Who: Janet, Darryl, Ella & Iris
Where: From French Polynesia to Alaska
Multihull: Leopard 384
Blog : www.svmaple.blogspot.com
Yes, it is finally true. We have arrived in Kodiak, AK. Some fun facts happened by numbers during our passages since departing Tahiti on May. We’ve spent 52 days at sea, 27 to Hawaii then 25 to Alaska. We sailed 5,100 nautical miles, 2,350 to Hawaii, then 2,750 to Alaska. Even if, to be honest, we really didn’t track our mileage, so this is a very rough guess at best. We didn’t fish. Crew members lost three teeth, and a fourth hanging by a thread. Yes, we will soon need to puree all of Iris’s food! Girls have spent most of hours awake watching screens. We broke and repaired almost 20 small things. We replaced the two tiller arms, after one broke 500 nm SW of Hawaii. We had to create various renditions of a block to stop the rudder from bashing itself against the hull after the tiller arm broke. Darryl spent contorted, upside down in the engine room trying in vain at times to secure the rudder while precariously kneeling on the back transom step being swamped continuously by waves. We had to fix the emergency tiller, which was damaged when it was used as our first attempt for securing the flapping rudder. The torn spinnaker is not yet repaired. We had to replace chafed spinnaker halyard. We had to replace chafed furling line. An alternator was replaced. We had to change fuel filters after troubleshooting while the starboard engine lost power. The water tank sprung a leak just days into our first passage losing us 400 liters of water, this will not be repaired. Two life jackets which need either a new cartridge or replaced altogether. Main sail tear had to be patched. We had to reset the inverter when it wouldn’t turn on the very first morning after leaving Tahiti. Mind you if that had not been fixed, it would have saved the girls from the incalculable mind-numbing screen time.…
