The First Week – Day Eight to the Marquesas

On May 22nd, 2014 Published By B.J.

Yup, we’ve been out here a whole week now. As of this typing (about 2100 ship’s time, 0300 UTC) we’ve travelled about 1,377 miles and are nearing the halfway point for the trip.

Of course actual distance sailed will be a little more than the 2,975 Nautical Miles laid down in our original course plot back in the Galapagos. The reason for that is that you rarely sail a straight course down the rhumb line in any long trip. Winds and currents impact your course, impeding or assisting your progress. We’ve mad some broad diversions from the rhumb line course in order to seek better winds and better sailing angles.

Yesterday’s 24 hour distance (from 1700 UTC to 1700 UTC today) was 187 miles, a pretty respectable distance even if we couldn’t hit that magical 200 mile day again. Conditions have been pretty good again today and we are able to press on and make good speed in the direction we want. We’ve been gaining on all of the boats we’ve been traveling with though we won’t catch the two day head start of the first boat before we arrive in this group we may catch the rest and arrive second.

As we sail a course like this we are constantly checking weather and conditions, following predictions from places like the National Weather services for guesses at future wind directions and currents. Of course these are large scale predictions and not your local weather and represent general trends over the region. While we also use these to watch out for more extreme conditions such as large storms in general they are predictive of what is likely to happen.

Every day or two I download a new GRIB file (short for Gridded Binary) which contains some of the large scale weather predictions for the region. Our navigation software, Maxsea, allows the direct importation of these GRIB files and lets us overlay the weather predictions over our charted course area. As mentioned in other posts we also have a Routing module that uses the GRIB data and our boat information to plot what it believes to be the fastest course to where we are going optimized for best boat speed, wind conditions and sailing angles to get us there quicker than just sailing down the Rhumb Line.

The weather models we’ve been looking at and our optimized routes from the Routing Module suggest that the wind is going to shift from the Southeast (around 135 degrees) to more Easterly at around 100 degrees by the time we get closer to the Marquesas. The net effect of the wind moving in that direction would be to make us turn more left and sail South. The suggested way to handle this is to stay North and minimize Southward travel until we are forced to turn by the wind. So that is our current plan. If you follow our track you will see that we have been sailing mostly West on courses such as 260° instead of more South. We will continue this for a few more days as long as we can.

After two days of delicious Mahi Mahi dinners we decided to skip fishing today and have chili for dinner for a change. Although the fresh fish is delightful it does add a bit more work and tends to wake everyone up from their rest when a fish is on. We will probably fish again in a day or two depending on the weather. There’s no sense in it if it’s rough so we take it day by day.

Prior to this our longest off shore passage was the roughly 1,500 miles from Hampton, Virginia to the British Virgin Islands. In a few hours we’ll pass that distance on this tripand be half way there. There are also a few other key differences between that trip and this one, such as distance off shore. On the BVI passage I think our furthest from land distance wasn’t much more than 300 miles and the Rescue Assets on hand were primarily USCG.

On THIS trip the furthest we go from land is where we are now, the halfway point between the Marquesas and the Galapagos at some 1,500 miles. And those too places aren’t exactly the MAIN-land if you get my drift. The ocean is a lot bigger out here.

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The Benefits of a Broken Autopilot

On May 21st, 2014 Published By Kathy Woodruff

For several years I’ve been trying to get other family members to come post on the blog, I finally succeeded!  Give Kathy a warm welcome as a new blog author.   – B.J.

