(Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands)- If some of you recall, Virginia and Jerry from Bellingham, Washington
did an extensive refit on their J/40, called HERON REACH, set sail
from San Diego to the Marquesas Islands to join the “Blue Planet
Odyssey”. They recently made it to the Marquesas, here’s a recent
excerpt from their blog: “On Sunday, March 29th at 6:15pm, we morphed from Pollywogs into Shellbacks! In other words, we crossed the equator into the South Pacific! We celebrated with a toast of gratitude to Neptune. Not surprisingly, it doesn't look any different out there, but we have a powerful sense of the accomplishment for crossing this imaginary line! Tonight we saw the Southern Cross for the first time, the smallest of the 88 named constellations. It points to the south celestial pole and feels like a different world. But the next day, it was back to squalls coming on the horizon.
We
have traveled 4,223 nautical miles since we left Bellingham, all on the
largest body of water in the world. The Pacific Ocean (North and
South) cover more area than all of Earth's continents put together. It
is surrounded by the Ring of Fire, hundreds, if not thousands of both
active and dormant volcanoes. There are over 20,000 islands in the
Pacific Ocean, most of which are concentrated in the south or west where
we are headed. Some of the islands are associated with their
neighboring continent, like Japan, in the east, the Aleutians in the
north, or Vancouver Island and the Gulf and San Juan Islands in our own
backyard. Another type is the high volcanic island such as the Hawaiian
Islands or the Marquesas. Finally, there are the sandy coral atolls
like the majority of the islands of the South Pacific. It is this type
most in danger by the rising seas of climate change. It is astounding
to us, as we cross this vast ocean, to realize that we have raised the
temperature of such a gargantuan mass and changed its acidity level with
our high carbon uses!” Read more about their adventures here.
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