Micronesia

This is a view of Kolumbangara from Jericho harbor on the island of New Georgia in the Solomons, the last safe anchorage we'd have for 9 days.

Before preparing to come here we'd never heard of Pohnpei, one of the larger islands in Micronesia. In fact, the admiral found a t-shirt with the slogan "Where the Hell is Pohnpei?". The answer is about 7N, 158E, roughly 900nm north of the Solomons. We wanted to escape the tropical cyclones, though Gizo is rarely a affected much by them. This would be our first foray N of the Equator in a couple of years.

We expected doldrums and we got them; note the glassy water 150 nautical miles away from land.

We had to motor for 4 days, which is painful when fuel is over $1/L ($4/gal). But the winds were absent or adverse. When we approached the Equator we became immersed (literally) in stunning, torrential, biblical-grade rains for 3 days, the water falling so hard you couldn't see the bow of the boat.

We don't recall praying for wind but we got it anyway about 4 degrees N. Suddenly we had 25+kts, which would torment us for the last 200 miles. It would have been OK except it was almost "on the nose", i.e. we had to beat our way into it. We've been thrashed by the sea before and could deal with that, but since we were on a boat we had yet another challenge when the autopilot resigned from the crew. Many people don't realize that boats nowadays aren't hand-steered. Our steering is hydraulic and rather heavy, which became exhausting to handle 24hrs/day for the last day and a half, especially with 12' waves breaking over the side.

Exhausted but safe, we limped into Pohnpei.

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