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As I write this post we are sailing away from the Marquesas. Our next stop will be in the Tuamotus where we hope to do lots of snorkeling and beach combing.

Our last two days in the marquesas were packed full of adventure on the island of Nuku Hiva with the first being an all day driving tour of the island and the second a 12km hike to a beautiful waterfall in Daniel’s Bay.

I was excited to search for the places photographed by my parents in 1987 and found some! I’m surprised by how much has remained the same: the main town of Taioha’e has not expanded much and the bays look the same (more crowded with cruising boats though).

Differences include more of the island being accessible by narrow and steep roads that connect the villages: everyone owns a 4WD truck here. And, unfortunately, there are so many cruisers coming through here, we are clearly a source of income and maybe even a nuisance. Imagine a balanced community for 9-10 months of the year and then suddenly thousands of cruising boats arrive that want to buy 10 dozen eggs each and buy fancy cheese and meats and go eat pizza. It’s hard to support that fluctuating demand. It reminds me of our community on Orcas Island and how it changes in summer.

Our final stop in the Marquesas was Daniel’s Bay, Nuku Hiva. Wow what a spectacular place with volcanic cliffs dropping into the valley. We walked with our friends off sv Impossible to a waterfall that I hiked to as a child. We even found a tiki that I posed with back in 1987, it hadn’t budged!

1987 left and 2024 to right. Interesting the forest of pine now on the ridge that was not there before.

We did a wonderful hike today to a remote beach that faces west. It catches a lot of ocean a trash. From fishing boats a lot of it is, but also from irresponsibly discarded anthropogenic sources. Fishing boats are not throwing legos in the ocean people. We can all made a difference. Reduce your consumption of plastic.

These are the microplastics that I picked out of this 1’ x 1’ square area of the beach. These are just the pieces I can easily see with my eye, between surges of ocean where crabs frolic in the foam and children run from the waves.

April 10 we crossed the equator from north to south hemisphere! See the shenanigans here.

We had our birthday in Bahia Conception, Mexico. We turned 7 and celebrated by inviting over some other boat friends and we ate cake and had the best birthday! 🥳 Enjoy this video that we made about this fun day!

-Aurora and Coral 🦄🌈🎂⛵️🪩🪅🥳🎁

The Miller 6 have a Christmas video for you! Full of music created across the miles from Maine to Mexico.

The kids have a new video ready to tell you about how we produce, store and consume electricity on the boat. Enjoy!

The kids worked hard on this video! We hope you enjoy learning about all the gadgets we have aboard Lyrae to help keep us safe.

Covered in this video are:

-life jacket and harness

-lifeline netting

-jack lines

-epirbs

-starlink

-radar

-VHF radio

-AIS position tracking

-chart plotter

-OLAS tags

-garmin in-reach tracker / messaging

-ditch bag

-life raft

-dinghy

-DAN Buoy

-fire extinguishers

-fire blanket

-Man overboard procedure

-Mayday distress call procedure

04:15 am, N 28d 55.9’, W 116d 03.2’

Clear skies, stars, a huge moon. We are no longer just going to Baja, we are there. What we’ve planned is playing out. We are closing in on Bahia Tortuga, our first stop down the coast of Baja, where we get to lay up for a few nights to relax, enjoy a party or two with the other rally boats, eat some restaurant food and hopefully play with some other boat kids. Tacos, cold beer, sandy beaches! Tacos, gold beer, sandy beaches! We still have the last 100nm to go today, but we’re chugging away waiting for the winds to come up. This trip is about 330 nm direct, and more like 400 nm if you don’t just run dead down wind. I’ll note that some of the fleet got a good start, went hard with their spinnakers and were able to stay on the end of what seemed like a passing wave of wind this entire passage. We started only 90 minutes behind the pack and I opted to swing out to sea while the seas were calm so that if/when the seas come up, we would be able to run with the waves behind instead of abeam, a much more comfortable point of sail for the entire crew. Think less puking kids.

Yesterday we got about 6 hours of sweet sailing in the late afternoon / evening. Not enough for anyone’s taste, but enough to keep you coming back for another day. It’s like hitting a great drive on the 18th hole. LJ’s still under the weather but she’s tireless, cooking all meals, doing school, entertaining the kids, cleaning the boat and still sitting her night watch. Adam is great crew, taking trustworthy watches so LJ and I can sleep and entertaining the kids like a fun uncle. The boats doing well so far. We’re clean, warm, dry, plenty of water and plenty of electrons. And when the wind goes over 8 knots, she’s an easy sailer. We can make 6 knots overground in 9 knots of wind with just the jib and main, and we could make 7-8 if we unfurl the code0 (today’s plan after researching predicted conditions). For now the crew is settling in and getting comfortable. It’s our kids’ first multi-night passage. The seas are very calm, nothing like the PNW passage, and the weather is warm. Hot during the day and I’m thankful for shade.

