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17th May – 7th June 2005
Watch. Since there is some truth to that adage, reading a day by day account of a three week
crossing would be pretty dull, so instead, here are some of our thoughts and more amusing tales
from the last 21 days.
Easy as…
We are both firmly agreed that this passage was definitely the most peaceful and contemplative
passage we’ve had to date. It all started with the ease with which we left the Galapagos Islands.
After a day’s outing to a nearby volcano, we upped anchor and left. It was as if we were just
popping around the corner, rather than heading across the world’s largest ocean. It was as
simple as that. The one thing we did do though was a quick tour around the anchorage to say
goodbye to a few of the boats we knew, and hoped that we’d bump into them “on the other side”.
The Largest Backyard
To give you an idea of the scale of all that blue on the chart we crossed….
1. The Pacific Ocean covers more than a third of the planet’s surface – as much as the Atlantic,
Indian and Arctic oceans combined.
2. You could drop the entire dry landmass of our planet into the Pacific and still have room for
another continent the size of Asia... Wow!!!
3. For most of the passage there was between 4-5km of water between Skardu’s keel and the
seabed – that’s a lot of ‘deep’ for those sea-monsters to inhabit!
The Zen of Crossing Oceans
With a few long passages behind us now, we are starting to discern certain patterns. It takes
your body 2-3 days to get physically used to its new schedule of 3 hours on, 3 hours off. The
next change then happens after about 5-6 days, when you mentally get into the rhythm of the
journey. After that you enter this certain zen-like state where time doesn’t matter, the days fly by,
you notice yourself staring at sunsets, sunrises, stars and wildlife more than you normally would,
and you don’t really care when you’ll hit land. A genuine sense of inner peace descends – a
commodity of such rare value in today’s frantic modern world, that it is hard to overvalue it’s
worth. Being so far out at sea should be scary, but instead it's incredibly calming, you embrace
the peace and solitude, and there’s nowhere you’d rather be. We never used to understand the
countless stories of sailors who preferred to be at sea rather than return to civilization (Cook,
Drake, Moitessier etc), but with two oceans in our wake, it’s all starting to make sense: simple
life, no deadlines, only yourself to rely on, and most obstacles and problems can be solved with
logic and common sense. Sadly this hypnotic zen-like state usually comes to an abrupt end as
soon as you start approaching land and doing all the normal calculations: if we go x knots, and
we’ve got 327 miles to go, when will we arrive? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not unusual for
sailors to want to stay on board the first day they arrive; they just can’t stand to loose that
wonderful sense of well-being achieved at sea.
Nature and the Elements
Nature works in weird and wonderful ways, as we found out on this trip.
1. Mould – Grows like crazy, on canvas bags, foul-weather gear, leather belts and wallets, but
most insidiously on food! We had to do daily triage on our fruits and vegetables to discover
which were worth keeping. Did you know that a cabbage can cover itself in a black-fur coat in
less than 2 hours?
2. Aquatic Gunk - Even though we were averaging 6.5knots most of the trip, we still managed
to attract a very tenacious collection of marine life on our hull, from the large worm-like barnacles
on our waterline to the grass growing on our transom – now rechristened “the football pitch.”
Needless to say, it’s been great fun trying to clean it all off (see photos below).
3. Weather – Given that Eskimos are supposed to have over 100 different words for snow; it’s
surprising that sailors don’t have more words to describe the sea and the skies: blue sky, grey
sky, black sky, thunderous sky, squally sky etc? There are so many colours and moods.
However it’s articulated, we were very lucky with the conditions we encountered on this trip.
Despite the light winds and sunny skies the first week, we still managed to log some very fast
days. To put our speed into perspective, in 5.5 days we covered the same distance it took us
9.5 days to go from Panama to Galapagos. Furthermore, we managed to log our first 200 mile
day; an unprecedented distance due mostly to a very favourable current. Then things livened up
a bit. We passed through several storm fronts during our second week, where we were kept
busy dodging and sailing through squalls about every hour or so. It’s a wonderful way to ensure
that you don’t fall asleep during your night watch! As strange as it sounds though, the squalls
were rather fun. Despite getting wet – the rain was warm – they were never alarmingly severe
(34 knots, Force 8 was the largest gust) and gave us a chance to get some speed up and surf
down some bigger waves, once even clocking 11.9 knots. We’re not sure if the squalls are less
threatening in the Pacific, or if we've just become more comfortable dealing with them. Given that
we usually didn’t bother waking up the person off-watch for each squall, it’s probably the latter.
