITCZ, then the equator, then the 1000 nm to go, then 500 to go, then 400. It's not helpful. If you're wondering what it feels like to have now only 230 nm to go in a 2750 nm passage, the answer is exactly the same as it felt when we passed the last imaginary line in our path that had been fixed in our navigational minds. Unspectacular. I long for the sweet smell of hibiscus; that- smell- is the sense I am most excited to reunite with land. And I miss exercise; we haven't walked more than about 15 feet at a time in nearly a month. It seems only the final landmark- the one on land- will assuage our restlessness.

I have wondered when this perverse relationship will end that has us feeling farther away the closer we get. Today, supposing that point might be when we finally see land, I got out some paper and figured at what distance from the island we'd be able to catch our first glimpse, knowing the highest peak of Hiva Oa to be 1276 m, according to Lonely Planet. Assuming we're perched on Ardea at a mere 5 feet above sea level, it's 95.171 nautical miles. Great. Of course, at this rate we'll come into that range at night, so it's moot. That was entertaining for a solid twenty minutes, though.

All this whining aside, we really are doing pretty well. Other than tiring of having to hear Dana's list of possible dinner ingredients (?Potatoes... rice... noodles... eggs... cabbage... alright, pick a starch.?), and just generally wishing for some variety in our activities and environment, we continue to be in high spirits. Ardea continues to kick ass like a ninja, albeit a really slow ninja with not so much of the stealthiness. We did end up motoring a fair amount, though I won't report the final numbers until we arrive, and we've had a couple of squally convection zones in the southern hemisphere so far. In fact, a few nights ago we got a real nice one where it was all rainy and I, on watch, got to yell for Dana to come help and we reefed with a vengeance and watched in the full moon as a line of squalls hunkered towards us and we cycled through 5 and 25 knots, dry and down-pour for an hour or two. The break in routine was exciting.

Also, last night we saw a ship. Dana and I were sitting in the cockpit late, moon still near-full, drinking beers and enjoying the incredibly comfortable night air. I nodded to a dot on the horizon, only visible when the swell was right and mumbled without enthusiasm, ?Think that's a ship or a star??. We each alternately assessed that it was a star, then decided it was probably a ship, then went back confidently to star, then went on to talk about something else. Within ten minutes we could see its navigation lights, so we turned ours on. It passed us another ten or fifteen minutes after that, close enough that we could hear the engines. I tried hailing them on the vhf, just to say hi (we hadn't seen a ship in weeks), but they didn't respond. It was probably a Japanese long-line fishing vessel, but we're not really sure. Exciting, huh?

And so we continue, safe and sound, weather agreeable if less windy than ideal, and really and truly almost there. We're at 07 degrees 16 minutes South, 135 degrees 54 minutes West. I'm not sure if Shiptrak shows the islands, but ?there? is 09 degrees 49 minutes South, 139 degrees 02 minutes West in Tahauku Bay near the town of Atuona on the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Archipelago in French Polynesia. So, we're basically looking at Friday afternoon if it gets a lot windier right now, Saturday if there exists a modicum of mercy in the world, and Sunday+ should the status-quo be maintained.

We were told on the radio net the other night by some folks who already arrived that the town is about a 45 minute walk from the anchorage, but it was possible to get a car ride in. I don't know if these people have a fitness center on their boat or just take a sadistic joy in watching their legs atrophy, but you couldn't pay us to take a ride into town. When we get there, I'll walk the whole damn day and with a smile on my face.