26/5/2015 0 Comments More joys of life on board!!!The trip from Bora Bora to Samoa took 14 days which was quite an experience for us all, even lifetime sailors & boat owners often never get to experience this type of journey.
Generally all went well but when it doesn’t you realize how extremely vulnerable you are with all that water around you & NO way to reach land quickly. We'd had a few days of wild seas and swell, winds and rain that made life on board a tad unpleasant (2 torn sails, one had to be taken down & replaced at sea, also the navigation lights had stopped working, meaning other boats couldn't see us so we had to keep a more vigilant look out for them on our night watches and spotlight the sails by torch if we saw another fishing vessel close) we were all quite glad for a rest when we reached land. At this point Mark is now quite far behind schedule for getting the boat back to Australia and was deciding to shorten stays in the next stops of Samoa and Tonga so we could see we'd be at sea quite a lot without having the pleasure of the islands so we made a decision that when we got to the next island we would leave the boat. Svend was also getting anxious to get home as we realised he'd only been home 3 months in the last 14 months so it was quite understandable. So we would miss Tonga but as it happens they'd also decided to only visit the northern islands and Clive Mona and Tina will depart from there and mark and Maureen will continue at sea onto Fiji etc. where more repairs will need to be done. So with this decision made a good few hours were spent assessing various options for the next part of the trip, flight options checked etc. when we got good Wi-Fi. Svend & I booked a flight from Samoa back to Sydney & then planned our next few days on Samoa. After 14 days at sea, food has started to run out and some of our frozen and fresh food had gone off as the fridges and freezers had to be turned off sometimes, as the batteries weren’t charging properly. Our bed linen also needed a good wash as did our clothes as it had been so hot & humid on board, and although we had showers on board we all needed a good sprucing up in a stationary shower without rolling around at sea. AND we could finally comb our hair which we generally didn’t bother doing because it gets blown all over the place, hence the necessity for a good hat!!! All a good experience to try. The night watches take a lot out of you as you then tend to sleep a lot in the day but still hard to get up for 3 hours in the middle of the night. The last couple of nights Svend let me stay below as it was quite terrifying out in the cockpit with rain, wind, sails flapping and the boat suddenly picking up speed when the wind changes. So all rather quickly came our departure from the boat, but we are all still good friends & we will sail again, just not weeks at a time on the ocean, been there, done that, ticked off our bucket list.
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