The Long Passage

I believe people are capable of a lot more than they realize.  It simply takes a challenge to bring that out of them.  Most folks don't go searching for challenges in this day and age and, consequently, they never find out what they're really capable of.  During this last month and a half, I found out that I'm capable of sailing across the South Pacific.

It has been so long since I’ve posted that I decided to split up this passage into two blog posts.  This is the first installment gives the blow-by-blow of the passage, some of my fresh thoughts and feelings from the trip, a collection of interesting statistics, and my plans for the future now that I’m in the land of milk & honey (err… wine & beef).  

Stay tuned for my second blog post from the passage in the next few days.  There will be thrilling accounts of fires and steering failures, a sketch of what a “typical day” looks like on the Rascal during long passages, as well as my recipe for the Tropic of Capri-corn-dogs that I fried up just after I crossed the line.

The Three Phases
There were three distinct phases of the passage, with very different weather dominating each.  The first phase was in the SE trade winds and they were very, very consistent (10-25 kts from the SSE, SE, or ESE).  The only trouble was that my destination was to the SE which meant that I was bashing into the wind and the waves for the first two weeks.  It was also quite cloudy and the decks were awash with rain and waves 24 hours per day.  You can imagine how that might be frustrating, but I was well aware of what I was in for and it was actually a very productive portion of the trip in that I managed well over 100 miles per day for 10 days straight.  In fact, I went several days without adjusting my course or sails at all.  It was definitely rough sailing and I’m fortunate that I’m not the sort to get seasick, because the Rascal and I really took a beating during the first part of the trip.  There isn’t much you can do around the boat in such conditions, and I managed to polish off lots of books from the relative comfort of my pilot berth.  There were one or two days in the middle that felt particularly hateful, with gusts up in the 30s.  

On and on the wind came. It had tremendous force and the whole boat was singing it's song as it whipped through the rigging. She was heeled over at an absurd angle and she bowed over even further with each gust. Yet stronger, and more dangerous, than the wind - was the swell. A very steep, closely spaced set of waves were running and the Rascal was laboring over them like a whipped hound. Her bow plunged into each wave, flinging spray skyward and rocking the captain as if to recall a bronc busting competition. Occasionally, our course, the extreme steepness of a wave, and the treachery of Poseidon would combine to send the Rascal careening off the side of a wave. She'd come down like a cannonball in the following trough and when she did, she let out a shudder as though she was possessed. The captain, similarly, would let out a whimper from his bunk and wonder if it might be a good idea to heave-to until the weather calmed down.

The second phase was spent close to the center of the “South Pacific high”, which was fairly stationary for my trip and it made for very light winds.  If given the choice, I would definitely prefer the 20-25kt winds I was battered with in the first phase to the frustratingly slow progress associated with the high pressure system.  These calm conditions lasted for 13 straight days with winds less than 10kt and 10 of those days with winds of 5kt or less.  The wind direction was also quite variable.  I spent most of my time ghosting along at 2-3kts with the spinnaker or the genny set and obsessively trimming sails and watching the horizon for any changes.  There were lots of days when I made less than 80 miles.  The most frustrating part of the calm, however, is that the forecast kept calling for 5-10 or 10-15kt winds and instead I’d get dead calms.  I’d get a little puff and all of my hope would swell, only to have it fall calm again.  I spent a fair bit of time motoring during this phase, but never more than 6 hours per day to save as much diesel as possible and to make all possible use of the wind.  The nice part about this phase is that it was sunny nearly every day and I got plenty of opportunity to dry out and relax after getting soggy and beat up in the first two weeks.

The last part of the trip had variable conditions, but they were oftentimes more conducive to making good distance towards Puerto Montt.  There were a few days of calms and also a few days of 20kts gusting to 30.  In fact, towards the end of the passage, the Rascal managed one 24 hour run of 146.1nm (averaging more than 6kts all day!) which is the biggest day she has ever had by far!  There were even several periods of 7kts.  She was on a broad reach and it was like a horse running home to the stable after a long day’s work.  There were lots of rain squalls during this part of the passage and the rainbows and sunsets were outstanding.  I had a few slow days, but averaged better than 100nm/ day overall.  

