The Pacific (4,135nm) – An Overview

Hello – long time no see! Did you receive this by email? If so – our bad! This post is just for reference. It collects together the long form text of all of our tracking and rally updates from throughout our Pacific crossing. BUT, a much more interesting read is Alec’s post exploring his reflections on the first half of our crossing and the best moments, which should be published approximate 30 seconds from now!

We did it! We crossed the Pacific! Well, the biggest chunk anyway. The beefy bit. It took us 29 days + 5 hours to traverse 4,135 nautical miles between Vista Mar, Panama and Taiohae, Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas islands.

The crossing’s truly special moments were interspersed with some big challenges and, to be honest, a lot of monotony (but a mark of a good passage is a lot of “inactive” sailing time!). As a general compendium, this post features our unabridged daily logs from the passage, while our next two posts will feature our highlights and reflections on the crossing.

Captain and First Mates’ Logs

As part of the Pacific Puddle Jump rally, I was asked to send a status report every day, which quickly became synonymous with a daily mini-log. All of the other rally boats actively crossing did the same, making for often humorous exchanges and a great sense of camaraderie. Alongside this, Alec (mostly) and I (at times) posted longer, more thoughtful and detailed updates on our PredictWind tracking page. Notes in italics are my additions to clarify context. Fair warning – there is some repetition of stories between the PPJ logs and our longer tracker updates.

Day 1 – Thu Mar 5th 2020:
8.2747°N, 79.8677°W (Daily PPJ update) – Serenity First are off! We’ve left from the Vista Mar marina and are working our way out of the bay of Panama. Fingers crossed the ECMFW forecast is right for us this week. Wind N 10kts, hoping for a bit more soon. Our first goal for the passage is to rediscover our waterline (Serenity is sitting mighty low with all our stores!).

7° 44.870’N, 79° 45.219’W (Alec) – Not the first day I’d hoped for, as we spent the first 8.5 hours on the engine to get through a wind hole that only emerged on the morning’s forecast. I hadn’t given it much thought given the broader forecast down to Galapagos hadn’t deteriorated, but it made for a bit of an inauspicious start. Thankfully, the wind has now filled in as expected and we are ripping along towards Punto Mala (yes, that does mean bad point) at over 7 knots with more than a bit of favourable current and tide. The upside is that we have had a really easy first day to allow everyone to settle in and start to find their passage legs. We had leftover pizza for lunch (I miss land already), and Daniel and Camille are making quinoa bowls for dinner. Only upcoming hazard is crossing the shipping lane as we pass the point, but if we can keep this speed up and get round the point before the tide changes, the that will be no challenge at all.

Day 2 – Fri Mar 6th 2020:
5.4571°N, 79.9336°W (Daily PPJ update) – A day of steady winds and mild seas for us. Current conditions: wind NNE 10-15kts, swell <1m, sunny skies. Jamming out to Collision Course (Linkin Park / JZ) – highly recommended. Still two slices of Dominoes pizza in the fridge, but might have to start cooking soon.

5° 17.959’N, 79° 57.391’W (Alec) – Our first night was a good one as the conditions were fairly stable and Serenity First kept up her pace and easy motion from the end of the first day. Most of the crew managed some sleep, but I resigned myself to my typical first night of passage (watching the clock) knowing that exhaustion will be an effective sleeping potion tonight. Our automated activity planner (a passage gift from our Atlantic crew, Ballin and Katherine) deemed that today was 90’s playlist day, so we relived some of our early musical memories as a group and finished of the rest of the Dominos pizza. I currently hold the lead in the sextant competition, although seeing as I am currently the only entry this prize isn’t as prestigious as it first appears. Laura’s turn is tonight and no doubt she has her sights on my 3.7nm. The only other notable activity is that we changed the dressing on my finger and still have no signs of infection – high fives all round (except me).

4° 19.200’N, 80° 09.818’W (Laura) – Had a wonderful sail during the day, with such mild seas that we were all able to do a few boat jobs too. Ballin and Katherine’s snazzy spreadsheet tool generates fun daily activities for us, and today’s was to come up with a Serenity First handshake. We decided to interpret this as a celebratory gesture and settled on making a wave motion with your hand and then moving from there into a high five. I look forward to putting it into practice! At 23:30 the wind unexpectedly failed on us, so we motored for a couple of hours. I came on to watch at 12 and decided it was worth another try with the sails. I have just about managed to keep us sailing but we may have to call the donkey in again soon.

Day 3 – Sat Mar 7th 2020:
3.3579°N, 80.9449°W (Daily PPJ update) – We have had avg. 10-12kts of NNE/NE wind, c.1m swell and mostly clear skies for the last 24hrs. Begrudgingly turned the donkey on for two hours last night during a lull but decided we preferred the slightly flappy sails and so the twin genoas went back out. We’d been good about not raiding the snack cupboard since we left but now that the pizza is gone we’ve lost our resolve. Boat exercise sessions are being instituted to combat the inevitable “Pacific Bulge.”

3° 23.483’N, 80° 54.601’W (Alec) – With a bit of space now available in the fridge, we finally got round to putting out the lines today, but weren’t even rewarded with a nibble. To be fair, we spent much of the morning pootling along at low speeds that make fishing tougher, but the key takeaway is that we have managed to keep sailing all day. Laura led a boat yoga class this afternoon, which yielded an astonishing array of creaking joints from the whole crew – seems like trying to make time each day for some exercise will at least give us a fighting chance of maintaining some level of physical ability once we reach land!

Day 4 – Sun Mar 8th 2020:
2.0782°N, 82.5051°W (Daily PPJ update) – Weather forecast promised us wind yesterday evening, but you can’t trust those ‘Lying Eyes.’ However, since about 3am have enjoyed blissful hours living ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ with 15-20kts NE wind. I’ve taken all the credit, though some say my whispering to the ocean makes me a ‘Witchy Woman.’ Swell maybe 1.5m, from the NNE. Still sunny skies. No fish have appeared on our lines yet.
P.S. Listening to The Eagles.

1° 33.020’N, 83° 11.309’W (Laura) – Today has felt much more like our Atlantic crossing – 20kts of wind and big waves on the aft quarter making us roll-y poll-y. But, with a key upside being that we have absolutely flown along! We’ve had a few days to get our sea legs so thankfully everyone handled it well and its been exciting to make so much progress today. Alec and I managed to watch a film on our off-watch time (Whiplash, highly recommended!) and then spent an hour working on a “Su-Dunk-u.” That is, a Sudoku, impressively converted to text format, sent from our good family friend Duncan. We’ve enjoyed it immensely – thanks Dunc!

