Galapagos to Marquesas – April 2007
This crossing is the longest journey that has to be undertaken on a circumnavigation via the tropics. The journey takes 3-4 weeks, similar to an Atlantic crossing from the Canaries to the Caribbean. This was our second ocean crossing, and although this time we have an extra baby on board, in many ways the preparation and crossing were simpler this time round. I was familiar with the quantities of food and other provisions we had last time, which ones ran out etc., and was able to organise provisioning this time with more accuracy. Although weather conditions were similar to our Atlantic crossing, this time we knew how many miles we could expect per day, we were prepared for slow conditions at the beginning, and we were now familiar with using our downwind rig of two poled out genoas. We were also better equipped in that this time we had a watermaker, making the journey a bit more luxurious, we had ten extra cans of diesel on deck giving us more flexibility to motor in calms or to make water/ hot water / charge batteries, and we had a better set of solar panels and batteries so our daily power intake, storage and usage was far more generous.
The biggest problem was personnel, as with an extra baby in addition to Daniel, our resources of time and energy were pretty stretched in general. Nigel spent a lot of time day and night sailing Spinalonga to her best in very difficult (light and shifty) winds,with running sails and poles downwind and up to four white upwind sails as the wind changed, and I spent lots of time looking after children! There was little opportunity for daytime naps for anyone except Lisa, which made the ideal of keeping full watches at night impossible for a month-long passage. We knew there would be little commercial traffic, but several yachts per day would be leaving the Galapagos for the Marquesas and as we found out, in our first four days there were light winds mixed with calms which gave additional problems. Sometimes we would motor in the calms, sometimes we would lie ahull, moving at 0.5-1.5 kts in roughly the right direction with the current. In light winds, sometimes we would sail at 2-3 knots, sometimes we would motorsail at 5-6 knots. Assuming all the other yachts were doing the same amount of stopping and starting, there was a far greater possibility of meeting another boat, with a yacht under motor or motorsailing passing close to a yacht which was lying ahull or under slow sail. So for the first few days we kept a reasonable if haphazard watch system going, i.e. when one of us woke, we would have a look around and occasionally check with radar. This gave perhaps 6-8 looks around per night, so maybe a check once an hour. We got a fright however a few nights in when I got up in the early hours when we were lying ahull in a calm and I saw another yacht’s light not far away! Checking with radar it was a mile away but inspecting its course it was motoring at about 5 knots and had passed perhaps 0.2 miles from us! Also worrying was that by the time it was three miles away, its light was not visible at all. This meant that unless we watched at least every half hour, we could not guarantee to prevent that situation again. One problem is that American boats are not required to have such good lights as European boats. We later found out from an American yacht that our own light was very good when viewed from four miles away. From previous experience we know we also give a good radar reflection to commercial boats, however few yachts have radar, and for those that do it takes too much power to run it except occasionally. Yacht radar sets are also not all that good. We are lucky in having an old commercial set that works very well. However later in our journey we had trouble picking up our friends’ yacht on our radar when it was only 8 miles away, as much depends on what radar reflective surfaces the target has and how high they are, which way the target is facing, how much each boat is wobbling on the waves, and how much each yacht is sinking into the troughs between waves. Later in the crossing when the wind was established there was less chance of meeting other boats. However we did see two commercial vessels visually, and did pick up several more on the radar. We also saw occasional yachts on the radar and one visually. Nigel generally kept the boat going at night, having a look around and attending to sails and steering, with checks on the radar and sleeps in between. He gets by far better than me on less sleep, and he added daytime naps when necessary.
