On Christmas Eve our crew left, and we were alone again, what a relief.

We left the buoy at the Balboa yacht club and headed out towards the Pearl Islands and had the skyline of Panama City behind us.

Heading out also meant that we finally went out on the Pacific Ocean

Relatively fast we were rewarded with a fish on our hook, this time it was a Spanish Mackerel of a good size.

When reaching the anchorage at the Pearl Islands we were invited to Christmas dinner by Peter and Catharina on Blue. We had a nice evening. We spent the time together on the Pearl Islands and on New Year it was dinner on Kerpa.

Christmas dinner

New year dinner

In between we had some heavy rain, so took the opportunity to top up our water tank with ca 100 liter of rainwater

We had a very nice time together, they sat sail towards Costa Rica, and we headed back to Panama City for final provisioning.

Panama City

We anchored outside the Flamenco Marina

Besides several days of provisioning of canned vegetables, fresh fruits, topping up with more wine and beer, filling CO2 tubes for carbonate water, Jerry cans for extra diesel etc, etc.

We took a day in the old town

It rains short spell more or less every day, but gave good opportunity for as pitstop, to have a beer or two.

One day at the marina parking we saw this for us strange animal, a racoon

Sometimes we had some heavy rain too

Back to Pearl Islands

After clearing out we sat course towards the Perl Islands, this time to The Hotel Bay at San Jose and there we meet Kristin and Jan on the Vilja. We had a short but very nice time together.

Kerpa and Vilja at anchor

We visited the Hacienda Del Mar together and had some cold but rather expensive beers in a relaxed environment.

It was nice to be together for a while as we during the passage to the Marquesas we would be totaly alone for ca 4 weeks.

Towards the Marquesas.

Due to both expensive and cumbersome processes to go through for permit to visit the Galapagos. We visited Galapagos a few years back when we made a 2 month bus trip from Ecuador to Brazil, so we sat course direct towards Hiva Oa, ca 3900 Nm.

On such long trip it is not possible to find a good weather window, one must take whatever comes. On the first stretch towards The Galapagos one risk both light winds and wind against you. We do not fancy very much to go by engine, so we decided to have a weather routing service. Usually we use Chris Parker, but he is more focused on the Atlantic and Caribbean Sea. After some googling and FB questions we found a service called Ocean Tactics managed by John, He had some good revives. 550 USD for a full year service including 2 longer crossings such as Panama-Marquesas and Fiji to New Zeeland, on top of that, 5 shorter trips such as Marquesas to Tuamotus ca 500 Nm, sound as a reasonable deal. The service should include bot departure planning and daily feedback with points to aim for and of course a weather report.

If you get good advice, one might save 550 USD only on diesel cost by avoiding calm weather and being correctly placed in the current which can contribute to over 2 kn during major part of this passage.

Later the same day as we signed up, I got a message on Messenger from an other Amel owner warning that the service is very poor. Unfortunately, he was right so I must warn others from signing up with Ocean Tactics.

The departure planning was a joke, and the weather report I’m sure was from Predict Wind, the professional package. Much better and cheaper to sign up your self for the professional package. If you need weather service on passage, better to use Chris Parker, which we did a few times on our crossing.

How to describe a 27-day passage is not very easy as many days are the same and not much variation, but it is still a special feeling being out on the ocean for almost 4 weeks only the two of us. It can maybe be boring to read about.

The first questions we get, isn’t it very boring to be out there only the two of you?

And what do you do all the time?

Answer to the first question, no it isn’t! Even tough I had some doubt about doing the trip only the two of us. On the contrary it was so great to do the trip just the two of us, not boring at all, your favourite corner in the cockpit is always there for you, no one to consider. I enjoyed the trip much more than expected, not bored at all and could have stayed out for much longer time, but Kerstin was very happy to arrive and would not enjoyed a day or two more.

Our Starlink contributed, to not feel alone or bored. We had face time calls with friends and family, must say it was very nice to talk with our kids and grandkids, further we could follow news which we missed a lot before we got Starlink, especially these days when world news is very interesting, and things change almost on a daily basis.

And of course, to keep track on weather.

We have two units as we like redundancy, one Starlink Mini drawing ca 20 watt, and a Generation 2 unit that consume just over 40 watt, during the passage we have both active if one would fail, but of course only one turned on, the mini. We found that the mini connected much faster than the G2 did on our Atlantic crossing, sometimes the G2 took up to an hour to connect if the sea was rough.

Very simple installation of the mini but working. The G2 antenna we have on the stern rail.

The other question what do you do all days? To be honest not much, just enjoying the time.

So how to visualize the trip, I choose to show you several short video clips from the trip, and maybe you can get a feeling how such a long trip could be, I tried to make film but my computer did not cooperate

Please give feed back, if you like this way or not to describe how a long crossing could be.

Appreciate if you also give comments or a like then I know that at least some reed to the end.

The start and day 1

Finally on our way on a for us epic journey

Day one started well with good progress both at day and during the night

Great progress during the first night

Every 4 hours we take not of position, speed, wind, distance etc, of two main reason, first if navigation breaks down, we have position not older than 4 hours, and if an accident happens we could show log for our journey. And fun to keep track of statistics, how fast we go, record distance in 24 h, and maybe less fun, our slowest 4 or 24 h distance.

