Enroute to Easter Island - Day 5

Today was much better. We are finally out of 'the box'!! (Yay)


The wind started moderating during the night last night. Leery of being caught with too much sail up during the night, we were slow to add more genoa, and so had our slowest noon-to-noon day yet--only 121 miles (NM). That is only an average of 5 knots over 24 hours. That's pretty slow for us. Our average speed overall as of noon was 5.6 knots.

But once dawn came, we pulled out more sail, and have been doing between 5.5 and 6.5 knots all day. The wind has stayed pretty steady at around 15 knots all day. We have only done one cycle of 'the wind has died, pull out more sail, the wind is back, reef it back in'. We have a HUGE genoa... at 120%, it is almost double the size of the 95% yankee that the CSY's originally came with. With 15-20 knots of wind, trying to trim the sail properly (and roller reef it in and out) is REALLY hard. I'm getting my muscles back--I will look like a linebacker by fall!!


The weather has been beautiful--even when the wind was blowing too hard. Sunny trade-wind conditions. The temps have dropped from about 80 in the Galapagos to 76 right now (just after sunset). Now that the wind has moderated a little, we are really enjoying the sail.

With the ride getting more comfortable, we've actually been doing something other than just hanging on. This morning I spent several hours working on my French lessons. Dave has no French, and no desire to learn. So I guess I'm "it" in French Polynesia. Fortunately, I had French in high school and college, and used my French last time around the Caribbean, as well as a little bit in Europe this fall. I still need to do some heavy 'brushing up', but at least I've got a leg up.

We also spent some time today with the guidebooks, trying to map out our short term plans for French Polynesia, and our longer term plans for what route we plan to take to Hawaii, and where exactly we want to go for 2011. (Watch our 'Cruising Plans' page on our website for updates, once we figure it out).

Our friends on Visions of Johanna arrived at Easter Island sometime today. And Infini continues to increase their lead on us--they are now 160 miles ahead of us. (Guess we should stop calling their Westsail 42 a 'WetSnail', huh?) You can see their blog at svinfini.blogspot.com. Another boat we know has just left Lima, Peru for Easter Island. They have about the same distance we do, but have a better wind angle.

We've been keeping in touch with everyone via a twice a day schedule on the SSB radio.

We are about 1/3 the way there... only 1285 miles to go!! (Current ETA Mar 15 or 16)
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At 3/7/2010 12:56 AM (utc) our position was 08°39.83'S 097°43.61'W

Enroute to Easter Island - Day 4

We got out of the washing machine yesterday evening. We think it was an area of counter-current, making the seas steep and confused. All of a sudden, without any change in the wind, things smoothed out a little.

So far we have seen one fishing boat--our first night out of the Galapagos, 2 seagulls, and a lot of flying fish. No other boats, no marine mammals. It's a big empty ocean out here.

Today our focus has been to keep the boat moving at a reasonable pace, and stay dry. We want to sail at around 5.5-6 knots, but it's a struggle. The wind has been up and down all day. We get everything trimmed up just right and we're humming along at 5.8 knots, and then the wind comes up a few knots, and we start tearing along at 6.5. Faster is usually better, but in this case, it means we bash harder into the waves.

The waves, though not crazy like yesterday, are still big and still pretty much on our beam. Every now and then one breaks over us, and water washes down the deck and over everything. Occasinally when the wind comes up, we heel so far over that we bury the lee rail in the water. We have our cockpit enclosure to thank for staying mostly dry. But we've got so much foamy water on the lee rail that we have a salty mist in the cockpit, and everything is coated in salt.

We have kept 2 reefs in the main, and the staysail up, and use the roller furling genoa to slow us down or speed us up. Most of the day it has been blowing close to 20 knots, so we've varied between a 'scrap' and a 'bedsheet'. Right now our genny is only out about 8-10 feet. It isn't shaped very well when we've got it rolled in so much, but we don't care.

The forecast for the next few days is pretty much the same. The GRIB files say the wind should drop off a few knots from today's 20 knots, but not change direction much. So we'll be hard on the wind for a few more days.