Some might look at a broken autopilot as thousands of  miles of grueling hand steering and misery… but on the positive side:

  1. Improve my helmsmanship – I’m definitely getting better at steering a straight compass line with no other reference points, and learning the feel of the helm with different sail trim
  2. Comradeship – everyone had to pitch in and we are all taking equal turns.  An awesome team effort
  3. Faster – the autopilot can not respond to small wind shifts or surf the wave.  Danielle and Will are quite the speed demons
  4. Closer to nature – would Will have been hit by a flying fish cowering under the dodger?  NO!
  5. Makes time go faster – watching the compass, steering and of course sleeping when you get your break.  The miles are just flying by.
  6. Watch Buddies – we now always have two people instead of one in the cockpit at all times.  It allows us to share the deep sea phosphorescence and stars, late night dolphin visits and of course watch snacks.
  7. Good exercise – My arms hurt, my shoulders hurt, my back hurts, my legs hurt, even my feet hurt!  It has to be good for me.
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To the Marquesas – Day Seven

On May 21st, 2014 Published By B.J.

Today had a lot in common with yesterday. Great sailing conditions and good speed, a nice fresh Mahi Mahi for dinner, and the same songs spinning around again on the iPhone in the cockpit.

This last we need to do something about. I’ve been introducing the kids to concepts like The Album where you had a thematically linked production like Dark Side of the Moon that you could really only listen to from start to finish. No Shuffle Play, no Play Listsif you wanted to skip The Great Gig in the Sky you had to walk across the room and move the needle or press the Fast Forward button on the cassette player.

We’ve also begun the Big Random List of songs, all the CD’s we ripped when we left are in there somewhere with all the songs that didn’t make everyone’s play list the first time around. There is still a lot of good stuff that’s been out of the rotation. And some of the less rocking but still excellent stuff that is too mellow for doing dishes or boat work certainly finds a nice groove when we’re sailing.

Tonight’s Mahi was blackened instead of lightly fried with corn meal like last night, so there was some essential difference. But everyone is in complete agreement that there is absolutely no better fish than one you caught the same day you are eating it.

The fishing out here has been pretty productive so far we only had the line in the water for an hour or two today when we decided we had enough for dinner. Which was one Mahi as long as my armbut we didn’t want to scramble everyone and disturb sleep just to fill the freezer.

Tomorrow we may or may not fish, two days of Mahi in a row is excellent but we don’t want to wear it out. We can always vacuum seal and freeze something but we all know it won’t be the same. Of course if we caught something different

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Day Six – Fish Mayhem

On May 20th, 2014 Published By B.J.

About Time

First though, a word about Days and how we’re counting them.

We left the Galápagos on May 15, 2014 at 1300 local time (1:00 P.M.) which is also 1900 UTC – 7:00 p.m. at Universal Coordinated Time, which used to be known as Greenwich Mean Time before the days of atomic clocks.

Timekeeping on a trip like this is a little odd, as we are crossing several time zones. Since we are crossing an area wider than the United States we are likely covering three, maybe four time zones. Some day we will cross the International Date Line but for now we will avoid THAT confusion.

So we tend to speak in UTC as well as local time. Our clocks, watches, computers, navigation equipment etc are all set to the same local time where we just were at anchor in this case the Galapagos. We will maintain this Local Time throughout the passage, attempting to change hours as we cross from time zone to time zone would confuse watch schedules, logs, and people in general. Of course now the sun comes up at 0700 and it gets dark earlier. UTC has the advantage of never changing so it is a convenient common time for dealing with those in other zones.

We sailors also tend to favor 24 hour or military time. Why? It’s not just pretension; it is to eliminate any ambiguity in things like logs and deduced reckoning positions (Dead Reckoning we call it, though it is more correctly Ded. Reckoning). If someone leaves the a.m. or p.m. off a position report it makes the report useless if a twelve hour clock is in use. So these sorts of navigational records are always done in 24 hour time.

Just as an aside, when I learned this years ago I decided to only way to get fast and comfortable with a 24 hour clock was to force myself to use it. So I drove Kathy and the kids nuts by changing every clock that I could into 2 hour format my watch, phone, car, appliances and so on. So people would look at our kitchen stove and wonder why at said 19:00 on itlong explanation!