Day 5 – Mon Mar 9th 2020:
0° 55.859’N, 84° 16.868’W (Alec) – Morning world! We are back in the realm of favourable currents which offsets the fact that the wind has died and so we are having to motor – it’s like Neptune doesn’t know it is my birthday :P. We are now getting to the critical part of this first stage of our crossing as the winds are becoming increasingly fickle as we head into what is effectively the doldrums, and so we have to balance making ground under motor with reserving fuel for the rest of our crossing. I suspect we may end up bobbing around a bit in the near future, but for now the waves would make that untenable and so we are electing to chug along (with the spare electricity driving the watermaker to keep out tanks topped up). I’ve had a special birthday breakfast of haribo and am now feeling mildly nauseous – turns out I’ve still got a long way to go before I grow up…

0.5510°N, 84.9965°W (Daily PPJ update) – Neptune giveth, and then Neptune taketh away all our lovely wind. But on the bright side, it’s given us an excuse to fly our jazzy spinnaker all day! Winds E 7-10kts, swell 1m, clear skies. Celebrations have been the order of the day for the birthday of our skipper, Alec. We’ve enjoyed Haribo and fresh chocolate chip cookies, but have been dissuaded from making him take a birthday swim (aka “Dip the Skip”) due to doctor’s orders.

0° 14.393’N, 85° 28.903’W (Laura) – I started out dreading today because I was sure we were going to have to motor all day, BUT then Alec had the brilliant idea that we should try our spinnaker, just to see if that would do better in these light winds. Short answer is – yes! It does very well indeed! We floated merrily forward under spinnaker all day and it was delightful. We won’t win any prizes for distance sailed, as we were fairly slow moving, but I’ll take it! The low stress sailing day gave us time to do other things, like dump several buckets of ocean over Alec’s head to mark his birthday at sea :). We’ve decided to try running the kite overnight and so far so good, though the wind is continuing to ease off so we may have to go back to the iron sail soon. But, still a very successful day all around!

Day 6 – Tue Mar 10th 2020:
(Special PPJ update from Alec) – Thank you for the birthday wishes, but a warning to all the other skippers out there that the “Dip the Skip” is not as fun as it sounds and seems to have led to an erosion of my authority aboard with my orders now frequently being met with “don’t make me get the bucket again, Skip.” Hopefully today’s shellback ceremony will help restore the strict discipline that we had been operating under so far, but I am not confident…

@Irony: Congratulations, we hope you all got a good night’s sleep on the hook (In reference to an email reporting their arrival in Nuku Hiva)

@Serendipity II: We’ve followed your lead and uncorked our own Kite Sprite – first time ever we’ve ever flown it overnight, but the wind was super stable and we all slept incredibly well as a result (In response to their email about letting the “genie out of the bottle”)

@Full & By: So close now guys – hope the final miles are enjoyable (Full & By were within a few days of land)

@Wind Dragon: Sounds like you have more fish now than you know what to do with. We are yet to get a nibble, but I reckon you might still have some in your fridge when we turn up in the Mq in 3 weeks or so, so make sure you save us some steaks 🙂 (These guys had just caught a huge tuna!)

0° 07.690’S, 86° 20.651’W (Alec) – We are now ‘unofficial’ shellbacks! For the landlubbers amongst you, this is a status conferred upon sailors who have crossed the equator. We also managed it in style, as we did it flying our spinnaker throughout the night (another first for us). Normally we wouldn’t risk the spinnaker for night sailing, but the conditions were so benign and boat motion so enjoyable that we went ahead and it made for a wonderfully relaxing time aboard – perfect to catch up on some emails and reading.

PS: The unofficial part is because the status needs to be conferred upon the sailors by a representative of Neptune, and he was a bit busy last night but has agreed to swing by Serenity First this afternoon for a delayed ceremony.

0.3179°S, 86.6756°W (Daily PPJ update) – The crew of Serenity First officially became Shellbacks at 4:11am today! Neptune has kindly permitted us to postpone our ceremony until this afternoon to allow for crew sleep, but we suspect will demand additional sacrifices as a result.

Have had the spinnaker up for 36 hours now and man this is living! Wind 6-8kts SE, gentle swell from the NE, a few clouds this AM but now clear skies.

Day 7 – Wed Mar 11th 2020:
1° 02.023’S, 88° 08.238’W (Alec) – Made some more wonderful miles under our colourful kite and am swapping spinnaker synonyms with other cruisers on our email net – our favourite thus far being ‘genie’ as in letting the genie out of the bottle. Cocktail hour has been continued from our Atlantic passage routine, which has become a forum to share our jokes and any brain teasers that we received in the previous 24 hours, and to generally reflect on the day. Today we even had an extra crew member join us – “Finn” the Galapagos Finch seems to have lost his way as he landed on our radar arch when we were 130nm away from the nearest land! He is very small and the ocean doesn’t seem like his natural habitat, and he spent a very nervous first hour aboard being terrified of the various moving ropes and sails. He’s calmed down now though and spent the night sleeping on a bundle of rope that naturally swings with the waves. It’s nice of him to join us as we were all disappointed to miss out on the Galapagos wildlife, but it seems it is coming to us (we also got a glimpse of what looked like a pod of pilot whales in the early evening). The big question now is whether we can find some food and drink for Finn that will give him the energy to make his return flight, as I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to go to the Marquesas…

1.8760°S, 88.7604°W (Daily PPJ update) – Another spinnaker day for Serenity First; we have been very lucky so far with the conditions! This afternoon we’ve had enough breeze to chuck out the mainsail as well – it’s first outing of the passage. Wind NE 10-12kts, swell mostly from the NE <1m, hazy with high clouds.

Alec wrote “Dominos” on the white board this morning as a suggested activity for the day. I initially thought he meant he’d stashed away a pizza; disappointed to discover he meant the game…

@Full and By, @Belle Vie: congratulations on your arrivals! Wishing you all a very pleasant first night’s sleep!!

