The Eastern Pacific - Pacific Crossing Notes: A Sailor's Guide to the Coconut Milk Run - page 224

Galapagos Islands to the Marquesas: Life
is but a Dream
On the eve of our departure from the Galapagos Islands to the Marquesas, each member of
our crew was preoccupied with his or her own thoughts. Sure, we had already crossed the
Atlantic, completed a round trip from the Caribbean up the US East Coast, and sailed 900
miles beyond Panama into the Pacific. But the remoteness of this next stretch of ocean - all
3,000 miles of it - was something entirely different. I was thrilled to be standing on the
starting line of a lifelong dream, but slightly overwhelmed by the scale of it all. Then there
was nagging concern about provisioning: had I stocked enough food, water, and (most im-
portantly) chocolate cookies to last the distance?
Markus devoted most of his attention to tracking the immediate weather conditions around
the Galapagos, an area of strong currents and fluky equatorial winds. Nicky, on the other
hand, was too busy with ambitious Lego projects to think of pesky details like preparations
aboard Namani . Bidding a fond adios to the cavorting sea lions, blue-footed boobies, and
marine iguanas of Darwin's archipelago, we were off and away on April 2, 2012.
As things turned out, the passage could be divided into three distinct parts: an awful begin-
ning; a long, glorious middle; and the home stretch. We couldn't be choosy about a weather
window once our twenty-one day Galapagos permit expired (and - shhh! - after overstay-
ing that by two days). The first three days underway were squally with wind from the
southwest. On the port tack, Namani could only manage a heading slightly north of west.
On the starboard tack, she tracked an even less inspiring eastward course due to the strong
current. Where was the favorable west-setting current we had read about? In one miserable
twenty-four hour period, we tacked over one hundred miles to make ten good. It was a
squally trial of patience and faith in many ways.