The definitions and delineations of a sea versus an ocean are complex, contested and best left to the learned geographers to debate. From a sailor’s point of view, excluding landlocked bodies of water, the rest of the brine is a contiguous path to glorious global adventure. Having said that, we do have our favorites. While the dreadful grind of the ice pack in the Far North and the towering graybeards of the Southern Ocean have their devotees, most sailing fantasies turn toward the seductive strum of the ukulele, the swaying palms and the white-sand beaches of the exotic South Pacific.

Ferdinand Magellan may have been a bit optimistic when he named a body of water that encompasses nearly one-third of Earth Mar Pacifico (peaceful ocean), for, like all oceans, it depends. The very size of the Pacific presents unique challenges, but so too do its strong currents, powerful storms, hazardous coral outcrops and remote low-lying islands.

Voyage Planning for Sailing the South Pacific

A successful Pacific passage will rely on meticulous planning, based on current information tempered with flexibility, because, by nature, cruising has it vagaries. But before one gets into the minutia of details, they should first step back and consider the bigger picture of sailing across the Pacific.

Is the vessel truly stem-to-stern, keel-to-masthead ready? Remember, a day’s work at the dock is worth a week’s under way. Is the dream and determination shared equally, or will the plan unravel with the first gale? Does a westward passage commit one to a circumnavigation, or are there strategic exit points? Does the voyage rely on a financial structure subject to change? Are you most comfortable as part of a rally, with a “buddy boat” or as a lone wolf?

Next is the paper chase. Gone are the whimsical days of letting the winds blow you where they may. The modern cruiser must be prepared in advance to face a host of legal requirements. First, ensure that every crewmember’s passport is as current as possible. Many countries will not issue visas to passports within six months of expiry. Next, list every country that you may wish to stop in and those in peripheral waters. Check the visa requirements carefully because the devil is in the details, especially if you have a multinational crew. Many countries require no visas if your stay is relatively short, or issue visas upon arrival. But some, such as Australia, will hit you with a hefty fine for showing up without one. Albeit increasingly expensive, cruising permits are normally obtainable upon arrival, but check the cruising websites and forums for current and accurate information. Make very high-resolution photocopies of your passports and ship’s papers. Bureaucrats love the pomp and splendor of shiny paper, and your precious original boat documents can stay safely on the vessel. If departing directly from U.S. waters, be aware that U.S. Customs does not normally issue a zarpe, or outbound clearance papers, yet these are required for entry into nearly any other nation. Download CBP Form 1300 and insist on a government stamp, any stamp. Be sure to have clear doctors’ prescriptions for every drug in the ship’s medical kit. What might be an over-the-counter medication in one country can be highly prohibited in another. Increasingly, foreign marinas demand third-party liability insurance. If you hope to further insure for damage and loss, check carefully the caveats relating to seasons and areas. If you plan to rent cars for touring, it is best to obtain an international driver’s license before departure.

Familiarize yourself with the basic elements that will shape your course and schedule — the direction and timing of the prevailing winds, significant currents, cyclone seasons, the positioning of the intertropical convergence zone and the South Pacific convergence zone. Ascertain if the year of passage has been deemed an El Niño or La Niña year because these phenomena can affect the above.

West Coast sailors may depart from as far north as the Strait of Juan de Fuca, near Seattle, or dally south to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, while awaiting the passage season. For European and East Coast sailors, the Pacific launching point is obviously the Panama Canal. The details of a canal transit are complex enough to warrant an article of their own, but relevant here is do not assume a quick passage, because during peak periods there can be several weeks of delay. Also, build in time to enjoy both the San Blas Islands, on the Atlantic side, and the Las Perlas Islands, on the Pacific side.

Pacific Sailing Routes

Although the official window for departures from Panama extends from February all the way to June, the trade winds tend to stabilize and strengthen as the year progresses. However, an early exit has many advantages. Leaving it until June allows only six months to transit up to 9,000 nautical miles before being forced to exit the cyclone belt at the western edge of the Pacific. This truncates the time to linger in favorite anchorages or tend to inevitable breakdowns and delays. Leaving as early as late January might technically put one out into the Pacific during the official cyclone season, but the statistical chances of a storm developing this far to the east are slim.

There are countless permutations of a westward passage, but the path dubbed the “Milk Run” is the most popular. Regardless of one’s plan for the western Pacific, this route passes by or through the Galápagos Islands, the Marquesas, Tuamotus and Society Islands (Tahiti).

The initial stage presents a challenge because the winds can be light and the currents contrary in the Gulf of Panama. It’s advisable to head slightly east of south when heading out of the Gulf; the western promontory is aptly named Punta Mala (Bad Point) due to its penchant for confused currents and squally weather.

Once well clear of the Gulf of Panama, fashion a southwestward course with a pronounced southern belly toward the Galápagos group. I once sailed a direct course for the Marquesas Islands that passed over the northern edge of the Galápagos. I paid for this foolishness by spinning in lazy circles for five excruciatingly long days. Given the early time of the year, I would have been better served by passing several degrees south of the island group. Because the intertropical convergence zone (better known as the doldrums) is widest in the eastern Pacific, it is best crossed at the least oblique angle reasonable.

On another Pacific passage, I chose to head south for Bahia de Caraquez in Ecuador. Not only was the cruise down the Ecuadorian coast fascinating, the passage to the Galápagos from Salinas provided steadier winds than had we departed directly from the canal.

The cost and conditions of a stay in the Galápagos are forever changing. As an admittedly stubborn form of protest, I sailed right by them on two different occasions. On the third, my wife, Diana, put her sea boots down and demanded we stop. Even with a limited stay and restricted access, we were treated to one of Earth’s most unique and fascinating natural habitats.

The 3,000-mile passage from the Galápagos to the Marquesas will probably be the longest of your sailing career. If you can focus on the journey instead of the destination, it might also be the most memorable. Many modern sailors tend to fill the Pacific void with a frenetic schedule of radio nets, emails and obsessive navigational updates. Others soak up the rare opportunity to commune deeply with nature, and experience a rare solitude and reaffirming self-reliance, which I believe to be the core virtues of bluewater sailing.

Counterintuitive to the landlubber but axiomatic to any old salt is that the rhumb line is often not the quickest route to a desired destination. Favorable winds mean speed, and the extra distance in search of them is usually well rewarded. When transiting from the Galápagos to the Marquesas, by first heading south-southwest down to 3 to 4 degrees south latitude, one should reach the upper limits of the southeast trade winds, albeit possibly sporadic at this point. But as you proceed west-southwest toward 6 degrees south latitude and 100 degrees west longitude, they should increase in both strength and consistency. As you straighten course toward your chosen port of entry in the Marquesas, you should begin experiencing your best noon-to-noon runs because you will still have a southerly component in the trades. This puts you on a broad reach, a point of sail most boats excel in. The farther west one heads, the more easterly the trades become until you are eventually running dead downwind. This tends to be a touch slower, with exacerbated rolling. Be sure to carry light-wind sails for the early portions of this journey, and equipment and sails suitable for downwind situations. That fortunate discrepancy you will notice between your speed on the log (i.e., through the water) versus the GPS speed (over the bottom) is compliments of the South Equatorial Current, which fortifies with the steadier trades.

There is only one shoal area along the route, which is well-charted (8 degrees 5 minutes N and 139 degrees 35 minutes W), and the islands are high and easily sighted from afar. Entrances to the main ports are open and well-marked, thus safely approached, a blessing for a fatigued crew. What the Marquesas Islands might lack in terms of white-sand beaches and aqua lagoons is more than made up for with a geography so dramatic as to be somewhat foreboding — towering rock spires, dense jungle and precipitous waterfalls. These islands have been protected from rampant development by a crushing remoteness and therefore arguably remain the cultural heart of Polynesia.