So when cruisers are communicating and planning we tend towards UTC times in a military format. When we plan our nightly net of the boats that are out here together it is for 0230 UTC which translates to 2030 local Galápagos time, or 8:30 p.m. in the time we are operating atcurrently.

Of course this lengthy and marginally coherent discussion goes back to the original topic of How Many Days Have We Actually Been Out Here. Since we left at 1300 local time (1900 UTC) we have not actually been out here Six Full Days even though I am blogging this as day six. As I write this (1820 local time, 0020 UTC) we’ve actually been sailing for five days and about seven hours; hardly six days. Although we have been on the boat for part of six days since we left, ergo it is Day Six even though Day Six isn’t done until lunch time tomorrow.

Mostly this is a little point about how far we’ve come and how fast and how long the passage takes. In about another three hours we will log out 1,000th mile on this trip, in about 5 days and ten hours we will be roughly 1/3 of the way done with this trip. Extrapolating that out, if conditions hold that works out to about 16 days and six hours to cover 3,000 miles. IF conditions hold wind, waves, and weather; I’m not making any claims!

The most salient point in all of this is that after 6 days and 1,000 miles in order to know 1) what day of the trip it is and 2) what day of the week it isI need to look it up. Fortunately yesterday’s blog post has the Day of the trip and the computer has the time. It all becomes a blur out here as the days are not so different one from the next.

Fish Mayhem, Part I

The other day I talked about the fish and squid that litter our deck in the morning and how we do not want them to hit us. Today, apparently we sailed through a mysterious Zone of Really Stupid Fish.

While Kathy and Will were on watch this morning in broad daylight Kathy went up to clear the decks of last night’s uninvited guests (fishy count: 4 flying fish).

Shortly after she got back to the cockpit Will got smacked by a flying fish. Yes, in broad daylight one of these stupid things managed to launch itself into the water and NOT avoid the rather largish white moving object that wasn’t more water. It wasn’t painful, but much hilarity ensued as Will and Kathy tried to catch this slippery live fish that was now flopping around under Will’s feet in the cockpit.

During this escapade another fish managed to trap itself on the deck that Kathy had just cleared. In broad daylight.

I admit I was a tower of self control and did not laugh out loud even once until it was all over.

More Fish

Today is also the day we got more serious about fishing. With the disruption of the schedules from the autopilot failure I’ve not been as keen to throw a line over board. A Fish On drill is generally an All Hands drill; someone needs to reel in the fish, and the boat must be slowed which involves course changes and sail trimming. And finally there is the requisite supporting gear to be organized cleaning knives, a tarp, gaff hooks and so on. My designated job is generally to strap on the fighting belt and reel the thing in, Will usually handles the helm work. Danielle helps with lines and Kathy gets the support gear together.

With the watch schedule we are running it is rare that all four people are now awake and alert in the cockpit. When the first fish hit this afternoon we had one crew sleeping and one in the head when the line started peeling off the reel. Much shouting and arm waving ensued before we final brought the beast to bay a very nice three foot Mahi-Mahi which we devoured with relish for dinner tonight.

The second Fish On! had me sound asleep in the cockpit with earplugs in while Kathy was again trying to sleep and the kids were in the cockpit listening to music as Will drove the boat. Apparently I didn’t hear them yelling at me over Stevie Ray Vaughn’s excellent cover of Voodoo Child and hey had to shake me awake.

Again with the leaping and running about, and we brought another beautiful Mahi Mahi of similar size up to the boat. Unfortunately I didn’t try and gaff it and our freezer fish shook out the hook as I was hauling it out of the water.

Fishing out here is good, but it is a little scary. There are some SERIOUS fish out here in these waters, and a 100 lb. (or 200 lb., 300 lb. and so on) tuna is quite willing to strike the same lure as I use to catch an eight pound Mahi. Same for things like Marlin and other huge fish like that pestilential Sailfish I caught on the way to Panama.