Day 8 – Thu Mar 12th 2020:
2° 55.288’S, 89° 40.584’W (Alec) – A bit of a somber day yesterday, as after a restless night where he was unable to properly settle down Finn fell into the ocean from exhaustion in the morning. We had tried to encourage him to drink some water from a bowl and provide some food, but he was either too scared or too tired to refuel. What made matters worse is that another bloody finch found us today around sundown, leaving us with a dilemma on our hands. Thankfully this finch has found a far better spot for the night that is sheltered from the wind, which hopefully means he will be rested tomorrow and better able to make his return journey. We are just hoping the finches do not carry the same level of bad luck as albatrosses. In more bird news, we have been surrounded by a growing number of weird white croaking gulls throughout the night, who seem to be having a wonderful time feeding off whatever we are scaring out off the water. We’ve finally hit the doldrums and so have been motoring since around 10pm last night, but hopefully we should be through to trade winds by some time tomorrow. We have some rain forecast and so we are planning to catch what we can and use it for our first load of laundry.

 3.4562°S, 90.4513°W (Daily PPJ update) – Serenity First is sailing yet again. As we officially entered the ITCZ yesterday, the wind died and we had 12 hours on the motor, but this morning a puff came back and we have been happily close reaching along for a few hours (though as I write this we’ve been headed, so the donkey may be back in action soon).

Wind SSW 7-9kts, swell SW <1m, cloudy with intermittent drizzle. Today’s music selection is a Yacht Rock playlist, which is just the thing to keep morale high on a rainy day :).

3° 58.820’S, 91° 06.073’W (Laura) – The trade winds are proving a bit shy, and have yet to make their appearance. We’ve managed a few hours on and off close reaching on little wind systems that have come through, but otherwise trusty Mick is helping us continue the search south. Had some light rain today and clouds, which in many ways was really nice as I think I didn’t get sunburnt today – that is I think a first for the passage! Not enough rain has come down quite yet for laundry but Serenity and her crew aren’t too stinky yet, so we can wait for more :). Took advantage of the calm conditions today to cook a big frittata up for dinner, which was both a yummy treat and a good way to make use of some of our remaining fresh veggies.

Day 9 – Fri Mar 13th 2020:
4.5367°S, 91.8169°W (Daily PPJ update) – We are technically through the ITCZ, but the trades are proving a little shy. They keep fading south, but we’ll catch ‘em. MVP of the passage so far goes to the spinnaker, who is once again allowing us to sail in these light winds. Wind ENE 6-8kts, swell S <1m, patchy clouds.

Today we convened our first book club session of the Pacific, on Jack London’s “The Cruise of the Snark.” It’s a fun and slightly wacky account of his South Pacific cruise. A good accompaniment to this passage!

P.S. Anyone else having problems with birds depositing messy “gifts” all over their decks (and crew)?

Day 10 – Sat Mar 14th 2020:
4° 58.529’S, 92° 55.100’W (Alec) – Yesterday was our lowest daily miles total to date (107nm), but considering we have been able to sail for the majority of the time as we’ve passed through the doldrums (and other similar boats before us were struggling to make 50nm in 24 hours, we are counting ourselves as very fortunate. We also managed to get our first bite on the lines yesterday, and although the fish managed to escape we are hoping that this could signal the end of our driest ever fishing spell. Yesterday we had our first book club of the trip to discuss Laura’s choice of Cruise of the Snark by Jack London. The language was often obtuse but the similarity between his sailing experiences and ours, as well as his eye for detail and humour, made for an enjoyable read and lively discussion. Also, the most recent joke submission by our friends Sam and M has reached to top of the leaderboard – unfortunately I can’t reprint it here for reasons of decency…

5.4130°S, 93.7517°W (Daily PPJ update) – After 10 days of nada, all our fish action came at once in a giant yellow fin-shaped package. Over an hour fight, and then it took all four of us to haul him aboard! Nose to tail 1.5m, and we estimate at least 70kg / 150lbs. Both fridges are completely stuffed. Anyone nearby want some tuna???

Wind is the usual 6-10kts, <1m swell from the S, clear skies. But all the forecasts assure us that we really will find the trade winds tomorrow!

Day 11 – Sun Mar 15th 2020:
5° 48.316’S, 94° 46.862’W (Alec) – This has been a significant 24 hours for Serenity First and her crew. Firstly, after 10 days of nary-a-nibble, all our bites emerged yesterday afternoon in a single yellowfin package. The largest fish any of us has ever seen in real life, and it took us an hour of battling to get this tuna aboard. We had no way of weighing it accurately, but it was 1.5m long and we think could be over 150 lbs…needless to say we were all exhausted by the end of it. The fact it went for our 5” lure (not exaggerating) is a surprise and given his size vs. our fridge capacity, we would have released him if possible – unfortunately the damage he’d done to himself by the time he was close enough to see meant that he wasn’t going to make it and so we took as much meat off him as we possibly could. We are now desperately in need of as many different tuna recipes as possible, and won’t be fishing again for probably the next two weeks. The other important news is still a bit of secret as we don’t want to scare them away, so I’ll whisper it to be safe: “I think we have found the trade winds…”

6.1913°S, 95.3577°W (Daily PPJ update) – I don’t want to jinx anything, but we *may* at long last have found the trades!  Beam reaching in a delightful 12-15kts SE (gusting 18-20), swell from the S about 1-1.5m. Lots of squally showers about but Serenity really needed a bath (especially after yesterday’s fish) so I’m kinda okay with it.

@Wind Dragon: commiserations and sorry to hear about the sail issue. Hopefully there’s still lots of fish in the freezer to keep morale up? (Wind Dragon had a nightmare where their spinnaker got tangled around their genoa, meaning neither could be flown – makes for verrrry slow sailing.)

@Venture Lady: thanks for the tip on the current – we are about three days behind you and looking forward to finding that! (They’d reported a +1kt favourable current directly ahead of us.)

Day 12 – Mon Mar 16th 2020:
6° 08.536’S, 97° 29.841’W (Laura) – Good news, we definitely found the trades! In fact we got slightly more than we bargained for, with 20-25kts through the night and a sizeable swell on the port quarter. This first mate was not quite prepared for such spicy conditions on last night’s watch, but I settled into it before long because Serenity was entirely unfazed. I was then probably the only member of crew to get much sleep in all that roll. Sleeping on passage is my super power (doesn’t come up a lot in try outs for Marvel or DC superheroes, but you never know), but even so I was pretty surprised I managed so well given it was our first rolly night. Was feeling good this morning so I decided to do laundry despite the boat’s rather wild motion, which was definitely an experience. Probably wouldn’t recommend it, but hey we’ve got a fresh set of clean clothes now!

6.1502°S, 97.5925°W (Daily PPJ update) – After a night broad reaching slightly north of west to improve boat motion / prevent mutiny, we are beam reaching in 18-20kts. Swell from the SE about 2.5m but starting to abate a bit. Sunny with scattered light clouds.