Passages between the islands are mostly clear and well-charted, but potentially windy. The anchorages tend to be open roadsteads, so anti-roll tactics and equipment come in handy. Yachts can clear in at Hiva Oa, Ua Pou or Nuku Hiva. Those first stopping in Fatu Hiva have met with mixed results, ranging from spot fines to official clearance. Yachts are no longer required to rush to Tahiti to extend their initial 30-day visa. Thus, with 90 days in pocket, you can divide your time between the Marquesas, Tuamotus and Societies more evenly than in years past.

Encompassing an area larger than Western Europe, the Tuamotus are the longest chain of atolls in the world. Historically, they were known as the “dangerous archipelago,” and rightfully so due to a baffling maze of poorly charted reefs, low-lying islands and diabolically unpredictable currents. Even with the best of modern navigational equipment and weather forecasting, they demand the mariner’s absolute vigilance regarding watchkeeping, entry and exit from atoll passes, and anchoring techniques.

Those in a hurry to reach Tahiti tend to pass through the wider channels at the northern end of the chain, perhaps visiting Ahe, Manihi and the main center of Rangiroa. Others, with more time, make landfall far to the south and make their way up the chain via Makemo and the beautiful Fakarava Lagoon, enjoying a better angle off the wind on the short sail to Tahiti.

The Society Islands are divided into two groups: the Windwards, including Tahiti and Moorea, and the Leewards, with Huahine, Raiatea, Taha’a and, perhaps the most beautiful of them all, Bora Bora. They are all lush, high and ringed by azure seas. If early in the season, all are worth visiting. If time is short, be sure to at least attend the amazing group-dance competitions held in the buzzing capital of Papeete, celebrating Bastille Day on July 14.

North or South?

In Tahiti, the Milk Run divides into myriad possibilities. There is the northern route, for those planning to cross through the Torres Strait or into the Northern Hemisphere for the coming cyclone season, and the southern route, for those dropping south of the danger into New Zealand.

Although the majority of the South Pacific islands would remain unexplored, Tahiti is the earliest cutout for those needing to return to North America because its easterly location allows for a viable starboard tack through the southeast and northeast trades to Hawaii. The long but logical route from there is wheeling over the top of the North Pacific summer high and back south into U.S. West Coast waters.

While the land mass of the Cook Islands is a mere 100 square miles, its economic exclusion zone covers nearly 700,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean. One can only hope to draw a thin line through this scattered nation. For those on the southern route, the four- to five-day passage to Aitutaki or Rarotonga offers a predictable beam-to-broad reach right on the rhumb line.

En route to Niue lies one of two opportunities to experience the eeriness of anchoring in the middle of a featureless ocean (the other being the Minerva Reefs between Tonga and New Zealand). Beveridge Reef is a sunken atoll with not a skerrick of land awash at low tide, yet it offers anchorable depths within.

Niue is a raised coral atoll and geographically rare in the South Pacific. As anchoring depths are prohibitive, deep moorings are available. Keep in mind that it is an open roadstead vulnerable to dangerous swells. If the wind even hints at going west, as it occasionally does, get out immediately.

To break up the 1,200-nautical-mile haul to American Samoa from the Society Islands, the northern fleet usually takes a break in the remote and uninhabited atoll of Suwarrow, also known as Suvorov. The pass is challenging, as is the anchoring. But those who dare will be treated to one of the wildest places left on this planet.

From this point west, both the northern and southern fleet enter into the South Pacific convergence zone, a dangling arm of the intertropical convergence zone that extends from the Solomon Islands in an east-southeast direction. The South Pacific convergence zone drifts with some seasonal predictability (more to the north from December to May and the south from June to November), but is also influenced by larger weather anomalies. It tends to shift to the northeast in El Niño years and southwest in the La Niña phase. Generally, it is an area of enhanced convection resulting in a frustrating mix of cloud cover, line squalls and calms.

The list of interesting stops from here west includes Tonga, Wallis and Futuna, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Nevertheless, those planning to sail directly through Torres Strait into the Indian Ocean cannot afford to dally. They should be through the Torres by late August or early September in order to cross the entire Indian Ocean into South Africa before the cyclone season begins sometime in late November. A popular alternative is to pass south to a good cyclone hole on the Australian coast, such as Cairns or Port Douglas, and backtrack up to the Torres Strait at the beginning of the next safe season.

Keep in mind that an east-to-west circumnavigation does not demand a route through the Torres. I once circumnavigated by passing north of Papua New Guinea, avoiding the Southern Hemisphere cyclone season, taking in Palau, the Philippines, and Borneo before dropping back into the Southern Hemisphere for the Indian Ocean passage to southern Africa. Any destination north of 10 degrees south latitude will keep you out of harm’s way, albeit without the steady assist of those lovely trade winds.

Those on the southern route can linger through Tonga or Fiji until well into November and still safely make New Zealand shores before any tropical depressions threaten. Most cruisers heading for New Zealand do not venture as far west as Vanuatu or New Caledonia on the assumption that they can easily fetch them on their way north the following season.

Unanimous acclaim for the beauty of the northern Tongan groups of Niua, Vava‘u and Ha‘apai makes some time here mandatory, which harks back to my original advice to head out of Panama as early as safely possible. The southern contingent usually drifts south toward Nuku‘alofa, the capital, until it likes the long-range forecast for the passage to New Zealand. Many plan to hole up in Minerva Reef, getting a head start on the 1,100 miles to New Zealand, and depart there with the absolute latest weather predictions.

The reputation of this leg has more bark than bite, but it cannot be denied that tropical weather events drifting down from the Coral Sea and cold fronts coming up from the Southern Ocean have dramatic potential. One can expect winds from nearly every direction, starting with southeast trades on departure and potentially deep lows with strong southwesterlies shifting to northwesterlies when approaching New Zealand. Thus, the usual advice is to fall off the southeast trades and make some westing in anticipation of that southwest-to-northwest change. Not to be a contrarian, but I have made this passage more than a half-dozen times and believe it is better to hold to the east as far as wind and waves allow because if that southwest change does not occur, you might find yourself on the wrong side of North Cape, New Zealand, with contrary winds and confused currents. Although Norfolk Island is not a fully protected anchorage, many vessels that find themselves west of the rhumb line with foul forecasts to the south will shelter here until conditions improve.

It’s possible, albeit tedious, to return to North America from New Zealand. Vessels head out to the east from as far south as Tauranga hoping to catch the northerly limits of the westerlies until they fetch the longitude of the Austral Islands, then turn north for Tahiti. From there, they follow the route as previously described. From the outset of their voyage, some have planned to sell their yacht in New Zealand or Australia rather than carry on with a circumnavigation or a very lengthy sail back to the United States, especially if they are East Coast residents. Import duties, brokerage costs and currency exchange rates must be factored into this strategy. Is it heresy to suggest that another option is to ship the vessel back home? The initial estimates might seem staggering, but once compared to the escalating marina and maintenance costs, and the many windward months and miles home, the horror subsides.

Whatever your plan from here, through a combination of wind and will, you have done it. You, your crew and your splendid craft have spanned the mightiest body of water on Earth. You have immersed yourself in millions of square miles of salty solitude and self-reliance. You have absorbed the exotic cultures of Central Americans, Polynesians, Micronesians and Melanesians. And now, as only a seasoned mariner can, you truly understand why they call it the Big Blue.

