I am heading out for a quick jaunt across the pacific ocean. Enough friends have said how much they enjoyed reading about previous ocean crossings on my blog so I am resurrecting it to share stories and pictures for this upcoming Pacific crossing. I will try to share occassional videos on Instagram
On Feb 27th, I will be flying to the Galapagos to join 3 others and an Amel 55 called Kincsem to sail across the Pacific Ocean to the Marquesas, Hiva Oa in particular. It’s 3000 NM jaunt so similar in length to the Atlantic crossings that I have done.
I will meet up with the two other crew (both from Scotland) in Quito, Ecuador and then we will all fly to the Galapagos together. We will have a few days in the Galapagos to explore, meet the wildlife, possibly have a wild life? and provision the boat. I will spend a chunk of time familiarising myself with every system on and every inch of this 55 foot sailing machine. We will cast off on March 3rd and be at sea for about three weeks.
The Amel 55, an ocean cruiser and seems to tick all the right boxes when it comes to safety, comfort, reliability engineering and speed. I anticipate that German skipper has every bolt tightened within an inch of its life. It’s a cutter headed ketch rig and (for non sailors that means we could have 4 sails up) has just about enough sail area to cover ahalf a tennis court which will be really fun and fast in the right wind and downright scary when a 50 knot squall blows through at 2am and you want to reduce sail in a hurry. I will let you know how that goes.
Sailing a cutter headed ketch is new territory for me and so I will be on a bit of a learning curve initially and specifically think about best sail plan in various conditions on that sort of rig. You could probably wrap a small apartment bock in that much sail.
I sailed from Halifax to Bermuda and then down to St Maartin in May last year on a Van De Stadt 45 called Supertramp. She has also just arrived in the Galapagos so I have planned a reunion with my kindred spirits of the sea on Santa Cruz. Its nice to fly half way around the world and find good sailing friends, oh man and we have some stories from that trip!
Although we have not yet met in person I have spend months on zooms with my fellow Scots planning for our leg across the pacific, both have sailed on Kicsem before. We are products of the same culture and history so trust that nothing will be lost in translation. I already have a sense that we “get” each other.
Ok all from me for now as I go and make the final preparations to leave. I look forward to sharing this journey with you and will be in touch again soon.