The Blow-By-Blow
As my time in the Galapagos drew to a close, I got more and more fired up to tackle the passage, but the cold beers and friendly wildlife made it tough to leave.  

The penguins were especially active and a group of them spent all of my last morning chowing down on little minnows next to the Rascal.

But my permit was up, the wind was as good as it was going to get for more than a week.  So I went in to town for a last trip to the Booby Trap (a local restaurant), had a glorious lobster omelet for my last meal on land, pulled up my anchor and set sail southward.  

The first couple of days had very light wind and I spent a bit of time motoring before I picked up the real force of the southeast trades.  There is also a strong current that sets westward close to the equator that pushed me around a bit, but the current also seemed to carry dolphins with it, so I was able to get a nice escort out of the Galapagos!

I also caught a few pretty hefty rain squalls in those first few days, with enough rain to give the Rascal and I a nice freshwater shower.  

Around day three, clouds spread across the sky, the southeast trade winds filled in nicely, and I trimmed the sheets, set the windvane, and started reeling off the miles.  The weather was consistent for more than a week and I covered lots of ground.  One day started blending into the next and I charged my way to the south southwest miles after mile, day after day.  

You fall into this beautiful, natural rhythm.  A part of it is routine and the other part of it is like a zen state.  You're sailing, but you're not really focused on anything.  You're just living in the natural cycle of the day and night, rocking along with the waves and sliding through the water.  You're not really spending any time thinking about how much time you have left or how many miles you've come, you're just existing out there.  I was alone with my thoughts and letting the days come and go as they pleased.  

I had visited a farm up in the hills before I left, so I had tons of great produce and fresh meat and I ate like a king for the first few weeks of the passage.  Just a little sampling of my meals: filet mignon teriyaki sandwiches with fresh lettuce and green onion; meatball subs with fresh oregano and melty mozzarella; quinoa salad with peppers, onions, fresh basil, and black beans; steak tostados with chipotle refried beans and caramelized onions.  I was living high on the hog, but I knew leaner times were ahead once the ice ran out and the fresh veggies dwindled.  

I was in a very empty part of the Pacific, and there are no shipping routes or large population centers for thousands of miles.  I was expecting to see the occasional boat, or at least hear radio chatter from time to time, but for those first two weeks, I saw nothing.  There weren't even very many birds.  It was perhaps only every second or third day that I saw a bird and I didn't hear a single squawk on the radio at all.  

It was typically quite cloudy, but the moon was bright and sometimes it would break through in the night to shine on the boat.  I would wake up, see a bright light, think it was a boat nearby, and leap up into the cockpit only to find the man in the moon beaming down on me with a mischievous grin.  This happened several times before I got used to it and I slowly stopped noticing.  

Early one morning, at about 4am, I happened to be awake reading my book.  It was blowing 25 knots with a substantial rain storm and the Rascal was really rocking and rolling.  I looked up from my book and saw a light shining in one of my windows.  "Just the ole moon," I said to myself.  Except I knew it was totally overcast.  So I slowly ambled up to the companionway, and nearly had a heart attack.  A HUGE ship was right next to me.  The ship itself was probably 300 feet long and it can't have been more than 2-300 yards away.  Out there in the middle of the goddamn limitless pacific, I had come within 300 yards of another boat! 

He didn't seem to be moving at all and I was doing a consistent 5 kts.  By the time I noticed him, I had already nearly passed him and it was clear we weren't on a collision course.  I hailed him on the radio several times in a bunch of different languages, but never got any response.  I can only assume that he noticed me on his radar and came to check me out.  It was of a small tanker size, but I think it must've been a research vessel or a navy boat of some sort, though I can't imagine what he was doing all the way out there.  It was pitch black and the boat was rocking around like crazy, but I snapped a few shitty pictures just to prove that it had happened.  All you can make out are his navigational lights whipping across my field of view.  

The next morning, the clouds started to clear away, and the wind began backing further around to the east.  Throughout that day, the weather transitioned from the strong consistent winds of the trades to the light, variable winds of the high pressure zone.

At the time, I remember thinking, "Wow, this is lovely!" and I spent a few days drying the Rascal out, lounging on deck in the sunshine, and making modest progress in the proper direction for a change (with the wind at my back at times!).  

