We are here! Taiohoe Bay on Nuka Hiva island. We’ve anchored, stood on solid ground with wobbly sea legs, and, most impressively, slept 8 hours in a row! (Well almost – we had to get up and close hatches against two late night downpours.) We sighted land the night before last and shortened sail to slow down so that we would arrive at dawn. Ironically, the moment we did so, a squall arrived and Confetti continued to rocket merrily along at seven knots with only a triple-reefed mainsail (!) and no headsail.

At first light we headed into the bay and tacked upwind against an ebb current. The anchoring went smoothly but I have to admit Dan and I breathed some pretty big sighs of relief, and I felt my heart rate drop quite a bit, when that hook went down! Later on shore some Norwegian cruisers we met told us they thought we were, "Quite sporting to sail onto anchor!" Little did they know we had no choice. Thankfully our racing experience has contributed greatly to handling boats without engines.

We took the crew out for dinner last night and very much enjoyed sitting at a table with people delivering things to us and no one having to stand watch! We are all still a little “spacey” from being at sea so long, but very much enjoying the lush, green scenery of the island, with 4000-feet peaks surrounding our bay.

The trip definitely became more of an adventure after the engine died, but really very little changed. We had a few frustrating days of light wind, but mostly the boat moved along beautifully the whole time and we beat most cruisers’ passage time from Baja (again not that we’re competitive!). The total was just under 18 days (19 from LaPaz) for the 2605-mile “puddle jump,” with a 6-knot average and only 55 miles of motoring. The equatorial weather was quite cloudy, so it was a challenge to keep the batteries (5 deep-cycle, gel-cell – 4 house, 1 engine) charged, but they did the job and we were still able to make plenty of water with the watermaker.

Today, armed with only confidence and a French vocabulary of four words—oui, non, merci, and bon jour--Dave Lee hit shore and immediately became our social director. At this very moment he’s arranging excursions to explore the interior of the island tomorrow.

We look forward to meeting our new oil cooler (guaranteed to arrive Wednesday by FedEx, currently expected Thursday). If all goes well (please keep your fingers crossed!), we’ll fix the engine and depart within a week for the Tuomotu Islands.

Thanks so much to everyone for following along on our journey, and to our weather gurus for sending us toward good wind (which was really important in the end!), and to Matt for translating the cryptic sat phone text messages for the blog this past week. Since we, conveniently(!), have wireless internet right here in the anchorage we will upload photos from the passage asap. All our best from S/V Confetti!