The Crossing 5/30/08 to 6/22/08

For those of you who do not know the distance from san francisco to the Island of HIva Oa in French Polynesia is approximately 3000 miles. For better or worse our first passage is also one of the longest that we will have to make on our trip around the globe. We departed from Pier 39 in san francisco on Thursday 5/29/08 at 1030 PST. It wasn't long before we lost the sight of land 6/4/2008 and only three days after that we saw our last ship...at this point we realized the pacific is a very big ocean..the next time we saw a ship...any ship was about 400 miles out from the Marquesas(june 19th).
The two black tie affairs during the crossing lived up to their billing. The first was held on the 8th of june (fred's birthday). Jeff and Angie managed to smuggle presents aboard; bake a cake; and make steak and goat cheese quesadillas accompanied by a nice bottle of napa cab which we had picked up in San Francisco.
The second affair was preceeded by a stint in the doldrums or Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). A few notable things about the doldrums: they didn't last as long as we thought they would; it was the first time we were able to actually go swimming off of the god spede (although we were very conscious of the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere); and the embedded rain squalls were as advertised...short and fierce...some not so short.
Crossing the Equator has always had a certain je ne sais quoi in the sailing community. Essentially you are supposed to sacrafice something to neptune (god of the sea) upon your first crossing: sacrafices were as follows fred- beard. angie- nothing. jeff- something. (angie is slated to be pierced by neptune's trident in the not to distan future) and no, Hughsie, jeff's something wasn't the providence college jersey.
The crossing party consisted of: shots chosen by the person on shift(jeff) who picked jim beam...which thankfully had been baking in the heat for the past several weeks and was an old favorite of fred's (june 8th 1998 the last time he had one) and then we continued to melt under the equatorial sun.
The last week of our trip is when we saw the only two problems. Our electronic self steering broke one week out which wasn't a big deal until the second problem occured. On 6/20/08 a piece of our standing rigging broke just before midnight. It snapped at the top just under where it was attached to the mast. When it broke it came crashing down into the companionway luckliy not hurting a soul. Unfortunately, with the rigging broke and the electronic self steering out of commision we were left to hand steer the last two days into the Marquesas. We arrived to a crowded harbor in the town of Atuona on the Island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas on 6/22/08 tired and very happy.