After three of four days of calm winds, I drifted across the Tropic of Capricorn, which felt like a big milestone and as soon as the excitement from that wore off, I started whistling for a wind.  Whistling, loud funk music, and even offerings of gin to the sea gods were all insufficient to summon a wind to my aid.  And I continued limping along to the southeast, making a weak 70-80 miles per day and waiting for the often-forecast winds to return.  It was during this calm phase that I had a fire and engine troubles befall me as well (I'll recount those tribulations in the second blog post) and it felt like Poseidon was adding insult to injury.  

Despite the frustrating conditions, it was absolutely beautiful and I spent many long hours staring down into the electric blue depths of the ocean.  With the sun at your back, it shimmered like a neon light.

In fact, the only fish I saw (and I didn't manage to catch a damn thing for the entire passage) was a tuna that was swimming in the shadow of the bow, presumably to get out of the blistering sunshine.  He swam alongside the Rascal for several hours, until an (apparently) poorly aimed spear shot made him decide to split.   

There was also a healthy number of top notch sunsets during the calm and I enjoyed each and every one.  

The stars during the calm were also particularly incredible.  I saw the Southern Cross for the first time and it really blew me away.  You're so far from light pollution and the air was so clear that it seemed there were millions of extra stars that hadn't existed before.  The milky way looked like a torrent of whitewater racing across the heavens.  I'd spend hours laying in the cockpit gazing up into the heavens.  

It was around this time that I realized that my course had inadvertently traced the shape of a lovely breast across the South Pacific.  Really quite incredible and unmistakable.  Complete with a little nipple and everything.  

Eventually, almost a month into the sail, some dark clouds appeared on the horizon and as I looked back behind me, I was horrified to see waterspouts dropping down out of them.  I had read some stories about exceptionally high winds associated with waterspouts and I got pretty nervous, but in the end I managed to out-sail them without any issues.  

With the waterspout and some other squalls in the area, the wind finally filled in strong and true and the third phase of the voyage commenced.  There were still some days were I'd motor through a few hours of calm, but in general, I was making 90 or 100 miles in the right direction each day, with a few days of 120-130nm.  

At this point, my ice had run out weeks before, all vegetables except for onions and potatoes had long been consumed, and my stock of meat was down to cured pork products (pepperoni, prosciutto, bacon, etc) that didn't strictly require refrigeration (and none of which went bad).  That said, I didn't feel like much of a hardship, and I still had lots of incredible meals supplemented by canned foods with rice or pasta.  I was also pretty careful about rationing throughout the whole trip to ensure I wouldn't have to go without.  I rationed good books, I rationed diesel, I rationed particularly tasty foodstuffs, and I rationed wine (that was particularly tasty given that it was Chilean).  I can certainly see how you'd look at a voyage like this and be appalled by its austerity, but 'going without' makes you appreciate 'times of plenty' so much more.  You can only imagine how good my first cold beer tasted after the passage.  

This last passage seems like a good illustration (if a bit extreme) of the way I've been living my life over the past year.  I've realized that I don't need to burn lots of fuel, I can use the wind to move me.  I don't have to take long showers and go through water with reckless abandon, in fact I only used 20 gallons during this whole passage.  I don't even really need much space, the 30 feet of the Rascal will do just fine.  I think a lot more about my impact on the world around me and if I ever go back to living on land, I'll certainly do it in a more respectful manner.  In a way, recalibrating my expectations to my humble life on the Rascal is an incredible gift.  I'll be satisfied with so much less in the future and appreciate luxuries that much more.

Waves continued to come and go, days continued to come and go, and I made steady progress towards Puerto Montt.  After I passed the Juan Fernandez archipelago, (where Alexander Selkirk was marooned and the story of Robinson Crusoe was born) I soon found that more and more seabirds where everywhere.  Mostly there were petrels, but I also saw a few southern hemisphere skuas and my first albatrosses!  They are absolutely enormous, appearing something like a pterodactyl sized seagull. 

As days wore on, I got closer and closer to Chile and I started to get fired up for the landfall.  There weather was pretty volatile and I had lots of showers, which made for lots of rainbows!

The Rascal was sailing really fast and as I approached the coast, I found myself in a dense mist, with low clouds, and a light following wind.  Chile was doing a pretty good job of hiding, but eventually I managed to make out a crest of land beneath the clouds.  