Seeing the photos from Orcas over the last week has given me the first real homesickness since I left in August. Orcas on a sunny fall day is beautiful. I miss those crisp mornings, the smell of freshness that comes with fall, the community’s relief as the tourist season fades and the locals return from their summer travels. I miss going to Chris’ gym to workout with my friends. I miss my little office in town. I miss waking up and looking out over the cove. I miss drinking a cup of coffee staring down East Sound to Blakely island. I miss bumping into neighbors on the drive to school. I miss eating lunch at the market. I really miss the Halloween party in town. What a tradition! I miss coaching soccer with Brian and sitting quietly in the Oddfellows hall through the girls’ ballet class taught by his wife. I miss golfing with my friends. I miss fall racing with the J Pod. I miss the satisfaction of finishing a fully stocked woodpile. I miss playing pool at Bruce’s and planning next season’s boating adventures north. I miss soaking in our redneck hot tub with LJ looking at the stars.

Maybe I’m getting older? Maybe I’m getting more honest with myself? Maybe a decade of investment in making a new place home is paying off? I don’t know. We have an incredible life there, and it’s one of a kind place. I’m enjoying this adventure, I’m surrounded by family and friends this whole time. I’m so lucky to know that we have found our home, and to have a place to return to with smiles on our face instead of the dread of reality. We aren’t coming home anytime soon, but I look forward to the day we do. Onward!

Here is the kids video Part 4 – first overnight passage

https://youtu.be/prd_CQsZ0M4?si=PyIyQGXNn4y0T7hl

We have covered another chunk of distance down the California coast from Sausalito to San Diego and as I post this, we are poised to depart for Mexico!

The month included stops in Half Moon Bay, Monterrey Bay, Santa Barbara, Channel Islands, Catalina, Long Beach, Dana Point and San Diego. We had some amazing land trips to Disneyland and Legoland. While entering San Diego harbor, we passed an outgoing submarine and it’s escorts and they all smiled and waved back.

We made some mistakes, like overflowing the diesel tanks into the bilge. That was bad. And Mikes vision got blurry from a scopolamine patch. And I got over-confident after having no kids throw up, ever, in 10 years. So I fed spicy curry one afternoon last week as we were entering San Diego and then oops, poor Forrest. On Santa Cruz in the Channel Islands, we surfed ashore to a sand beach on the paddle boards. Mike, Sierra and Coral got dumped in the surf but they were ok. It led to a 30 minute parental crash course/ practice session on how to time entry and departure from a beach. We are experts now, of course!

I’m realizing that my role as a deck hand is limited. Teaching 4 kids school, maintaining overall kid happiness, feeding 6-10 humans, cleaning, provisioning. These things are hard to transition in and out of when Mike cheerily says “let’s put up the main” or “I need your eyes” or “time to anchor” or “take the helm while I make water.” When another adult is with us to be dedicated crew, my anxiety almost disappears and this becomes fun. But when it’s just the 6 of us, I’m nervous. There isn’t a backup if Mike or I get sick or hurt or overtired. This boat needs a rested and alert captain at the helm.

Then there were the two hurricanes that hit Mexico in the last two weeks, Norma and Otis. Ocean temps of 90 degrees? We are hesitant to rush into Mexico with warm air and oceans so recently causing these disturbances. There was a lot of damage to La Paz and we could be there in 2 weeks.

I continue to be grateful for the support of our friends, family, visiting crew, weather models, chart plotters, and starlink. My heart is mourning for my Maine friends and family, stunned from the Lewiston shooting. We will push forward, remembering that our time on this earth is limited and to be grateful for the moments and opportunities that we have now.

The worst wounds are often self inflicted. We’ve had a slow freshwater leak from our plumbing in the starboard hull all season. On a monohull with a bilge sump it would go largely unnoticed. The water would pool in the sump and be pumped out every few hours without you noticing. On a flat bilge catamaran it’s totally different. Every drop of water sloshes around but it would take tens of gallons to get high enough for the bilge pump to suck it out. So until we get really motivated, or until the leak worsens, I’ve just been sponging it up occasionally. Think one gallon a month maybe. But, we have been suspicious of a mixing valve that lets us select saltwater or freshwater for toilet flushing. Fresh is way better as you don’t have dying sea creatures in your plumbing and holding tanks, but it’s nice to have saltwater as a backup in case the watermaker dies on passage. And the saltwater system is one I never use, so I usually just leave it in it’s winterized state, which means full of red rv antifreeze. So when we see red or pink in the bilge it’s a hint of where it came from.

