Day 19, Leg 4: Galápagos Islands to Hiva Oa, Marquesas:
Our freezer finally decided to throw in the towel a few days before we left the Galápagos Islands and with a terminal diagnosis of dead compressors we had no choice but to completely rethink our meal plan and provisioning strategy for our forthcoming 3000 mile voyage to the Marquesas that we reckoned was going to take us about 3 weeks to complete. In many ways it was a relief: it had been throwing a tantrum for quite a while and we were constantly on tenterhooks as to whether we needed to take a chance for this long leg by relying on it, or whether to provision with fresh, tinned and dry goods. At least now we knew what we were dealing with - and we thanked the gods that it had chosen to die before we left.
Because there are just 2 of us we always aim to keep everything at sea as stress-free as possible. Our galley is set up about as well as it can be for cooking at sea. It is very narrow, allowing anyone working down there to brace themselves effectively, and our cooker is gimballed, enabling it to swing at crazy angles with the roll of the boat, keeping liquids steady and anything in the oven from sliding about too much. Nevertheless cooking at sea can be pretty traumatic: in the tropics the galley is unbelievably hot and with the boat rocking and rolling in a heavy seaway it is difficult and unpleasant down there - so much so that it’s often tempting to just not bother. This however is not a good strategy as it is super-important to keep energy levels and morale high - both of which sink rapidly if you don’t eat regularly. Therefore we have always batch cooked all of our on-passage meals and stored them in the freezer, along with a lot of frozen vegetables to take the stress out of having to keep fresh vegetables edible for long periods of time. So …… with a considerable amount of swearing we jettisoned around 30 meals that we had already pre-prepared along with the bags of vegetables.
The Galapagos is really not the best place to provision the boat for a long leg. On the plus side there is a very good fresh market on Santa Cruz, with a great choice of fruit and vegetables along with fresh meat stalls and very friendly stall-holders. It was a great experience to provision there - even with my pathetically limited Spanish - and to take the opportunity to try out some unfamiliar produce as well as more recognised items. However, there was no way of knowing how fresh the meat was and therefore how long it would last, so we had to take a leap of faith and purchase quite a few days’ worth. The other issue was that the largest supermarket was more like an ambitious corner shop but with added cockroaches.
I absolutely loathe cockroaches - and for sailors they can be a disaster. We are completely paranoid about them getting into the boat where they will multiply like you would not believe - and be almost impossible to eradicate. The cockroaches in the Proinsular Supermarket were without shame, sauntering brazenly among the cereal boxes and actually running over my flip-flopped feet whilst I waited to pay. (Scream? You bet I did!) So in addition to our normal precautions, every single item we brought onto the boat had to be washed, and literally all packaging - and especially cardboard (down to the cardboard wrappers on the chocolate bars) had to be thrown away as it notoriously harbours cockroach eggs.
Since leaving the UK I have always kept an overly large stock of tins and store cupboard items on the boat, much to M’s continual - and up to now probably justified - exasperation. I’m sure a psychologist would have something to say about trying to control the uncontrollable with enough tins to survive a nuclear winter. I am ashamed to admit how many tins of Heinz tomato soup we carry - not a single one of which have we have ever felt the urge to open since leaving Guernsey.
However, what started life as a comfort blanket has finally come into its own - and I am vindicated! Finally we are glad that we have a stock of 28 tins of tuna along with 34 tins of sweetcorn, 8 tins of mushrooms, 12 of baked beans, and numerous cans of ravioli, dauphinoise potatoes, fruit, rice pudding and coconut milk, accompanied by a selection of assorted beans, lentils, and pulses that I have never eaten in my life, plus 6 different types of pasta, more soy sauce and pesto than 1 person could eat in a lifetime, and some packs of self-heating stew that are probably best left for truly desperate times.
So we set sail with a fridge full to bursting with fresh meat, a ‘sort-of’ bacon, a large tinned ham and a lot of unfamiliar cheese, vibrantly coloured yoghurt (that bizzarely comes in bottles in the Galapagos), a fruit net that looked about 7 months pregnant and a bag of dried tofu generously donated by our friends on fleet boat Imi Ola that they promised rocks it in a bolognaise sauce.
Almost immediately we realised that cooking our main meal at lunchtime was much better than a race against the failing light in the evening, which is when we would typically have our main meal of the day. It also helped us start our watch system on time as we weren’t scrambling to eat and clear up before the start of the first watch. Furthermore, we found that we only need to eat breakfast (usually fruit and yoghurt) plus a main meal at lunchtime. In the evenings and overnight we were rarely hungry enough to want supper.
People often ask about how we deal with sleep. We have been asked if we anchor (no, not in 4000 metres in the middle of the ocean with 150m of anchor chain!) or if we just go to bed and let the boat sail herself. I do occasionally hear about people doing this, especially on long ocean crossings where you rarely see another boat. In theory it’s possible to set up your radar and your AIS (automatic identification system) with proximity alarms. However we have seen the lights of fishing boats before now that don’t show up on either. Plus we like to be awake to deal with a change in the wind, to manage squalls and to sense any changes or problems with the boat.
We have sailed around 15,000 nautical miles since leaving the UK and always with just the 2 of us. We have tried a number of variations to our 2-person watch system. We still come back to 3 hours on and 3 hours off during the night, with a more flexible approach during the day around the need to nap. The critical factor for success in the tropics (particularly on an east to west transit) is to ensure that the final watch finishes before the sun rises into the boat which causes the off-watch person to wake early in a completely sweaty panic.
In the early days we used to do 2 hours on and 2 hours off but this was literally exhausting and resulted in having to sleep a lot more during the day. We occasionally still do this if the conditions are terrifying enough - even dropping to 1 hour on, 1 hour off if needs be.
