Pacific Crossing, Days 16-20

What’s it like to cross the equator on a sailboat?

Day 16 - March 7

Distance sailed: 127 nm

Total distance sailed: 1,927 nm

Distance to Hiva Oa (as the albatross flies): 739 nm

Wind: SE 5-10 kts

Weather: Sunny and hot

Sail Plan: Spinnaker and mainsail

Today was supposed to be the day we would celebrate our equatorial crossing. 

But yesterday in the morning Andrés Jacobo looked at the charts and the dying wind and announced we would cross the equator in the middle of the night. 

‘I guess that rules out an equatorial swim for you. But we could celebrate at breakfast or lunch. What do you think?’

I don’t have any extraordinary breakfast possibilities so I reply ‘Let’s celebrate at lunch. I have a celebratory dish I can make.’

But at the very end of Andrés Jacobo’s  afternoon nap, I am playing around in the charts, looking how far we’ve sailed, looking at close Hiva Oa is, looking at our current position. And SURPRISE!

‘Guess what!’ I exclaim when he rouses. 

‘What?’

‘We’re 4 miles from the equator!!!! We should cross it at dinner time.’

Ditching the mundane dinner plans I had in mind, I prepare a bit more festive meal for this hot weather party: Tacos Al Pastor. Pork cooked in pineapple juice. Salsa casera. Pineapple chunks. Fresh squeezed lime. Wrapped up in a tortilla. Yum. Yum. Yum!

I hurry to clean up dinner because surely we’re getting close. ‘How much time until we cross?’ I ask Andrés Jacobo as I dry the last of the dishes. 

‘Probably 10 minutes. I’ll put the GPS position on my phone so we can track it….ooooohhh! Oh! Look!!! 0°0’0”! We’re here! We’re at the equator!’

‘Wooooohoooooo!’ I add my hollers to the jubilation, jumping up and down, giving him high fives. 

Good thing I put the champagne to chill in the fridge this morning just in case. I grab the small bottle, 2 champagne flutes, and the treat I picked up in Medellín for this occasion before making my way into the cockpit. 

Andrés Jacobo pops the cork, pours us each a glass, and sprinkles the rest in the sea as the traditional gift to Neptune. 

We sit side-by-side, savoring the sensation of the cold champagne tingling in our mouths, nibbling on the dark chocolate açaí bites, giddy with excitement. Crossing the equator on a sailboat is a big deal. Crossing the equator after 1,800 hard-fought nautical miles feels like a victory. 

Instead of an anti-climatic nighttime crossing, we’re smiling together in the warm cockpit, the mainsail shading us from the sun’s harshest light. All 3 sails are out, pulling us at a gentle 5 kts into the Southern Hemisphere. This is about as perfect a celebration as it gets. 

Once we’ve fêted, the flutes have been washed and put away, the sails set for the night, and Andrés Jacobo tucked into the sea-berth below, I sit quietly in the cockpit marveling at the sights.

My view is almost the exact opposite of yesterday morning’s. The sun sets slowly and brilliantly in the West as the full moon rises straight up from the East. The Northern Hemisphere and the Equator are disappearing in Ana María’s wake while Hiva Oa beckons sweetly from less than 800 nm away. 

For the first time in several days I don’t want to escape from my surroundings, preferring to immerse myself in a book or album. I want to be fully here to memorize every sensation, to etch into my soul the joy and pride of tonight’s accomplishment. 

What a night! A night I’ll treasure the rest of my life. 

The Lingo

No longer shall we be called ‘Pollywogs’. Henceforth, having crossed the Equator under sail, we shall officially be called the long-honored ‘Shellbacks.’  

Day 17 - March 8

Distance sailed: 119 nm

Total distance sailed: 2,046 nm 

Distance to Hiva Oa: 630 nm

Wind: E 5 kts 

Weather: Sunny becoming squally

Sail plan: Spinnaker from first light to sun down then wing-on-wing

Crossing an ocean on a small sailboat is a lot like playing the game Settlers of Catan. 

Well, okay, it’s like playing Settlers of Catan outside in a thunderstorm on a tilt-a-wheel carnival ride while sleep deprived …but stay with me. 

There are the obvious similarities in the basic nature of any strategy game, e.g. it matters where you start, it matters how you move across the board, etc. 