We had an exciting mid-Pacific meeting with our friends Tony and Linda. We do not have SSB so we were not familiar with the positions of other yachts, however we have an Iridium phone with data, and Tony and Linda have an Iridium phone. So we established when they left the Galapagos and kept each other updated with our positions. They were going faster due to our heavy coating of three inch long goose barnacles but left later, so about 850 miles from the Marquesas they overtook us! At 8 miles apart we could only just see them by looking in exactly the right place, from high up on our spotting platform. We each altered course to close the 8 mile gap and they hove to so we could catch up three miles, and we waved, took pictures, and chatted on the radio for some time! It was good to feel we were not so alone and the ocean was not so big! Strangely as we were alongside each other, an escaped 10 foot high steel navigation marker passed us on the other side! This was the only such article we had seen on our entire crossing and it had to turn up while we were chatting and waving to our friends! Of course there are occasional hazards even in the middle of the ocean and most of them you miss and don’t even see. After we had parted by three miles and it was dark, another yacht overheard us on the radio and called to establish our positions, he was four miles away, and was a catamaran travelling at 8 knots. We barely saw his light although he was clearly visible side-on on the radar when we looked. If he hadn’t called we wouldn’t have known about him, and once he was ahead his radar reflection was practically non-existent. Most of the time we leave our radio off anyway.
Lisa had her first birthday the next day, in the middle of the ocean! We had a few presents for her, made a cake, took video and photos, but it was all a bit bewildering for her as she doesn’t understand about birthdays yet! On this journey she has learned to climb up the steps into the cockpit, no mean feat on our boat as the distance is nearly six feet and five steps! Lisa does well on a rolly boat, she is quite at home with the movement, but compensating all the time does tire her out. When she isn’t playing she can sit in her chair to eat or listen to music or stories, or she can play in the front or back cabins which are secure, and she can nap there too. She is normally napping twice a day still, and sleeps through the night mostly. Lisa is attempting to stand up independently too, which on a rolly boat is kind of doomed, but she is so determined that we think she will do great once we reach land. Daniel as usual is pretty good on the journey, occasionally bored but mostly occupied, with reading, lessons, drawing, toys, and one or two hours of films or games if we have the power. He also plays a lot with Lisa. Nigel is mostly occupied with getting the boat to sail well and steer properly. We have a problem on this trip with goose barnacles which have materialised all over our hull, making sailing slower and steering more difficult. This is because due to a lack of funds we have not renewed the antifoul on the boat, which was ok in the Caribbean where professional boat scrapers can be hired every few weeks, but here it is a big mistake. Elaine in her spare time has got started on some sail repairs, canvas repairs, and other sewing projects. The main limitation on this is the rolling of the boat, which is more often than not too much for placing a heavy sewing machine on the table. In Panama we bought a giant reel of sail thread and quite a bit of cheap acrylic canvas for projects during this year, as well as other fabrics for household projects – cushion covers, baby seat covers, courtesy flags, ensigns, etc. Elaine’s other pet project has not worked out this time. Although we bought a 2007 Nautical Almanac for star sights with the sextant, Elaine has not had time to practice on this ocean crossing, due to too many demands by children! Also many evenings were cloudy. Still it is available for emergencies.
We have seen a lot of wildlife on this trip, more so than in the Atlantic. To name what we can remember, we have seen several schools of dolphins including some high-jumping spinner dolphins, some schools swimming with the boat. We saw two shoals of tuna while in light winds and slight seas, also swimming witth the boat like dolphins! They were just the right size to eat and Nigel twice managed to get one with his speargun! It was amazing to see them and they sometimes jumped clear of the water. Nigel and Dan saw two whales one evening. Flying fish although not apparent early on, did show up in big numbers later. In fact later still we saw some quite big ones, 8-12 inches long. There were seabirds of various kinds around frequently, presumably following shoals of fish. Nigel didn’t have much luck towing various lures and lost two lures, however in the final days he designed his own lure made of hooks, swivels and bright yellow and blue heatshrink, and in an hour we had a lovely dolphinfish to eat! Some stripy fish seem to be living under our boat for the journey along with the goose barnacles.
As we closed with our destination we were all ready to arrive and leave rolly waves behind. Of course the list of jobs for our arrival was expanding – laundry, reprovisioning, cleaning the hull of barnacles, signing in, etc., etc. But we have made a long journey! Now our time zone is GMT-9.5.