Contributing editor, Alvah Simon, and his wife, Diana, are presently sailing New Zealand waters on their cutter Roger Henry, with occasional voyages to the South Pacific islands.

South Pacific At A Glance

• Dry Season: May-October
• Wet Season: November-April
• Cyclone Season: November-April. Active
• Cyclone Area: south of 10° S; west of 140° W
• Distance: Panama to Australia — 8,000 nautical miles
• Cultural Areas: Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia/New Zealand

References:

• World Cruising Routes by Jimmy Cornell
• noonsite.com (Virtually everything you will need to know on a current basis will be found on this comprehensive website.)
• Atlas of Pilot Charts — South Pacific, DMA/NOAA
• The Pacific Crossing Guide by Kitty Van Hagen
• Charlie’s Charts of Polynesia by Charles and Margo Wood
• Landfalls of Paradise by Earl Hinz and Jim Howard
• South Pacific Cruising by David Thatcher
• South Pacific Anchorages by Warwick Clay
• Rocket Guide to Vanuatu & New Caledonia
• Solomon Island Cruising Guide by Dirk Sieling
• New Zealand Coastal Cruising Handbook by Royal Akarana Yacht Club
• Lonely Planet South Pacific Travel Guide

Selected SSB/Ham WX Nets:

• Southbound Evening Net: 6516 kHz at 0100 UTC
• Panama Pacific Net: 8143 kHz at 1400 UTC
• Pacific Maritime Mobile: 21.412 MHz at
• 2100-2400 UTC
• Pacific Magellan: 8173 kHz at 1730 UTC
• Pacific Seafarers: 14300 kHz at 0300 UTC
• Namba/Sheila Net: 8101 kHz at UTC plus 11 hours
• Gulf Harbor Radio: 8116 kHz at 0715 local New Zealand time
• (There is a host of smaller and temporary VHF and SSB nets throughout the Pacific.)

The post Pacific Passage Planning appeared first on Cruising World.

It’s the question of the ages: Should I stay, or should I go? To offer a bit of clarity into this, at least as far as passage planning goes, is FastSeas, a new weather-routing app. FastSeas is designed by a cruising sailor and is easy to use. “Give FastSeas your vessel’s LWL, closest point of sail, departure location, destination, and time of departure, and it will find your optimum route using the latest wind and ocean current forecasts,” says developer Jeremy Waters. “You can adjust comfort criteria to decide whether speed or pleasant sailing conditions are important to you.”

The routes are calculated using NOAA GFS wind forecasts and NOAA OSCAR ocean current observations. Free Basic and paid Premium subscriptions accommodate all budgets. The Basic subscription is limited to five requests per month, while the Premium subscription permits unlimited requests and requests via email (for use with Iridium Go!, InReach, and Sailmail/Winlink).

Check it out at fastseas.com.

The post App of the Month: FastSeas Weather Routing appeared first on Cruising World.

In late 1984, with 2,000 miles of California sea trials and easy Baja California cruising behind her, Taleisin could no longer be called a new boat. We’d tested her power as we beat north against 25-knot winds to re­visit the magic hideaways of Mexico’s Gulf of California. As we explored the hidden coves we’d prowled around 16 years before on Seraffyn in the tranquil waters of the Bay of La Paz, we’d found the best leads for our light-air sails. A few fresh reaches had forced me to rearrange lockers so I could actually get at the provisions I wanted even when I wasn’t feeling my very best.

Now, as we left Cabo San Lucas, bound for the Marquesas, Taleisin was in top sailing shape, though she was loaded well beyond her designed 17,400-pound sailing displacement. In fact, a check of her waterline marks showed her ready-to-­depart weight was close to 18,600 pounds. But other than four baskets of fresh, fragrant fruit and vegetables, which we’d wedged securely at the head of the forward bunk, everything was hidden in its proper locker.

Ahead of us now lay a whole new world. In 18 years of voyaging we’d never once poked our bowsprit south of the equator, never visited a South Seas island or coral atoll, never heard the throbbing drums of Polynesia.

Two days’ sailing south of Cabo San Lucas lay Socorro Island. Rugged and desolate, it is inhabited on shore only by a small contingent of Mexican soldiers. Underwater it is reputed to be haven to the largest spiny lobster population in the Pacific. We planned to stop for a few days and enjoy a few good meals before setting off for the long haul to Polynesia. It was late morning when we reached in toward Socorro’s only tenable anchorage, an open bay tucked tightly against the southwest corner of the island. The water within the bay didn’t look right. I got out the binoculars and could make out wispy plumes of spray, then the slowly arching backs of seven gray whales as they stirred the waters by moving in a slow pavane, circling the only shoal area we could safely employ. We dropped the small genoa and, under staysail and main, reached closer. Larry tried to reassure me: “They’ll leave any second now. Besides, they’re probably farther offshore than they look from this angle. We’ll sail in past them and have lots of room to anchor.”

He was wrong on all counts. The placid behemoths ignored us completely as we slowly reached alongside them. They carried on with their mating activities. I threw the lead line to sound the anchorage; they still didn’t leave. In fact, the closer we got, the more they seemed to fill every bit of space, swimming to within a dozen yards of the shore with their massive, heaving, barge-like bodies.

We jibed, then reached clear of the anchorage, and as the full swell of the open ocean again caught us I said, “Let’s ­forget Socorro — wind’s fair, let’s keep going.”

But Larry’s eyes had their mad hunter look. “Remember what that Mexican diver told us about the lobster here. Probably never have another meal as good as the one we’ll have tonight.”

So we winched home the sheets, tacked over and left the staysail backed. Taleisin slowly lost way and lay comfortably hove-to while I made lunch. Two hours later we eased the staysail sheet to turn and reach back in to the anchorage. By then, our harbor mates had moved … somewhat. Now there was almost enough room for us to set our anchor as the whales nuzzled around each other, completely ignoring us. But not quite enough. So we jibed and reached out into the open water again, to lay hove-to for another hour. Then we sailed in yet again. The necking-party-cum-gossip-session seemed less intimate now as the whales swam in three separate groups. Amid them there appeared to be just enough swinging room to set our anchor. Before I could change my mind, Larry had unclutched the anchor windlass and eased out our 35-pound CQR with 150 feet of chain.

Our big gray cove mates ignored the rattling chain but ­acquiesced to our territorial claim, swimming and cavorting just clear of Taleisin. I turned to Larry.

“Going in for some fresh dinner fixings? I’ll get out your fins.”

My urgings, definitely made in jest, were ignored. He sat next to me on the cabin top, imagining the teeming sea life crawling through the crevices and crannies of the sea-washed rocks just 200 yards from where we lay at anchor. That evening, as we chewed our way through some durable Mexican chicken and braced ourselves against the slight surge in the anchorage, the whale-induced wavelets and occasional gusts of the fresh westerly breezes scooting down from the hills inshore of us, Larry said, “I’ll slip overboard and chase up a bug or two tomorrow, when our friends move on.”

But by morning it was we who decided to move on — to get a good night’s rest by going to sea. The serenade of whale spouting, augmented by what we took to be sighs of sexual delight, had kept us both on the edge of wakefulness through the night. Within an hour we were free of the wind shadow of Socorro Island and gliding over a sun-speckled sea, three sails set to catch the 15-knot westerly.

The wind slowly eased aft from our beam to cross our stern until we were running wing and wing in the northeasterly trades. The only comments worth recording in our log, other than course and distance made good, were: “baked bread, had a hot shower, took cushions out onto the foredeck for the afternoon, made love in the shade of the drifter.”