We have tried a 4, 3, 3, 4 system to provide more sleep. This keeps the graveyard shifts shorter which helps to keep sleepiness and visceral despair at bay, especially on those moonless nights, but we found a couple of problems with it. Firstly being woken after 4 hours is harder than after 3 as you are more deeply asleep, and secondly it is harder for the last person sleeping to get their full sleep allocation when it is getting lighter and warmer. I usually have the last sleep and I have a really effective sleep mask from Drowsy but it is still not always enough. 2,4,4,2 might solve that but doesn’t deal with the bleakness of a long graveyard shift. Some of our friends do 6 hours and 6 hours. This would definitely help to give a good long sleep but would be incredibly tough on the person doing the 2nd shift as the midnight to dawn hours are the most desolate. I also feel that it would be very hard to stay awake for 6 hours. You could alternate to keep things fair, but we have found keeping to the same sleep pattern is really important for our poor sleep-deprived bodies.
With just the 2 of us we always sleep in the cockpit. Our cockpit seats are long and relatively comfortable, and we can put up the table leaves which wedge you in nicely in rolling seas. Much more effective than a lee-cloth! It’s lovely to have another human being close by on those lonely night watches, even if they are unconscious - and if something needs doing quickly such as shortening sail for a rapidly approaching squall then we are both on hand. Generally it is far too hot to sleep inside, especially as the seas are often too lively to risk having the hatches open, and the cockpit is a lot cooler. In fact we usually have a light blanket to sleep under as it can get a bit chilly.
As well as curiosity about our sleep, people often ask what on earth we do for days on end at sea. And yes - you’re right, unless something goes badly wrong there is very little to do. We fall into the rhythm of sea days where there are only 12 hours of daytime once the night watches are done. There are the occasional sail alterations or changes, but with twin poled-out headsails on an east to west trade wind crossing there is not much to do other than adjust them or the boat’s heading occasionally, and furl them in and out according to wind conditions. It is an almost ideal short-handed set-up. We tend to avoid putting up our light wind asymetric as we’re both nervous about getting it down double-handed. Our autopilot, Ernie (he drove the fastest milk-cart in the west) steers the boat, so Aqualuna tends to sail herself a lot of the time.
We have to do regular boat checks. We check running rigging and sails for chafe, hardware for breakages and general wear and tear. These long ocean passages put enormous pressure on the boat and the rig so this is a really important task. We also have to make water (using our onboard watermaker which turns seawater into really good drinking water through a process of osmosis) and fire up our generator to top up our house batteries overnight when the solars are not able to charge. Otherwise we read, write, listen to podcasts, learn French, play games, and communicate with friends and family via WhatsApp. We even have the occasional video call thanks to our Starlink system which gives us better WiFi mid-ocean than we have at home. Other than that I spend a lot of time just watching the ocean, hoping to see whales, dolphins or even a shark. My favourite spot is on the dolphin seats at the front of the boat (when it’s not too rough to venture up there). I can happily spend hours up there enjoying the ocean, with my favourite playlists on my AirPods and singing away at the top of my voice. I mean, where else can you sing to your heart’s content without being heard?
For the first 10 days or so, the moon was almost as bright as day. And of course we experienced that wonderful lunar eclipse. Now that the moon has all but disappeared, and with absolutely no light pollution, the nightly show of starlight is eerie and enchanting. If we’re lucky we see phosphorescence in the water that appears to mirror the starlight overhead.
And of course food! Thanks to that broken freezer we have at last discovered the joy of cooking at sea where we can be creative with what needs eating at the time, in conjunction with what we feel like. Much of our daily conversation now seems to revolve around this ever-fascinating subject. The Cooking at Sea group in the fleet WhatsApp community has provided me with a lot of inspiration - and fun. Although I admit to feelings of inadequacy in the face of photos of a breakfast of frittata and fresh bananas (yes fresh bananas on day 17) whilst the cook does yoga in the background; an awesomely appetising, and beautifully presented deli platter from the person who was ‘running out of lunch ideas’; and the picture of the couple dressed all in white (on a sailing boat, on day 16!) looking like they’re on a photo-shoot for Hello! magazine and about to tuck into their lunch of pineapple, crème fraiche and walnuts with risotto and asparagus (asparagus??!). M and I function more along the lines of The Good Life without the gardening element, and the pinnacle of our achievement was home-made pizza ….. which we then ate for the next 3 days.
We are now on Day 19 and it’s all going pretty well so far. We’ve finished all the fresh meat and fruit with almost no wastage. We have made bread, banoffee pie and home-made pizza along with a full roast chicken dinner (twice) and all whilst rolling from 45 degrees to 45 degrees. My core muscles have had a hell of a workout!
We’re fast approaching our destination of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, and it just remains for us to enjoy the final 48 hours at sea. Although I am looking forward to a full night’s sleep in a (hopefully) calm anchorage, along with the chance to stretch my legs and have a nice cold beer, I am feeling wistful. This has been one of the most beguiling adventures of my life. The Pacific Ocean is one of the last great wildernesses, where it’s essential to align entirely with the elements, whilst relying wholly on yourselves and your boat to cross successfully
It is hard to describe how isolated it is out here. Your existence becomes distilled down to what is required to survive, and to navigate across safely in conjunction with the weather conditions. It is a way of truly living in the moment and I realise that we are experiencing something that very few people will have the privilege to undertake. And as I have done so many times before, I have to remind myself that this is real! Much of this voyage has had a dream-like quality and I want to be sure that I live every minute of it to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime gift. Life is very simple and very beautiful out here.
Posted by Claire