Signs of Life
We went one 14 day stretch without making radio-contact with anyone or seeing any signs of
human life, and even then it was only a light on the horizon; hardly enough to bring us out of our
zen-like trance. Similarly, marine wildlife sightings were few and far between, with a couple of
notable exceptions. Early on, we spotted a pod of camera-shy pilot whales, and then probably
one of the most amazing sights on the whole trip: a large ray that jumped clear out of the water
and flipped a somersault just near the boat… not once, but three times in a row! To our surprise
we noticed a good size tuna swimming under our boat one afternoon. The water was so clear
we could see it swimming along just under the surface for at least half an hour, so we tried
tempting it with one of our lures, but it was too smart to take the bait! The one exception to the
scarcity of wildlife was the birds. We had birds flying around us almost every day. What are
they doing so far out at sea, thousands of miles in some cases? Aren't there fish closer to land?
They came in all shapes and sizes. Some, like the little petrels continuously flapped their wings,
and fly a few feet off the waves. You wonder how they can keep it up. Others had larger
wingspans and soared above the waves, scarcely flapping at all unless they had to... clearly the
smarter ones.
Time for Learning
Celestial Navigation - There is a grey wooden box tucked away above the pilot berth, which
for the last 9 months has been daring us to open it up. On this passage we finally stepped up to
the challenge. It is of course the old Russian naval sextant we bought in England before we left.
Not deterred by an old work colleague of his who told him that celestial navigation was a one year
course at the Naval Academy, Mark was the first to tackle the ancient art. We took the heavy
metal sextant out of the box along with all the various books of navigation tables, and instructions
on how to use it. We had been reading the books intermittently for the last few months, and were
hoping that something had sunk in. We worked out when local noon was for our position, and
then around that time both started taking timed noon sights. After some calculations, Mark
worked out that our latitude was only 22 miles off our true latitude - not bad for a first try we
thought, until he spotted some errors in his calculations that put us less than 2 miles away from
our true latitude! To prove it wasn’t a fluke we tried it again the next day and were still only around
2 miles out. Perhaps with a touch too much self-confidence, the following day we tackled the
harder “sun-sight”. After almost 2 hours of calculations, Mark figured out we were 25 miles from
our GPS position. Not great, but in the global scheme of things, that’s practically next door. One
thing it did do though is give us greater appreciation for the navigational skills of the ancient
mariners… what did they do without GPS? We’re now looking forward to using just our sextant
to plot a future passage.
Baking – How could we hope to become men of the 21st century without learning how to bake?
Baking is viewed as a necessity for most world cruisers, but so far we’ve managed to escape it
by finding bakeries and long-life bread, or recruiting talented crew members who know how to do
it; however now with only the 2 of us on board times were-a-changing. Having apprenticed to
Molly McDaniel on the equator-crossing passage, Mark was keen to try out his new found
talents and limited repertoire. On the menu: banana bread (to use up our brown bananas!) and
focaccia. Both turned out so well, that Quintin jumped on the bandwagon a couple of days later
and produced another focaccia loaf and two beautiful wholewheat loaves. We’ve now got
enough flour and yeast on board to bake a hundred loaves of bread. However, as luck would
have it, fresh French baguettes seem fairly easy to come by in French Polynesia. Maybe our
rise to men of the 21st century may take a little bit longer after all.
Equipment Problems
Luckily we didn’t have any life-threatening issues this trip, but we did have a couple of scenarios
that got us thinking.
1. Radar – Our radar mounting has been bent out of shape (probably caught by a flapping sail),
so that the radar now points to the side and downwards, not straight ahead any more…. not very
helpful. A quick mid-ocean inspection up the mast by Mark confirmed that we would have to jury-
rig it until we could get to Tahiti to work on it properly.
2. Batteries – A week into the passage we thought we’d fried our batteries, because they would
not take a charge properly. After thinking through the consequences (no power = no lights, no
GPS, no chart software, no watermaker etc.) we decided to go into “power-saving” mode. By
turning just about everything off except the fridge, it was amazing how much we saved. In fact,
with the solar panels and wind vane, we almost broke even. Fortunately, for some unknown
reason, the batteries appear to be back to normal again.