As I read that comment now, decades later, the scene floods back in warm details: the green-and-blue striped sail arching over us, providing a perfect screen from the tropical sun; the smell of fresh bread slowly baking belowdecks; the sound of Earl Klugh’s guitar carrying softly from our stereo, his strumming almost in perfect rhythm with the hiss, then gurgle, as Taleisin’s bow rode over the crest of each surging wave.

For once I truly believed perfect trade-wind sailing existed. We’d found it, and Taleisin loved it. The string of noon-to-noon runs recorded in our log belied her relatively small size: 158, 165, 176, with the current giving us a few extra miles on top of that. The days sped past in the easygoing, intimate routine that seems to develop on board a two-handed sailboat during an ocean passage.

Keeping the necessary round-the-clock watch means Larry and I spend little time actually being together when we are at sea. Three hours on, three hours off all night, our only communications being a quick update from the person coming off watch. We each then spent two hours napping later on to top up our need for about eight hours’ sleep each day. Then there was the time needed to make occasional sail changes, navigate, clean up inside the boat, check the gear on deck, check the fresh produce for signs of deterioration. With only the two of us on board, we find that at sea we have less than four hours of unstructured time for cooking, eating and communications. If one or the other of us happens to be fully engrossed in reading a book we “just can’t put down,” we find our only true time together happens as we share our evening meal. Then begins the routine of settling the boat for the night and having a quiet drink, a quick sing-along or a shared chapter from a book we might choose to read aloud together before Larry climbs into the bunk.

As on all previous passages, we stuck to our routine of having the same watches each night. Studies by sleep psychologists confirm what we have learned by trial and error. Our body clocks adjust more quickly to sleeping during the same time periods each night instead of dogging or alternating watch hours.

Two things began to indicate the unique nature of this passage. First, not one of our night watches was interrupted by a call for assistance. The second oddity: By our 10th day out from Socorro we hadn’t found the doldrums that should have slowed our progress well before we reached the equator. In fact, when our sights showed a current against us — a sure sign of the edge of the doldrums — the seas steadied and the wind shifted just enough to put us on our fastest point of sail, a beam reach. Taleisin, with her modest 27-foot-6-inch waterline, turned in a wondrous series of noon-to-noon nautical-mile runs: 168, 176, 171. Our taffrail log reading and celestial sights concurred to within a mile or two to rule out help from stray currents.

As exciting as this was, it presented a new problem.

Both of us are fair-skinned. Many years of enjoying sailing before medical science made the link between sun exposure and skin cancers meant we’d both acquired a fair sprinkling of keratosis (the early stages of skin cancer). These scaly ­patches and recurring small lesions had, in the past, been frozen off during a visit to the doctor’s office. Recently our personal physician had suggested an alternative — a chemical treatment called Efudex, which we’d tried under his direction (made by Roche Ltd., it’s basically chemotherapy for the skin, using fluorouracil cream). We’d apply the stuff twice daily for three weeks; the sun spots would redden, turn to open sores and then scab over and heal, leaving behind blemish-free skin. The spots we’d treated under the doctor’s supervision had all been on our forearms and easily hidden from public view. Now the affected areas were on our faces. We kept putting off the treatment, waiting for a time when we’d be away from people for a while. The time seemed right on this longer passage.

“It’s more than 2,500 miles to the Marquesas,” I’d said to Larry when we left Mexico. “We’ll be at sea for three weeks or more. If we start the treatment a day or two before we leave, our skin will be all cleared up before we get there.” But by our 13th day at sea, when another 158-mile noon-to-noon run put us within 400 miles of Nuku Hiva, I looked at Larry’s splotched countenance, then took a mirror to inspect my own ravaged face, and knew we’d made a slight miscalculation. Both of us looked like refugees from a fire. Unless we hove-to for a few days, we’d arrive appearing ­almost leprous.

There is a saying among sailors: “Put one sailboat within sight of another and both will start racing.” There wasn’t another boat within hundreds of miles of us. But the splendid record of miles made good was as much of a prod as the sight of another sail on the horizon. So, in spite of our appearances, we kept Taleisin running as fast as she could, the drifter set to one side on the 20-foot spinnaker pole, the mainsail to the other.

On the morning of the 16th day at sea, the craggy outline of our first South Seas island seemed to burst over the horizon. Taleisin surged down the trade-wind swells as the sheer black cliffs of Nuku Hiva slid ever closer. The fish line we’d been trailing for almost 2,400 miles sprang to life, sounding the alarm Larry had jury-rigged by putting a couple of nuts and bolts inside an empty beer can.

Larry almost trampled me as he rushed through the cockpit to grab the line. A gold-fringed tuna leapt into the air, growing ever more frantic as Larry pulled it hand-over-hand toward the boat, then flipped it over the lifelines. I ran as far out of the way of that flailing flash of silver as I could, clinging to the fish-free safety of the boom gallows until it was subdued. My screams of “Kill it before it jumps down the hatch!” died in my throat as a strange black smoothness disturbed the crest of the swell ahead of Taleisin. The next 10-foot swell lifted Taleisin’s stern and sent her scudding downhill amid a burst of foam, guided only by the wind-vane self-steering gear. She seemed to hang motionless for just a few seconds in the trough of the sea as I pointed in stunned silence. Less than 10 feet away on our beam, two huge whales lay side by side, gently spouting, basking serenely, unaware that only fate had kept 9 tons of rushing timber and lead from landing on their backs.

“Luck, only luck. That’s all that kept us from a real catastrophe,” Larry whispered as he held the slowly dying 8-pound tuna against the leeward bulwark rail with his foot.

My mind was filled with visions of a massive, angry fluke smashing through our teak planking, driven by 20 tons of terrified mammal. From the look in Larry’s eyes I could tell he was recalling another encounter with sleeping whales almost 18 years earlier, when he’d been first mate on an 85-foot schooner called Double Eagle. He’d been at the helm when, halfway between Hawaii and California, they’d sailed quietly past a basking whale. One of the crew tossed an empty beer can at the mammal. Its frenzied dive had sent cascades of salt water right across the massive schooner to drench the crew.

“If that fluke had hit our stem, it would have shattered it,” Larry had often told me.

Now we watched in silence as, astern, white wavelets washed across the backs of the whales. Taleisin lifted and fled before another trade-wind swell, and within two minutes those whales were lost from view. The smells of approaching land slowly invaded my senses. The last death throes from the fish Larry was still holding under his foot brought him out of his shock-induced trance. We were soon occupied with fish filets, sail changes, navigation. Neither of us mentioned our close encounter with those mammoth creatures that shared this water with us until we lay in our bunk together late that evening.

It was dark when we short-tacked between the towering sides of the Marquesas’ Taiohae Bay and shattered the quiet with the rattle of our anchor chain. Sixteen days, six hours out of Socorro we lay at anchor after a passage that could be described as close to perfection.

Morning brought reality with it.

At the first sight of our yellow quarantine flag, the health officer arrived. He took one look at our sore-encrusted faces and informed us we were confined on board until further notice. Our attempts to use our 20-word French vocabulary failed completely. But he did take our tube of Efudex with him and made it clear he would be contacting the authorities in Papeete, Tahiti, for further instructions. It was late afternoon before he returned, accompanied by a customs official, who carried a bottle of wine to officially welcome us and invite us to explore his island home.

An old sailing friend once said, “You’ll go out sailing 10 times, then you’ll hit one day that is sheer magic. You’ll be hooked and go out again and again trying to fall under that ­intoxicating spell once more.” When I look back at all the voyaging we’ve done, I have to agree with his sentiment: Truly memorable days were vastly outnumbered by those days when the sailing was merely pleasant, or other days that were utterly mundane or even downright difficult. I knew this would be the case as we voyaged onward on Taleisin. But now, the difficult and stormy days, as well as the mundane ones, are set against the memory of our highly satisfying dash, neatly sandwiched between two whale tales, from Mexico to the South Pacific.