With only Dave and I aboard, we are doing 3 hour watches through the night. This gives us each about 5-6 hours of night-time off-watch sleep, and we supplement that with a nap during the day, and cat naps during our watches. On Soggy Paws, we are permitted 15-minutes at a time while on watch, to cat-nap, read, or whatever. We use a kitchen timer loud enough to wake us up. After a couple of days of night watches, you get pretty efficient at sleeping in 15 minute segments, poking your head up to check on things, and then going back to sleep again. Or read... or work on the computer.
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At 3/6/2010 2:07 AM (utc) our position was 07°05.05'S 096°27.39'W

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All is Well

Just a quickie... we are fine, sailing 5.5 knots 215 degrees
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At 3/6/2010 1:30 AM (utc) our position was 07°02.47'S 096°25.29'W

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Sailing South in A Washing Machine

Galapagos to Easter Island - Day 3 - 1568 Miles (about 11 days) to Go

We are in, or almost in, Jimmy Cornell's dreaded 'box'. This is an area that Jimmy Cornell, in World Cruising Routes, says that many sailors have reported bad weather and uncomfortable conditions. In the edition of his book that we have, the 'box' is 3°S-8°S, 90°W-95°W. However, in the latest edition of World Cruising Routes, the 'box' has been repositioned to 3°S-8°S and 95°-105°W.

We Are Grateful for Our Cockpit Enclosure!
We are currently at almost exactly 5°S 95°W. After a reasonable night last night, early this morning we sailed out of a nice moonlit sky into a 100% overcast, and the seas have just gotten awful. Not big so much as confused and steep. The wind is only a little higher--and pretty much the same direction--as we've had for the past two days, but the seas are something else. It's like being in a washing machine.

We have one wave train coming directly from the side--about an 8' swell with a 4-5 second period... tall steep seas. We have another wave train, coming right on our nose--4' and not so steep. The wind is about 15-18 kts, and we are down to a double-reefed main and just the staysail. We took a second reef in the mainsail yesterday evening, after our friends ahead of us reported 20-25 kts. It never got that high during the night for us, but we were still glad we'd reefed down.

About mid morning, we rolled in the scrap of genoa that we'd left out all night, mainly because the heel from the sails, combined with the steep waves coming from the side, were really rolling us around.

So we spent a few hours wallowing along pleasantly, 20° off our desired course, only making about 5 knots. However, with the 100% overcast, we needed to run the engine to charge the batteries anyway, so we cranked up Mr. Perkins at 1pm and have been motorsailing for the last 2 hours. With the engine on, we've been able to turn up just a little, so we're now going along our desired course (about 211°), and going slightly into the big steep swell, so we're not rolling so much. As long as we don't get going too fast, it's not too uncomfortable. We are hoping to just get ourselves further south as soon as possible.

We think that around 8°S, we'll be almost out of the 'box' and start seeing the wind go further east, which should let us ease our sheets a little. Unfortunately, we have a day or two before we reach that point. :P

In contrast, our friends on Visions of Johanna (vofj.blogspot.com) have reached an area of calm just north of Easter. They expect to have to motor pretty much all day today and tomorrow and arrive at Easter Island Saturday morning.

We are getting 10 day forecast GRIB files, covering the area down to 40°S and out to 160°W, and don't see any terrible weather brewing up between us and Easter Island. (Though anyone who trusts a forecast more than 2-3 days out, especially on this uninhabited patch of ocean, is foolish). But we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Our noon-to-noon run ending at noon today was 138 miles, averaging 5.75 knots. At that speed, we have 11.36 days to go. So we'll probably make Easter sometime 15-17 March. If the wind veers more East, we should pick up speed and may shorten that by a day or so.
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At 3/4/2010 9:29 PM (utc) our position was 05°00.15'S 094°47.43'W

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Enroute to Easter Island - Day 2

We had an uneventful day... the wind was up and down between 10-15 kts at about 145 degrees. Mostly nice sunny skies.

We have a reef in the main and the genoa rolled in a little. We've been averaging about 6 knots, not quite tracking down 212 degrees as we should be, but averaging a COG of about 225 degrees. The wind should swing more east as we get further south, and we expect to be able to curve right on into Easter Island sometime around the 15th of March.

No fish to report... since we are hard on the wind, we are heeled pretty good (leaning over, for you landlubbers), and have some pretty big seas, and it's a little challenging doing anything but sitting in the cockpit reading. Our freezer is stuffed so full, we wouldn't have any place to put any fish anyway.

