Galapagos-Marquesas Pacific Passage……. (the big one!)

There was a subtle, silent, nagging apprehension in the air aboard Tika as we prepared for our ‘big’ ocean crossing. We faced 2900 nautical miles and anything up to 25 days at sea to our next landfall in The Marquesas, French Polynesia. We waved goodbye to the other yachts and slipped out of Isabella just before sunset on the 1st of May, 2016. The sea was inky black and the sky glowed satin orange as massive winged manta rays, a single pilot whale and a tiger shark all cruised passed Tika’s hulls. For one last time we were in awe of the wildlife of the Galapagos Isles.

It took us about 48hrs to hit the trade winds. There is a well documented, windless convergence zone (the ‘doldrums’) that one must push through to get to the westerly breezes- we motored for 10 hrs. and finally, at about 3 degrees, 15 minutes south, we were able to set sail and truly start our passage!

My first long passage felt to me a little like a pregnancy- A tad queasy and overwhelming in the beginning, ready for it to be over towards the very end and bloody fantastic in the middle!

It does take me about 3 days to get into a routine at sea. Night watches screw up my body clock and I feel stupefied until I get into sync with our rotating shift schedule. We split the night in half- one of us takes from 7.30pm-1.30am and the other is on the grave-yard until 7.30am. Next night we swap. 6 hours is a long shift but it is also a relatively long sleep! Day shifts are quite flexible- whoever needs to sleep sleeps and the other one takes on managing the boat, meal prep, horizon lookouts, course checks and over-seeing school-work. The kids do horizon checks, ease and pull sheets and take turns on the cooking and clean-up roster.

As the miles slip by we slowly ease further and deeper into passage mode and the family dynamics take on a go-slow, day-dreamy, living-in-a-bubble kinda feel. The twice daily radio sched with other ‘puddle jumpers’ is our only outside interference and we come to love checking in our daily position and listening to other boats check in theirs. We glean wind/current information from those ahead of us and track the positions of friends who left after. We have our favourite net controllers; the ones who are clear and efficient, but with a bit of personality and humour thrown in. They log vessel positions, courses, wind and sea states and check that all is well aboard. Should anything happen, it is good to know that someone has our last position and course.

Above; Captain Underpants goes hunting….Mahi Mahi!!! When the ‘FISH ON!!’ call goes up, Kai and I have the task of stalling the boat (foresails in and boat into the wind) Jaiya runs for the equipment needed to bring a fish in (gin to anaesthetise it, knife, gloves, gaff, pliers) and Russ goes for the reel. It jolts us out of our passage stupor as we lock onto thoughts of sashimi for lunch…

Below; Love this shot of our girl on the winch….

We have a medical kit fully stocked and ready for ocean passages and cruising in remote areas many miles from medical assistance. We were grateful to have a stock of antibiotics about half way through the passage…

I developed a sty (blocked or infected tear duct). It was mildly annoying at first and I put some paw paw cream on it but the next day my eye had swollen and was painful, red and puffy. I tried antibiotic cream but by that evening I felt unwell, my vision was blurry and every blink caused a sharp jab of pain. I was unable to do my watch and Russ had to go right through the night. I had a panicky thought that the infection could spread to the other eye and render me useless midway through a 2-3 week passage. I hit some oral antibiotics and by the following morning the swelling had subsided, I felt much better and Russ was able to get some well-earned sleep. The simplest thing can become a big issue when on passage. Who would have thought that an infected tear duct had the potential to cause a big problem!

Below left; feeling pretty crappy with a painful, swollen eye…the photo doesn’t really show it but I could hardly see out of my left eye at this point.

After days and days of not seeing any sign of another vessel, our fastidious, 15 minute horizon check turned into a casual glance out the window every now and then. On day 11, I saw a ship during my night watch- very exciting!

One aspect of passage making that has blown my land lubbing mind has been the wondrous beauty of sunrises, sunsets, the star-strewn, night sky and the mesmerising phosphorescence that would stream, sparkling from our wake like some strange goings on at Hogwarts…Inevitably, this phenomenon only happens at night when one is alone in the cockpit. I found myself open-mouthed in awe and fighting the desire to wake every-one (anyone!) up (“check that out!!) to share the moment with me…

With 4 of us living in this 55 foot, constantly moving, floating home, it can get a little claustrophobic on passage. Occasionally we all got grumpy with cabin fever. We tried to spend some time getting ‘out’ of the living space (the cockpit and saloon) by sitting out the front on the bows/tramps or up on top of the coach house pod every day. It was good to leave the living space, get wind in our hair and move energy around our bodies!

We had fun recording our daily mileage and plotting our progress on the paper chart; over the days we saw the little crosses (positions) march their way across the big expanse of blank paper/ocean towards the minute dots that are the Marquesas…

It’s not everyday that you sleep with a flying fish! This one found its way through the top hatch of Kai’s cabin (where both kids sleep when on passage as Jaiya’s front berth gets bouncy) and we found it on the floor the next morning. The poor thing must have landed on the bed and flapped around a lot before hitting the floor and perishing! Kai and Jaiya were a little bewildered to find him as they stepped out of bed. We find flying fish and squid on our decks most mornings but this is the first time one has made it’s way inside…

Chocolate covered gingers made from scratch were our passage treat! Jaiya googled a recipe before we left Isabella and we picked up a stack of fresh ginger from the markets. It was peeled, cubed and boiled in sugar water and then left to cool. The following day the kids dipped it in our 100% Cacao Grenadian chocolate! OMG yum!! So much more bite than the crystallised, chocolate gingers you buy in a shop.