What makes Settlers of Catan so much like an ocean passage, though, is the paramount importance of managing resources. In the game, whoever maximizes the use of their bricks, wood, iron, wheat, and gold wins the game. Out here, the sailor who maximizes the use of the sails, current, fuel, solar power, water, and crew energy will make landfall safest and fastest. 

And just like we learned to play Settlers of Catan, we’re learning to play the resource game out here: 

• In Catan, the resources you need at the beginning (lots of brick and wood to build roads) aren’t necessarily what you need later on. Out here, we needed full water tanks at all times at the beginning in case the watermaker broke en route. As we get closer to Hiva Oa, the risk is reduced so our water resource is less critical. Before we crossed the equator we depended on the wind to move us.  Now we are pretty dependent on the currents and fuel. 

• In both the game and passage it’s critical to put the resources to use. The person who wins the game isn’t the person who has the most resource cards left, but the person who has turned the resources into settlements. The goal of the passage isn’t to make it to Hiva Oa with all our fuel. The fuel should be used if it can get you there faster and safer. 

• In Catan, the settlements start to grow when you combine several different kinds of resources.  Same thing out here. Combining resources can get you further. If we use fuel to run the engine, we try to raise the sails to increase fuel efficiency and run the watermaker off the free power from the engine. 

• I remember the first time I lost half my resource cards in Catan. It was a tough lesson to learn: It does not pay to hoard resources. In fact it can cost you. When we left La Paz, Ana María was the heaviest we’ve ever seen her. Yet we could have stuffed more jerry cans of fuel on the side decks and more food in all the nooks and crannies. It was tempting. We chose instead to travel as light as possible since a heavy boat can’t sail in light winds. Our gamble is paying off. We’re managing to sail at 4 kts in 5 kts of apparent wind thanks to Ana María’s slim figure. 

• My mother-in-law’s go-to strategy in Catan is to establish a port. In the game, this port allows you to trade at a more favorable exchange enabling you to more efficiently leverage your resources. Our solar panels do this same thing for us. Since they are so efficient, we are able to run the watermaker off the solar power. Only on the worst day of the ITCZ did they perform so poorly we were forced to use fuel to top up the batteries. 

• And just like the game, you can use all your resources strategically and it still comes down to Luck of the Draw. 

(Apparently we drew the card of doom: 10 days of zero wind forecasted between here and Hiva Oa.)

The Galley

Carrie Hoffman, a friend in St Louis, asked for some of the recipes I am making on the passage. Here are 2 favorites when simplicity is the name of the game:

The Boat Galley’s Chicken Tomato Couscous - Pour 1 cup boiling water into a bowl of 1 cup couscous and 1 tsp chicken bouillon. Stir, cover, let sit 5 minutes. Heat 1 can of diced tomatoes and their juices in a small saucepan until boiling. Add 1 tablespoon Tarragon, salt and pepper, and chicken (I use vacuum-packed shredded chicken or Wild Planet organic canned chicken). Heat until chicken is warmed through. Serve over fluffed couscous. 

Chickpea Melt: We serve this recipe as written when at anchor but eat a deconstructed version of it on passage. Shelf-stable and delicious! https://www.thekitchn.com/cheesy-chickpea-melts-23035443

Day 18 - March 9

Distance sailed: 104 nm

Total distance sailed: 2,150 nm

Distance to Hiva Oa: 530 nm

Wind: E 5-8 kts

Weather: Mostly sunny and hot

Sail plan: Spinnaker and mainsail from first light to sunset then wing-on-wing 

Spinnaker flying. Making 5.3 kts direct to Hiva Oa with only 6 kts of wind. No squalls yet to break our progress. 

Now this is smooth sailing. 

The Challenge

We’re just over 500 nm away from landfall so we are relatively confident we can make it - even if we have to swim and tow the boat behind us. The question is now ‘When will we make it?’ 

Forecasts show ZERO wind for the next 10 days and we don’t have quite enough fuel to motor all the way to Hiva Oa. So we have 2 options: 

1. We can relax, bob around with the swell and current, and get there in 2 weeks. 

2. We can redo our watch schedule to maximize the time we can fly the spinnaker. We can do frequent sail adjustments to take advantage of every puff of wind. We can withstand some sail flogging at night to inch out 3 kts of progress under white sails. With all this effort, we may get there in a week. 

Door #2 it is!

Day 19 - March 10

Distance sailed: 99 nm - our slowest day yet but every mile counts!