We are chagrined to find out that our friends on Infini are going a little faster than us, so they are now just over 113 miles ahead of us. And Visions of Johanna are 2 days from Easter Island. We are still doing twice a day radio contacts with them.

Anyway, we are fine. 1677 miles to go.
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At 3/4/2010 1:37 AM (utc) our position was 03°32.81'S 093°34.31'W

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Enroute to Easter Island - Day 1

We are finally on our way, the leg we've been talking about and worrying about for years... months... days. 1900 miles, 13 days, hard on the wind for half the trip.

I can remember sitting in the Melbourne Yacht Club bar on a Friday evening in late 2006, talking about 'going to Easter Island'. It seemed like a far-off possibility. Now we are enroute! How exciting!

We didn't leave yesterday as planned, because we were still doing 'preparation' at 3:30 pm, and still had an hour or two's worth of stuff to do. The sea breeze was also blowing pretty briskly. Dave insisted that we have an early dinner, get a good night's sleep, and get going in the morning calm. Though I really wanted to get going RIGHT NOW, I couldn't argue too much with his logic.

Our friends on Infini had pulled out of the harbor at noon, though, thinking we were nearly ready to leave as well. So they were 102 miles ahead of us this morning at 8am. I think we are slightly faster than they are (a Westsail 42), so we should slowly catch up with them.

We motorsailed out of the harbor at 7:45 am, and turned the engine off as soon as we got clear of Isabela, around 10:30am. We hope to make the rest of the trip strictly under sail.

Right now, at 1330 local time, we are sailing close hauled at about 6.5 knots, making good a course between 225 and 235 degrees. The direct course to Easter is more like 212, but as we get further south, the wind will go more East, and we should be able to make Easter with no problem.

This old CSY was built for this kind of sailing, and is doing beautifully. The ride isn't that uncomfortable and the weather is just fantastic--sunny with a fairly steady wind at 10-15 knots.
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At 3/2/2010 9:26 PM (utc) our position was 01°29.67'S 091°34.31'W

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Underway For Easter!!

Finally got underway this morning at 0730 Galapagos time... 1890 miles to go!

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Planning to Leave for Easter Tomorrow

The Pacific Ocean is still sloshing back and forth a little--we are still seeing weird currents in the anchorage. But all reports from all our friends in the Pacific indicate that fortunately--this time--it was a relative non-event.

We are lucky, and we are very thankful.

We had a great evening last night with our friends on Beaujolais, another CSY who arrived in the anchorage at the same time as the tsunami. We warned them not to come in, and they hung out outside, hoping to warn us of anything 'big' before it happened. After an hour when things settled down, they anchored right behind us, hoping for a little help from Dave on their refrigeration.

While Sue from Infini and Janice from Beaujolais and I went to town for some internet and provisions, the guys worked on Beaujolais to diagnose the problem. It turned out that they have a 'broken rod end cap' (or something like that) in their Tecumseh compressor. They need a new one shipped from Ft. Lauderdale--and they need a good refer mechanic to clean their system of all the metal bits. We think we've got them lined up with a good guy in Santa Cruz. We'll leave them our cell phone sim card as well--they'll be here awhile waiting for parts.

In the afternoon, our agent, Bolivar, showed up to say hello. We weren't sure why he flew over from San Cristobal, but it turned out he had some business with the sale of a fishing boat here, and was also trying to straighten out some port captain problems (more in another post about that). But he did stop by with a huge hunk of yellowfin tuna for each boat. So we pigged out on sushi last night.

All accounts seem to indicate that Easter, Pitcairn, and French Polynesia are OK. The weather here looks good for going (though, in a 15 day passage, who knows what the REST of the trip weather will look like!!). So we are headed out tomorrow...1,900 miles. We expect to make approximately 150 miles per day. We'll be off the internet except for our sailmail email. We WILL be posting daily updates here, and you can track our progress here: http://shiptrak.org/?callsign=KN4TH&filter=30

For those of you looking for Easter Island on a map, here's a lat/long: 27°03 S 109°25 W

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Wondering about Easter Island

We were planning to leave Monday for Easter Island. And in fact we have friends who are already enroute.

At the internet cafe at 1pm local time today, we searched for information, but only found the President of Chile's warning/fears about EI getting hit. Have not heard anything more since the.

We are wondering whether to get underway on Monday as planned.

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