I have absolutely no idea what I will do if something that large grabs my lure., I can’t even figure how I’d get it on board. When I was shopping for a boat rod my mentality was If I can’t get it in with 80 lb test I don’t want it anywhere near the boat and this is still the case!

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To the Marquesas, Day Five

On May 19th, 2014 Published By B.J.

Well there’s not a whole lot to add to today. The wind came back so we’ve been going faster, yesterday’s 163 mile day will hopefully be a thing of the past.

Today I spoke with the manufacturer of our autopilot drive unit and the prognosis isn’t good. The hydraulic pump has failed for some reason and there is no reasonable way we have to fix it in the field.

So we’re carrying hand steering and getting settle into the new watch schedule. So far all is well.

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To the Marquesas Day Four

On May 18th, 2014 Published By B.J.

Nothing broke today! Whoo-hoo!

Hand steering and the new watch schedule seem to be working out pretty well so far. We’ll see how we make out after a few days of it but everyone is grabbing sleep when they can and so far so good. In a few days it will settle into routine and rhythm.

Piscatorial Body Count

Every morning we get a special treat from Neptune on our decks, various species of flying fish manage to strand themselves almost every night. We are used to this from the Atlantic – you just flick them over board when you walk forward the next morning, though I know some people that insist fresh fish makes a wonderful breakfast. Its not surprising, flying fish by the thousands scatter in any given day and they can get some serious air, I’ve seen them fly completely across the boat and land on the other side.

The Pacific has offered a new treat for the morning walkabout somehow the squid manage to leap out of the water as well.

I had no idea they could do this. Frankly, being raised on the Alien movies I suppose I find the idea of many legged slimy things launching themselves in the air at night to be vaguely disturbing. When we brought Evenstar home to Florida and errant flying fish clobbered one of the delivery crew in the dark, leading to accusations and exchanges of charlie-horse punches until they paused to wonder about the fishy smell. Getting hit with a flying fish would be startling, getting hit with a flying squid would be appalling.

We have had several theories of HOW these squid are getting airborne. When we arrived in the Galápagos we had a squid on top of the dodger, which is some ten feet off the water. Around the Galápagos at night we had swallow tailed gulls as constant companions after dark, they are night hunters and feed on small fish and squid. One theory is that particularly clumsy gulls were dropping the squid on the deck. This was a weak hypothesis though, especially as the end result serves neither gull (goes hungry), squid (still gets dead) or Evenstar crew (has to scrape a nasty sun baked squid off the deck).

The second hypothesis is that they get carried in the waves and spray. There is a fair amount of that all night when we are off shore. But then we take very few waves over the dodger, I’ve only see that once in truly awful conditions. Which leaves the third disturbing alternative that the squid, presumably when avoiding predators, are capable of launching themselves out of the water up to ten feet in the air. Yech.

The total for this morning:

Flying Fish: 9
Squid: 5

This represents a new over-night record for both the vertebrate and invertebrate categories.

We’ve started a nightly guessing pool on the critter count in the morning, feel free to join in the comments. There is no prize, but if you want to experience this in reality you can buy some frozen squid and herring at a bait shop and throw it on your driveway for a few hours. Then go clean it up.

Sailing Today

Today’s conditions haven’t been quite as good as the first few days. Last night and this morning we had some drops in the wind and only completely 190 miles for the day, today we are on a pace for less.

Our navigation software, Maxsea, has a Routing module which is supposed to take the weather conditions from a current file you download, couple it to the rough sailing characteristics of your boat, and create an optimal route to sail for best wind and current.

We decided for the first time to give one of these optimal routes a go. The predictions looked pretty constant no matter where you went but there are some ocean currents out there that can affect you for better or worse depending on how you sail through them sailing 20 of 50 miles further North or South can sometimes make the difference between a knot of current in your face or pushing you from behind.

In theory.

