Look at How Far We’ve Come

We had a really straightforward checkout process out of Mexico, and got our last bits of paperwork finalized and then we were ready to go the next day. We left on Saturday the 22 of February at 8:30 in the morning. The day was pretty calm and sunny and we had a chance to call a few family members before we headed far offshore. 

The first few days of any passage are always a little lumpy and bumpy, as you get into the rhythm of the boat and your passage routine. For us, there was a magic turning point at day three when everyone started feeling better and more confident and comfortable on the boat. 

We were able to sail a lot of miles those first days and even made a personal best mileage in one day of 151 nautical miles. Not bad for a 45-year-old boat! 

The first few days were mostly all of us getting used to being on the boat full-time, ironing out a few systems and trying to have some fun. We had set up a nice afternoon routine of a cockpit happy hour together. We would find some kind of special drink (sometimes Matt and I would have an alcoholic beverage, sometimes we wouldn’t - it depended on the day), and maybe some chips or nuts or chop up a fruit and just be together in the cockpit. You’d be surprised how much you don’t see each other on a boat as everyone kind of goes into their own survival mode And you end up spending a lot of time alone. So I really treasured our family happy hours together. We started listening to Sherlock Holmes Short Stories together and that was always fun.

What surprised all of us was that we saw birds of all sorts every day we were out at sea, even when we were 1500 miles from shore. We weren’t expecting that, but it was neat. We saw a few freighters, but really not much action on the water. We have been used to keeping a sharp eye out while we’ve been on the Pacific coast, but it really felt like it was us all alone on the sea out there. 

Oh but we got a good few dolphin visits! And we even some some pilot whales. 

The boat handled really well throughout the whole journey, without any major failures. We had one night of really rocky waves when the auto pilot chain fell off (of course it was in the middle of the night!) But luckily, Matt thought ahead and had installed a back up auto-pilot that was ready to go. Thank goodness for that!

The middle part of our passage was probably the toughest, and we called it “rock ‘n’ roll town“. It was just constant rocking and rolling for about 700 miles, or five straight days. You’d be surprised what you get used to! Life was a little difficult, but we really did get used to it and we just accepted our fate for a little while.

As is with most sailing journeys, everything can change pretty quickly, and soon enough, we were in much calmer, smoother seas. This was the only time I came close to tears, as it was such a relief to just be in the boat and not constantly bracing side to side. 

This was as we got closer to the doldrums and the equator. We had all been looking forward to this, partly for the break from the big waves and also meaning that we were well over halfway. It was really fun to celebrate together the halfway mark and then a couple days later to have a fun equator party.

Then it was just a matter of running the motor through the doldrums. The first day or two was nice, as the seas were really flat and we had nothing to do, but get through the day, but then the heat turned up. Some days were so incredibly hot that we were all constantly rinsing ourselves off the back of the boat just to try and stay cool. The clouds at the equator were the cutest and fluffiest I’ve ever seen, and the water the bluest - but it was hot. The water temp was 29 degrees and it got close to 40 degrees in the boat sometimes. 

It wasn’t long before we started feeling some wind again, knowing that we were getting close to leaving the doldrums, and making an angle for French Polynesia. We had a couple days of on again off again, motoring and sailing as we could see our miles click down to zero and our arrival. 

I found it really interesting to watch the kids get excited about French Polynesia like they hadn’t been before. Maybe it was being trapped on the boat with nothing else to think about for three weeks or maybe they genuinely were more excited for something new.They were both happy to stay in Mexico and didn’t quite see why we wanted to leave to French Polynesia, so it’s nice to have them on the same tack as we are. 

We had all taken a bet when we left Mexico on how many days it would take us to get here, and Matt was often saying “anything under 25 days would be amazing!” And here we are making it in 21 days and a few hours. 

I’ll chalk that up to decent weather and very good navigation from Captain Matt. We were lucky to have a bit of land help to from some experienced sailors we’ve met along the way, and that was really great to toss some ideas around with them from land too.

As we’re approaching the island of Hiva Oa, I think we’re all feeling proud and excited and maybe a little bit anxious to start this new chapter of our adventure. This has been a long time coming, and I honestly can’t believe we’ve made it this far. There has certainly been moments when we wanted to turn around and go home, but I’m really grateful we’ve stuck it out. Look how far we’ve come!