3. Water - Our watermaker has been a complete result for us, making most of our water on a
daily basis, however one day we noticed that the water was starting to come through the taps
dirty. A quick inspection and some short experiments later showed that our water filter was old
and dirty and the source, rather than the answer, to our problems. We plumbed the filter out of
the system, and hey presto, we have good water again... phew; now to find a replacement water
filter.
Fish
What would a Skardu journal be without tall tales of fierce battles with unfeasibly large fish on the
ocean waves? Well, since we don’t have any of those, we’ll happily spin yarns about the
countless hari-kari-committing flying fish and squid we “caught” every morning instead. Our
finest day found 8 flying fish and 3 squid dried out and arranged along our windward deck: sadly
their dried form didn’t entice us to try eating them, so no sustenance there.
But enough of that; now, to the fish… well, eerrrr, we didn’t actually do that much fishing! It took
us a week to finish our supply of fresh meat, and then we had our line out for all of 1 hour before
we caught a 7lb Mahi-Mahi. We'd already reached "Z" in our list of fish names, so it was time to
start afresh on the "A"s. Thus it was that “Aristotle” was christened before being thrown on the
grill….yum. The funny thing is, after a couple of meals of grilled fish, as delicious as it was,
neither of us felt the desire to do any more fishing for another week, and then when the lines went
back in we didn’t get a bite for days. We hooked a notable catch one night when we forgot that
we’d left our lines out and pulled in one of the weirdest looking creatures we’ve seen: it looked
like one of those made-up animals that lives 5,000ft under water that scientists catch once in a
while. It was an eel-like fish with a long mouth full of sharp teeth... we carefully avoided its teeth,
extracted the hook, and threw it back in. Over the rest of the trip we managed to get up to “C” in
the alphabet: “Boadicea” a 4lb Skipjack Tuna, and “Cassanova” an 8lb Mahi-Mahi: 6 hearty fish
dinners in 3 weeks was just about right!
Food
We’ll after we had talked about our baking skills, would you be surprised to hear that once again
we ate like kings on this passage? Fish was grilled, seared, and even one successful evening
made into Mahi-Mahi fish tacos’ that would rival anything found in Southern California.
Vegetables on the turn were transformed into tasty curries thanks to the “Ru’boy curry” recipe
our friend Dil left us. We had pancakes for breakfast, and fresh baked focaccia with Spanish
Manchego cheese and chorizo for lunch…who says salty sea dogs can’t eat well! Oh yes, and
of course we also had mac n’ cheese with corned beef, and ramen noodles, on occasions
when neither of us felt like playing chef, but we don’t need to dwell on that for too long. Needless
to say our house-rule of “No one leaves Skardu hungry” is still in effect.
Just as important for morale are the little treats that keep us going, especially on the long hours of
night watch alone. An inestimable amount of pleasure is gained from a couple of our precious
Jelly Babies, Liquorice Allsorts, or chocolates – all rationed a few at a time, due to limited stock!
Oh, the small pleasures in life!
Time to Think
Finally, what is the value of this exceptional experience? Well, for a start no access to TV is a
blessing. You realize what a timesink and mind-drainer it is. Instead, we read more, learn about
new things (weather systems, the history of places we visit, celestial navigation etc), and try to be
more creative (writing these journals, editing our photos, and composing the website etc.) With
the luxury of plenty of time to ourselves to think, we both hope to have identified a more balanced
approach to life in the future – who knows if this will last when we get back to civilization!
A Few Statistics
Total Distance by Log (through water): 2,818 Nautical miles
Total Distance by GPS (over ground): 3,065 Nautical miles
Total Passage Time: 20 days, 16 hours, 5 minutes
Total Engine Hours: 57 hours, 45 minutes
Maximum Wind Speed: 34.1 Knots
Maximum Hull Speed: 11.9 Knots
Average Speed Through Water: 5.68 Knots
Average Speed Over Ground: 6.18 Knots
Water Temperature: 27.3 - 29.6 degrees Celcius
_________________________
...and as for 3 weeks growth of Aquatic Gunk on the hull... yuk!!
