585 NON-STOP HOURS AT SEA __ Sailing Across The Pacific Ocean

113 nautical miles to go and this right here is probably the scariest part of sailing. We've got a big storm approaching. Our winds have just died down to like 7-8. The part that freaks you out, the mind game, is is it gonna kick up to 20? Should we stop the spinnaker? Should I stop the socket right now? Should I turn on an engine and motor and wake up Nikki and let the storm pass? It's like amazing what goes through your head and you never know the right thing until until I guess either it's too late or it's all the way over. So I'm gonna let it fly until I get too close to wind speed. I'm gonna run down and get Nikki and then kick on the engine. Yeah, six o'clock in the morning by the way. She just went down for her rest. Okay, it's coming in behind us. It's about a half a mile away, the first part of it. The one telltale is the ocean. To listen to it and to feel the boat. It's not bringing huge waves so hopefully it's just a small system. The spinnaker still looks good. The storm's kind of causing us to change angles. Starting to get some rain. It's just sprinkling on us now. 15 knots of wind. All the stars are going back out here and see if anything's on the heels of the system we have at us right now. It looks pretty clear. 17 knots of true wind, 18 knots of true wind. All right, it's not it's not worth it to risk it. She is coming up. What? We've got 16 knots of true wind. We've got a big storm right behind us. Okay, we're good. Socket, motor. We're still doing okay but and just like that after 10 minutes of anxiety and excitement, Nikki's gone back to bed. The wind's back down to 10 knots and the radar shows nothing. That, that is sailing. Especially at night. It's like just so intense and then so thankfully that could have gone a lot more intense. Dolphins! They're full out jumping. Welcome to French Polynesia. Wow, that's got to be like the coolest way to enter a new country. They were here forever. Babies, jumping. It's just like the whole shebang. It's impossible to capture on camera the excitement that you know you feel when they're all just... But there's so many of them. There's so many and you just can't capture them all and they're doing all these tricks. It's so cool. Definitely the best entourage for entering into a new country. What is going on in here? It's time for a haircut. 20 whatever days at sea, it's time for a haircut. Couldn't wait one more day. No, it's new country, honey. It's French Polynesia. I needed a French haircut. No, it really was time for a haircut and I thought, well, I might as well occupy myself because otherwise I'm just staring at like the nautical mile counter going, one less mile. Okay, 10 hours. Okay, nine hours. So yes, this is me occupying myself. Oh man, you're amazing. What was that? What did I hear you yell? Oh, right there. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cool. It's land. It's so exciting. I still want to be there, but we've had such crappy wind that we've been going so slow. We could get there in just a couple of hours, but it'll be in the middle of the night and it's going to be dark and that's a bad idea. So we're going to have to piddle around out here with the Genoa until the morning. How's that for a nail biter? Yeah. Just like... So close. So close. But so far. How cool is that I haven't seen anything for 25 days other than this water and clouds. And me. What a night. It is... Honestly, I don't know what time. Our clocks are 315 AM, but our phones and everything have said, and it actually, it is 1045 because we were still on Ecuador time. Anyway, very confusing. We are maybe about 15 miles from the anchorage or landfall. I can literally see land right there. It's three miles from me here. And we've been getting like 20 to 25 knots of wind. So we've been flying with, mind you, making an effort to really slow down. It wasn't enough. So now we had to keep to, or hope to, still going three knots. Just kind of trying to bide our time until in the morning. Of course, lots of excitement as we approach landfall. I have a feeling we're kind of tired by the time morning rolls around. But we're going to be there. I'm so ready. I just want the hours to just hurry up and fly by. Feeling very antsy. Of course, we've got our makeshift traveler that's held together with Spectra. And of course, we're in all this high wind and we're hoped to. And so it's kind of bouncing around a lot and I'm waiting for it to chafe through. So anyway, it feels a little stressful. And then I think the fact that I've got like the antsy pants going on ready to get there is not a healthy thing. So anyway, it's good to be on watch because I wouldn't be sleeping. Nikki's on rest break now. We switched things up because of, well, excitement. She wasn't tired at all. So I took a little nap. We undid our hove to, or heave to, and we've tacked. And I'm now slowly making progress between these two islands heading in the general direction of our anchorage. I've got the Genoa out on the second reef. So there's just a tiny bit of Genoa just to put some steerability and we're sailing in as close as we can. It's like so frustrating. There's land right there and there's land right there. That's another fun thing about sailing is you're here, but you're not. True wind's died down a little bit. We got 17 knots and it's barely comfortable, so I can't complain. We're just going to float around out here for the next few hours, wait for the sun, and then drop the anchor. We just did our final tack and we are heading straight for our anchorage because looky there. We got a little bit of sun coming up. Oh, this is awesome. I can't wait for it to be over. Oh, for the good this is. We are sailing pretty much the entire way. What you doing? First time to ever have to throw a stern anchor, so just trying to sort it all out. It seems pretty straightforward. And why are we throwing a stern anchor? Because we read on Active Captain that the swell is so bad that you have to point your boat towards the swell at the anchorage. Otherwise, you do this. Also, when everybody else is doing a stern anchor, then we have to do one as well so they don't swing Yeah. And how tired are you? Extreme. Good morning. We made it. Almost. Oh, we are 1.27 nautical miles from our anchorage. Jason's got to jump the port engine because well, as you may recall, we discovered that our starter has gone out on us. We've got to do that so that we can make it in. We're ready for a shower from land, but it's a hard debate between my excitement to go to land and my tiredness and wanting to take a nap. I don't know which one went out. I think we'll see how we feel after we finally get anchored. But oh man, is this a sight for sore eyes. This is beautiful. I don't think I've ever been more pleased and more appreciative of a destination than I am right now. Yeah. Okay, waypoints are dropped. We're good. Turning the engines off. Oh, we are here. Oh, that is a beautiful sound. Yeah. Oh, good job. Oh no, I'm good. We did it, honey. We did do it. That was a long 20, 25 and a half days. But it is 8, 11 a.m. local time and we're here. We got to stay on the boat for several hours just to watch and make sure the anchor looks okay. Pretty gnarly. This is pretty dramatic. Yeah. All right. Time to clean up. Well, we are pooped, but we were too excited to sleep. We tried. We laid down for like 30, 45 minutes and neither one of us were asleep. So into town we go. So we can't stand ourselves. Got to get on land. There's curiosity. Oh, it's been too many days. Got my watch on so I can measure 300 steps so far. That's more than we've done in 25 days. All the flowers. We walked all over. Well, not all over, but 6,000 steps, 156 feet of elevation. Yes. And everything seems to be closed. We did find this one hotel that was open so we could get our first French Polynesian beer. And we gave the guy $20 and this is what we get back. So I think we need to find a bank and get a proper exchange rate because I have no idea what that was. And what else? It's absolutely gorgeous. Check out this view. Look at this. Black Sand Beach and that mountain. We are totally going to hike that volcano, I guess. Yeah. Eventually. I have no idea if there's a hiking trail. We're going to find out. Oh, I just figured out what I wanted to tell you. I'm very tired. So my brain is not functioning very well. I'm trying to order anything or talk to anybody around here. We were just finally getting like decent at our Spanish. Of course, now we're entering like a whole new territory with French and we suck at it really bad. And everything we say ends up sounding like it's supposed to be Spanish instead of French. Oh, it's going to be fun. The beer is good. It's kind of hoppy actually. Really? It's more flavorful than I thought it would be. Yeah. Yeah. It tastes good right? It's a lot of head. That's what she said.