Finally: Success!  Wednesday, 28/06/2023

Twenty-eight days, seven hours and forty-five minutes. At 3:30pm on Tuesday 27th we arrived in French Polynesia, and are anchored in the Bay of Taiohae on Nuku Hiva. What a voyage – it really feels like a long time ago that I left Costa Rica on the 30th of May.

All went well – in fact we made it in less than the thirty days which would have seemed a good result. This was in spite of the trade winds at times proving to be very fickle – the wind light and its direction very variable, which doesn’t make sailing easy. So overall it was a combination of several pretty slow days with some very rapid ones when the trades were blowing as they should at this time of year.

From Golfito in Costa Rica we covered 3,902 nautical miles (4,487 land miles/7,180 kilometres). The direction was very much west: from 83 to 140 degrees longitude, but we also travelled over a thousand miles south, from latitude 8 degrees north to almost 9 degrees south. An obvious highlight was crossing the equator, just north of the Galápagos Islands. Compared with my Atlantic crossing, this Pacific journey was a lot faster. Covering 2,600 nautical miles of Atlantic took 24 days, an average speed of 107.5 miles a day; covering 3,900 miles of Pacific took 28 days at an average 137.8 miles a day. It was a relatively fast voyage. 

Traversing the Pacific really feels like a challenge. It is empty. There are just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles of nothing. Absolutely fascinating – it is hard to think of anywhere where you could be more alone. I saw a ship the night after I passed the Galapagos, on June 7th. I did not see another until last Sunday, the 25th. That’s 18 days. 

Amusingly, the first ship in all that time actually came right up to me: it was a small French warship (a corvette I think). No idea what it was doing a good 300 miles east of the Marquesas. On a loudhailer they asked me to make radio contact. Just wanted my details – country of domicile, home port, origin on this voyage, destination, was I carrying any weapons, etc. etc. They called themselves “French Warship”. They were very pleasant. I think they must have had the information I’d supplied online to the French Polynesian authorities before I departed, and were simply comparing my answers with it for consistency. It was all quite surreal – this dark brown, very modern French ship and Manuka, together in an empty ocean. 

What I did see were birds. What amazing creatures they are: in the middle of nowhere a bird suddenly appears, very often circling the boat once or twice before doing a bit of fishing, then flying off. Occasionally they would come down and sit on the boat for a bit. They are usually solo; perhaps they are the renegades of their bird community. A bit like me I suppose. As for the sea, lots of flying fish, and typically you’re throwing one of two dead ones overboard in the morning – they fly into the cockpit at night, perhaps attracted by the light. Apart from that, nothing: no other boats, no whales, no dolphins (there were a lot of dolphins up until the Galapagos, then strangely none after). It really is empty out there.

I think I coped well with this long spell of being alone. At times, the days felt monotonous – every day ends up being very much the same. But I distracted myself well by reading (17 books in 28 days!). And I found that as time passed I could sit and look at the sea, the waves in particular, for an hour or two at a time. It’s a rhythm thing I think: in the first few days you don’t have it, but after a time you become attuned to the pace and the feel of the ocean, and then it’s easy to sit and look at it, become absorbed by it. The night skies are superb too, studded with so many stars. 

So I had no difficulty managing the 28 days – at no time did I feel despondent, or even lonely. (But before you think I’m on my way to becoming a hermit: I’m not. I did think about whether I could permanently be alone, and the answer is no, I wouldn’t want to be! That said, I think something has changed in me – I think I have become better able to tolerate solitude. Which is a good thing I think – it makes you stronger). Although this trip was longer, it was easier than the shorter Atlantic crossing, I suppose because I’d done it before. I knew what to expect, which makes a difference.

The one thing in the back of your mind is always the possibility of some sort of serious damage to the boat. Happily – having had my damage at the beginning, forcing me to turn back – nothing serious went wrong. Some small damage to the foresail’s roller furler, but otherwise nothing broke. A great relief! At times we were in heavy seas, but everything held up well, including me! I didn’t damage myself either – no cuts, no heavy bruising!

Ironically, the worst conditions experienced were probably those on the final day, coming into the Marquesas. The wind reached 28 knots at one point, with waves well over 3 metres. Very rough indeed, albeit nothing to worry about. But it did make dropping the mainsail difficult as I prepared to enter the fairly narrow entrance to the bay. With the boat gyrating, the sail of course didn’t come down nicely, so I had to go up to the mast and, while hanging on with one arm, haul it down properly with the other (I did wear my safety harness – in fact, every time I went out of the cockpit I did. You do not want to go overboard when you are sailing alone). 

I do feel pleased that I’ve done it. I’m now a good halfway across the Pacific, and I’ve covered the difficult half. Going on west from here is relatively easy: there are island groups, and although distances are substantial between them, it’s not more than a few days sailing. Easy in comparison. I’ve written this on the evening of my arrival, and at 9pm I’m feeling very tired. It will be lovely to sleep undisturbed, instead of getting up a few times in the course of the night!

A post script, written on Wednesday evening. After checking in with the police here, I bumped into a couple of young Germans and a Polish girl who I’d met back in Shelter Bay, Panama. It was a happy reunion! But what they told me was sobering. Friends of theirs on another boat were also crossing, five days’ sail behind them, in the middle of the Pacific. And these people hit a whale – and sank. They spent a day and a night in their lifeboat, before being picked up by a fishing boat dispatched by the Peruvian authorities, which then transferred them to a cargo ship. Unbelievable. It does bring home the danger of being on the high seas: there’s nothing you can do to prevent something like that happening. As always in life, it’s important to be lucky. The fact that it took the nearest boat a good 24 hours to reach them shows how few boats there are in mid-Pacific.

I shall post again in the next few days about Nuku Hiva – this post is long enough already! But to end:

“In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set off in five leaky ships, in a brave but seriously underfunded operation, to find a western route [to the East Indies]. What he discovered was that between the Americas and Asia was a greater emptiness than anyone had ever imagined Earth had room for: the Pacific Ocean.” (Bill Bryson: At Home)

The seas contain 97% of the earth’s water. The Pacific holds 51.6% of that, and is larger than all the earth’s land masses put together.