Kerstin takes nots during her watch

Another question we get is how is your watch system?

During day-light time I’m responsible for the watch, and during the dark hours we share and take 2-4 hours, as no traffic, the one on watch take a 1 h nap/rest and then check around that everything is in order, a good lock out and checking the radar. During the whole trip we saw one fishing boat when we passed south of the Galapagos, else nothing, just a very few AIS targets from commercial vessels at very fare distance.

Day 2

Little wind slow progress with rather confused sea, making it a bit uncomfortable aboard

A free passenger can lighten up aboard now and then, but they leave a massive amount of droppings, not so fun to clean off, we had a few visitors, one evening we had a whole family sitting in the rig dropping all the time, our spray hood and bimini became full of droppings and we could feel the strong smell. We tried to chase them away, but not easy they are not afraid at all. Finally I took our portable fog-horn, but it was not one blast that was needed, but many I was afraid I run out of compressed air, but finally they left. N.B. the Bobbies do not need the boat for rest, I think they just sit there for fun and look at the strange creatures out on the ocean.

Day 3

What do we do?

We regularly bake bread, this time a cake, but the baking soda was old (6-7 years) so result was not as expected, but taste not too bad.

There are plenty of beautiful evenings with sunsets in abundance

As well as amazing nights

The moon shines up the night, and when no moon, one can see the most wonderful starry sky. No light pollution at all. It was wonderful to just look at the sky for a long time and see stars I had not seen before and star constellations in a different orientation than we are used to, that due to being so close to the south hemisphere.

Day 4

Heavy rainy day cleaning away some of the bird droppings.

Day 5

Not much wind, motor sailing. We lost two lures as fishes to large for our fishing gears.

Day 6 passing the equator

One is supposed to be baptised by Poseidon when passing the equator, but as only the two of us, we just celebrated it with a cognac, very modest

Day 7 rather bumpy and not so easy to make food

Day 8, a maintenance day

We have had light wind, causing flogging of the sails, that is a common problem on passage, light wind with old swell can cause sails to flog violently, not unusual to have speed even over 4 knots but the sails flog so violently as you have taken them in and motor.

The flogging causes a lot of strain of course on the sails, but also on the furling units.

I noticed that several of the screws holding the foil to the furler has fallen out and some of them had broken. The threads that hold the foil to the furler was severely damaged. When filming the damage, a big wave hit the boat and I had a close call to fall overboard as you can see on the clip

Some thinking and I fixed it in a Quick and Dirty (Q&D) manner

The solution worked great all the way.

Later during the day, we sat the Code sail

Day 9 Maintenance again this time at night

Our hydrogenator that gives good contribution to the batteries suddenly gave strange noise, a quick inspection showed that one of the blades was broken off. It was a rather calm night, we furled our code to reduce speed and attended the hydrogenator.

It was a quick fix, but after replacing the propeller the hydrogenator only produced half of what it did before, even though the same pitch on the propeller!!??

Day 10 Fishing luck

A skip jack of decent size, when cleaning the fish we found parasites in it, but Mr google say safe to eat if frozen 7 days at -18 C, so we had to wait one week before we could taste it.

Day 12

W spend a lot of time in the cockpit to be shaded from the sun, but sometimes I feel a bit trapped in there, I feel a bit shaded/screened off ( do not know the correct English expression, but hope you understand what I mean) from the sea and the fresh air. It also hinders you from discover the wildlife outside, I wonder how many whales and dolphins we missed during our passages due to that. I would like to spend more time on deck, but the sun is too strong, the UV index is always on extreme level. Anyhow one day, we were pooling out our head sail, and then Kerstin saw the blows from three large whales probably humpback whales not fare at all from Kerpa. No photo or clip of that unfortunately.

Outside the cockpit bubble

Day 13 Sundowner on deck

Day 14 Halfway

Halfway is an important milestone on passage it took us almost 14 days to reach.

Halfway celebration with Cava

Dinner, Pasta with Salmon, one of my favourites, excellent for celebrating the occasion

How is it to eat aboard on passage?

Well we do miss to sit at a table, we do eat from dog bowls, that is maybe one of the reson for that some choose to sail on catamaran?

Day 16

I get another favourite dish, meatballs

Day 18

Listening to Swedish radio, it is “The Melodifestivalen” a competition for which song that qualify for “The Eurovision Song contest”. This is quite a big thing in Sweden and the rest of Europe, a lot of people watch the competition on TV or listening to radio. When listening to the radio they asked people to take a photo from where they were listening to the program an to sent it in. We took a photo in the middle of the pacific and sent it in. about 15 minutes later they mentioned on radio that we were listening to the program from the Pacific.

This is the photo we sent in.

Day 19 just another day

Day 21

Another sundowner on deck admiring the sunset

Day 23

A bumpy lunch

Day 24 600 Nm left

Nice time on deck

Day 26

Almoast there

100 Nm to go

Day 27 arriving Hiva Oa

Finally, there after 26 days 10 h 45 minutes 3927 Nm in total where off 425 Nm 85 h by engine or motor sailing. Average daily distance was 148 Nm, which for us is not so good.

Of course, we wanted to take a bath in the water after arriving, looking at the bottom was a bit shocking the least

What we did about it, you have to wait to the next blog post.