Staying in Tahiti for further notice. There are waves, mountains and cheap bread.
The past weeks I spend with boys from South Africa. It was a privilege to motor with them around French Polynesia.
Now I hopped of from their boat. After 4 months it’s nice to be facing the future with uncertainty. I do love that feeling and to me that is what traveling is all about, at the moment. The bonus of it all is to meet great people on the way.
- 3000 sea miles (Galapagos-French Polynesia)
- blood poisoning in the middle of the Pacific? (red stripes from middle finger to my armpit)
- paradise (Fatu Hiva)
- going to Tahiti with a sailboat without a mast (next)
(I know french lines are the biggest NONO of blogging but I´m in a hurry and this is French Polynesia and NONO is a type of sandfly common in the Marquesas)
That´s what has happened and what is going to happen in the near future.
Sorry, as crazy as it might sound I’m in so much hurry that I can’t write now. Tomorrow I’m changing to a new captain and a boat without a mast. Then we’ll start our “sail” towards Tahiti.
To be continued… I promise. This is getting crazy!
We´re off to Marqueses tonight. The sail should take around 4 weeks. So that is probably the next time you´ll hear from me.
If you like following a dot on a map ;)
http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=KL2VC
Keep the world in one piece while I´m away. Thanks!
Peace!
Lately I´ve been trying to really concentrate on getting the right exposure and also frame my shots more carefully.
My longest lens is fixed 100mm f/2.0 (meaning I don´t have x10 zoom). To get the idea of this lens just extend your arm straigh forward and spread your fingers as far a part as you can. The view you see is the view I see with my longest lens.
To most people Galapagos is known for nature and to some for uncrowded surf. With my 100mm lens I had to use carefull aproach with animals and some imagination framing surfing shots.
I could and maybe even should buy a 100-400mm lens for nature and sports but why do it the easy way? This isn´t so much about what gear I have but more about what can I do with the gear I have.
Sneaking up close to sea iguanas without them running away at some point wasn´t always easy. My nature photography ethics say that if the animal runs away at some point of photo session it´s not cool. These photos live up to that principle. There might be some spit on my lenses from angry iguanas. That is a border-line case in my book…
Oh, no more major post production on this blog, maybe. Cropping has never been my thing.
This requires patience.
To select these I had to go thru 11 000 photos and delete some to make more space to my hard drive (which is full again).
So I hope you have to patience as well. Thanks!
So some of you might have checked our boats position (link in previous post). We hit the ground but not exactly where we thought it would happen.
Our current location: Buenaventura, Colombia.
We were advancing nicely but too strong winds (25-30 knots) straight in our face made going forward too difficult. Big storm was passing through Galapagos and South America and we couldn’t really sail straight into it.
So long story short – We are waiting for the waves and the wind to die down a little so that we can continue our journey. Small catamarans aparently arent’t really designed to go against big waves. Let’s put it differently – If you had fills in your mouth you wouldn’t have them anymore.
Enough of computers. Email me! nestori.virtanen(AT) gmail . com
For real, it would be nice to hear from you. I quit using facebook, for now.
I’m off to enjoy city life. Cool place and they have ice cream!
You don´t find this spot from storm guides.
I´m taking a holiday from publishing own stuff. Not sure of the length for now. ;)
Photos by: Nina & Flo
You can follow Flina´s progress from this link.
http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=KL2VC
I’m off. So the idea is to sail to the Pacific and see what happens. With Nina and Flo I’ll get to Marques islands in French Polynesia. After a stop at the Galapagos it will be a month of sailing before seing land. From Marques I have to find another boat to hopefully go further west. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First it’s time to take last shower and get a taxi to the harbour.
Catch you in a month or two. Maybe short update from Galapagos!
Something I bumped into this morning