For those that read this week’s Met Bob email, we experienced no effects of that mirror ITCZ at 5 degrees S. We picked up the trades just below 6 degrees S yesterday afternoon. ECMWF has been the most accurate model for us from when we got close to Galapagos but has consistently underestimated wind strength by 3-5 kts.

Day 13 – Tue Mar 17th 2020:
6° 22.896’S, 99° 16.245’W (Alec) – We are catching brief snatches of the C19 situation, which has escalated tremendously since we departed Panama, and I find myself facing some conflicting emotions. On the one hand, a perfectly timed ocean quarantine seems to be a fortunate escape from a global pandemic; however, the stories of fear and distress reaching us from our loved ones around the world leave us feeling even more isolated and impotent than ever.

On top of this, there is now a big layer of uncertainty around the situation that will greet us when we get to French Polynesia in April. There is already some evidence of travel restrictions and quarantines throughout the South Pacific, which at its worst might strip this crossing of its promised rewards. Sailors on our communication net are telling stories of boats being turned away from Galapagos despite the fact that they don’t have suitable provisions for the onward journey to the Marquesas. At the moment, we seem to have escaped the fallout but I suspect it will catch up with us eventually. For the time being, we are doing our best to ignore what we can’t control and just focus on completing this passage in a safe and enjoyable manner.

Our thoughts are with all our friends and family who are living in far greater proximity to this crisis that we are, and we will do our best to continue finding and sharing the joy in this adventure to help provide some momentary distraction and relief from what I can only imagine must be a terrifying 24 hour news cycle.

6.5126°S, 100.4270°W (Daily PPJ update) – The wind has eased off a touch, along with the waves, and made for a relatively smooth 24hrs for us. We’ve also picked up the current mentioned a few days ago by Venture Lady, and validate it seems to be about 1kt setting W.

Conditions here are wind 12-15kts SE/ESE, swell 1.5m from the SE, scattered clouds. The temp has cooled a bit too. I had to wear a jumper and a jacket on watch last night!

Day 14 – Wed Mar 18th 2020:
6° 46.153’S, 101° 59.672’W (Alec) – Not a huge amount to report from the last 24 hours. Wind has been good, allowing us to average over 6 knots, but is now easing and so I’m debating between changing to spinnaker (although it has some small holes that could do with patching) or the twin headsails (might not be enough wind to keep them filled).

Laura made some tuna fish cakes last night (with instant mash potato), which were absolutely delicious and really emphasised how well we are currently doing in the galley given we are nearly out of fresh food (bar tuna…) and the boat is still moving around a fair bit.

I tried my first sextant shot in these tougher conditions last night, and did okay but it certainly makes the process much, much harder. Firstly there is the difficulty in keeping the scope on the star when you are moving all over the place; secondly there are now lots of clouds (and sometimes sails or spars) that keep obscuring the stars we want to use; and finally, the horizon is a bit of a moving target as the various waves roll across the view and lift the viewer up and down. Still, we are all averaging under 4nm for our shots, which is nearly good enough to be a backup for when we get close to land (although I suspect I may still be reluctant to turn off the GPS!).

6.5327°S, 102.9706°W (Daily PPJ update) – We were running with twin headsails most of the day but just switched back to a beam reach since the wind has been veering on us. Had a lovely day chewing through the miles. Wind 10-12kts SE, swell 1-1.5m SE, high clouds but no rain. Disappointed as it’s my night to take a star shot on the sextant but I might not have any visability :(.

Happy to hear the quarantine rule has been revised. Many thanks to Andy (the Puddle Jump coordinator) for all the work you do for us! We are reserving judgement on arrival port until closer to the time as it feels like things are changing too fast to know what’s best yet.

P.S. Tomorrow we will reach the halfway point to the Marquesas! Woohoo!

6° 24.314’S, 103° 56.945’W (Laura) – A lovely day chewing through the miles. We got to fly our twin headsails for most of the day, which was very enjoyable, before returning to a beam reach for overnight. We are keeping busy with lots of little jobs, and there is always something that needs cleaning (especially given the flying fish so love jumping aboard and spreading their goo around). The halfway point is tantalisingly close – I think we should hit it tomorrow just in time for cocktail hour. So exciting! From there it is literally downhill all the way to the Marquesas. True fact.

Day 15 – Thu Mar 19th 2020:
6.1481°S, 105.1816°W (Daily PPJ update) – In t-minus 30 minutes, Serenity First will officially cross the halfway point of our passage! All on board are pleased to get over the hump, but probably more excited that this means we’re allowed to refill the snack box. If only we had saved one of those Dominoes pizzas…

Wind is 16-18kts SE and I’m starting to wonder if we’ll get to use our twin headsail rig much at all. Luckily Serenity loves a beam reach and we are flying along. Swell S maybe 1.5m. Scattered clouds. Hoping I’ll get my sextant shot tonight.

6° 07.850’S, 105° 29.517’W (Alec) – Halfway there!!! We marked the occasion with our customary Bon Javi karaoke ceremony. It is slightly intimidating to think that after all this time at sea, we have to the same all over again – by this time on the Atlantic we were already in Martinique sipping on Ti Punch. The flip side is that we have now settled into a very manageable routine, and so going for another two weeks is certainly sustainable.

We even have enough space to deal with the typical cruising curveballs, of which today’s was the batteries. Despite filling them just before leaving, they needed a top up today and that isn’t easy when we are in a marina let alone in a rolly sea way. On top of this, the battery water we got in Panama turned out to be unsuitable, so I spent an enjoyable hour this morning swapping emails with Pappa Marshall as I briefed him on the question I needed to answer via the magical internet cruiser forums. He came back with some suggestions, one of which was possible after spending 30 minutes retrofitting the watermaker so that we could double filter some water to get the mineral content low enough. Crisis averted, until the next one :).

Day 16 – Fri Mar 20th 2020:
6.0068°S, 107.9700°W (Daily PPJ update) – A speedy day for us beam reaching in 14-16kts of SE’ly breeze. Still have somewhere between 0.5 and 1kt of current with us. Swell has been S / SE, still holding around 1.5m. Another lovely sunny day with scattered clouds.

@Soteria: We were hoping if we dropped enough mentions of Dominoes into our updates someone might take pity and bring us one in their freezer from Panama, but I suspect with all the border closures we’ll just have to keep dreaming about it! (In their last update, they’d been kind in saying they enjoyed all our pizza references!)

