Wks 81-82: Pacific pt. 2

The second half of our voyage continued to provide challenges, bringing periods of inconsistent wind and confused swell as well as increasingly worrying reports about the state of the world and what we’d find on arrival to Nuku Hiva. But, we enjoyed some fabulous highlights including meeting another sailing boat, marvelling at some incredibly clear and vibrant night skies during the new moon and solving a few particularly difficult brain teasers.

First Mate’s Log

Day 15: Officially reached halfway!! Played the customary Bon Jovi, and refilled the snack box (maybe the most exciting bit). Stayed productive creating battery water by doubly RO-ing through the watermaker and then did a mid-ocean battery top up since they were surprisingly low. Happy sailing days on a very pleasant beam reach.

Days 16-18: Two pleasant days beam reaching with following current of about a knot in pleasant weather, but it couldn’t last forever and by day 18 we started tracking south out of our lovely current to get better wind. Enjoyed a very pleasant passage birthday, with cake and Disney movies :). But COVID news continued to dribble in, souring the mood and increasing our uncertainty over what we’d experience on arrival in the Marquesas. Distracted ourselves with boat jobs – fixing holes in the spinnaker, cleaning myriad bird droppings from the solar panels, and… laundry!

Day 19: Ate the last of the un-frozen tuna! Which means we allowed ourselves a break from tuna for a night, after 9 days of eating it for two meals a day. Heard from another rally boat that just arrived in Nuku Hiva that the whole country of French Polynesia has just started a 14-day quarantine. But life is still good out here, broad reaching comfortably and enjoying incredible bioluminescence in the water at night.

Days 20-22: A few days of changeable winds and a touch of rolly swell makes for lots of sail changes but the crew are now getting very slick at reefing. More importantly, we heard another vessel on the radio! Alkemi (another Pacific Puddle Jump rally boat) hailed us as they were catching us up from behind and soon were sailing within a mile. We had a fun catch up with their crew and had all but shook hands on a deal to trade fresh bread for beer when the skippers (perhaps wisely) vetoed it given the bouncy swell conditions. A real highlight to see another boat!

Day 23: Reached the 3/4 mark. Solved two pesky brain teasers (and discovered the third was impossible anyway). Made an emergency genoa furlex fix, and, oh yeah, nearly hit a weather buoy. Enjoying the spectacular night sky we are getting lately – right now you can see Jupiter, Mars and Saturn clearly in all lined up. Alec gave me a lesson on the constellations when we handed over watches at 4am, which was particularly special (see story of the weeks). Still sailing along well.

Days 24-25: Flying along in good wind with following waves at 2m. Still deciding if we want to put the lures back out. Expecting the wind to die on us soon though, making some tough planning for the skipper. Also, Alec’s sister just adopted a puppy and we are uber-envious.

Days 26-28: The forecast was unfortunately correct and the wind eased off, but not the waves, making for tricky sailing. Found a compromise under spinnaker that seemed the happiest for us and the boat, until the spinnaker decided to unhook itself in a gusty period one night – probably means its time to take it down!! Broke out the watermelon I’d been saving to revive crew spirits. Neptune then thankfully brought some more even, relaxed conditions and we caught four small mahi (though only one big enough to keep).

Day 29: Inconsistent wind and crap conditions overnight, but evened out by morning and we had another great spinnaker day. As the sun started to set, an acrobatic pod of dolphins put on a great show off Serenity’s bow and then… LAND HO! Camille spotted the Easternmost of the Marquesas islands (Fatu Huka)! What a surreal feeling to see land again after a month of just ocean.

Day 30: Pounded by wind and swell the final six hours of our approach, but soon Nuku Hiva appeared through the clouds. We made it! Dropped the hook and enjoyed a warm welcome (by VHF only of course) from many cruisers in the bay. Feeling pretty pumped for a great night’s sleep!!

Story of the Crossing (2nd Half)

Even after two years of sailing I have to admit I had woefully poor knowledge of the night sky heading into this passage. So, I was excited that Daniel brought along his sextant as learning to use it would necessarily bring increased understanding of the stars and how they move. I owe particular gratitude to Alec for reading the celestial navigation books we have and figuring out how to identify suitable stars, plus finding an iPad app to do the long and complicated calculations for us before we left. Without this we would have been up a creek without a paddle!