In practice the jury is still out on who well we like this whole weather routing module thing. It operates on some assumptions of our boat performance that I don’t agree with, and it also works off of a large scale computer model for prevailing weather conditions. It doesn’t get into micro-forecasting what your exact local conditions are.

Part of why today has been slow is that we sailed more South on the guidance of the routing software. We reviewed it’s suggestions and decided they made as much sense or more as anything we were doing so far. However late this morning the wind shifted East and dropped. This meant that our boat speed dropped as the wind was more at our backs, and the ocean roll made keeping our sails full a struggle. Some of the routing is contrary to suggestions made in books like Jimmy Cornell’s World Cruising Routes, which does make you wonder a bit. Of course the books are only a guideline too, only the skipper in the boat knows what the local conditions are.

With the wind where it is it isn’t practical to sail back North to where we were and undo the routing, so we make the best of it. The suggested route has us swinging more Westerly and less South in a couple of days, crossing back over our rhumb-line course and sailing North of it for better current. We’ll see how it goes.

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Day Three – So Much for Uneventful

On May 17th, 2014 Published By B.J.

Well the last twenty-four hours has proven an interesting course of events.

The Bad News First

In brief, last night around midnight just after I took over watch we lost the autopilot, it failed for what we think is good. It is tough to tell, we have an e-mail into the manufacturer but it is Saturday so we may not hear for a couple of days.

What does this mean? Well, we talked it over and none of us want to turn back. Heading back to the Galápagos would allow us to stop and explore our options. But the Galápagos is a horrid place to try and get your boat fixed. There are virtually no professional services there and getting parts sent in is an expensive, nightmarishly long process. Parts tend to sit on the mainland in customs for weeks before they get shipped to their destination. Not that we wouldn’t mind more time in the Galápagos, but we want to get to the Marquesas too.

To repair it properly and quickly going East would require a return to the mainland either Panama or Ecuador. Neither of these options is appealing and either would spell an end to getting to French Polynesia this year.

In addition we’d STILL have to sail the boat back well over 1,000 miles with no autopilot.

We all decided to sail on and hand steer the boat to the Marquesas, which still lie some 2,600 miles away from us. It involves an extra 5-7 days of hand steering beyond turning tail and returning to Central/South America. We all want to do this and everyone is keyed up to pitch in.

Operational Impact

First and foremost the boat is in no danger, and nothing is compromised beyond her ability to steer automatically on the course we want. The broken part is inside the boat and self contained. No other systems are compromised.

What it affects the most is how we have to stand watch.

Watch with the autopilot is a one person affair. The watch stander checks the course, keeps a lookout, adjusts sails as needed, and makes hourly logs of our position. Otherwise the person on watch free to read, listen to audio books or music. With the boat self driving one person can handle all of the little adjustments the boat might need. Our watch schedule was pretty simple; Will stands from 9:00 – Midnight, B.J. from Midnight -3:00, Kathy from 3:00 a.m. until 6:00 a.m and Danielle takes over at 6:00 and stands watch until people start waking up over the next hour or so.

Without an autopilot we need TWO watch standers since the wheel can never be left unattended. Someone must always have a hand on it. Sail trim adjustments therefore require to people one to drive and one to make the adjustments. This applies for most everything, the helmsman must even have a backup to take a short break to use the head. And hand steering can be very exhausting.

The good news is the second person who is not on the helm can get some sleep in the cockpit and relax, since they are only needed when things must be done. The two switch off between hand steering while the other rests and does all the other tasks.

This affects the way we sleep, and everyone must take more watch and some night watch. With four people on board and two people on at any time that means everyone must have twelve hours on watch and twelve off. Ideally you break it up so no one gets over tired and you allow everyone to get at least one six hour block for sleeping.

