Making the Jump!

At 9:15 a.m. this morning, Korvessa pulled away from the dock in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. After filling up our two tanks and six jerry cans with diesel, the guys made their way to Nuevo Vallarta for the official checkout with Customs, Immigration, and the Port Captain. Yesterday, getting our pre-departure paperwork ready at the Port Captain’s office, I found myself choking up at the prospect of leaving Mexico, of our boat leaving Mexico. Today, I found myself choking up at Tom leaving Mexico, with no other country in sight for three to four weeks. It’s a weird feeling. I came back to our little apartment and just vegetated for hours while the I gave the kids free reign on their tablets. I’m going to have to return to actual parenting shortly, but in the mean time, I just needed some time to breathe out all the busyness of the last five weeks.

It’s been a whirlwind of activity to get ready for the passage to French Polynesia, stifled ironically by Tom’s severe cold and Mexico’s afternoon heat. I had planned on getting Tom to narrate a short video about what he did to get the boat ready, but that was simply not possible. Here is small sample of everything we did to get the boat and ourselves ready for the trip:

• Inspect all the rigging and hull.
• Inspect the engine and generator and service various parts.
• Install a solar panel as a bimini so there is a modicum of shade in the cockpit on the transequatorial passage.
• Fix the radio antenna at the top of the mast and check all communication systems.
• Strap down the dinette tables and floor boards so that they don’t go flying in the case of a knock-down.
• Purge the boat of anything unnecessary and find nooks and crannies deep in the bilge for storage.
• Pack the boat full of food, spare parts, and other essential supplies.
• Ensure we have paper charts of the whole South Pacific.
• Ensure that our paperwork is in order (there’s more than you’d think).
• Attend a bunch of seminars on weather, provisioning, rigging, South Pacific, etc to make sure we know our stuff.
• Be social. Though this last week, that took a firm backseat most of the time.
• Last but not least: Watch weather patterns: I watched the weather reports daily to start noticing patterns and developments. Tom will be downloading GRIB files (weather maps) and tuning into HAM nets to get forecasts and identify where the best place is to cross the ITCZ. We have also employed a weather router for this first big crossing. As much experience as we have in looking at the weather, this is a very apt time to listen closely to an expert.

By the way, except for the map, I have no pictures of any of this, because, well, because we were a little busy. So I will let you imagine the piles of tools, of food, of floorboards removed and Tom upside down in the bilge. Of overwhelmed, screeching kids stepping on backs, tool-bags, and Demon’s tail to get to the most inconvenient spot on the boat. Of a meowing cat and sweating, dripping humans. Of Lego pieces everywhere. Let’s just say it could sometimes be chaos.

But we lived through the chaos, and before I start to work on some more detailed posts about La Cruz, provisioning, and other things, here are some answers to a few FAQs we have gotten. Feel free to ask more, and I will try to respond:

• The passage to the Marquesas should take somewhere between three and four weeks.
• It will be somewhere between 2900 and 3200 nautical miles.
• Why such a range? You can not take a straight line to the Marquesas. You have to first get out of the light winds around Mexico, then get into the NE trade winds. From there, you follow the weather to find the narrowest and least stormy place to cross the Intertropical Convergence Zone (the ITCZ, which is full of zero wind and squalls), at which point you make a B-line south (probably by motor), then look for the SE trades to blow you toward the Marquesas.
• French Polynesia is made up of three major island groups: the Marquesas (tall and volcanic, like Hawaii), the Tuamotu Archipelgo (a collection of atolls), and the Society Islands (where Tahiti and Bora Bora are).
• We’re at the early edge of the window to make the crossing, though there are already quite a few boats ahead of us. March and April are when most vessels make the crossing because that’s when the North Pacific High has re-established itself, supporting steady trade winds north of the equator, but before the hurricane season starts in the north Pacific (May 15). Currently, winds look fairly steady at 15-20 knots for most of the passage, except for the next few days when some light air is moving in near the coast.
• There is more than 200 gallons of fuel on board, plus about 220 gallons of water (and a water-maker).
• Even with my forgetting to put the bag of cucumbers on the boat, there is plenty of food. Pretty sure they could make it four or five months. There’s even plenty of cilantro and scallions for as long they last.
• No, the kids and I are not on the boat for this long passage (better for everyone, we agreed), but we have plenty of shorter (2-10 day) passages ahead of us to get to New Zealand so we’re not missing out on that experience. Besides, we will have five flights to get to Atuona, which is kind of an epic journey of its own.

Another journey is in the attempt to document even a little of our adventure on video. Dylan and I have gotten a little behind on our videos, but here is a link to our latest production, which is about the day trip we took to San Ignacio in mid-December. Enjoy!