The sail from the Galapagos to the Marquesas is the longest leg of most circumnavigations.  It’s 3,000 miles roughly but if there is no wind in Galapagos, one needs to take South-south westerly route initially before turning towards the Marquesas, which increases the distance sailed.   The initial routing showed that we would indeed need to motor for a few days to get into the trade winds.  We were planning on between 18 and 20 days so provisioning the boat for this many days became a big task.   The team for this leg consisted of Stefano, Anna and Iain who joined a few days before the start and they went to work on provisioning right away.  Unfortunately, Iain had to return home a day before the start to take care of a family emergency. 

Kincsem being prepared for the long haul in Santa Cruz

 

This leg is a competitive leg of the WARC – i.e. we’re “racing” and there is an official starting line.    We had a pretty good start on an up wind course but the wind died within minutes of the start.  So we and the rest of the fleet were again motoring like on the way to get to Galapagos ….  Fortunately, we found some wind off and on during the first three days of the passage so were actually sailing a bit.  From Day 4 on, the winds became more consistent and we could finally sail almost 100% of the time.   For all of us on board, this is when the true enjoyment started.

The Doldrums at their max

Stefano readying the furling line for the Code Zero

These gulls don’t seem to be able to behave even for a few minutes!

 

The last of the Red footed Boobies from Galapagos, as usual soiling the foredeck

 

There is really nothing like a long sailing passage in the trade winds.  The winds are from behind and generally neither too strong nor too weak.  So there are often not many sail changes – we have had days where we did not change anything all day!  With three people on board, we are taking turns and life revolves around the watches – although Max, the autopilot, is always on watch!  Between 2100 and 0900, we have four 3 hour watches and during the remainder of the day, we do three 4 hour watches.  This means that the time of one’s watch during the night changes every day so everyone has the opportunity to be on watch during sunrise and sunset, for example.  Everyone gets 5 to 6 hours of sleep during the night and there is plenty of time to catch up on sleep during the day.  We do 1800 happy hour religiously where we enjoy a beer or some non-alcoholic drink and some nibbles.  One of us then cooks dinner and everyone else cleans up afterwards.  Next day:  Rinse and repeat!

Dinner time!

G&Ts for half time!

Code Zero and Genoa on poles and the mizzen are up at night!

 

From the beginning, the big question was where to find the wind.  The grib (weather) files showed generally that there would be more wind South of the rumb line but catching the stronger winds would mean many hundreds of miles in additional distance and the difference in wind speeds was usually only a couple of knots.  It is important to understand that the grib files are really only reliable for a few days – like 5 or 6 days – so everything beyond that is more like speculation.  In addition, only one of the grib files, the US GFS model, goes out 16 days (others are typically 8 to 10 days) – but even that is not enough to cover the entire trip to the Marquesas.  So running a “routing” on the computer using these grib files has severe limitations!  So my plan was to stick as closely as possible to the rumb line after catching the trade winds and only deviate if that seemed clearly warranted.  Many of our competitors had different plans however and soon were 200 or more miles to the South of us!

 

 

What were the highlights and low points?  For the first two weeks, we had a nearly full moon during the nights which made being on deck at night very enjoyable.   The Southern Cross was always with us and one fantastic stary night followed another.  We tried the mizzen staysail – a huge sail that is like an asymmetric spinnaker set from the mizzen mast.  In the right conditions, it adds up to a knot of speed and it is surprisingly easy to set and recover because it has its own snuffer - takedown sock.  The Parasailor was up many days and nights – until it ripped leech to leech one day in moderate winds. 

The Parasailor with one hole too many!

I had neglected to have a small hole professionally repaired last winter which started the rip.  We spent many hours taping the rip but ultimately didn’t have enough good sail tape to do a good job so the repaired sail ripped again after only a couple of hours.  From then on, our downwind sail plan became Code Zero and genoa, each on its own pole.  This is a very stable setup which Max likes a lot but it takes a while to rig the many lines (sheet, topping lift, downhaul, foreguy, aft guy) and things can get really complicated when we need to jibe.    

Under Parasailor into the night

Rocking along under Parasailor and Mizzen Staysail

 

There was only one equipment failure:  one night we had the Watt & Sea hydro generator in the water when it suddenly made a strong noise so  Stefano took it out of the water.  The next morning we discovered that the electric starboard genoa and mainsheet winches were no longer working.  It took me two days to diagnose the problem:  the control units for these two winches were both blown out, apparently from a voltage spike.  So Kincsem is now a manual boat on port tack until we can get replacement controllers shipped from Italy! 

 

Our landfall in Hiva Oa was truly spectacular as the high mountains of Hiva Oa appeared right at sunrise.  A few hours later we passed the finish line at the mouth of Tahauku Bay at Atuana, Hiva Oa after 19 days, 1 hour and 1 minute, which combined with our low motoring hours, gave us first place in Division A!

The finish line in sight!

The winning team after check-in