Our last morning in Makemo was an early one as we prepared to depart. I jumped in the water to help retrieve the anchors and prevent them from wrapping on any rocks or coral as they were pulled in. Ideally, we would exit the Makemo pass at the slack tide, but since our window to …
By Day 24 we had less than 300 miles left to go and it felt like we were approaching the finish line. Making 100 miles a day seemed doable given the forecast, so we expected to make landfall within a few days. Since we ran out of fuel in the main tank back in the …
Now having been three weeks at sea, and after running out of fuel in the main tank, followed by 16 hours of bobbing around in the doldrums, we finally got the wind we were praying for. On Day 22 we found ourselves with a sustained 20 knots of wind and a building swell on the …
After weeks of watching the latitude dropping towards 0-degrees, it was strange to see the numbers going back up again, but in the southern direction. We were officially across the equator and heading into the southern hemisphere, one degree at a time. Despite being right on the equator, the temperatures constantly surprised me. I expected …
After two weeks of uncomfortable conditions, we had finally entered the doldrums and were motoring our way through the notorious windless dead patch that borders the equator. With less wind came calmer conditions which were very much welcome. Not the totally flat seas I was hoping for, but a great improvement from the conditions we …
With a week of the crossing behind us, the days past with each moment feeling like an eternity of sailing purgatory through the uncomfortable conditions. With a 5-mile visual radius, the scenery didn’t change much from day to day, just an endless waterline on the 360° horizon. Even though we were in the middle of …
By Day 4 of the crossing, we transitioned to our 3-hour on, 9-hour off schedule and began settling into a life of constant movement. As Eitan had predicted, traveling west with the wind coming from the north put us sideways to the well and caused us to roll back and forth. I sent a satellite …
After a nearly sleepless, anxiety filled night, I awoke on the morning of our planned departure for the Pacific Ocean crossing to the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. Of any circumnavigation, this is the longest passage between land at approximately 3,000 miles. We stayed up until 1 AM the night before, organizing and storing all …