A passage is always made more exciting by a bit of friendly competition, so Alec, Daniel and I decided to compete with the sextant in two categories:

1. Best single shot (i.e. the calculated position that was closest to the actual position)
2. Best overall accuracy (i.e. lowest average distance between calculated position and actual position across all shots taken)

The set up was that each day we would rotate who’s turn it was to use the sextant. We decided to use stars instead of the sun because it is a little bit less work and it was a fun excuse to learn more about the stars. The trick though with navigating by the night sky is that you need to take measurements on at least two different bodies to be able to calculate your position. The window to take measurements is relatively short because you need enough light to be able to see the horizon (what you’re measuring to) but it also needs to be dark enough that some stars are out. So we would get really only maybe 30 minutes of the right conditions per day (that is assuming the sky was clear enough to see anything at all!), right at dusk.

Alec and I did some practice sessions on land in the marina in the last days before we set sail, which had allowed us to identify an arc of stars that would all be good first options to use for navigation, and over the first half of the passage we slowly built our skills and understanding. By the second half, I delighted in watching the stars start to come out each evening and found both comfort and joy in knowing them.

Venus (okay, I know not actually a star… but planets are also great for navigation!) was always the first celestial body to make an appearance as the sun set and very easy to spot being so incredibly bright. This made it an obvious choice for one of our two objects to measure, but using Venus does have a downside. As it is so close to Earth, it is also very fast moving compared to basically everything else in the sky, meaning it is much harder to get an accurate measurement of it. But, despite that, we almost always ended up using it because it was so otherwise convenient.

Second to arrive was always Sirius, the brightest actual star in the sky and therefore also easy to spot. Unfortunately, the orientation of Sirius to our position at that time of day meant we couldn’t use it to measure because it was directly overhead (a body can’t be more than 70 degrees above the horizon or the calculations get very inaccurate). But it was followed shortly in appearance by Canopus, which was both low enough to use and well positioned for visibility on the port side of the boat. As such, Venus and Canopus were usually the two we would end up going for.

BUT, there were lots of other options! Alec was the most adventurous of us and would often take one or both of his shots on other stars. He even once did a dawn shot using Jupiter, which we were all very impressed by! The arc of stars I mentioned above (the visible part for us of the “Winter Circle”) could be found tracing outwards from Sirius, and included Procyon, Pollux (the brighter twin of Castor, also part of the Gemini constellation), and Capella – all good options depending on the angle we were sailing and the position of the clouds. Another good one was Betelgeuse, which is one of Orion’s feet and therefore easy to track down.

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I have really loved now being able to look up at the sky and actually recognise it. It gives you a sense of place, which is wonderfully comforting out in the endless blue of the ocean. This culminated for me in a particularly perfect night, when there was no moon, zero clouds and for once no haze. I was finishing up my watch, which would normally hand over to Alec at 4am. He got up a little early though and invited me to sit on the coach roof so he could show me some more parts of the sky. First, he pointed out Jupiter, Saturn and Mars that were all incredibly bright and right next to each other, forming an unusual, fleeting “constellation” to our East. We could also now clearly see the Southern Cross, a new one for us now we were in the Southern hemisphere! Then Alec walked me through the visible constellations that correspond to the signs of the Zodiac. My favourites were Scorpio and Sagittarius, which were both huge and complex constellations – lots of fun to look at! It was an incredibly special experience and for me the highlight of the whole crossing.

I digress – back to the competition, the results are in! The map at the top of the post plots our calculated alongside our actual positions. Blue points are Alec’s, yellow are Daniel’s and green are mine. You have to zoom in a ways before you acutally see the two different dots corresponding to each shot! The good news is this means we were all very accurate. Surprisingly so, to me. I honestly thought we’d be rubbish having had so little practice, but it turns out we would all make okay pre-GPS navigators :). In total, we each managed 6 shots (a number of days didn’t work because of clouds or other factors), of which we were allowed to throw out our worst one (helpful as I had a shocker early on!). The winners are:

1. Best single shot: Laura at 1.12nm (gap between actual position and calculated), obtained right towards the end and narrowly unseating Alec’s 1.39nm that had stood the majority of the passage
2. Best overall accuracy: Alec with an incredible 2.51nm (for reference both Daniel’s and my averages were over 4nm!), and extra kudos for using lots of different stars

Go us! An honourable splitting of the prizes :).