Our new watch schedule looks like this (I have no idea if this table will translate well to HTML):

0000 B.J. (3) Kathy (6)
0100
0200
0300 Danielle (6)
0400
0500
0600 Will (6)
0700
0800
0900 Kathy (3)
1000
1100
1200 B.J. (6) Danielle (3)
1300
1400
1500 Will (3)
1600
1700
1800 Danielle (3) Kathy (3)
1900
2000
2100 B.J. (3) Will (3)
2200
2300

So everyone has some night time watch and everyone gets some time off. That is the single largest change the passage has become a whole lot more work.

The Good News

Yes there is some good news too!

First, we hit our first 200 mile day ever, 202.4 nautical miles actually during our second 24 hours on the trip. A 200 mile day under sails a very good day on a cruising monohull.

The boat is sailing fast, and we are sailing it fast. The wind and wave conditions have been ideal, with 15-18 knots of wind on a reach and long slow rollers. Evenstar thrives in these conditions.

One unintentional side effect of losing the Autopilot we WILL sail faster. Why? Easy- the autopilot is good at keeping the boat moving in a set direction, but it isn’t a particularly good sailor. It reacts to conditions rather than proactively steering which means it is prone to over steering and moving the boat in more of an S-shaped course that a human helmsman would. Turning the rudder is like dragging a brake in the water, so the autopilot does a lot more turning than needed causing more drag and slowing the boat more than even a marginally competent helmsman would.

So we have that going for us, and that’s nice.

Other Good Stuff

Lest you think making a passage is all grueling hand steering, canned food, disturbed sleep and picking dead flying fish off the deck in the morning you should know that at least we’ve been eating very well this trip.

Before we left the Galápagos we visited an local organic farm (this may get its own post at some point) and stocked up on some great locally grown fruits and vegetables. As fresh as possible, as the farmer cut what we wanted right from the trees and bushes. With some planning and preparation we’ve also stocked up on a decent supply (months worthremember all that Provisioning in Panama?) of meats, cheeses, and staples. So last night we had home made meatballs (with Kathy bravely trying her mother-in-laws famed recipe for the first time off shore, in a moving boat) and eggplant parmagiana, tonight we had chicken quesadilla spiced with hot peppers and tomatoes from the farmer’s garden followed by from scratch brownies.

In the meantime we still have organic oranges, papaya, bananas, pineapples, tomatoes, green onions, watermelons, melons, hot peppers and mandarin oranges hopefully timed with ripeness to carry us for another week or more with fresh stuff.

In truth everyone is motivated to get the boat to the Marquesas by hand if we must. There have been no complaints and everyone is stepping up to do what needs to be done.

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To the Marquesas – Day Two

On May 16th, 2014 Published By B.J.

Another uneventful day is another good day. Nothing broken, solid breeze and sunny weather is what we want. The best I could hope for is a series of deathly dull today we sailed fast and nothing happened blog posts broken up by reports of the occasional tasty fish caught for dinner or cool critter sighting.

During our first 24 hour period we covered 192 miles, which is an average speed of eight knots. This is fantastic and I hope it holds, but I’m not about to jinx myself by getting too optimistic about a short passage with so much ocean in front of us.

There is a small group of us that all left the Galpagos for the Marquesas around the same time. Athem, an American/Canadian Hylas 46 that left earliest followed by the Norwegian Fargus 37 named Dese a day or so ahead of us. North Star, an American Tayana 52 with similar performance characteristics to Evenstar, took a two hour head start on us yesterday and we expect to be followed today or tomorrow by Cetacea, another American Cheoy Lee. We’re all strung out over a few hundred miles of ocean and in radio contact together.

We had the opportunity to meet all the crews of these boats in the Galpagos and a few of them worked out a loose scheme to meet up on the radio every night at 0230 UTC (which is about 8:30 p.m. Galpagos local time or 10:30 EST). There are larger radio networks being run by the Pacific Puddle Jump Rally (which I think we are all part of) and the Pacific Seafarer’s net but it is nice to chat with boats that are right next door to get information about local conditions.

