After a week of extreme changes, this is an important update in the Glenn & Cynthia/Columbine world. First off, Cynthia and I are together again on Columbine. Everyone who knew us knew we couldn’t stay apart for too long. But our plans have changed drastically, several times. Initially when we arrived here we were anchored near Marina Taina. After resolving our issues from the last week, we moved Columbine into the Marina and arranged for long-term storage. This was so that we could fly back to Seattle, get ourselves fully in sync again, then come back and continue our cruise. In fact, we have those airline tickets in our possession right now.
The problems with this plan were in the details. For one, the boat would severely suffer from sitting in the tropical sun for six months or more until we could get back to continue on. For another the cost here is exorbitant. I don’t think we could have afforded to come back to continue cruising; my most realistic guess was that in six months we would be putting her up on the market for a fraction of her value, and just walking away from all personal possessions left onboard. Yet another problem was Nemo, the cat. As long as he remains onboard our boat, French Polynesia is fine with us having him here. But he cannot be landed here. This poses a problem when sailing in and then flying out. It’s really hard to get him to the airport without taking him ashore. Their solution is to first send a vet to the boat to examine him, and then send a customs agent out. The customs agent must witness us putting him into his carrier. He would then follow us in the taxi all the way to the airport, right up to when we checked in. This whole procedure is to ensure that Nemo did not contact French soil. Don’t let that cat out of the bag!!!
After a lot of discussion, we have finally decided to leave here on Tuesday (which we have to do because of our visa), and sail Columbine directly back to Seattle. This is a 5600nm passage (1.5 – 2 months sailing time), passing through the hurricane belt during hurricane season. Surprisingly, the route planning guides state that this is the right time of year to do this passage. To keep us out of big trouble, we will be using a weather routing service to monitor the North Pacific weather and to recommend a safe path. But we must arrive in Seattle before November to avoid the onset of severe winter storms that begin about then.
This may not be an easy passage to make, but we are convinced that it is our best option right now. While we are on passage, we will be updating our blog daily so everyone can see where we are (I think we will be much better at keeping up with it this time).
Since we had already partially stripped Columbine for storage, as soon as we made this decision this morning we began reassembling in preparation for going to sea. Tomorrow (Monday) morning we get our final exit papers from our yacht agent. We then need to finish provisioning for this much longer passage. We also need to buy some new batteries for the boat, since ours have now failed completely. We have all diesel tanks full already, but we will now fill all available portable containers to give us an extra margin of fuel.
I will post another blog Tuesday confirming our readiness for sea, and then will begin our daily position and status reports. Wish us luck.
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