Long acknowledged as the “first couple of cruising,” Lin and Larry Pardey are two-time circumnavigators aboard boats they built themselves and the authors of 11 previous books. This story is excerpted from their 12th and latest, Taleisin’s Tales: Sailing Towards the Southern Cross (L&L Pardey Publications, 2017).

The post A Perfect Pacific Passage appeared first on Cruising World.

1. Moorage: So long as the slip fees don’t daunt you, marinas are usually an option in port cities. But if your budget is limited, the ability to anchor out or grab a mooring is critical. Victoria, British Columbia, offered us no place within the harbor to anchor or moor, but both San Diego and La Paz, Mexico, had prime space available near the city center.

2. Walkability: It’s possible to get around most cities using taxis and rental cars, but walking a city, both to explore and to acquire the things you need, allows you to connect with and enjoy it more intimately. Many times, choosing where you berth or anchor makes a big difference in how you’re able to access a city. In addition to offering marinas a short walk from downtown, San Diego, Victoria and La Paz each also feature marinas or anchorages that are set far apart from the city, and that make short, impromptu excursions difficult.

3. Dinghy Accessibility: Dink accommodations vary widely. Dana Point, California, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, both provided us a welcome place to anchor, but neither area allowed for secure and accessible dinghy landing. For about $1 per day, we found in La Paz a clean, convenient, guarded dock to which we could tie up when going ashore.

4. Attraction: The appeal of any city is in the eye of the beholder. Had the seasons allowed, we’d have gladly spent much more time weaving ourselves into the fabric of the smaller cities of Sitka, Alaska, and Astoria, Oregon. On the other hand, while Venice, California, was a feast for the eyes, and nearby Los Angeles offers a lifetime’s worth of experiences, we felt sated (overwhelmed?) and ready to move on from both cities within a week. But only by visiting many cities did we learn what kept us in one place or made us eager to cast off.

5. Services and Provisions: These features draw many cruisers to cities in the first place. Seattle; San Diego; Fort Lauderdale; Ensenada, Mexico; and other such cities are meccas when it comes to meeting the boat-related needs of cruising sailors. But getting to see a dentist or dermatologist with one day’s notice is an aspect of La Paz that we value. Welcoming and comfortable coffee shops in Astoria were a boon to us in terms of Internet access for off-the-boat home-schooling and writing work. Being in the right city to meet as many of your specific needs as possible makes for a productive stay.

The post What to Look for in Cruising Cities appeared first on Cruising World.

At 0500 Monday, August 22, our 53rd day at sea since leaving Darwin, Australia, the wind died, and Gannet, my Moore 24, and I were becalmed 10 miles from Durban Harbor, South Africa. Confident that the remainder of the 6,000-mile passage would be over in a few hours, I took advantage of the smooth conditions to fit the outboard bracket and electric Torqeedo onto the stern. The Torqeedo had not been used in months, not since I’d powered the last half-mile to the marina in Bundaberg, Australia. I was pleased when it started at the first push of a button. Then I removed the tiller arm and tilted the Torqeedo from the water. It has a limited range, and I would use it only after entering the port.

A few minutes later the wind, which had been light and behind us, returned with a rush, but from directly ahead. I raised a triple-reefed main and partially unfurled the jib.

The wind continued to build and build. Had I not so wanted to get in, I would have stopped sailing by 0600. But I did and kept on. Gannet was heeled 40 degrees, thrashing through and under water, the lee rail buried. Activity below was impossible. One of the rules on Gannet is the same as in boxing: Protect yourself at all times. Trying to heat water for coffee, momentarily I didn’t, and was thrown across the cabin. That wasn’t far, of course, but I lost some skin and got a good-size lump on my elbow. I drank the coffee with room-temperature water and ate a protein bar for breakfast.

With the wind coming partially over the point of land to the south, I thought it possible that the sea would be smoother closer to the coast. I was wrong. The wind there was as strong and the waves steeper. I threaded my way through a half-dozen anchored ships awaiting entrance to the harbor, until I ran out of room and a mile offshore tried to come about. Despite moving at speed, Gannet didn’t have the weight to do it. The wind stopped and shook the boat like a dog shakes a bone. I had to do what I didn’t want to, and jibed. The power of the boom going over was immense. Gannet went to almost 90 degrees, but Moore 24s are self-­correcting boats. They seem to want to do the right thing, and as I eased the sheet, she came up. Some. As I steered back past the anchored ships, one of them gave a blast on her horn that I decided to interpret as applause. To the south I could see the breakwaters at Durban, 7 miles away.

Wave after wave swept over Gannet and me. While being flailed in the failed attempt to tack, the jib sheets had tied themselves in a Gordian knot. Once clear of the ships, I tied down the tiller and lowered and subdued the mainsail, then went forward to untangle the jib sheets so I could furl the headsail.

All brutal and dangerous.

Finally, under bare pole and being pushed north, I called on the handheld VHF to the anchored ships, asking for wind speed and forecast. One of them answered, reporting a wind speed of 45 knots, forecast to go to 50 with 20-foot waves and easing in 24 hours. Gannet’s cabin was as wet as it has ever been, but she felt safer and much less likely to be rolled. She had taken a beating. We both had.

I don’t think the waves ever reached 20 feet — perhaps 12 to 14 — but I have always preferred to err on the low side rather than high. Whatever their height, they were steep walls of seething water and big enough.

After an unrelenting afternoon and night, the wind began to drop at 1000 Tuesday, almost as abruptly as it rose. Even after all these years, I am sometimes amazed by how quickly waves decrease with the wind. By 1300, Gannet was headed back toward Durban, now 40 miles away, making 3 and 4 knots under full sail across a mildly undulating sea on a sunny afternoon. Two whales spouted a few lengths away. Albatrosses glided above us. We entered the harbor late the next morning and tied to the international jetty at noon.

This 6,000-mile passage had been difficult and sometimes tested my limits, first with too little wind. A week out of Darwin, we’d been becalmed for almost 24 hours on a glassy sea, and Gannet had her slowest day’s run ever, of only 28 miles. I went overboard for a swim, startling a fish that seemed to be living beneath us.

Then we’d had two weeks of too much wind: 25-plus knots going to gale force twice. This was complicated by tillerpilot failure. I probably did 5,000 of the 6,000 miles using sheet-to-tiller steering. In strong wind, this approach can result in accidental jibes. Twice I had to lie ahull because the risk of being rolled was too great. And Gannet’s interior was entirely wet, as was I. Every surface was covered in slime and mold. My sleeping bag was intolerably sodden, so I slept in wet foul-weather gear beneath a foil survival blanket. Finally that ended, and we again had mostly too-light wind.

On a moderate day, with only 6-foot waves, one of the waves broke and caught us just right, rolling the masthead into the water. I know it went in because afterward the masthead Windex was hanging off the side, and the masthead Raymarine wind unit was gone. I somehow don’t think this will be covered under warranty. (Gannet is the fourth boat whose masthead I have put in the water. This is a club you ­probably don’t want to join.)

Gannet has covered more than 9,000 miles since we sailed from Opua, New Zealand, less than four months ago. Despite being driven and tossed on the deep blue sea, she hasn’t suffered any structural damage that I can see.

We have done what we planned to do this year. We are both going to rest.