Our fridge was stocked full of fresh vegetables when we left Isabella, but after 10 days at sea we turn to sprouted mungbeans and home-made sauerkraut for salad crunch, nutrition and taste.

To sprout mungbeans; take a packet of dried beans and soak them over night. The next day drain and rinse, place in a jar in a cool, dark place and wait 1-2 days. Voila! For sauerkraut; finely slice cabbage (we mix red and white) and leave in a bucket it the sun for 5 hours with 1 tablespoons of salt per head of cabbage. The cabbage releases an enzyme-filled juice and it starts a fermenting process that provides excellent gut flora. Next, we add a variety of flavours- grated carrot, caraway seeds,  pepper, mild curry spices, finely chopped onion etc. and place in a jar. Leave out for 4-5 days with the lid on but release the lid to let off the gas from the fermenting process every day. Be prepared for loud complaints from children when you open the jar as the odour can be strong After 4-5 days the odour relaxes and the process is complete. Refrigerate. It lasts forever and remains crisp.

We also make our own yogurt and bread….and then there is always sashimi and sushi from freshly caught fish, meat from the freezer, tinned food and our dry foods supply! We won’t go hungry but we are also conscious that  low or no wind or gear failure could mean an extra week or more at sea so our provisioning allowed for emergency supplies of canned food, legumes, rice etc. There are x4 20L jerry cans of water in our cockpit as a precaution in case our water-maker goes down.

Our sail plan for this classic down-wind passage was all about our code zero headsails set from either our bow sprit or hulls. A code zero is a big, light weight, multi purpose sail that can be used like an asymmetrical spinnaker or as a large jib- generally good for down wind surfing! We have two (one large120m sq. and one small 70 sq. m) and they give us flexibility in variable winds and help to keep us moving at good speed (we averaged a boat speed of 8.3 knots throughout our passage) After our initial southing to get to the trade winds, we veered a little north once again to make the most of a westerly current..

Our biggest day was 229NM in a 24 hr. period. Our fastest speed was18.7 knots as we surfed down a long, Pacific swell in good wind. We consistently did more than 200NM in a 24hr period and our total passage from Galapagos to Marquesas took 15 days. We did 3100NM on an ‘as-the-crow-flies’ passage of 2900NM.

We have a grab bag set up and stored in an easily accessible locker. It contains water, head torches, flares, hats, sheets (for shade) fishing equipment, a medical kit and sunscreen. We have a list on the wall of last minute things to grab in an emergency- epirb, ipad (navigation and gps) and a VHF hand-held radio. We have a Man Over Board (MOB) drill and step by step procedure notes up in our cockpit. Our life jackets are all designed to emit a AIS signal that can be tracked from the boat if one of us ends up in the water. We try not to dwell on the potential hazards of cruising but we think we are pretty prepared for an emergency!

It was landfall day. We had calculated an early afternoon arrival and the excitement on the boat was palatable….I can imagine that those last few hours at sea would have dragged on tortuously if we  hadn’t filled them with a last minute disaster. …

We jibed and a midway preventer (a rope attached to the middle of the boom) caught on the corner of one of our solar panels and the thing crumpled as if in slow motion amidst a spectacular shower of fine, glittery, shards of glass. The glass went everywhere- we all had tiny fragments in our feet, a glittery carpet in the cockpit and Jaiya, who was sitting directly underneath, had glass all through her hair…….Every crevice, crack and surface seemed to be filled with sharp little crystals. For months afterwards, despite extensive cleaning, we found glass. Glass dust must have clung to the ropes and grooves around the solar panels and every time it rained it made its way down into the living spaces of Tika…oops.

We had inherited a big, old, wet dry vacuum cleaner when we first bought Tika. It drained power like a ferocious creature with an insatiable appetite so we rarely used it, but today was it’s day to shine. We put both engines on flat out, plugged the beast in and vacuumed our way into Fatu Hiva, the Marquesas. With all the drama distracting us from the excitement of landfall, we also forgot to reel the fishing rod in, got the line wrapped around the prop, and promptly snapped our rod! It was a tad ironic that, after a smooth, fast, 15 day passage, our last 50 miles were full of glass, stress, cursing crew members and broken fishing rods! Despite the hiccups, the landfall itself blew our minds…

Below; breathtaking Fatu Hiva. We felt like we had landed in a magical scene created from the depths of the mind of J.R Tolkien…..yay! we successfully puddle-jumped! (and, thanks to our vacuuming marathon, we had the cleanest boat to make landfall in the history of sailing)

Below: Tika Travel’s the Pacific passage; the movie…

Next post; The island of the phallus;  Fatu Hiva…

This entry was posted in The Sail.