Eventually I passed into the throat of a big channel and land became apparent on either side.  I called ahead to a lighthouse to report my position and alert the Chilean Armada (the navy that controls all marine traffic in and around Chile) that I was coming into the country.  

I navigated around the corner to a protected anchorage and dropped my anchor into Chilean soil for the first time.  It felt like a million bucks.  I spent the evening gazing across the water and inhaling wafts of fresh cut grass and wood smoke that floated across the water to my passage-deprived-senses.  

Statistics, Milestones, and Interesting Data
This passage is by far the longest I’ve ever done, with 3524.1 nautical miles covered from door to door and 37 days between my departure from Puerto Villamil in the Galapagos to Puerto Montt in southern Chile.  This brings my total for the trip to 9889.8 miles & 355 days of sailing.  Just short of 10k and almost an entire year of my life.  

To give some perspective, the distance I traveled during these last 37 days is equivalent to the following spans (as the crow flies): Boston, Massachusets to Stockholm, Sweden; Anchorage, Alaska to Acapulco, Mexico; Honolulu, and Hawaii to Tokyo, Japan.  Its a damn long distance.  Its also equivalent to the Rascal running 155 marathons or 4 marathons per day for five and a half weeks.  

Between the calm and the short days on either end of the passage, I averaged 90 miles per day which is respectable but certainly not fast.  I think if I were to attempt this passage again, I'd probably stay a little bit further west to try and avoid the high, but chances are that route would see heavier weather on the run in to Puerto Montt.  

The course I sailed was about 74% efficient which is quite good considering how much time I had the wind coming directly from my destination.  The highest winds I saw were somewhere in the low 30s.  The water temperature, over the course of the trip, plummeted from 82 degrees in the Galapagos to 53 degrees in Chile.  

I ended up burning 25 gallons of diesel during the trip, which equates to about 140 miles per gallon.  Pretty respectable compared with what it would've required to fly or drive a similar distance.

There was one point, ten days into the voyage when I was 967 miles from both the Galapagos and Easter Island, and 1100 miles from continental South America (the Peruvian coast).  I dare say thats about as far as I'll ever get from land.  A thousand miles from nowhere.  

I also crossed the Tropic of Capricorn during this trip, which is the southernmost circle of lattitude where it is possible for the sun to be directly overhead.  As you travel further south, there is never a day (even in the height of summer) when the sun is overhead.  I crossed the Tropic of Cancer (the northern equivalent of the Tropic of Capricorn) in Mexico last June.   

Next Steps 
I've been in “passage mode” for a long time.  After a couple months of long sails, the Rascal and I are both pretty well worked.  I'm going to spend the next few weeks making repairs to the Rascal, devising a master plan for my time in Chile, and learning how to walk again.  I'm planning to stay in the Puerto Montt area for that timeframe, because it’s the easiest place to get boat parts and there are other voyagers here who have lots of valuable info about the territory to the south.  It is the tail end of summer in the southern hemisphere and I’m thinking about doing some traveling around on land while the weather is still warm and pleasant. 

My general plan for the winter is to try and find a tasty looking fjord or volcano (of which there are several!) with a snug anchorage at the base of it to see if I can’t manage a ski decent or two from the boat.  I’ve got lots of logistics to figure out first (skiing/sailing partners, timing, anchoring equipment, locations, etc) and a lot of my plans will be heavily dependent on weather.  At the moment, I’m feeling quite proud of myself for having made it this far and I don’t have any intentions of diving into anything too ambitious in the southern fjords just yet. 

There is much talk of nature and the preservation of wild places, but it seems to me that there are few places more wild and well preserved than the vastness of the ocean. Just sitting there and watching the waves roll past, with the birds wheeling around me, I'm totally humbled and awed by the beauty that exists out there. I'm awfully fortunate to have had the opportunity to be totally and fully immersed in it, in a place so completely unsullied by the hand of man.  It's a feeling that is tough to come by in our day and age and tougher still in places that are crowded with people and things.  Feeling that peace and being able to truly enjoy the simplicity of life and the grandeur of the world is a very valuable thing and I have never felt it so deeply as I did during this past month.  The world is a beautiful place, and I'm a damn lucky man.