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4/19/2006 3:30:00 AM
Fatu Hiva, Bay of Virgins
A beautiful bay on Fatu Hiva, very green and lush

Day 21 of 21 - We did it

DAY 21 of 21 - We did the biggest crossing we will most likely ever do and made landfall today.

Notice the difference in the subject line ... yes we are NOT counting down to 25 anymore ... WE ARE HERE ... WE DID IT.

We had a spectacular sail the last 24 hours and broke another record of 178 miles over 24 hours which averages to 7.4 knots ... that is average and we saw 8 knots all the time. We were all pretty beaten up over the last few days of hard sailing but none of us could really sleep that morning and finally at around 10 or so, the moment was here ... LAND AHOY ... we saw Fatu Hiva on the horizon as a faint silhouette.

After sailing a slalom thru the various squalls that haunted us again, we finally turned the corner around Fatu Hiva and the seas calmed down and guess who was just in front of us not more then a few miles ahead ... Capaz. After leaving Z town within 4 hours of each and sailing almost 3000 miles, at the end we sailed into the anchorage within an hour ... pretty amazing to think that we were never more then 90 miles apart during the whole passage.

We then pulled into the anchorage at around noon local time (minus 9:30 hours from Greenwich Mean Time) in Fatu Hiva called 'Bay of Virgins'. The place is gorgeous but you sure can tell it is the rainy season because we got greeted right away with 2 squalls and big gusts running through the anchorage.

Our arrival was a bit stressed because it is a fairly small anchorage and place was hard to come by. To make matters more difficult, the anchorage is very deep and it took us 5 times of dropping the anchor and bringing it back up until we found a set that seems to be OK ... I even dove the anchor to check it out. By the way, diving I took a detour by a little reef and I saw more colorful fish then in 'Captain Nemo' just within 10 minutes ... this is a good start.

The rest of the afternoon was spent cleaning up the boat while the kids went with Ohana Kai and Capaz boys to town ... seems calling it a town is a bit of an overstatement but then 'a couple houses' is too long to write ... so I will stick with town. Niki and I will go on land tomorrow for the first time after we spent pretty much all afternoon, moving stuff back to where it belongs when we are living on Lawur rather then doing a passage ... the V berth for example was converted into a storage place and things had to be moved around quite a bit beside the cleaning up and below deck that was way overdue after being out at sea for over 20 days. The best part of the squalls is that we don't need to wash Lawur down ... she is sparkling though the bottom needs a little bit of cleaning to come later this week ... there is all together a bit of deferred maintenance that needs to be done within the next week before we want to go on.

That's it for today ... we are having dinner now just TheSchmids and then we will get together with Ohana Kai it seems for some games tonight ... let's see if we can stay up that long.

I will follow-up in a day or two with a final email to our trip and I will try to get everyone in the family to give his point of view of the last 21 days.

Thanks for the encouragement along the way ... I have to say it hasn't quite yet sunk in that we just finished the longest passage we will probably ever make and are truly in the Marquesas now.

Did I mention already that WE DID IT ... oh yeah and how blue the water still is!?

Robert and crew

TheSchmids Family Sailing on Lawur --------------------------------------------------------------------------- !!! PLEASE DON'T INCLUDE ORIGINAL WHEN REPLYING TO REDUCE DOWNLOAD TIME !!!

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