The 3,000 mile passage from the Galapagos to Pitcairn Island began with a fine, fair wind which promised a record passage - - until the last 40 miles. Then we were hit with a gale from ahead, the strongest winds since the World Voyage (off the notorious Cape of Good Hope.) It took us 3 hard days to make the last 40 miles to Adamstown, where we anchored at sunset of the Sabath off Bounty Bay. Soon the longboat was alongside, and Romance enveloped in that special warmth of Pitcairn friendship. My family, the Jacob Warrens, had gone to New Zealand on a medical emergency - - yet there was a grinning Jacob leaping aboard. "We heard you were coming, so we caught the next ship home. We wanted to plant a garden of new potatoes for the Romance. They're coming fine!" New potatoes! Unheard of in the tropics! How we feasted on these and all the good Spring greens growing in Pitcairn's red volcanic soil! Cabbages 15 inches across, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes and onions, and the first tender sweetcorn.

With the sea too rough for a wood cutting expedition to Henderson, we had the longest and best visit ever ashore. We went out in the longboats to barter with a passing steamer, descended the terrifying cliffs at Down Rope, to see prehistoric rock carvings, and went sandhill tobogganing on banana stalks. Body surfing, barbeques and concerts, and just the fun of being Pitcairners for a while.

Surf conditions continued very bad throughout our stay. Romance was compelled to shift anchorages repeatedly, and parted her windlass in heavy swells off Tedside (T'other side, in Pitcairnese.) Steve Christian and Nig Brown welded it as good as new. For days and nights, the ship lay to at sea, exchanging crews, each trip a remarkable demonstration of longboat handling in the wild surf of Bounty Bay. That alone an adventure of a lifetime!

Leaving Pitcairn, this Romance crew consumed 10 stalks of bananas in 9 days, which proves we can always try harder. The Marquesas: Hiva Oa, Taohae and Typee, Ua Pou, and this year a new island, Fatu Hiva. The beauty of Hana Vave, Virgin's Bay, has been described as "almost physically shocking." It is entered between perpendicular black cliffs which rise from the deep, dark waters of the bay, and funnel toward a small black beach. there are no soundings (no bottom) until the ship is almost ashore, and the black cliffs tower very close above you. Let her go! The anchor splashes down, and the ship swings in under the cliffs, and there you are. Above the mastheads, a fringe of very green, waving palms, and rising out of them, a brood of volcanic stone statues, each several hundred feet tall, and resembling hooded virgins. A trio of white goats frolic in the greenery which cloaks the tallest. The effect is, to say the least, overpowering. Ahead between cliffs, a compressed slice of green valley above black beach, and mountains beyond. An outrigger appears, bringing tapa and pomplemus, huge perfumed grapefruit. We go ashore, and climb above the valley, and sit down and drink in the beauty of ribbon waterfalls far below us, a natural arch through the peaks, and fairy terns soaring overhead. By full moonlight, the scene from the anchorage is magically transformed into - - snow. Snow on the slopes and in the valley, and on the hood of the Virgins. Enchanting!

During a calm near the Tuamotus, we were folled by a magnificiently ugly white tip shark. While we ran around looking for bait, the brute surfaced and scratched itself against the hull. This was too much for Phillip Lloyd, who grabbed a barbed fish gaff, and leaning overboard, rammed it into the surprised creature. Phil now had a 6 foot shark on a 5 foot pole - - and only Phil could have wrestled him, snapping and thrashing, to the deck. Millie made a good shark of him, baked in a delectable cheese sauce.

At Takaroa, we introduced Halloween into the Tuamotus. The crew, led by two ghosts and a headless man carrying his coconut head under his arm, roamed through the village with lanterns, thoroughly frightening children and dogs. We invited the whole village back for popcorn and refreshments, and a hilarious dockside dance to wild and wonderful homemade Tuamotuan ukuleles.

Armistice Day in Papeete, a 21 gun salute, war canoes and sailing outrigger races. Pineapples in season, a sugar-sweet string of 6 for 100 F, about $1.33. Imagine! We ate 14 in the first 24 hours. Within 48 hours, the crew were wearing Tahitian pareus, & strumming ukuleles, with flowers in their hair. In Moorea, we attended a Tamaaraa, an earth-oven feast with tradtitional dancing -- just a rehearsal for Saturday night at the One Chicken, where the vahinis wiggle a torrid Tahitian hula, and the men dance with fire and machettes. Cool off with a plunge into Moorea's fairyland reefs, where the underwater world's a lilac garden of butterfly fish and irredescent clams in lovely fluted shells. Good chowder! Moorea's tiger-tooth mountains and lovely quiet bays -- a vision of every South Pacific dream come true.

The sacred Maraes of Huahini, coral stone altars of human sacrifices by the sea, are somber places of strong mana; tabu. We were astonished when our Tahitian guide set aside an altar stone, revealing parts of 3 skulls and othe human bones. In Bora Bora, Dino de Laurentis tried to film scenes for "Hurricane" in the Queen's Marae, the most sacred of temples, and so disasterous were the results, that the scenes had to be reshot in a less holy site.

Raiatea, Tahaa, Bora Bora. The Queen's Marae is before me as I write, in this lovely lagoon; mountain, motus and golden sunset-mirrored in the sea. Soon Romance will sail in the wake of the bold navigators of Bora Bora, who first colonized Hawaii in fragile double canoes. A last great sea voyage into Diamond Head. But Lord willing, she will return to this lagoon. Next year, on her second voyage around the world.

Next......Log #9
Romance's 2nd World Voyage - Sept. 1980