Crossing the Atlantic it was common to find dead flying fish on the deck, even in the cockpit.  I’d see these fish spend a fair amount of time airborne skimming across the water so it was not a great surprise to see some of them end up on the deck.  But I don’t know what’s up with all these squid that started showing up on the deck in the Pacific.  They can’t fly so I assume they get tossed on deck by the waves that routinely hit the hull of Phywave and break over the deck.  Most are less than 6 or 8 inches long so don’t weigh very much and water could easily toss them around. However, a few days ago a really big one landed on deck, about 18” long with tentacles, weighing over a pound.  Somehow it got wedged under the headsail halyards. I tossed it overboard but now I’m hoping for a short, intense rain squall to wash the bloody mess off my deck. And as of a few days ago the dead flying fish are also back.

I’ll pass 90 degrees west longitude today, due south of the Galapagos Islands 840 miles to the north, a very interesting place I visited for a week back in 2007. From my current position there remains about 2950 nm to Nuku-Hiva in the Marquesas Islands (about 24 days averaging 5 knots). My boat trip log says I’ve already sailed 2350 nm from Puerto Montt so this will be a 5300 nm passage when I arrive there, more than twice as long as the longest passage I made in the Atlantic.

I’ve just added a new page entitled “Sailing Videos” under the Sailing section of my website www.phywave.com.  These are short, unedited video clips posted on my YouTube channel that better convey the sailing experience than still photos can.

I thought that once I crossed 20 degrees south latitude and got into the trade wind zone the winds would become more steady and reliable. So far that hasn’t been the case. For the last several days the wind direction has varied over 50 to 60 degrees and the wind speed range from 7 knots to 25 knots. The forecast doesn’t reveal any of this. I hope as I move farther west and north the winds will steady.

Fortunately, the autopilot on my boat has a mode where you set it to maintain a given angle to the wind instead of maintaining a fixed course. As the wind direction changes, the boat heading will change so the wind is hitting the sails at the same angle and the sails stay full. The boat’s course will also change accordingly but out in the open ocean that’s not a big deal as long as the boat, on average, is going in the right general direction.

I also expected to pick up a following current, the Peru current, but that hasn’t happened yet either. The boat speed through the water has almost always been greater than the speed over ground (SOG), indicating a contrary current. The SOG is determined by GPS position fixes so it’s very accurate. The boat speed is determined by a little paddlewheel spinning on the bottom of the boat, much less accurate. Often the paddlewheel will get fouled with bits of weed or other things in the water that inhibit it spinning freely so it usually reports boat speeds that are too low. Unusual for it to be too high. If the paddlewheel calibration is off I can adjust it but I need a measured course in pretty still water, or run the course in both directions, to calibrate it. Not going to happen at sea. For now I’ll live with it. The SOG is the one that matters since that tells me how fast I’m getting to my destination.

Looking at longer range weather patterns along my route it appears the El Nino weather pattern may result in changing my destination from Gambier to the Marquesas. I won’t know for a few weeks yet but right now it looks like difficult weather and contrary winds going south to Gambier (at 23 degrees south latitude) while the Marquesas remain in the middle of the trade wind flow I’m now joining. The Marquesas are somewhat farther than Gambier but closer in terms of time if these wind patterns hold. I might have first heard of the Marquesas in Stephen Stills song “Southern Cross”. Great song.

I’ve had one failure since leaving Puerto Montt, the top fiberglass batten in the mainsail broke. I have spare batten material which I inserted in the batten pocket but it needed to be cut to the right length with a hacksaw. This can be a little tricky if you do it while in place, holding the batten with one hand with the saw in the other hand and holding on to the boat with my third hand. My Dad, who is was in the Navy in WWII, said sailors have a rule “one hand for yourself, one hand for the ship”. What if the ship needs two hands? If you’re in the Navy you get another guy. Not an option on Phywave. It would be less convenient, but safer, to mark the batten length, pull it out, and take it back to the cockpit to cut it.

With the batten cut to length the next step is to push a strap attached to the sail into the batten pocket. The strap has Velcro on one side and wraps around the end of the batten where it’s then shoved deep into the batten pocket where the opposite Velcro is located. Usually this system is sufficient to hold the batten in place but on this voyage I’ve had problems with the battens working their way loose so I now sew them in. To do this I get my cordless drill and drill a hole through the batten pocket, the fiberglass batten, and sailcloth on the other side and sew the batten in with heavy sailmaker’s thread.

Otherwise, all is well on Phywave. It’s just a matter of turning the miles, day after day, week after week.

