Here are a few things you can find in the middle of the Pacific ocean:
- Barnacles
- Hot weather
- Some areas without wind
- Some areas with wind
- Good weather data (shocking)
- Great sailing!
- Sharks
Number 5 in particular shaped a great ocean passage with an unexpected landfall at the terminus.
I know – I’m terrible at posting to this blog – but despite the long silence all is well. Kuaka is still afloat and I had a good long wander across the eastern Pacific Ocean to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas (the unexpected landfall).
Here are some of the details:
May 1st found Kuaka with just not-yet-lonely old me aboard for the first time in a long while, clearing out with Mexican customs from La Paz. After some challenges involving dinghies that apparently don’t exist, I had a good sail in 15-20kt southerlies which died, came from the northeast and came back from the southwest. I anchored that night initially near La Ventana, and then moved around at dark to Bahia de los Muertos once the wind came back from the NW.
The next morning I headed south again – not sure if I would stop for the night at Los Frailles or keep going. After a beautiful afternoon of sailing with the big code zero and main I decided to keep on going. I had an odd afternoon experience of passing a sailboat, just south of Los Frailles, sailing with nobody on deck or responding to the radio. If I hadn’t changed Tom’s course (Tom is the windpilot self steering) I would have run right into him. In retrospect, I probably could have gotten closer and tried to raise someone with the air horn. Only a few weeks later did I figure out that it’s an instagram / tik-tok famous singlehander headed to French Polyensia. As of this posting I think that he’s still out there floating around!
I continued on through a very busy shipping lane, finally getting to the northerlies with 20-25 knots of super sailing all night. By morning the Baja Peninsula had sunk below the horizon.
Over the next week the wind slowly died, the temperature increased, and my daily runs got shorter and shorter. I still had flying fish on deck though, and caught a nice little Tuna. My sister Molly made a wonderful singlehanded sailor’s advent calendar (something she also did for a friend when we sailed around the pacific 20+ years ago). That kept my spirits up.
I talked to a ship that I saw on AIS and learned about their back and forth trips from Japan to Peru, picking up iron ore. The chief navigation officer, who is from China, reported that all that driving back and forth could get a little bit boring. I only physically saw two ships between Mexico and the Marquesas, and both were uncomfortably close. The second one changed course to come about 2nm behind me, but I could never raise them on the radio. The first one was the Dole Pacific, which we had also seen off San Diego.
Despite trying to avoid motoring I ended up with dead calm: water temperatures up around 90, air temperature in the mid 90s and not cooling much at night, and no wind showing up anytime soon in the model forecasts. It was time to fire up the motor. I ended up motoring about 100 hours – or 3+ days, between Mexico and the Marquesas. Almost all of it was done with the air temp around 95 degrees and often with heavy squally weather. The ITCZ (doldrums – hot and no wind) is hands down the most miserable place I’ve ever been. Just the water temperature (shown below with pink being awfully hot) is a good indication of this.
The worst part was the slatting of the sails with large, confused seas and not a breath of wind. When the wind did come it was up to about 50 knots, and from every which way in dark little mean squalls. One night I woke up with the boat thrown over on her side in a strong gust, despite motoring with 2 reefs in the main in a dead calm 30 minutes earlier – not a blip on the horizon. More often there were a few large squalls zipping around, making it hard to sleep.
Finally, after about 1200 nm, I got wind. I got quite a good bit of wind, but from the SW – not an ideal direction. The sailing was great though with Kuaka sailing at 7-8 knots close hauled. The pounding was less than great, but I was just happy to be moving.
At this point I had watched the weather in the SE pacific closely for the past 2 months. This mostly looked like me watching large low-pressure systems come further and further north. Then I would refresh the screen to see if the lows went away. Then refresh again. You get the idea. Most years this weather pattern alright, since my aim was to head to Chile at about 40 degrees south. I knew that I would have weather strongly influenced (dominated) by southern ocean fronts and systems from about 25-30 degrees to 40 degrees south. What I was seeing instead was that these systems were coming all the way up as far north as 15-20 degrees south. This heavily influences both the SE tradewinds in the eastern part of the ocean and the last 25-30 degrees (at minimum 1500-2000 nm) of my passage. Also – when comparing the forecast wind to buoy and ship reports of observed wind, I saw that the models were routinely mis-forecasting direction / timing and that the wind speed was usually 15-30 knots stronger than the forecast had estimated. Hmmm – did I really want to go to Chile that badly? I kept sailing south and had good wind, so at least I was pretty happy! I also kept refreshing the weather files thanks to Elon.
Ocean sailing is really good for pondering. You can ponder all sorts of things. Should I put in a reef? (yes). Is the new Taylor Swift album good? (no comment). Is that a ship on the horizon? (no) Should I read another book? (yes) Should I turn right and sail to French Polynesia?
This last one took a lot of pondering, but eventually I tacked and headed West. It seemed like the right decision then, and it has only seemed more like the right decision since then. The weather in the SE pacific continued to see large lows coming far north and the SE Pacific High had failed to fully develop. This may have had something to do with El Nino, odd ocean patterns, or just being too late in the season and pushing against the beginning of the austral winter.