Six-time solo circumnavigator and writer Webb Chiles began his most recent great circle aboard Gannet in San Diego.

The post Gannet Makes Landfall appeared first on Cruising World.

The beauty of blue­water sailing is that once the lines are cast off, we enter a vast, complex and power­ful natural system over which we have no control. Every captain’s challenge and responsibility is to develop a fundamental understanding of the elements involved and align them in the safest, most efficient manner possible. To paraphrase an old alliterative saying, “Prior planning promises pleasant passages.”

There are far too many world cruising routes to offer specific advice for each herein, but no matter where you wish to sail, a review of the tools available and general principles of route planning may help in your initial stages of preparation.

The three major factors in successful planning are when you sail (selecting the right season and window within that season), where you sail (shaping your route along the path of least resistance), and how you sail (matching the vessel and crew to the anticipated conditions and carrying the appropriate reference materials, sails and equipment).

Pilot Charts

As simple as that sounds, the devil is in the details. And no more detail can be found in any single source than in the Atlas of Pilot Charts, first compiled in the mid-1800s by Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury, U.S. Navy, recognized as the father of modern oceanography and maritime meteorology. These weather charts encompass the globe and have evolved into a stunning compilation of historical averages regarding wind direction and strength, storm frequency and tracks, major currents, iceberg limits, fog, air temperature, great-circle routes, magnetic variation, and more. For the big passage overview, they are collated into a three-month-per-page format, and for more specific planning, on a one-month basis. There are five volumes in all, categorized by geographic region.

The graphic symbols are easily interpreted. Wind circles are placed in evenly spaced squares across the charted areas, broken down into the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Each circle is surrounded by arrows emanating from the eight cardinal and ordinal directions, with the wind flowing in the same direction as the arrow flies. An arrow’s length, relative to the other arrows, indicates the proportion of time the wind is from that direction.

If the wind is so dominant from a single direction that the arrow’s length would interfere with the neighboring square, the arrow is broken with a numerical percentage. The “feathers” on the arrow indicate the average wind speed, with each feather representing one force on the Beaufort scale. A number at the center of the circle indicates the number of days in a month with either no recorded wind or wind so light as to be variable.

Intense as they are, tropical depressions do not statistically affect the wind roses, because they are so short-lived. They do, however, affect the sailor caught in them. Therefore, on each page a sidebar uses red lines to record the tracks of significant hurricanes (also called typhoons and cyclones), and a separate section discusses the details of gales and tropical depressions for the covered time and area. This is important because once you understand when and where hurricanes are most likely to develop, and the probable track they will take, it may be determined that with a good extended forecast, one could set sail — even though officially in the hurricane area and season — with the hopes of vacating the danger zone before a significant system could develop or converge with one’s outgoing track.

By sifting through the data, one soon discovers that although the rhumb line may appear to represent the shortest distance between two points, it is not necessarily the quickest route to take. Though a great-circle route may be shorter, by following a reasonable arc of favorable winds (rather than adhering to a strict A-to-B course and mentality), your speed over ground and velocity made good will usually be fast enough to compensate for the extra mileage sailed. Plus, being a little off the wind makes the sea motion better, reducing wear and tear on the rig, sails and crew.

A passage we made from Canada’s Vancouver Island to Hawaii illustrates that point. A direct course would have taken us through the middle of the North Pacific High, replete with contrary currents, frustrating calms and unpredictable wind directions on the approach to Hawaii from the north. By sailing down the coast to the latitude of San Francisco, and then bending a course south and west until reaching Hawaii’s latitude, we were assisted by favorable currents running down the West Coast and caught steady northeast trade winds on the starboard quarter (a wind angle our 36-foot Roger Henry loves) all the way into Hilo.

Current Affairs

The green lines on the Pilot Charts identify the major currents of the world, including the Kushiro, Gulf Stream, Humboldt, Agulhas, Californian, North Equatorial and South Equatorial. These currents are powerful forces, and any prudent mariner will shape a course to use them to his or her advantage, or at least mitigate their detrimental influence. It is not just a matter of a countercurrent sapping your SOG. When a major current runs contrary to strong prevailing winds, the resulting seaway can be nasty.

A classic example of this occurs in the passage from any East Coast seaport to Bermuda and beyond. The Gulf Stream flows in basically a north-to-northeasterly direction, averaging up to 4 knots. When this flow is contrary to strong prevailing winds, dangerously steep seas develop. But the stream is not consistent; it meanders in bends that nearly turn back on themselves, and widens and narrows often. Using real-time observations as recorded on a NOAA website, one might decide to head in a direction oblique to Bermuda in order to cross the stream in a narrow area or where it flows in a safer direction.

In some cases, even where you sit in the current can be critical. The Agulhas Current runs south down the east coast of South Africa against frequent southeasterly gales. Inside of the 100-fathom line, vessels traditionally fare well. Outside of it, even supertankers have been known to break in half. These differing conditions lie nearly within sight of each other.

The Pilot Charts do not deal with wave heights, as they are too unpredictable. What is predictable, however, is the turbulence caused by wind over shoal water, sudden depth rises, and convergences of known currents. Plan to give a wide berth to large banks and prominent headlands, such as the Grand Banks or Cape Hatteras.

Remember that large landmasses can have significant effects on winds. Many a cruiser has felt the sting of the Tehuantepec or Papagayo winds off the west coast of Central America. A large saddle in the cordillera (mountain range) accelerates the winds crossing from the Gulf of Mexico in what is known as the Venturi effect. And yet, sailing north from Chile along the South American coast, we took advantage of not only the north-flowing Humboldt Current, but also the onshore breeze that developed early in the day due to heating air rising up the Andes, as well as the offshore breeze that developed at night as the air cooled and fell from the heights.

All this data has, in a sense, been given training wheels via Jimmy Cornell’s comprehensive book World Cruising Routes. Cornell has interpreted and reduced the mountain of data into specific routes to and from nearly every destination on the planet. Logically organized, this tome includes specific timing windows, GPS waypoints to follow, distances to cover, and more. It’s a carefully researched and edited work.

Either resource can be considered a stand-alone reference, but I believe that by first mastering the Pilot Charts on your own, and then confirming your conclusions with Cornell’s book, you will have laid the foundation of personal competence and confidence while remaining open to the advice of other experienced sailors.

Locals’ Knowledge

In aggregate, historical data proves quite accurate, but each year is different, and anomalies occur. The effects of a pronounced El Niño or La Niña year can dramatically change prevailing winds and currents. The intertropical convergence zone drifts north and south in irregular cycles. Listen to the accredited weather pundits for long-term outlooks. Seek advice from cruisers, but assess the source; the right to an opinion, however ill-­informed, is issued with every captain’s hat. Also listen to the locals, as they have seen their weather come and go for many, many years.

I once watched a Malabar ketch depart Colón, Panama, for Florida in mid-­December. A seasoned Panama hand looked up from his barstool and said with certainty: “They missed it by a week. They’ll be back.” And back they were, 10 days later, without a mast and severely shaken up.

On another occasion, we were waiting in the San Blas Islands for the fortified trades to die so we could make the passage to Florida. At the first sign of a let-up, in early April, a flotilla of impatient yachts set sail north. I asked an elderly Kuna man what he thought.

He said, quite sagely, “Coming one more storm from the north, then go.”

I took his advice, remembering the old adage “a sailor with time always has a fair wind.” That storm did come, and it was a ripsnorter. The early birds suffered dearly; we had a picture-perfect passage.