I‘m finally underway again, sailing north along the coast of Chile toward the southeast trade winds, a westward flowing river of wind, that will take me across the Pacific toward French Polynesia.  I should pick up those winds somewhere around 15-20 degrees south latitude, sometimes farther south.

I’ve changed my intended destination from that shown on my route planning map.  I’m going to skip Rapa Nui (Easter Island) since I already spent a week there in 2013 visiting the Moai and other interesting archeological sites.  The anchorages there are also renowned for being problematic with no real protected coves or harbors so a boat is exposed to the open sea and rolling swells most of the time. Changing wind directions move from one side of the island to another so that it’s best to move the boat very few days to stay on the lee side.

I’m also skipping Pitcairn Island group (4 islands).  Though I’ve never been there it has the same issue with an anchorage that’s open to the sea.

Finally, I’m late getting going on this leg so to get pick up time I’m reducing stops and now sailing to the Gambier Atoll in French Polynesia. The anchorages of this archipelago are in the lagoon inside the outer reef forming the atoll.  As the 16^th century mariners discovered, it’s a bad idea to sail there directly from southern Chile and risk getting becalmed in the high pressure region that usually dominates that part of the South Pacific.  The better strategy is to sail north along the coast of Chile to pick up the trade winds, so named because the early sailing ships followed them to trade with Asia. It’s the long way around, though, so I’m estimating around 4200-4400 nm to Gambier, a passage of 35-40 days, my longest by far. Once in the trade winds it should be pretty smooth downwind sailing with consistent 15-20 knot winds on the stern.  One caveat to that is the current climate transition from La Nina to El Nino.  In El Nino years the southeast trade winds tend to be weaker and more variable than in La Nina years.

My stay at the Reloncavi marina stretched from my original estimate of 4 weeks to 6.5 weeks.  The repairs to my mainsail took longer than expected followed by a week of bad weather offshore I didn’t want to bash into.  Even though I wasn’t making progress on my voyage I was comfortable there with a rental car. I also got spend time with some good friends, Curtis and Kate, who I met in Puerto Williams.  They are sailing Sweet Ruca, funding their travels with a great YouTube channel called “Sailing Sweet Ruca” with more than 110 episodes so far. They put a lot of time into producing high quality videos of their adventures.  They even interviewed me for an upcoming episode because my mission to sail solo to 7 continents is unique and I’m in the same “demographic” as many of their viewers.  On one of our excursions we took the ferry across to Chiloe Island for the day just to have a look around and stop for a seafood lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea near Ancud. Sweet Ruca also will be heading across the Pacific to French Polynesia but not leaving Puerto Montt until August.  I may see them again somewhere down the line, not unusual in the cruising community to once again encountered a boat and crew you first met years before.

I’m happy to say my work on the boat, especially cleaning and redoing the antifouling paint, paid good dividends. Motoring at 1750 rpm I now get a boat speed of nearly 6 knots. When I left the boat in Puerto Williams I was getting around 4.5 knots at that power setting. I also think replacing the zinc on the hub of the prop helped.  Its cone shape would definitely assist smooth water flow around the prop, improving its efficiency.

I left Reloncavi marina on Thursday morning at first light, around 1200z. The route to the ocean winds around islands through various channels where many floating aquatic farms are found. I’m not sure if they’re for fish or shellfish – mussels, oysters and clams a popular around here. However, they are not lit, or marked on the nautical charts, so unless you’re a local and know where they are it’s treacherous to navigate these channels at night. 

I stopped for an overnight anchorage at Puerto Abtao, about 30 nm west of Puerto Montt, to wait for the ebb tide passing through the Chacao Channel. The flood and ebb currents through the channel can be fast, up to 9 nine knots a times, so it’s essential to pass through westward on the ebb tide.  Motoring through the channel on Friday evening I enjoyed a speed boost from the ebb current of over 6 knots, a total speed over ground (SOG) of more than 12 knots. Once through the channel I had to work my way west and north around a tight little low pressure system that popped up. Winds around low pressure systems blow clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

Now it’s just a matter of sailing north for the next few days and getting into the trade winds as soon as possible.  At least the weather has been better than Puerto Montt where it was rainy, cold and windy much of the time, maybe one nice day per week. It is winter here.  I’ve been sailing under mostly clear skies so far, a welcome change I hope continues. I was up early today to adjust sails. The stars and moon are brilliant against the deep darkness of the open ocean at night, my old friend the constellation Orion hanging upside down over the eastern horizon waiting for the coming orange glow hints of an emerging dawn.  I think it’s going to be a good day.