85. Preparing to Depart

After the week in the Bahamas and a day long layover in Houston, Eitan and I returned back to SV Sierra Wind in Puerto Vallarta to prepare for the longest ocean crossing in the world without intermediate landfall options. While we were in the Bahamas, our new crew stayed onboard, getting used to boat life. Martin and Simone are a Danish couple, both 28. They had been traveling around Mexico and we met them through Facebook. Although neither of them had any sailing experience, they were quite adventurous and seemed like they would be a good fit for the crossing and travel through French Polynesia, so we invited them onboard.

After getting back to Sierra Wind on a Monday, the weather prediction models indicated our best day to set sail would be the upcoming Friday, giving us just three full days to prepare. We had 4 other sailboats in our group looking to depart around the same time but were avoiding the Friday departure day. Sailing superstition warns its bad luck to start a passage on a Friday. There doesn’t seem to be any other basis for this superstition other than Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Being a superstitious person, I tried my best to convince Eitan to change the date but he wouldn’t budge, since superstition isn’t on the check list of how a boat captain plans a passage.

We had a long list of things to get done before leaving. I was geared up to finish the final provisioning of fresh produce but, while in the Bahamas, we got a message from the crew that the refrigerator didn’t seem to be working. Eitan hired a repair service to evaluate the refrigerator and pray it was something that could be fixed quickly, or else we would be delayed until it was repaired.

Eitan had a couple last minute, ambitious projects he had contracted out, considering we had such a short amount of time. The first was for someone to construct a custom deck box to house a new gasoline generator. In case we run out of diesel or have engine problems, we needed a backup for charging the batteries. Eitan had imported a 2kw generator and we had nowhere to put it, so making a deck box for what little space we had left on deck seemed to be the only option. The second project was to install the old solar panels above the dodger for a little extra solar charging. To do this, we needed two custom stainless frames to attach to the existing stainless supports. By some miracle, we had a working fridge, new deck box, and the additional solar panels hooked up, all before Friday.

With the refrigerator back in working order, Martin and I headed to Costco to stock up on fresh produce and a few other provisions on Thursday. Anything I couldn’t get at Costco, I got at another large grocery store and made Martin sit in the rental car with A/C on full blast to make sure our fresh goods didn’t go bad. It was quite stressful trying to decide how many of each item we needed and where it would fit on the boat. Before shopping, I did my best to make a list of meals and recipes to cook each week and guessed at how long each would sustain us. The recipes needed to be a combination of quick and easy snacks during rougher seas and other more hearty and complex meals to boost morale during calmer conditions. In addition to four weeks of food, we also needed to provision for two extra weeks in case we were delayed for some reason due to lack of wind or unforeseen circumstances. On top of this, we had heard that some things in French Polynesia were incredibly expensive or could be hard to find so we needed to bring as much canned and dry food we could possibly fit onboard.

Martin and I got back to the boat after dark and Eitan and Simone met us with a dock cart, helping us shuttle the food back to the boat. At this moment I had a horrible, dreadful feeling that all of this food could not possible fit on the boat. I kicked myself for provisioning too much at Costco since you always end up with more of an item than you really need. I was only planning on getting four heads of lettuce but Costco only sells packs of six. Did we really need two liters of mayonnaise or a giant jar of fancy nut mix? We all got to work organizing and reorganizing and removing as much packaging as possible, since that’s just trash that we didn’t need to carry with us. After three hours, and a minor mental breakdown, we managed to fill the fridge, pantry, food drawer, and space below the table. The toilet paper, paper towels, and three Costco-sized bags of tortilla chips got vacuum packed and put in the dinghy. By some miracle, we managed to get everything stowed away.

It was a crazy couple of days getting ready for departure and finishing up boat projects but I am grateful for this distraction. Only occasionally did it hit me that we would be departing the following morning. In all honesty, I was scared. Really scared! Up until this point, the longest passages we had done were on our initial trip down the Pacific side of Baja and across the Sea of Cortez, and none of these were particularly enjoyable experiences. My greatest anxiety was that once we left, there was no turning around. Normally, if it’s too rough, or conditions weren’t as forecast, we could go back to where we came from or only had to endure the adverse conditions for a few hours or a couple of days. How would I mentally survive for four weeks in the middle of the ocean? Asking myself “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” didn’t bring me any relief as I thought of being stranded at sea. It’s not like starting a new job where the worst thing that might happen is that your boss turns out to be a jerk or you embarrass yourself on your first day.

It’s safe to say I didn’t sleep well that night.