Day 17 – Sat Mar 21st 2020:
6° 00.537’S, 109° 20.081’W (Alec) – It seems our plans to ‘escape C19’ maybe coming to an end. The latest updates we are hearing from boats arriving into French Polynesia is that boats are being quickly refuelled and moved onto Tahiti (i.e. pushed past the majority of islands in the archipelago) where crews are being encourage to repatriate. Given the islanders awful history with infectious diseases brought by foreigners, it is more than understandable that they would take stringent measures to protect the local population – it’s just a shame when you consider that the boats arriving from Panama are likely to contain one of the lowest risk (i.e. the most effectively quarantined) populations for the virus on the planet.

The restrictions are evolving on a daily basis so we are now waiting to see how they change through the second half of our passage. Given the worldwide impact of this virus, it was probably too much to hope that we could wait it out whilst also exploring some island paradises, but given this is our last year on Serenity we will be considering every possible avenue before we resign ourselves to walking away from her in Tahiti.

Spirits on board are obviously a bit muted, but the daily jokes, riddles and puzzles we are receiving from family and friends are really helping so please keep them coming. Shout out to our 8 year old niece Kenzie who hit us with four rapid fire one-liners yesterday. Followers may also have noticed that Serenity has fired-up her turbo chargers over the last 24 hours – we can’t be sure if this is down to the thin band of favourable current I’ve been hunting down, or whether the dolphins who visited us yesterday evening have decided to hang around and provide a tow. Either way, it has helped restore our spirits and we are hoping to keep it up for a few more days.

PS: We have now all eaten tuna for every lunch and dinner for the last 7 days (and the occasional breakfast) and are only about halfway through our supplies!

5.9940°S, 110.7435°W (Daily PPJ update) – Today we are celebrating the third birthday of the passage – clearly this crew’s parents were all captured by the opening song from Grease. Speaking of music, I’m very grateful to everyone on Serenity First for putting up with me blasting Taylor Swift on the stereo all day. May you all be as lucky on your birthdays :).

Wind today has been 12-15 kts SE. Swell’s calmed down a touch, 1-1.5m SSE-ish. Lovely sunny skies. Still have that current with us – we are moving and grooving!

Day 18 – Sun Mar 22nd 2020:
6.3968°S, 113.4943°W (Daily PPJ update) – @Takamoana: we understand a mid-Pacific delivery might be off the cards, but a pizza while quarantined somewhere in French Poly might be the one thing to keep our spirits alive! (Our friends on Takamoana, who were still stuck in Panama, had teasingly offered to bring us a Dominos pizza in their freezer)

@Zan: we’ve noticed you are gaining on us so the crew have gone into full race mode. We’ve been hand steering for 24 hours and also have put in place a dedicated kite trimmer (A bit of sport–and exaggeration–as we tried to stay ahead of Zan, a huge catamaran)

Happy British Mother’s Day to all the mums out there!

Wind a bit flukey this AM but now back to 14-16 from the SE. We have decided to cut south to avoid some weather but are sad to leave our excellent band of current behind. Swell is mild, 1-1.5m S-ish. Cloudy and sticky.

6° 44.239’S, 114° 24.673’W (Laura) – The crew spoiled me rotten yesterday for my birthday, including taking my day watches so I could fit in both a Disney film AND a nature documentary and making me a huge, delicious red velvet cake. We even had lovely sunshine to go with it. But today we were all feeling a little bit of a sugar hangover, and the weather turned overcast and sticky. So, much lying in front of fans was required to feel comfortable. We stayed productive though – Alec and I fixed the spinnaker’s latest set of holes and Alec cleaned off the solar panels. We’ve turned our course to the south to help us avoid some yuck weather, and interestingly, with the current wind, that meant we were sailing for a while this evening with the wind forward of the beam – extremely unusual for what is supposed to be a downwind passage!

Day 19 – Mon Mar 23rd 2020:
6° 59.514’S, 115° 21.621’W (Alec) – The weather has remained fairly stable these last few days, and we have been making good ground on a broad reach under various reefed combinations of mainsail and genoa. Laura is a bit frustrated as our special downwind twin headsails rig has got very little use to date, and although it only makes life a little harder when not being used, she is feeling that the weather owes us many more miles with it up. I’m less bothered as it actually means we are going faster (even though we have now left the favourable current behind us).

One of the boats on our rally reached the Marquesas yesterday and was pleased to announce that they were permitted to anchor there; however, the whole island has just started a fourteen-day self-quarantine, and as such they are only permitted to go ashore too purchase food and outside of this must remain on their boat. It is difficult to imagine the conflicting emotions they must be feeling, as being allowed to stop, rest and reprovison would be such a relief, but they have just spent 29 days at sea in that very small space and to have land so tantalisingly close but still be trapped for another 14 must be very claustrophobic.

The interesting question for us is how this evolves by the time we arrive, which should be towards the end of the quarantine. Will we have to observe an additional 14 days from our arrival date, or just the final few days of the island-wide self quarantine? But once again this is a question we can lose sleep over or it is one we can put from our minds.

The final exciting news is that we have finally managed to consume all the unfrozen tuna (I’ve avoided asking questions about the quantities of frozen tuna), and as such Laura and Camille have proposed that we take a respite from tuna for at least a while. Our cooking repertoire was helpfully expanded by various crew matriarchs, and 9 days of tuna for both lunch and dinner has not been the ordeal that some of you might imagine. I do know that my family have organised a sweepstake in the background as to how long we would last and who would break first, and I’ll report back when I know whose guess was closest.

PS – All you joke and brainteaser senders out there, we love you all (even Dunc’s Su-Dunc-o) and we will share our favourites with everyone once we find internet again.

7.0201°S, 115.7158°W (Daily PPJ update) – @Wind Dragon: congrats on arriving in the Marquesas and landing such a monster fish! (They’d just hooked a +100lb tuna!) Many thanks also for sharing all your info on the situation with the quarantine, etc. We are currently planning to land at Nuku Hiva as well so if anything more changes we would be very grateful to know.

@Painkiller: we don’t have any fresh fish stories for you since we are still working through our fish from a while back. We have eaten tuna for 2 meals a day for 9 days running and have only just gotten through all the fish we couldn’t fit in the freezer. (A slightly awkward set of accidental emails from Painkiller had them initially complaining about too many fish stories from rally boats only to backtrack and say they really DID want to hear fish stories…)

After an evening sailing with the wind forward of the beam (*gasp*), we’re back to broad reaching in 14-18 kts of ESE winds. Swell is it’s usual 1-1.5m self, SSE-ish. Mostly cloudy and cooler than yesterday.