Although we appear to be the fastest of the group of boats, in such a long low speed chase us passing anyone other than North Star is unlikely. Yesterday we were making about half a knot to a knot more than North Star, but she headed further South presumably for better current of wind predictions. With a two hour head start she was about 13 miles ahead of us when we left port. Gaining half a knot on here would mean it would take 26 hours to overhaul that two hour head start if we were traveling the same course. Likely the last we will see of her was when she dropped off the AIS last night as she continued South without us ever seeing her with our eyes. A full day even 150 miles with a smaller boat like Dese means even if we had a more substantial speed advantage like 1.5 or two knots it will take many days before we catch up to them, if at all. And even then Catch Up is relative, like North Star they could be m
iles to the North or South of the rhumb line (direct course) and we’d never see them.

But in the context of the vast Pacific ocean and a 3,000 mile trip they are close. In the event of a major problem any of us is within a day or so of helping another boat and that is a comfort.

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To the Marquesas, Day one

On May 15th, 2014 Published By B.J.

Well, we’re off. At just before 1:00 p.m. local time in the Galpagos we pulled the anchor and set out for the Marquesas.

If the conditions will stay like this for the next 18-20 days it will be a fast, comfortable passage. About 15 knots of breeze on a beam reach an Evenstar is eating up the miles making 8+ knots on the rhumb line in a good breeze.

Not much to add more at this point since we’re only a few hours on the way. After a nice dinner of Danielle’s meat patties we’re getting settled in for the night watch routine. All is well so far.

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Bound for the Marquesas

On May 15th, 2014 Published By B.J.

If all goes according to plan in a few hours we should be under way for French Polynesia. This will be our longest passage to date approximately 3,000 nautical miles. We estimate we should be at sea around three weeks. This may be more or less depending on wind, weather and other conditions.

During this time we will have pretty poor contact with land. If the Galpagos was tough on internet access it drops almost to zero off shore. I will still continue to post blog updates as I can, but will be unable to update the Facebook page or post pictures in any significant quantity.

Please share any of the blog posts and links on Facebook and other places if you think of it. Don’t be shy about posting them right on the Sail Evenstar Facebook page for other followers there, as some will miss the blog posts.

My apologies for not finishing the Galpagos posts before leaving but we’ve not had good internet at Isabela, which is also the coolest island we’ve stayed at. Pictures of the penguins, volcanoes, snorkeling at the lava tunnels, more boobies and sea lions, etc. etc. will all have to wait until we arrive in the Marquesas.

For those unfamiliar with French Polynesia I encourage you to have a look at a web site or map for details. The world gets very big out there for a sailboat. French Polynesia is a scattering of hundreds of islands in five major groups that cover an area about the size of Western Europe. The Marquesas are the Eastern most group, closest to the Galpagos and the coast of South America, to they are where sailors stop first. The Tuamotu archipelago is some 500 miles past the Marquesas, and runs a span of 1,000 miles from end to end full of remote coral atolls and few people and settlements. Two hundred miles past the Tuamotus are the Society Islands, with well known names like Tahiti and Bora Bora a more populous and well known part of the archipelago. To the South of these three groups like the smaller and less populous Austral and Gambier archipelagos, we will not have time to visit these remote island clusters during this visit. New Zealand lies some 1,800 miles west of the Society Islands.

We have six months to explore this massive and spread out bit of paradise before our extended visas expire and me must leave and seek shelter from the cyclone season. The passage is a daunting one due to its size but it is supposed to be one with mostly pleasant conditions. More challenging I expect will be to try and see enough of this wonder land in the few months we are permitted to be there. One could spend years exploring this part of the world and not see it all!

We are deeply saddened to be leaving the Galpagos, but adventure beckons further. This is one of the truly special places in the world and we will miss it tremendously. Of the places we’ve been so far we’re all agreed that this one is right at the top of the list and we rue that we couldn’t get here earlier and stay longer as we planned, but c’est la vie.

French Polynesia we’ve heard is pretty nice too.

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