Our First Week in the Pacific...

Welcome to our Blog. Our latest entry always comes up first... 
Click this link if you want to start at the beginning:
FIRST BLOG ENTRY
If you want to start at the beginning of our trip:
START OF TRIP
If you want to see the story of our trip from South Carolina
(where we bought the boat)
 to Lake Ontario Click this link:
  SOUTH CAROLINA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our first week in the Pacific has been a busy one...  We are still trying to get our provisioning and preparations completed for our upcoming journey to the French Marquesas.

Our planned departure date is April 12.  This is the day after our friend Christina arrives to help us crew the boat across the Pacific.  We have known Christina for some 20 years and she is like a daughter to us...  Her boyfriend is in the US Military and is being deployed for six months starting in March, so this created an opportunity for Christina to join us.  They hope one day to go cruising, so what better way to find out how much you like something, than to just do it!

For us, a third person on board means that eventually she will be able to take watches, which means that instead of a 3 on, 3 off watch schedule, we can enjoy 3 on and 6 off!  This will hopefully mean more sleep for everyone...

The journey from Panama to Hiva Oa is just under 4000 nautical miles...  This means that if we average 5 knots in 24 hours we should travel about 120 nautical miles per day.  Therefore, the trip should take somewhere around 33-40 days...  With the El Nino lurking about, the winds may be less than normal so we have planned up to a 60 day passage...  We are provisioned for 6 months, so food should not be an issue.

We carry 185 gallons (700 litres) of diesel fuel in our main tanks and have 35 gallons (130 litres) of extra fuel in gerry cans on the deck.  We burn 1.1 gallons of fuel per hour.  This means we have enough fuel to travel about 200 hours.  And assuming we make 6 knots with the engine, we have enough fuel to travel  approximately 1,200 nautical miles.  This is about  1/3 of the way.  The rest we must sail...

Our goal is to sail the whole way!  That said, it is nice to know that our engine is there if we need it...

As for fresh water, we carry 200 gallons (1000 litres) in our 3 fresh water tanks.  We also have a water-maker (de-salinator) that produces 15-20 gallons per hour.  The water-maker operates only when the engine is running, so we will "make" water whenever we run the engine....  Our goal is to also collect rain water and be careful with our consumption, so in all likelihood we will not run short.  If the WORST happens, we have an emergency hand de-salinator (watermaker) which can produce about 1 gallon of fresh water an hour...  

So there you go... we have worked many years to prepare as well as we can for what we hope will be a completely uneventful journey of a lifetime...

We will send position reports every 24 hours by means of our SPOT connect (a satellite positioning device) and with our HF SSB radio.  Our Spot positions will appear on Shelley's Facebook and our HF (Yotreps) position will appear here on our Blog page...  Top right corner... Just click on the picture of our sailing dinghy....

This week we endured the really rolly anchorage at La Playita and enjoyed a few days at Taboga Island.  Taboga Island is only an hour away from Panama City on our boat.  It is a beautiful Island with lots of walking trails and beautiful things to look at.  Here are a few pictures from our adventures this week....

Michelle stayed with us this week after our transit.  We really enjoyed having her with us...

We explored Taboga...

Before Michelle left we took her to the old section of Panama City...

This week we have some running around to do and next Monday we hope to meet a bunch of other cruisers planning the same trip we are.  An American magazine called Latitude 38 has amassed a list of over 100 boats planning a trip across he Pacific this year.  Here is the link :

More news soon...
Cheers!