 |
Live For Today, Hope For Tomorrow!! A. Einstein |
 Email Dave |
|
|
|
|
The Voyage - 
We all make mistakes in life. On this trip, I picked the wrong boat and definitely the wrong owner. I've heard of people who became tyrants at sea and control freaks, but I had never ran into one until this trip. The trip was originally supposed to be to Australia but half the crew left the boat(including me) in the Marquesas. The pain just wasn't worth the possibility of gain anymore. But we did have great fun anyway while it lasted and I met some great new friends from Argentina and Poland. The diving was suburb on Santa Cruz in the Galapagas, and the experience of being 1500 miles from any land 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. She has a centerboard(lifting keel) to allow shallow water entries in the coral atolls and is 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, and rusty bent coat hangars were used to keep the pots on the oven at sea. The People - 
I have about 16k blue water nautical miles, and 30+ years sailing experience in a variety of different blue water and fresh water sailing adventures. Also on board was a young Argentinian sailor, Ignacio Nano Saslavsky, and a young couple from Poland(Magda Jurkowska and Tomasz Bogusz) who are traveling around the world without using planes. Having 5 people allowed plenty of crew so that we were able to maintain night watches and still get 6-8 hours of sleep. The owner was an old British guy. He was a very rude, very arogant, very controlling person with a penchant for criticising everyone and everything, and allowing no discussion. I would rate his cruising skills as very mediocre and his captaining skills as horrifically bad. The Passages - When we are at sea, we practiced minimum fresh water usage and minimum power usage. This was due primarily to the length of the passages. At sea, we used fresh water for drinking and cooking only. We also captured rain water from squalls. We ran the the engine for 2 hours a day to maintain the batteries. But the engine was 30 years old and continually ran hot almost every day. The autohelm and windvane were useless so we manually steered the boat the entire way. 
Click here to see all 18 videos of this trip |