10.04.2013

Easter Island - Rapa Nui

This morning, in the dark, we safely arrived at easter island. As the sun rose we the dark island with little hills (highest volcano is around 200m high) turned into an intensive green paradise. This yellow green fresh grass gives quite a picturesque scene while growing on red red volcano soil. There are 4 (or5?) volcanos here -all inactive, one beautiful south see beach, many cliffs with the pacific waves strongly pounding against them and - the most important part - lots of ancient culture. Culture of people who have lived here hundreds of years ago, who have been killed, out so slavery or been brought to Tahiti and Peru for work from european (mostly spanish) and chilenan sailors. Thos who came back brough illnesses back, which almost killed all the rest of the people. There used to be up to 10-20000 people here, at one point of time only 111 were left. The beautiful nature with lots of rainforest trees had been cut down by wood companies. Now trees are slowly growing back (they planted them), around 5000 people live here (about 60% from the original population, 40% Chilenans) and the tourism interest is growing. Now they have to defend their island against too heavy tourism which would destroy a good part of the nature again.
Famous for this island are the Moai stone statues (onl head and throat) (UNESCO World heritage) here which can be seen all around the island, at the edge of the cliffs, facing inland.And it is famous for being the most distant inhabited island of the world - 3526km west of Chile, 4251km east of Tahiti, the next inhabited island (Pitcairn) a good 2000km away (our next stop).
More about Easter Island: look in Wikipedia. Here the link to the german site: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osterinsel

Pictures will hopefully follow. Too bad, I forgot my camera today, so no pix.

BUT: I have pix from last stop on Chile mainland and Robinson Cruesoe island.

Pictures of the Yacht Club Higuerillas, Vina del Mar, (trip to) Santiago
http://sailing.smichah.de/#51.0

At the yacht club
 10000nm!!!
 At the Yacht club
 Alita dirty coming out of the water - although not tooo bad. I am always nervous when I see this

 On the way to Santiago
 Yummy ice cream.

 In Santiago - Plaza de Armas
 Alita with her new shining body



 Running on water
 Feet out - I am just about to land. Hop

 Walk on water


 Lavender at the beach in Vina del mar



Here are the pictures of Robinson Crusoe Island:
http://sailing.smichah.de/#52.0

 Micha at Alexander Selkirk's lookout. 4,5 yrs he came here hoping to see a ship coming. One day it did - and took him home.
 My watch dogs who hiked 3 hrs with me.
 Rare to catch: a kolibri lady (shimmering green)
 and the guy
 View from beautiful, most exclusive Lodge (hotel) on Robinso Crusoe island
 View from top during my mule ride
 Looking to the other side from the top. What a change!
 Ha. Who is that??
 Love these big ears

 The story of a guy who was the inspiration for the book "Ronbinson Crusoe". Juan Fernandez was the first one to find the island, so it was named after him. But 2 hundred years later Alexander Selkirk made the island world famous - so the book inspired by his story gave the co.-name to the island



 Here the british navy bombed the german ship "Dresden" which was then sunk by the german captain so the brits would not get our ship. The munition (balas) can still be seen in the rocks (see picture above and below)

09.04.2013

Half a day to go

Yes, soon we'll be there. At Easter Island. Yippeeee. The weather gives us the interesting task to find a place where we can safely anchor and take the Dinghy to land. However there, at Easter Island, we can never leave the boat alone. Someone, who is able to manouver the boat alone, always has to be on board. Most of the time it'll be Marcus or me.
Thomas will leave us already tomorrow, he wants to spend 2 days on the island and then fly home earlier. Gyuri also wants to go to land for about 3 days to explore the island, which is far more comfortable from land, so very understandable. Both guys will rent a bike and tour the island together, I'll do that (and probably a horseback ride) as well later.

Tonight we have a wonderful last sunset evening together out here, in the middle of nowhere, a bit less than 50nm to the east of the island. I am sure early in the morning, as we approach the island, we'll all be up...

Over all we agree we had a great ride of more than 2100nm (4100km) over here, very easy, no tough weather situations other than little wind ;-) We're all well up, happy, have eaten very good and mostly enjoyed the solitude -although I missed my dolphin friends. Very different to the experience crossing the Atlantic ocean.
Have a great day everyone. Michaela

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08.04.2013

2 days to go!

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Less than 3 days to land

It looks like we'll be arriving on Easter Island on April 10th -hopefully. Just now the wind changed 30west so we have to make another long detour. Only few times were we able sail the direct course. In total I guess we will have made a detaou of about 200-300nm. Nothing else to report from here. Changing winds, today a beautiful sunset, since yesterday evening calm seas, no fish, about 3 birds a day, complete solitude. Crew is well up. Current position: 27deg30,5'S and 103deg33'W.

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