With good reference material, open ears and growing experience, you will start to develop your own intuitive sense of timing and routing. There is a well-worn track from the southern Caribbean to Panama that parallels the coast of Colombia. It is a downhill run and should not wreak the havoc it always seems to. Without being able to articulate my reasoning, I decided to make our run from Puerto Rico to the Panama Canal a full degree north of that well-traversed track. After a fast but manageable run into Panama, we heard horror stories from yachts that sailed a mere 60 miles to the south of us.

Jimmy Cornell’s second contribution to passage planning is the website noonsite.com, now run by the World Cruising Club. Here one can check on visa requirements, cruising permits, customs exemptions, ports of entry, and a plethora of other essential planning details.

Other pre-departure planning includes checking the offsets for Greenwich Mean Time along the route, and having designated longitudes recorded in the logbook at which time the ship’s clock will be corrected. Carry the tide tables for the intended areas of landfall, and verify the times relative to local time, GMT, standard time or daylight saving. A radio and light list still have a place on the navigation bookshelf.

Great Debate

The modern navigation debate is always framed as paper charts versus electronic charting. But those approaches are not mutually exclusive, and each serves a separate purpose. There is no doubt that integrated GPS, radar, chart plotters and autohelms have tamed maritime navigation. As long as they are working, we have at our fingertips our position, course, SOG, VMG, ETA and GMT. Why wouldn’t we use these marvels? Yet they are vulnerable to failure via lightning strike, flooding or even a mere power failure. You will never be lost at sea if you have plotted your position regularly on a small-scale paper chart; you can always fall back on dead reckoning.

In the last Volvo Ocean Race, in 2014, the navigator aboard the entry Vestas Wind plotted the team’s course through the Indian Ocean via a small-scale digital chart. But his level of zoom (or scale) missed a pesky little detail concerning the Cargados Carajos Shoals. They were charging along at 16 knots when they crashed hard into the shoals. The after-race incident review concluded the fault lay with “deficient cartography in presenting the navigational dangers on small- and medium-scale (or zoomed-out) views on the electronic chart system in use.” Like I said.

A small-scale (large-area) paper chart gives you the big picture without the loss of detail, and serves not only as navigational redundancy but also as an efficient and consistent visual planning tool. Mark all dangers in red with a generous clearing circle, and enter their presence, in order of passing, as a list in the logbook. Once underway, check one off and identify the next as you progress.

As much as possible, program into your GPS your waypoints before setting sail, because the fatigue that sets in on even the easiest of passages almost ensures a mistake will be made. Break down your entries into small blocks, and double back to methodically check each. Then take a break, because after too many entries, your eyes will glaze over and you will inevitably transpose a number.

Never trust another person’s waypoint blindly. Do the work; own the responsibility. Collect charting, of both types, and references for areas adjacent to your planned landfalls. As Arthur C. Clarke said, “All human plans are subject to ruthless revisions by nature.”

If you use onboard weather services, such as GRIB files via SailMail, familiarize yourself with them prior to departure. Remember, the GRIB files are computer-generated wind models and not informed by human interpretation; in other words, they can miss the big picture. Practice downloading weatherfaxes, as a real-time isobar picture of your larger cruising area is the single most important routing tool on board. There is a mountain of information available, but it can be hidden in a complex menu. Keep a printed channel guide near the radio.

An array of SSB and ham radio nets offer weather reports and routing advice. All are well intended, but not all offer the same level of expertise, nor can the hosts and their frequent relief stand-ins know your particular circumstances with regard to the vessel and crew’s capability. By all means, check in if you feel more secure posting a “last known position, course and speed.” But no matter how forceful the anchor’s recommendations, they are just that: recommendations.

There are three important words regarding when to set sail: early, early and early. By that I mean, first, early in the season, because delays will inevitably add up across a wide ocean, and many cruisers are rushed out of the tropics toward the end of the safe seasons. Next, be early in the immediate weather system; don’t linger for days at the dock while good weather prevails. In fact, many an old salt will intentionally depart on the tail end of bad weather to maximize the initial favorable period. Finally, go early in the day; if all goes well, you will be well offshore by nightfall, free of most hazards and coastal shipping. If it doesn’t go well, as too often happens without a proper shakedown cruise, you will have plenty of daylight to sort out the problem or return to port before dark.

I also always adhere to my rule of thirds and halves. I divide my food, water and fuel supplies into three portions. I designate the first third to the first half of the voyage (mileage­wise), the second third to the second half, and the final third as a contingency supply. The little bit of discipline involved in the early phases of the voyage pays off in dividends of safety, relaxation and enjoyment toward the end of the trip.

Finally, remember that the actual time we spend on passage is but a fraction of our entire cruising experience. In-depth planning leads to a safer and more efficient passage, and there is great satisfaction in that job well done. But it also helps us develop a deeper appreciation for the magnificent oceans we are so privileged to enter.

Two-time circumnavigator Alvah Simon is a CW contributing editor.

The post How to Plan a Passage appeared first on Cruising World.

When I was a young girl, the Cape Horn archipelago always brought to my mind historic tall-ship voyages made with bravado by explorers like Cook, Drake, Darwin and Magellan. I often imagined this faraway location to be an inhospitable landscape where elements of nature were harsh and raw.

My husband, James Burwick, and I believe it’s important to give our three children an understanding of life in the wilderness. This is a big reason why sailing offshore has worked so well for us as a family. Over the years, during our land-based adventures in the austral regions of South America, we often dreamed of exploring by boat the channels and fjords of Chile with our children. Our only problem was not having the right cruising vessel.

Anasazi Girl, a Finot-Conq Open 40, is set up for making solo, port-to-port, long-distance passages. With a full carbon-fiber hull, carbon-­Nomex deck, fixed deep keel, watertight compartments, rotating wing and stripped-out interior, she is most suited for Southern Ocean sailing. We have a life raft and an emergency anchoring system, but no dinghy. Since we are not geared up for coastal cruising, we make passages that the boat is designed to do: nonstop voyages with legs averaging 6,000 nautical miles. In port, we tie to deep berths where we can live aboard at the dock. We then spend between four and 12 months in each harbor. This gives us time to work, maintain the boat, experience local culture and, most importantly, form connections and personal friendships. Due to our limitations for coastal cruising, when we departed Auckland, New Zealand, in February 2014, we were headed eastbound and nonstop for Lorient, France.

We had no intentions of stopping in Chile. However, on Day 21 of our passage, Anasazi Girl was knocked down and dismasted 300 nautical miles west of the Diego Ramirez Islands. Our family was safe, but we found ourselves shipwrecked on Chile’s Navarino Island, with Anasazi Girl’s rig left behind at the bottom of the great big blue.

For the last two years, Navarino Island has become home for our family of five. We have been living aboard, rafted to expedition boats at the Micalvi Yacht Club and working to earn the funds needed to repair our vessel. During this period we ­organized a replacement mast, applied for and received temporary residency and work visas for Chile, formed a Chilean LLC (Anasazi Ltda.) and conceived our fourth child (due to be born just as this story goes to print).

Situated on the north side of Navarino Island on the south shore of the Beagle Channel, Puerto Williams has become a regular port of call for sailors. Its strategic location has made it a hub for most expeditions bound to and from Antarctica, Cape Horn, the Route of Glaciers, Ushuaia, South Georgia and the Falklands.

The weather here is dynamic, but there are two very well-­protected natural inlets (called senos) off of the Beagle Channel, Seno Micalvi and Seno Lauta, where boats tie up. To the south of Anasazi Girl’s berth on Seno Micalvi are the beautiful toothlike pinnacles of the Dientes de Navarino mountain range. To the north, you can see Seno Lauta, where boats are moored and anchored, the Beagle Channel, and Argentina’s Martial Mountains. This provides a stunning and dramatic backdrop in all four seasons.