Regardless, I turned right for paradise and the wind gods smiled on me. Kuaka and I had 5 of the best days of sailing in my life. The first day was something like 186 nautical miles (a 7.75 knot average speed) and every day for the next 4 was either 178 nm or 179 nm. For Kuaka, singlehanded, going to windward, that was pretty dang good. Tom steered beautifully and all I did was take reefs in and out. The picture below is from before I tacked, but gives you an idea.
Eventually the trades sort of petered out, leaving me becalmed again. The forecast had wind showing up in about 48 hours and the ocean was glassy. I eventually took down almost all of the sails and slept most of the night. It was my first sleep over 2 hours since leaving Mexico about 2.5 weeks before.
The wind came back, but never as strong or as steady as those first days in the SE tradewinds. The boat also kept feeling slower and slower. I wrote things in my journal like “it feels like I’m dragging a bunch of buckets,” and “this feels like driving a car with the parking brake on” or “this is like riding a bike with flat tires.” “Do I feel like I’m going slower because I’m running short on yogurt?” You get the idea.
What had actually happened was that, during my wonderful sleeping, gooseneck barnacles had fastened on to the bottom of the boat. Eventually they filled every thru hull (water intake) to the point where neither the head would flush or the galley sink pump saltwater. Luckily, I kept running the engine for a little bit every 5 days or so and the engine cooling water intake did stay open. With Kuaka under full sail and pushing hard I could get her to just do 5 knots, maybe 5.5 or 6 if I really pushed. And push I did, at 5 knots.
The distance to French Polynesia continued to decrease and I kept just enough wind to make good distances every day. With the barnacles getting worse and less and less wind, my ETA continued to push further out. I gave up guessing on how many more days I had to sail. There are a lot of good books on my E-reader and I wasn’t close to running out of water or food. Some of my solar panels had stopped working due to cracks that formed in a few squalls, but that wasn’t much to worry about. My biggest concern was the row of Red footed boobies that would take up residence on the port rail and poop all over the boat, including on my solar panels, cockpit and Elon (the starlink antenna). It took physical whacking with a boat hook to dislodge them.
I got so I could recognize the winged menaces by the plumage. A few were juvenile and even more brazen than the rest. The photo above was from when I thought they were still sort of neat. By day 5 or 6 of the booby invasion the entire boat reeked of guano and an oily mass of bird poop, flying fish, squid, and feathers caked poor Kuaka’s entire port side. They were company though and rather photogenic. And then one day they all left. 3 stalwarts stuck around. The next morning they were gone too – leaving me wondering about what storm might be brewing. Here they are at sunset. The next morning they took off as well and left me with a boat and sails caked in poop. The storm never materialized.
Just a few days later, following a beautiful sunset, I spotted the island of Hiva Oa at first light. I had considered a bunch of options for where to go once I turned right, including heading straight to Alaska, Hawaii, Tahiti, or Raiatea, but the Marquesas seemed to offer the most options and were the closest.
With the wind dying and the possibility of another night at sea, close to land with almost no chance of sleep, I motored the last 20 nm to anchor with a large number of other cruising boats at the clearance port on Hiva Oa.
The next day I walked into town to clear in with the Gendarmerie in Atouna. I tested my highschool french and it seemed to work. I was officially back on land after 31 days at sea, a bit over 4000 nautical miles, and a great passage. The distance sailed was just a few hundred miles less than what I had anticipated to Chile.
I stayed anchored on Hiva Oa for 2 nights before heading over to the neighboring island of Tahuata. What a squally, beautiful island paradise.
The barnacles were as bad as feared and I spent the better part of a day scraping them. The next day, when I went to finish the job I found that tiny crabs had eaten almost all of the remaining barnacles from the bottom. At their worst, the longest barnacles were about 3-4″ long and when motoring, I found that Kuaka burned about 1.5 gallons of diesel per hour to go 5 knots, when she can usually motor at 5 knots on .4 gallons per hour, or 6.5 knots on .8 gallons per hour. Barnacles are a worse menace than boobies.
Turning right and heading to paradise (the south pacific) will certainly change our trip this next year. It’s not what we had planned, but we always knew that the plan was something to deviate from and would change as we went. We needed the plan to get us off the dock. I am increasingly fond of the sayings that “sailors plans are written in the sand at low tide” and “you can have timelines or destinations, but not both”. Whoever said those things might have tried sailing to Chile in May / June during the end of an El Nino.
In a lot of ways, the change of plans feels like going from the bottom of a mountain, where you need to climb all the way up it before you can ski down, to the top of a mountain, where the Pacific islands are generally downwind from us. The passage was a great experience, and I took a recreationally long route to French Polynesia, fulfilling my interest in a long solo passage, and leaving me excited for more sailing. In the meantime, Hiva Oa was an entertaining place! This is the Aranui 5 coming in – the supply / cruise ship for the outer FP islands.
More soon, but Kuaka and I are safe and sound and will do a better job blogging in the future.