Permanent Crew Christiane Custers - talks of the passage from Pitcairn island - and tests your knowledge of nautical trivia:

“8 – 12 watch aft for the main sheet, and when the sail's sheeted in you're on the braces!”. Oh... wait a minute... that's me, my watch... I'm on the 8 to 12... pay attention... Our watch gathers on the poop deck. Ok, we're ready!
We're sailing off the anchor.

It's Friday the 12th of May and this morning we said goodbye to the most friendly and warm Pitcairn Islanders. It's good when a farewell can be so beautiful.
Now, we're under way to the Marquesas, 1120 NM from Pitcairn.
There's a nice wind and we steer full and by, as close to the wind as possible.

The second evening we have a wet (soaked) watch... it's raining. A squall approaches us and the wind is backing, backing more and... backing more. We've got to tack.
During the time it takes to wake up extra hands and tack the ship we're making a beautiful 8 knots... in the opposite direction than desired.
It's unbelievable, but in this short time we've lost more or less our day's progress!
To make the plotted track on the chart look even more impressive, the wind disappears completely after this squall. The ship's positions during the 12 to 4 watch are all located on a square centimetre on the chart...

The wind doesn't return and the Iron Sail is set. The engine.
The absolutely good thing about having no wind (at...all...) is that you can have swim stops. Many of them. All you need is a shark watch aloft (a what watch?!), a ladder over the side and of course a nice temperature (29°C at 9 in the morning does the trick).
During one of these swim stops the permanent crew practises the 'how-to-get-an-unconscious-person-aboard-the-Doti-boat' (and still wearing her bikini)? I can't help thinking that ìf it has to happen, please make it a light, small person...

Now we're becalmed we have more active distractions. There's the 'Søren Olympics'. The watches challenge each other in three events. First is throwing quoits, which is done in a civilised and calm way. Then a long line gets rigged through two blocks for the Tug o'war. The competitive feelings grow stronger... Cheating is allowed, as long as it's not seen by the umpire. Underarms are like jelly after the watches have been furiously challenging each other on this part.

The last game makes me cry. Loud. All of laughter, so that's good. God, this is funny. We're talking about the infamous 'orange-and-belaying-pin' game. I won't go into details but where I thought I was sailing now for two months with some hardcore seamen, this was the moment I lost this feeling... completely. What entertainment.

Two days later there's the other half of the Olympics. A quiz. 6 rounds with each 10 questions. And what kind of questions! I felt like a total nitwit. Gladly enough I had people (I call them very clever people) in my team who dìd know the answer to for instance 1)- Who was the queen of Tahiti when France took control? (uh... queen?... Tahiti had a queen?)
or 2)- Who invented the internal combustion engine? (oh, com-bus-tion engine? Internal? Tip of my tongue, no really)
or 3) - What was the nickname of the Laesz sailing shipping line out of Hamburg in the 1920's and 30's? (there are actually people who answer this in seconds...)
or 4) - Which seafarer wrote 'Freya of the 7 isles'? And so on... and on...
Just when I got more or less totally depressed there was a question which actually 1) made sense to me and 2)... I knew the answer! Wow! My moment of fame! In what constellation do we find Regulus? I know this! I know this! I leap forward and grab the pen out of somebody's hand. Leo! Leo is the anwer! The constellation that looks like a question mark, upside down.

I am so sure 'cause only a couple of evenings before we've been steering by this star. Barry introduced some Polynesian navigation, so we try to use starpaths at night instead of the compass.
So... Leo is the answer. Heh heh! I felt so much better.

The wind did come back, so we had some good sailing. And it died again. It stayed various until the evening of the 21st of May when we dropped anchor in Hanavavae Bay, Fatu Hiva. Hello Marquesas!

XXX Christiane.

Oh, and for my fellow nitwits...
1.Queen Pomare.
2.Joseph Diesel.
3.Flying P-line.
4.Joseph Conrad.