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Live For Today, Hope For Tomorrow!! A. Einstein |
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The Voyage - 
I met some great new friends on this trip. They are from Argentina and Poland. The diving was absolutely suburb on Santa Cruz in the Galapagas, and the experience of being 1500 miles from any land during the crossing to the Marquesas was exhilarating. We started in the Caribbean at Bocas del Toro, Panama in late January, 2012. From there, we transited the Panama Canal and proceeded to the Las Perlas Islands, then the Galapagos Islands, and finally reaching the Marquesas in mid April. The longest crossing was 27 days at sea between the Galapagos Islands and the Marquesas Islands. The Boat - The boat was a Southerly 115 yacht built in Britain in 1982. She had a centerboard(lifting keel) to allow shallow water entries in the coral atolls and was 36 feet long, quite short for a Pacific Crossing. She was 30 years old and had not been kept up. The engine ran hot almost daily, the autohelm and windvane were never used, the oven didn't tilt or swing. We used bent coat hangars to keep the pots on the stove while at sea. You certainly had to love her!! The People - 
The young Argentinian sailor, Ignacio Nano Saslavsky, is a surfer looking for the perfect wave. I think he found it near Tahiti. The young couple from Poland(Magda Jurkowska and Tomasz Bogusz) are traveling around the world. Having 5 people meant there was plenty of crew so that we were able to maintain night watches and still get 6-8 hours of sleep. The Passages - When we are at sea on the long passages, we practiced minimum fresh water usage and minimum power usage. At sea, we used fresh water for drinking and cooking only. Bathing was done with buckets of salt water sitting forward at the bow. We captured rain water for drinking from rain squalls. We attempted to run the the engine for 2 hours a day to maintain the batteries, but the engine continually ran hot. 
Click here to see all 18 videos of this trip |