Anaho Bay, Nuku Hiva 10 May 2010 8.8211S 140.0639W

and for a short time previous to this resting spot:

Haavei Bay, Ua-Huka 8.9440S 139.5955W

After a roughish overnight passage to Ua-Huka, we arrived to a swell and winds from the wrong direction for the anchorage at Haavei Bay, so we decided not to stay and kept going to Nuku Hiva about 5 hours further on. Seas were sloppy the whole time, but we’re now at a beautiful calm anchorage on Nuku Hiva. There are about 5 other “kid boats” here. So everyone is now relaxed and happy again. More on this beautiful place later. Every paradise has it’s price, for about 3 minutes on our passage I was not sure the price was worth it. Maybe that’s why I wrote these 3 minutes in the 3rd person for you:

The sensation of blood rushing to her head, pried her out of a torpid sleep. Her brain was thick with exhaustion. Sweat oozed from every pore. An unsuccessful attempt to open her eyes further drained her. As awareness seeped past her dreamless wall of sleep she rolled off the shoulder she’d laid on since her head hit the pillow. Hours ago? Minutes ago? There was a dull ache in her hand as blood blocked at the shoulder found that extremity. Sharp needles followed, telling her that it was likely longer than an hour since she’d laid down. The fact that the boat was still moving meant that it had been less than a day. So she’d been sleeping somewhere between 1 and 24 hours. As she tried again to open her eyes, the eyelids rubbing across her eyeballs felt like sandpaper. Closing them quickly brought only another pang as the abrasive inside surface of the lids ground into the dry surface of her eyes. A final attempt to open them brought a fuzzy world into view. Through the open hatch she could see a regime of green bananas swinging from the boom gallows, her mind wandered to the depressing fact that they’d all ripen at once, making it impossible to consume them all before they rotted. As she inhaled preparing for a deep sigh, the sigh was choked back from a fowl smell of fish blood drifting up from her sheets. She remembered watching at dawn as Frank kicked the same open-hatch shut while landing a tuna on the deck above. His was a fast kick, but not fast enough. In that earlier moment she’d been elated at the sight of the fresh fish, and had not stopped to consider how fast his kick had been. Later, when she’d thrown herself on the bed for this nap, she must have been asleep before her nose reached the pillow and got a whiff of the dead tuna blood. Her raw eyes dropped to see how bad the damage to the sheets was. Only a few drops of dried blood. Her focus shifted farther out to a line of clean mostly white shirts strung down the hallway past the engine room. Oh well, so much for finishing the week’s laundry. She wondered if the shirts were even dry yet. They’d been chased into the hall by numerous squalls, and she wasn’t sure they’d ever actually dry in the hot humid air of the cabin. After so many rinses, they were starting to acquire a faint scent of mildew. She wondered, once they were dry, would a day in a trash bag with some Plumeria blossoms counteract the mold smell? As the boat lurched again, the thought of the two smells mixing was sickening. The heat was overwhelming, but moving to the cockpit where the hot humid wind would only bring marginal relief may not be worth the effort. A profound lethargy clung to her. She knew she would not be able to fall asleep again with these violent seas, and also that laying there would bring no relief; but the alternative of getting up to be confronted by the disaster area that the cabin had become on this short crossing, seemed too much to bear – and so she lay, fervently wishing for the world to stop – the predicted 2012 Armageddon seemed hopelessly far in the future. She heard Logan call out from the cockpit, “Papa, Kennan needs a rubber band, he’s inventing an electric motor.” The muscles around her eyes twitched involuntarily as the beginning of a smile rose from the depths of her malaise. But the thought of the cleanup that must follow any Kennan invention stuffed the smile back to from where it came. The comment had stirred the mire of her mood enough though, for her to begin to resist the lethargy. She waited for the momentum of the next lurch to assist her in sitting upright. She quickly swung her legs over the side of the master berth, and launched herself onto the cabin sole. Timing was critical. It had to be done in one move before the temptation to return to the horizontal position overpowered her. Once vertical the thought of the effort to return horizontal would help keep her moving toward the chaos in the main cabin.

xoxomo