For most sailors, Puerto Williams is just a ­temporary stopping point between sailing trips to pick up crew, fuel up, connect to the Internet, obtain zarpes or do basic in-port maintenance. Only a few voyagers have “lived” here year-round as we have, though over the years several have taken up residence in the town of Puerto Williams.

We feel very fortunate to be shipwrecked here, of all the places in the world. Navarino Island has proven to be a true paradise for our small children, Tormentina, 7, Raivo, 5, and Pearl, 3. The beauty of being here is that it’s remote enough to be pristine, but not isolated enough that you feel completely desperate or cut off from the rest of the world.

The location fulfills many basic but very important qualities we want for life with our family: clean air, water and land; abundant nature and outdoor recreation; a low population density and crime rate; a pedestrian-friendly lifestyle; immersion in a foreign language; and exposure to a unique culture.

The island is part of the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve, named by UNESCO in 2005 as one of the 37 most pristine ecoregions in the world. My children have the opportunity to play in subpolar, Magellanic forests filled with evergreen and coigüe (Magellan’s beech), lenga (high deciduous beech), ñirre (antarctic beech), notro (Chilean firetree) and canelo (winter’s bark).

We are immersed in a landscape steeped in the ­incredible presence of the indigenous Yagán tribe. The last remaining Yagáns (formerly settled on the island at Bahía Mejillones) now live in a district of Puerto Williams called Villa Ukika. My kids visit the homes of local Yagán artists to see what they are crafting, and my oldest goes to school with Yagán descendants.

We are reminded of the impact of invasive species on the island: wild horses, mink, beaver, stray dogs and yellow jackets. Every once in a while a mink or beaver will swim stealthily through the calm waters of the inlet. We have watched the wild horse population multiply as new foals and fillies are born before our eyes. It is an incredible opportunity for us to discuss with our children the fragile balance of this life.

Sea life is abundant. Whales and seals swim in the channel. The local fishermen give my children gifts of róbalo (Patagonian blenny), centolla *(southern king crab), *erizos (sea urchins) and pulpo (octopus). Jellyfish and small fish swim up to the water’s surface alongside the boat. Teeming in the sand, mud, tide pools and under rocks are countless invertebrates. The constant tidal rise and fall of the waterways produces fresh troves of starfish, urchins, mussels, clams, limpets, chitons and centolla (both live and empty shells).

Most coveted of the objects to be discovered on the shore or in the forest are rarely found Andean condor feathers, which can span up to 3 feet long — taller than my youngest daughter, Pearl! Seeing the kids play among the island’s sun-bleached whalebones also gives us a new perspective on our size and place in the world.

A wide network of walking paths through forests, wetlands and sphagnum peat bogs is easily navigable by small children. A park along the Rio Ukika is a favorite, providing a nice loop through town, into the magic forest, downriver to its outlet to the sea, and back to the Micalvi along the shore of the Beagle. Only on rare occasions do the kids and I see someone else on our outings.

A new sailing school (Club Escuela Deportes Nauticos Puerto Williams), built by Chilean businessman Nicolas Ibañez Scott, sits on the point between Seno Lauta and Seno Micalvi. The school provides a free opportunity for all youth on the island to learn sailing and participate in national regattas. There are several kayaks, a fleet of Optimist prams, and one keelboat. The waters are protected in the inlets, and it’s very easy to mitigate risk in the cold waters. My kids have found both independence and personal meditation on the water. It is so nice to hear them talking about being in “the zone.”

Cruisers are fortunate on Navarino Island, because here it’s best to have your own boat. All movement in the Chilean waterways is controlled by the Armada, but once boats are out in the channels, there are many beautiful and well-protected anchorages nestled in the dramatic, wild, windblown landscape.

Sailors have a truly secluded playground for sailing, skiing, climbing and scientific expeditions. A very special and remote region along the Beagle is the Cordillera Darwin. In the winter, the snow-covered mountains along the Glacier Route are full of frozen waterfalls ripe for ice-climbing. The Darwin range is part of Yendegaia National Park, a recent 370,000-acre project of the Conservation Land Trust program.

The Micalvi Yacht Club brings in an international scene of sailors: Spanish, Austrian, French, German, Dutch, Chilean, Argentinian, Finnish, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Polish, American, British, Kiwi, Canadian and Australian, just to name a few. Seno Micalvi is often filled with a cacophony of languages across the six fingers of boats rafted together. My oldest daughter has learned how to speak, read and write in Spanish at the local school, and the sailing scene gives all my kids added daily exposure to a multitude of languages.

The peak sailing season is between October and April, with up to 42 sailboats in port at once. Many boats winter over in the extremely well-protected Lauta and Micalvi inlets (25 last year, and close to 30 expected in 2016). Others head north to Puerto Montt, or out of country to Brazil or Uruguay for offseason refits.

There are no chandleries or marine service shops on the island. Hardware stores are sparsely stocked. More supplies are readily available in Ushuaia, Argentina, but it is still a challenge. When it comes to making repairs on an island at the bottom of the planet, patience is the name of the game. The local private yachting industry is extremely small and developing slowly.

Most yachts in the country are foreign-flagged, and there are some services available for these visiting vessels, but they are very limited. In general, Chile’s maritime industry caters mostly to commercial motor vessels. For sailing yachts, careful planning is needed to maintain vessels here in a timely and affordable way.

F or our situation, searching in Chile and Argentina for a replacement rig for our type of boat proved fruitless. Fortunately during our knockdown, Anasazi Girl did what she was designed and built to do — keep us all safe, with only minor damages aside from the very major loss of the broken rig.

Shipping on and off the island is slow and expensive, and missing just one part creates a big hiccup in work progress. For us to repair the rig requires complete organization ahead of time, with all the parts and pieces coming in from outside of the country.

Equivalent replacements for the full carbon wing and racing sails had us digging deep for 100,000 euros, which is well beyond our budget. We don’t have a cruising kitty, a house or another life to go back to. Fortunately for us, although we are poor in pesos, we are rich in friendship. After our dismasting, 48 professionals in the marine industry around the world donated their time and knowledge to help us come up with the safe alternative solution of using a carbon plug to connect the carbon stump that remains on the boat to a new tube section.

Our replacement rig is coming out of Buzz Ballenger’s shop in Watsonville, California. It’s an aluminum section originally shipped from New Zealand to California for a trimaran that was damaged in transit and written off by insurance. The rig will be shorter than our original but will fit Class 40 sails. Michael Hennessy of Dragon Racing donated a used main and headsail to us.

Over the last 24 months, both friends and complete strangers have made small contributions to our mast project, which raised our spirits immensely and kept us afloat during some tough financial lows.

For approximately a third of the original carbon-replacement budget, we plan to step this tube over our carbon stump and use some of our original rigging and headsails. We are currently working to pay off the final balance due on the rig.

After a long two years, freedom from the dock and freedom to finish our family circumnavigation finally feels reachable. Through our marine-service business, we have also created something that gives us the potential for a future here.

Navarino Island has been a surprising gift. Never did I imagine as a child that I would live in this magical place with my own family, or that it would be under such challenging circumstances. Being here has pushed us to another level with patience, problem-solving and creative thinking. This environment — so clean, wild, and full of beauty and nature — has also given my family an incomparably simple and pure life. Our special experiences here will ­certainly be imprinted strongly in all of our memories.

Professional photographer Somira Sao is currently living with her family on Navarino Island, Chile. To see more of Somira’s work, visit her website www.anasaziracing.blogspot.com.

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