We set off promptly at 0800 on March 20th. The wind was light, but the weather was fine and so we motor-sailed for the first day. This was because we wanted to get below 2 degrees South because it looked as though the trade winds would be more reliable the further south we got.
Our natural apprehension was tempered with excitement at the beginning of a voyage which will undoubtedly stay in our memories as the best sail we have ever had. We settled into what was to become our watch system for all of the voyages we would do on our own. Once we had saluted the sunset and had our evening meal, Sarah would go to bed and try to get some sleep. She would then get up and do the 0001 to 0400 watch until I came on again at 0400 until she woke up again at about 0730. On most days I then went back to bed for a couple of hours unless there was something more urgent requiring my attention. We had no formal watch system during the day but would alternately grab a siesta in the afternoon as the need arose.
The interesting result was our ability to keep a 24-hour watch on the boat whilst at the same time containing our fatigue to the extent that we could have continued indefinitely. These early days on our passage were accompanied by a full moon which helped us no end to settle into the night watches. Tom had downloaded 8GBs of classical music onto our iPods and so even on the dark overcast nights there was something magical to accompany the movement of the boat and the phosphorescence of the wake.
We were treated to a display of dolphins corralling their evening meal on the first day out and we both witnessed the illusive ‘green flash’ at sunset on the second. But after seeing a fishing boat the following morning we would not see another man-made object until our arrival in the Marquesas.
My fishing stayed on it usual track. We had a strike five minutes after I started trolling and lost both lure and line because the reel ratchet was damaged, and we didn’t hear the strike in time. Consequently, I resolved to service the reel and ended up with a dozen bits and no logical or obvious way of putting it back together.
Easter day saw us with only 123nms on the log for the past 24 hours and speaking to Tom and Annabel’s answer phones. Emails from Tom were the harbinger of bad news for selling our house in Dartmouth when he reported on the demise of Northern Rock and Bear Stearns. We were later to take the house off the market and let it once again.
Our fourth day out made us wonder where the trade winds were when we only made 46nms in 12 hours, but this proved to be our last bad period. In fact, the wind picked up and was never less than force 4 for the next ten days and only gusted above force 6 when we were adjacent to a shower.
The first 1000nms was completed on day 6 and we had our halfway celebration on day 10. The South Equatorial Current had set in at about 5 degrees South and was pushing us on at between 1 and 1.5kts. My morning inspection around the boat usually revealed several dead flying fish and on one occasion we found one in the bucket that lives by the wheel in the cockpit. Much later on we tracked down a ‘fishy’ smell that had appeared in the saloon to a flying fish that had flown into the quarter birth! None of these guys were very large and so we did begin to wonder about the veracity of the tales…….’breakfast was of fried flying fish collected off the deck in the morning’.
The satcom was giving us its usual problem of failing to connect or breaking the connection during transmission. This meant we had a real sense of achievement when we were able to send and/or receive emails and grib files. This proved to be the start of a difficult time for Sarah as Annabel was searching for her wedding dress and starting to plan her wedding in November. Added to this, our granddaughter was developing rapidly.
For the first ten days we sailed with the wind on our port quarter on a broad reach, only reducing sail as necessary in the rain squalls and occasionally for Sarah’s night watch when Moonbeam was getting too lively. But on day 11 we set up our ‘downwind rig’ of poled out yankee and main on a preventer, which was left unchanged for the next six days.
With one thing and another it took me several days to fix the fishing reel, but from day eight we trolled a line most days and (when we forgot) some nights. In spite of the fact that there were endless flying fish and occasional storm petrels for company we didn’t land a fish until we were a day out of Hiva-Oa, although we did lose a couple more lures and lines. She was a lovely female Dorado which we had for lunch, but it is just as well we had not assumed that the freezer would be topped up with fresh fish!
One day just seemed to dissolve into another. Sometimes I made some bread - generally in the form of rolls. Occasionally we would have a bacon roll for breakfast, but for the most part we had coffee and orange or apple juice and then something for lunch and our main meal in the evening. Our menu was less formalised than when we crossed the Atlantic and was consequently probably more varied and spontaneous. We had much to thank Kay Pastorius whose book ‘Cruising Cuisine’ made bread –baking, pie crusts and pizza bases, among many other things, simple to do on passage. For the most part of our journey we lived on the fruit and vegetables that we had loaded in the Galapagos. Onions, potatoes, carrots, green beans and cabbage all stood up very well and we were still eating fresh vegetables when we arrived in Hiva-Oa. All of the produce had been washed in ‘Milton’ solution prior to being packed separately in special ‘green bags’ we had obtained in England. Sarah inspected everything daily and discarded the odd culprit that was going off. Our meat supply held up well in the freezers keeping everything nicely frozen and so we ended up with nearly as many tins as when we left.
Battery charging, refrigeration, and water-making meant that the generator ran for approximately 4 hours each day. There is no doubt that the generator is the lifeblood of Moonbeam because she uses 15 to 20 amps an hour with the autopilot driving the boat, the instruments and computer all running and (at night) the radar on. We used the radar at night routinely – not so much for collision avoidance as for early warning of a rain squall so that we could reduce sail as necessary. Squalls were easy to see by day and if they were isolated on a moonlit night, but with any cloud cover or before the moon was up, they could creep up on you unawares.
We retarded the ship’s clock every 15 degrees of longitude at 1200 local time but otherwise watched the sunset get ‘earlier’ as our daily fixes marked on the chart walked westwards towards Hiva-Oa.
Day 16 arrived with the wind easing and a major decision to be made. We had had the worst day’s run (132nms) since day 4 and it was time to gybe the boat!! This involved furling the yankee, stowing one spinnaker pole and setting the other and then flying the yankee again. This was a good half hour’s work for the two of us if all went well which it did until we found that the halyard had parted. So now we had to lower the yankee, attach the spare halyard and raise it again. Because these problems never occur singly, the block on the toe rail for the preventer for the main which was now to port also failed. To cap it all the wind died! This led to our worst day’s run this passage of just 115nms.
However, the wind recovered and we made a more respectable 133nms the following day and we decided to gybe the boat again as the winds were forecast to remain ESE. This resulted in the second halyard parting and the yankee was raised on one of the spinnaker halyards (with only one left before I had to ascend the mast).
We started the engine to help push us along to ensure a daylight arrival and just after midnight we clocked up 3000nms with less than 100nms to go. At 0930 we saw land and we anchored in the harbour of Hiva-Oa at 1300 on the 7th April. It had taken us 19 days 8 hours to sail 3077nms at an average speed of 6.63kts. We had changed tack only twice in all that time. What an incredible sail!
But the strange thing that marked us for ever changed is that in spite of the euphoria of a safe arrival after sailing so far on our own, we nevertheless almost resented it intruding into our world of empty horizons. How odd!