Parting Thoughts on the Pacific Crossing

In his last post, Alec covered a lot of the elements that made the Pacific crossing both easier and hard than the Atlantic crossing. But, I have a few more of my own to throw into the mix!

One aspect of life that made the Atlantic very challenging was the difficulty of basic tasks and the general lack of comfort. Some of that was due to difference in conditions (bigger wind and waves on the Atlantic), but a lot of it was down to better preparation and new ways of working that really transformed the experience.

I’m pleased to say we learned a lot from our Atlantic run and one of the major changes we implemented off the back of that was to move out of the forepeak and set up the starboard side aft cabin as home for the passage. In any kind of seaway, the forepeak is bouncy, and, with no lee cloths, there is far too much space to roll around in. We’d tried to keep the front as our cabin on the Atlantic and suffered (particularly Alec) with poor sleep the whole time. We did MUCH better on the Pacific in the aft cabin! Sleep is literally tier one on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs so its no surprise that improving it made a big difference to the quality of our passage.

We also did better with our galley planning, another learning taken from the Atlantic. We made sure that any recipe on the list for the crossing was one we’d tried before, knew we liked and were confident could be made in a seaway. And I’d taken more time to think about long-lasting foods and the best storage practices, which meant we could still have fresh food even in week four (top tips: onions in ventilated boxes in the bilge and recipes that use pumpkins – they last forever!). We were also smarter about packing “back up meals” for when the weather was bad or we were feeling too tired to cook. And we had WAY better snacks. I’m especially proud of the snacks cupboard. Honestly we ate incredibly well the whole way through. As a result, our digestive systems were happier and we kept our energy up even through four long weeks.

Then, possibly most importantly, adding the watermaker was a true game changer. I don’t think I appreciated just how stressful it had been to not only have a finite amount of water on the Atlantic but also to have lost some to a leak. The Pacific couldn’t have been more different. We knew we’d need to run the engine at least every other day for power, and we typically made water at the same time to make the most of that. I think we literally arrived to Nuku Hiva with full water tanks! It was incredible – it meant we could shower regularly (feeling clean is a major stress-reliever for me), didn’t worry about dishes or using too much cooking… it was a whole category of stress entirely removed. Thank you, thank you, thank you again to Alec for spending so much time finding and installing the watermaker!!

Finally, I’d also add that another year of experience under our belt, both in sailing and in learning to take the ups and downs of this life in stride, was a bigger help than at least I’d appreciated beforehand. We’d done a major crossing before, so there were fewer unknowns. We trust each other more; I’m a much better sailor and I know Alec is a more confident skipper. We’re better at balance, too. For example, this time we understood just how huge and stressful a role the skipper’s is, so we took as much other responsibility off Alec’s plate as possible and the stress load was much more evenly distributed as a result. That means, we’re a much better team.

But, real talk – the main reason I know that the Pacific was easier than the Atlantic for me is that I had zero instances of bawling in the shower (and I took a LOT more showers, so had ample opportunity). That might sound overly dramatic, but its true. Not once on the Pacific did I panic or break down (just a few tears once or twice when the weather was being particularly unkind). I’m proud of that, because this is not easy stuff. That was a HUGE ocean we just crossed! It makes me feel like we can really do anything we put our minds to and that is a very nice feeling to have :).

To counter my rose-tinted view above, it is undeniable that the COVID crisis dampened our experience dramatically. What was especially hard was the inconsistency in the reports we received, in particular from our destination Nuku Hiva. One day someone would suggest we’d be chucked on the first flight home from Tahiti and other days someone else would say we’d be able to check in normally and cruise the islands almost immediately. So our emotions were permanently on a rollercoaster. Some days I was a bit nervous to even check my email, afraid of what new, unexpected turn things might have taken. By the second half of the crossing, it was clear that our arrival in the Marquesas would not be the same relief and reward that we’d expected, and that definitely made it harder to muster the energy to tackle the difficulties of passage as fully as we might have liked. Unsurprisingly, the mood on board was subdued as a result. So, while the Pacific was undoubtedly easier than the Atlantic in my eyes, it is tinged with a little sadness because we lost a lot of the joy I think we would otherwise have experienced had we not been worrying about what would happen next. Having said that, I’m still really glad we did it and exceptionally proud of how far we have come!!

What was it really like when we got to Nuku Hiva? Well, that’s a subject for next week!