Galapagos to Marquises

I didn’t really know what to expect on a long passage. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy but not sure why. I think for me, the hardest part was the sleep deprivation. We took 4 hour shifts through the night so theoretically, wecould get 8 hours sleep during our two 4 hours shifts but it never seemed to work out that way. In the end we averaged 5 hours a night. I could cat nap during the day, but Steve was unable to.
The boat was always rolling A LOT. And either the motion itself would keep us awake or the noise of stuff banging around in the cupboards would. The worst sounds were on the days when there were light winds but the seas were still whipped up from the day before. There wasn’t enough wind to keep the sails full and then a wave would turn the boat and the boom would slam. These noises were impossible to sleep through.
I wasn’t quite sure how the meals would work out either. Prior to the 10 days we spent on the way to Galapagos, we had only done 3 day passages and I would cook up enough stuff for 3 days prior to leaving. For the Galapagos passage, we stocked up on lots of canned soups, pork and beans, and pasta. We had lots of that this trip too but I tried to cook one good meal a day of chilli or stew or something substantial. I never would have believed I could do that with the boat healing over and bouncing all over the place but I did it and I feel pretty good about that.
Prior to leaving 9 months ago, cooking inside the cabin while underway would have made me seasick, but I guess I have gotten used to the motion for the most part. For this I am extremely thankful. Only on the last couple days, when the boat was making a weird rolling/sliding motion did I feel bad enough to take some Gravol.
Many people had told us this passage was going to be easy. They said we would just set our sails when we left Galapagos and wouldn’t have to touch them again until we got to Marquises. What a crock that was! The wind changed directions constantly. Sometimes we would get a shift where we didn’t have to touch them for a couple hours but often we had to adjust them and gibe the main or the genoa pole a couple times during the shift. We are both surprised and impressed by our upper body strength now. We both have arms like Popeye. I always thought it was all that spinach but now I know it is just from the sail changes. I must say though that being busy all the time keeps the boredom away. I was not bored for a second.
Before we left Galapagos, we had arranged with two other boats to keep in SSB radio contact twice a day. A couple days out, we crossed another boat who was in contact with 10 other boats on the SSB so we joined their network too. Although we only saw another boat in the distance twice, we were always within a hundred miles of one. It was great to hear twice a day everyone’s position and speed and sailing direction. It made us realize that we were not the only one’s struggling with the sail changes from the shifty winds. It also came in handy when something inevitably broke and we wanted a second opinion on something.
On this trip, we flew our brand new spinnaker for only a few hours before it chafed through the halyard and came floating down to the sea (luckily still attached at the bottom so we could haul it back aboard). While sailing on a run, Steve climbed the 50 foot mast five times to sort things out and fed a new halyard through the top of the mast.
The chafe is something that everyone has to watch everywhere on a boat. For 23 days, the sails were flying so we had to regularly check all the lines to make sure they weren’t rubbing on anything. At one point, a sheet (line) from our genoa was rubbing on our staysail which was furled up, and it chaffed right through the UV protection cover in no time.
Other then that, the trip was uneventful, Eat, sleep, change sails. That’s about it but we had a huge sense of accomplishment when we arrived in the Marquises 23 days later.