Total distance sailed: 2,249 nm

Distance to Hiva Oa: 434 nm

Wind: ESE 5-10 kts

Weather: Partly cloudy

Sail plan: Spinnaker and mail sail from first light to dusk then mainsail, genoa, and staysail at an angle of 70° apparent wind through the night 

“Here’s a quote from your boat’s designer I found when reading about your Crealock 34. 

‘I believe there is a great difference between speed around the buoys and speed on an ocean passage consisting, perhaps of an undersized emaciated skipper and a mildly mutinous spouse. That’s when the boat must take care of the crew.’ 

Does the shoe fit?”

-Dad on his daily check-in

The mutiny in the belly of the crew has been quelled since exiting the ITCZ and the appetite of the Captain has been restored since leaving the steep seas of the Northeast trades behind, but Bill Crealock’s quote still rings true. 

This is a loooooong passage and we’re starting to experience the cumulative effect of fatigue heaped upon fatigue. We desperately need Ana María to cradle us in the safety and comfort of her hull. 

Many boats have a specialty, conditions in which they excel. They’re designed for those conditions. Ana María is a study in compromise. She is neither the heavy, broad, full-keel boat made to withstand storms and heavy seas nor is she the light, sleek, fin-keel boat that races upwind. 

But with her compromises we have seen her perform splendidly in the vastly different conditions we’ve experienced in the 2,200 nm thus far. She was a sturdy champ in the 6 days of non-stop heavy Tradewinds. She was a safe responder to the unexpected gusts of the squalls in the ITCZ. And now in 5 kts of wind, she’s nimbly using every puff of every gust to propel us at 5 kts toward Hiva Oa. 

Ana María has taken great care of us, just as we’ve taken care of her. No wonder the Crealock 34 is on every list of ‘Best Blue Water Cruisers.’

The Mainsail

It’s hard to imagine completing this passage without our weather routing apps PredictWind and LuckGrib. They have been powerhouses in getting us this far. Now, I know there are people who get this email who navigated oceans pre-GPS using sextants and I know in 2 years it will be unheard of to cross an ocean without real time forecasts from Starlink. In this moment in sailing history, we will appreciate what we’ve got. 

Twice a day, Andrés Jacobo downloads weather forecasts (GFS and ECMWF models) of varying resolutions using our satellite phone and apps. These apps use our boat’s polars (think golf handicaps) to recommend the fastest and most comfortable route to the destination very much like a sophisticated GoogleMaps. 

These apps, particularly LuckGrib, have been instrumental in helping us find the wind and favorable currents and avoid using the engine. 

Day 20 - March 11

Distance sailed: 132 nm

Total distance sailed: 2,381 

Distance to Hiva Oa: 320 nm

Wind: ESE 5-10 kts

Weather: Mostly sunny and hot

Sail plan: Spinnaker and mail sail from first light to dusk then mainsail, genoa, and staysail at an angle of 70° apparent wind through the night 

There is not much luxury on a 34 ft sailboat crossing an ocean, but there is one. A sublime one: the cockpit shower. 

Ana María has a ‘wet head’ meaning it is technically possible to shower in the head, but by the time you dry the whole head, you’re sweaty again. Andrés Jacobo designed us an improved system featuring a summer shower, gravity fill from the mast step, and a shower curtain to enclose the spray. We generally use the shower set-up every day. 

A daily shower is itself a luxury on a small boat, but the cockpit shower like the one we took today is the ultimate luxury. 

The warm air. The space to move about. The time to linger. The cool water, with enough pressure to imagine they’re washing your hair in a salon. The sweet raspberry scent of the kids’ 3-in-1 shampoo. The gentle breeze to dry you off. The easy clean up. The freedom. 

For a brief ten minutes afterward, you’re no longer a salty sailor. You’ve been reborn, new again, whole again, a human again. 

Thank you to Deb K., Michelle S., Suzanne M., Geoff H., Vanessa C., Karen B., Tim on s/v Coconut, Sam C., Don & Gloria on s/v Windswept, Pam & Steve S., Bryn P., Linda H., Jason & Sarah O., Fred on s/v Kaylee, Jean H., Gisela M., Carlene G., Adriaan JvV, Marlon, Emily F., and Kim K. for providing this week’s encouraging words and dinner time entertainment!

Thank YOU for reading and being on the adventure with us! 

Make sure to check our daily progress and read Andrés Jacobo’s log by clicking on the track at https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/AnaMaria