Fast forward to Monday when we moved the boat from the Long Beach YC dock across the fairway to a safe spot we could leave her while we went to Disney. We filled the fuel tanks on the way to be ready to depart to San Diego. And we took the time to top up our aft storage tanks. Lyrae is a specially outfitted Outremer that has double the fuel storage of standard. We carry nearly 200 gallons of diesel and, at 0.6g/hour per engine; that’s quite a range (we use one engine when on passage to run at 5.5 knots). So after fueling, tying up and getting ready to leave the boat for a Disneyland hotel earl the next morning, I did a final check of the bilge and saw just a tiny bit of liquid in the usual spot. Sierra asked “why is it pink?”, to which I smugly answered “that’s because we have a small leak and it’s coming from the saltwater plumbing.” I’m extra smug now because that’s a new mixing valve that LJ installed, not me 😉

Fast forward a week and we’re back on the boat after an amazing time at Disney. We saw friends from Orcas (4 different kid families!) and even had a sleepover party Friday night. Saturday morning we said a sad goodby to Long Beach and our friends and headed out to make the 30 nm run to Dana Point. We motored about half the time and after dropping the sails and turning towards port I went below to check a few things and I found … traces of red liquid in the port bilge. Note, this bilge has been dry since I fixed a holding tank leak this spring. The symptom of that was red antifreeze leaking from the holding tank over the winter into the bilge. “Dammit”, I thought, “do I have another poop water problem?” After staring at the small puddle of red liquid, I did what I should always do. I touched it. Slimy. But I know at least 3 red liquids on the boat that are slimy: rv antifreeze, yanmar engine coolant, and diesel. So I tasted it. DIESEL IN THE BILGE!! Oh boy. There are diesel fuel lines running all through the deepest darkest unreachable corners of this boat. If we have a diesel leak it means a week of tearing the boat apart with a few mechanics. Think ‘pull the couch and fridge and sink out of the salon’ style tear up the boat. More than we’ve ever done before. So I start pulling up floorboards and working my way to the deepest part of the bilge. Ugh, a serious puddle. A gallon? A few gallons? Dammit. Panic. Breathe. Panic some more. Dread telling wife. Breathe. Think. Huh. Remember when Sierra noticed the starboard bilge water was red? And I smugly told her it was antifreeze from MOM’s mixing valve?! Uh oh. Head to starboard. Pull up the bilge board. Red slimy liquid. Taste it — diesel. Ok. Panic starts to subside. What are the odds of blowing a line on both sides at exactly the same time? That’s low. So now my analysis moves into the dreaded zone — what have I touched? What did I do differently? Think…. The fuel transfer system. I have been chasing a slow vent on the aft port tank and the forward starboard tank. I’ve had luck leaving the transfer manifold that connects tanks open in the past, and when the tanks are full that allows air to transfer between the tanks. But I’ve never left it open to the aft storage tanks until I refueld Monday, precisely the day Sierra noticed the pink bilge liquid. Aha. So I peel up the beds that cover the aft storage tanks. They’re full, like overfull. And dribbling out around a fitting or two on the top. Where do that extra fuel come from?! Huh. Check the front supply tanks. Starboard is full, and port is — half empty?! WTH, that should be full! Ok, then I finally inspect my fuel polishing and transfer system that I’m so proud of and realize that the diesel return line for the port tank has an easier path sending the fuel to the aft storage tanks than into the port supply tank like it’s supposed to. And if some idiot leaves those transfer valves open, my yanmar engine has been happily overfilling the aft storage tanks. It’s doing exactly what I told it to do, I was just an idiot. Diesel plumbing is just like computer programming. It does exactly what you tell it to.

So after buying 100 absorb pads at Westmarine, getting half naked and mopping up the bilge while listening to MSU get annihilated by UM, I couldn’t help but think how the worst wounds are often self inflicted. To her credit LJ didn’t freak out, and to be honest I don’t think she can even smell diesel as it’s in her blood from a childhood on boats. There’s still more after-mess to deal with (some of the bilge is inaccessible). But I understand what happened, I don’t think we caused any lasting harm (my kids brains are already mostly developed, what’s a day of benzene fumes really gonna do to them…), and I’ve learned yet again not to be so damn smug to say I know an answer to a question before stopping, thinking, listening and … tasting.