P.s. the bioluminescence the last few nights has been phenomenal – worth killing the nav lights for a bit to watch it!

Day 20 – Tue Mar 24th 2020:
7.2786°S, 118.2695°W (Daily PPJ update) – Wind has been a bit variable in strength and direction today. Average in the 14-18kts range, ESE. Swell has been a bit confused (though every now and then we get a set of following waves, which is nice!) so we are rocking and rolling a bit more than usual. Mostly sunny making the solar panels very happy.

We’ve gone for a throwback today with 80’s on the stereo. Fits surprisingly well with passage making!

Day 21 – Wed Mar 25th 2020:
7° 34.061’S, 119° 23.714’W (Alec) – You can tell we’ve been at sea for a while now as Laura and I decided to spend the morning being grumpy and bickering with each other – very mature and I certainly started it when I was once again prevented from completing a simple boat task by the splint on my finger. It continues to heal and still no signs of infection, which is a relief since I’ve now been off the antibiotics for fours days; however, I can’t really grip anything with my right hand (including a winch handle = over 50% of sailing tasks) and am becoming increasingly frustrated at how much I need to depend on others. I need to do better at seeing the other side, which is how lucky I am to have a crew that have been so supportive in covering for me this whole time.

Still making good progress although the wind has become a bit more fickle. On average it is lighter so we need to put more sail out to maintain speed, but also more gusty that means we then get overpowered more frequently. We’ve been good at responding to these though and the team is now getting pretty slick at putting reefs in nice and quickly – our best performance so far was last night when despite starting with only one person awake and on deck we were able to get the genoa away and main reefed in about 3-4 minutes. It’s probably a good thing for the weather to be keeping us on our toes and engaged as it helps pass the time as we slowly tick off the miles.

7° 51.494’S, 120° 48.412’W (Laura) – About 8:30 this morning I was awoken suddenly by the noise of the VHF. I didn’t jump straight out of bed, as I was fairly sure I had dreamt it, but then, there it was again – “Serenity First, Serenity First, this is sailing vessel Alkemi, Alkemi.” Someone was hailing us!! By the time I dragged myself out of bed, Alec was at the nav desk responding. While we couldn’t see anyone on AIS, they were clearly close as the radio call was crystal clear!

Alec exchanged details with one of Alkemi’s crew, Alba, and we learned that skipper Steve and his wife Angela owned the boat, and had three crew from around the world, including first mate Wilber from Australia, and a dog! After swapping stories about our crossings so far, Alba revealed what was clearly their main reason for calling. “So… do you have any beer on board?” Serenity is in fact very well stocked at the moment, since we bought enough for Daniel, Alec and I to have one per day each for three months (and we haven’t drunk very many of them so far in this first month). When we replied in the affirmative, they excitedly enquired whether we’d be up to trade some, as they did not have any on board at all (gasp)!

Okay first question – who the heck is their quartermaster? I mean, there is an Aussie on board, how can they not have beer?? We said that yes we’d be happy to trade, if for no other reason than the excitement of trying to figure out how on Earth to make said trade out in this roll-y ocean. They then admitted, a bit sheepishly, that the captain was actually asleep, and they’d have to wait till he woke up to get permission. So, we stood by on channel 16 and waited to see if they’d call again.

I reset our AIS to see if that would help us pick up their signal. And voila, they appeared! This was very helpful so we could watch their trajectory and ensure we tracked close to them in case the trade went ahead. It was fun to stare out at the horizon waiting to catch a glimpse of them – first just the mast, then eventually the sails and finally the boat itself as they drew ever closer.

We were about half a nautical mile away when their skipper Steve, now clearly awake, hailed us on the radio. A super lovely guy, we exchanged a few more stories and information we’d heard about the situation in Polynesia and he offered to share his premium weather forecast. Steve mentioned they’d just made fresh bread and hoped to offer this up for our beer (heck yes!), but he felt the seas were just a little too rough to be worth risking a collision to get close enough to actually trade. Sad times!! He was probably right, but we were a little sad to miss a chance to pull such a crazy stunt.

Regardless, it was amazing to actually physically see another boat out here in the middle of such a big ocean, and as always a pleasure to meet more fun cruisers. It was the first sailing boat we’ve seen since leaving (and the first of any kind since the Galapagos)! Alkemi are also headed for Nuku Hiva, so perhaps we can revisit the trading then :).

7.8560°S, 120.7153°W (Daily PPJ update) – Exciting day aboard Serenity First – we saw another sailboat! In fact we came within 0.5nm of Alkemi and even discussed rendezvousing to trade beer for bread, but the waves were a little too choppy to make it manageable :(.

Conditions have otherwise been relaxed. Wind 12-16kts ESE, waves still 1.5m-ish but getting a bit more east than south in them. Sunny weather.

Day 22 – Thu Mar 26th 2020:
7° 47.245’S, 121° 59.666’W (Alec) – After the excitement in seeing another vessel yesterday we watched them slowly move ahead of us and over the horizon – they are at least 5ft longer than Serenity and that translates to being just that bit faster than us. We consoled ourself that this was a race with limited rewards seeing as every day before us that they arrive is another day to spend quarantined aboard. Whilst quarantined at anchor is probably still better than being on passage, it’s a close run thing.

Daniel proposed a round of “Scar Wars” over cocktail hour where we shared our best war stories as told by the unhealed damage to each of our bodies. The biggest surprise was that the most accident prone on the boat (Camille) had the least number of scars of anyone. Our only possible explanation was that the rest of us had learnt valuable lessons on self preservation from our scarring incidents that were now serving us well as adults, although my splinted finger suggests this may not be true for all of us.

Dinner was veggie chilli, which has been a welcome break from tuna. Laura has mentioned that we now have enough space in the fridge that could start fishing again if we were so inclined, but the lures must be sufficiently small to avoid hooking another monster. I certainly don’t want another battle like that so I’ll have a dig around in the fishing box today to see if I have anything that fits the bill.

7.8431°S, 122.9461°W (Daily PPJ update) – @Zan: Tough call, sorry to hear you have to add to your passage time. Maybe we’ll still see you if you drift past us :). (They decided to head straight to Tahiti, as they had crew desperately wanting to get home due to the COVID crisis.)

A slow day here, with winds lighter than forecast and the rolling seas making for horrible sail flapping – leaving us all feeling a tad stressed. Fingers crossed the incoming clouds will bring a little breeze! Wind 8-12kts (variable) ESE, swell 1m but confused. Mostly sunny today but now some clouds building.

Day 23 – Fri Mar 27th 2020:
7° 55.492’S, 124° 13.308’W (Alec) – The wind has eased off a bit in the last 24 hours so we’ve slowed down some; however, that doesn’t mean our time has been without any notable achievements:

#1) We reached the three quarters mark on our journey, which means that we have sailed over 3,000nm, and more importantly now have less than 1,000nm to go to the Marquesas

#2) Daniel and I gave some emergency love to our genoa furlex, which I noticed during my daily deck inspection appeared to be in danger of falling apart – hopefully this fix will at least last until Nuku Hiva

#3) We managed to solve two of the outstanding brainteasers that had been sent to us – a word riddle from Laura’s best friend Lauren and a logic problem from my Dad. The latter of these turned out to be particularly impressive as we then discovered that my dad had not included the final clue for the problem, without which it should have been impossible. Luckily for me, Laura was able to reverse engineer the solution using her own meta clue. I don’t know why my Dad decided to be this mean and send us an unsolvable brainteaser as he isn’t normally like this – I can only assume that he is struggling to deal with his isolation during the UK quarantine and decided to vent his frustration on us due to our comparative freedom. We are now wondering if Duncan’s ‘Su-Dunc-o’ is another example of these unsolvable riddles and are treating it with much wariness.

7.9980°S, 125.1519°W (Daily PPJ update) – Sooo before we left I downloaded the coordinates of the weather buoys because I saw someone put them on the French Poly Facebook group but I didn’t *really* pay them much mind because, what are the odds of coming within any meaningful distance of a spec in the ocean? Turns out higher than I thought!! We were hanging out in the cockpit this afternoon, when I suddenly saw the weather buoy for 8S, 125W glide by not 100m to starboard! Now that I’m over the shock I think it’s pretty cool, but man what are the chances…

Also we realised last night that Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Pluto are all visible to the East in a bright cluster – looks really cool, worth keeping an eye out for on your night watch!

Wind has been more stable today at 12-16kts and the swell is gentle if still a bit multi-directional. Expecting big waves to find us tomorrow night so enjoying it while it’s chill and pre-cooking some meals for the coming days. Less than 900nm to go!

8° 05.234’S, 125° 50.022’W (Laura) – Fun fact: there are fleet of weather buoys out here in the Pacific Ocean, which I can only assume are held in place by magic, given then depths of these waters. Before we left Panama, I downloaded the locations of said weather buoys (approximate as they apparently have a range of about 5nm) before we left Panama, but didn’t really pay them much mind as, I figured, what are the odds of coming within any meaningful distance of a speck in the ocean? Turns out higher than I thought!

After lunch we were all hanging out in the cockpit when something suddenly caught my eye. I initially thought it might be a boat, but swiftly realised it was the 8S, 125W weather buoy. It passed no more than 100m to starboard of us. Sooo, that was slightly terrifying! Now that I’m through the worst of the shock, I think its really cool that we saw that out here, but also makes me realise I should not write off chance encounters with objects, no matter how out in the middle of nowhere they are!!

Day 24 – Sat Mar 28th 2020:
8.1879°S, 127.5807°W (Daily PPJ update) – Today we are flying along with 16-18kts and 2m waves pushing us on. Running with it to keep the roll down so tracking a touch N of W. Sunny with scattered cloud banks that bring gusts.

We are down to one pack of frozen tuna left so might have to put the lures out again soon. But, we’re all a little nervous about trying to pull in anything of size in this seaway, so might wait a few more days.

Wishing all a good sailing day!

Day 25 – Sun Mar 29th 2020:
7° 59.339’S, 129 20.951’W (Alec) – As we enter the final stages of this passage and I start to reflect on the similarities and differences with our previous longer sails, the most obvious difference has been the variability of the conditions in terms of wind strength, wind direction, wave height and current. This has made the weather forecasting and routing task a far more important one as there have been clear decision points along the way, and actually this has made the task far more enjoyable as it doesn’t just feel like I’m turning the handle and going through the motions.

I may have unknowingly communicated this feeling to the weather gods as it feels like they have decide to make our final week of the passage the most challenging from a weather perspective. We currently have strongish winds that are changing direction alongside a growing swell, but over the next three days the wind is going to ease far faster than the waves which makes choosing a good sail plan much harder as often the normal option will be unsuitable for the increased movement of the mast due to the wave action. Then the wind may die off entirely, before filling back in for the final 100nm to Nuku Hiva. It will be a good test of everything we’ve learned thus far, but potentially not an enjoyable one as I suspect sleep is going to be harder to come by. At least once we reach Nuku Hiva we can sleep undisturbed for the next 48 hours, during which time we will be quarantined and so wouldn’t be able to visit the shore even if we wanted to.

7.9514°S, 130.2298°W (Daily PPJ update) – Wow it is a beautiful day here at 130W! Not a cloud in the sky and big blue is helping us along with a few following rollers. This is helpful for morale as we just found out Alec’s sister adopted a puppy yesterday and she is taunting us with adorable pictures from afar. Can’t believe I’m missing out on puppy cuddles!

Wind 16-18kts ESE, swell 2-2.5m from the SEish. Plan is to keep flying the twin headsails until this wind blows itself out and then broad reach down to Nuku Hiva. Looks like we’ll be getting in early AM on the 3rd.

Have a good day everyone!

Day 26 – Mon Mar 30th 2020:
8.2203°S, 132.9275°W (Daily PPJ update) – We are getting closer to Nuku Hiva but Neptune still has a few tricks up his sleeve for us. Today the wind has steadily died, and while the swell has eased somewhat, it’s still comparatively large, so the sails haven’t been terribly happy. We’ve tried a few arrangements but currently running under spinnaker, which is a bit slow but seems the more stable.

Wind 8-10kts E, swell 2m SE, patchy clouds and humid.

Day 27 – Tue Mar 31st 2020:
8.4426°S, 134.4274°W (Daily PPJ update) – Well it was an exciting night aboard Serenity First! After a day of very light winds, it filled in a bit and we were cruising along under spinnaker for the first half of the night. But the wind surreptitiously continued to build until at 0400 the spinnaker decided it had had quite enough thank you very much and somehow popped its own tack from the pole. Thankfully it happened at a watch change, so both Alec and I were already on deck and able to react quickly. All hands were soon up to help but we decided it was highly unsociable to re-rig the twin headsails at 4am, so just chucked out the genoa until morning. Never a dull moment!

I have been saving a watermelon for a special occasion and have decided it will make a perfect reward today for sail work in the wee hours. It’s amazing how well these things keep!

Hoping others had a less eventful evening!!

P.s. @Tourterelle: that loaf sounds epic! We shall remember to aim for late morning to come say hello when we see you in Nuku Hiva 🙂 (They wrote about a rather exceptional-sounding coconut loaf they’d baked that day)

Day 28 – Wed Apr 1st 2020:
8° 54.269’S, 136° 23.655’W (Alec) – Realised this morning that our radio silence on this tracker was less than ideal for those following – hopefully our onward progress was reassuring to anyone worried, even though we have slowed down a fair amount.

We’ve all been feeling a bit lethargic aboard Serenity First these last few days, which is probably due to a combination of the increased humidity, the fickleness of the winds that has meant we’ve needed to be much more attentive on watch and had to change sail plans at least twice a day (up from once every 2-3 days previously), and the direction of the waves, which has made sleeping much tougher. Writing that last sentence triggered a memory that made me smile from from our Atlantic crossing, on which our crew of Ballin and Katherine got so fed up of sail changes in the first few days that they set me a hard limit of one sail change per day. I think they were joking but I was never brave enough to risk a mutiny by requesting a second. I would likely have been jettisoned overboard at some point over the last few days if they were with us now.

Rumours have started to swirl again about changes to the situation in the Marquesas, and so we are once again facing uncertainty over whether we will find a positive reception when we reach Nuku Hiva in less than two days time. Thankfully there are cruisers we know arriving there today and tomorrow, who can hopefully provide us with some more clarity. In the meantime, we are trying to enjoy our last few days as much as we can – Bon Iver is on the stereo, the lures are in the water (small ones) and the spinnaker is high in the sky. Hope all of our friends and family around the world are staying safe and are also managing to find some small comforts to keep them smiling.

8.9481°S, 136.6596°W (Daily PPJ update) – Neptune must have heard my mutterings because we’ve had relaxed conditions the last 16 hours or so (wind E 10-12, negligible wind chop, swell probably back down to 1.5m E/ESE). Pootling along under spinnaker and finally put the lures back out! Have had four baby mahi grab the lines but only one big enough to keep. Still very enjoyable!

We are inching ever closer – just 200 nm to go. Expecting to arrive at N H early Friday morning (the 3rd). Crossing fingers, toes and anything else we can find that they’ll let us check in as expected.

Day 29 – Thu Apr 2nd 2020:
9° 00.522’S, 137° 42.924’W (Laura) – Bit of a tough night so far, both mentally and physically, for all of us aboard Serenity First. On the sailing side, we’d expected the wind to stay light overnight, so had the spinnaker up. But, cloud banks have been rolling through with significantly more wind underneath, the first of which forced an emergency spinnaker drop about 10pm. We tried sailing dead downwind under just the mainsail for a few hours, but it proved so rolly and noisy that by midnight we asked Mick (the engine) to step in. Hoping that the morning will bring more settled conditions and we can get the kite back up!

On the mental side, well, the constant back and forth and inconsistency of the French Polynesian government has us near breaking point. After a week or more of hinting that perhaps lifting of some restrictions was on the horizon, an email from our agent this evening bluntly stated that all new arrivals will be asked to sail on to Tahiti (after a brief stop to provision, get fuel and make repairs at Nuku Hiva). So, we are feeling both pretty gutted and frustrated by how much we’ve been messed around. It’s unclear at this stage how long we’ll be allowed to stop for (we have a growing list of critical repairs that may take some time to put right…) or what happens when we get to Tahiti, which is another 6 day’s sail away. We’ll update when we know more.

8.9920°S, 138.5535°W (Daily PPJ update) – Another tricky night for Serenity First in variable winds and waves. Our furlex went kaput a few days ago, so our sail options are curtailed. Had to emergency drop the spinny when the wind picked up around 10pm. Attempted to sail with just the main after that but the banging and rolling got to us eventually so we ended up driving most of the night. Spinny back up first thing this AM though and we have been making great speed while working on catching up sleep. Luckily, by tomorrow morning we should be anchored and can get a proper rest! Only 90nm to go! Thank goodness as our list of major repair needs is getting rather long…

Lures are out again too, really hoping for a last fish to fill the freezer!

8° 54.850’S, 138° 51.640’W (Alec) – After some uneventful days, we’ve packed a lot into the last hour. First off was a visit from what Daniel described as the “Harlem Globetrotter Dolphin pod,” as they spent 30 minutes with us performing some of their best tricks. We got jumps, flops, tail slaps, and more. No matter what is happening aboard, dolphins always lift everyone’s spirits and that was something we all benefited from this afternoon.

As we bid farewell to the last of our acrobatic friends, Camille looked up and spotted our first sign of land for a month – “LAND HO”. It was the uninhabited Fatu Huka, which marks the eastern edge of the Marquesas and means that we only have 70nm left before we reach our anchorage in Nuku Hiva. One night watch left, and seeing as the spinnaker is still happy we figure we will sail it for as long as possible, even if it means a likely middle of the night kite drop. Having done a number of these now, we are far more confident in our abilities, and the boat is so much easier to sleep on under sail that power. Hopefully the next post will be with the anchor down, even if we are not permitted to go ashore.

Day 30 – Fri Apr 3rd 2020:
8.9180°S, 140.1006°W (Daily PPJ update) – We made it! We caught our first sight of land yesterday evening and bee-lined it through the night to arrive to Taiohae at first light this morning. Rain and heavy cloud meant we couldn’t see the island till we were nearly on it, but eventually the imposing mountains emerged from the gloom and we found our way into the bay. A very warm welcome awaited from the cruisers already here and the calm waters made for excellent naps all around once we dropped the hook!

Kevin from Nuku Hiva Yacht Services was very helpful in getting us oriented. We are still awaiting a response from DPAM to know how long we will be allowed to stay here in Nuku Hiva, but it is clear we will be given a date by which we need to leave for Tahiti. Happy to share more details directly for any boats still underway if desired.

For now, we are enjoying the lovely scenery, the buzzing community (conducted all by VHF of course!) and the promise of a full night’s sleep at anchor!!

Coming Up

Next, Alec will share stories from the first half of the passage and his reflections on the good, the bad and the ugly of our Pacific crossing! Then, I will review the second half alongside my own musings and stories of noteworthy moments.