The Big Blue
It is time to leave Isabella for the Marquesas Islands, a trip that takes most yachts 15 to 20 days at sea. Only 2920 miles to go……..not much further than from the Canaries to the Caribbean, but it feels further as you set off. On the Atlantic crossing, you can always change your mind after 800 miles in an emergency and drop down to the Cape Verde Islands . Even after that, it’s a busy ocean. There are so many vessels making the voyage through the peak season. We almost ran down a single handed oarsman on the Atlantic crossing!
As you leave Isabella, there is but empty ocean ahead of you until the Marquesas, far away from commercial shipping routes, with only a handful of yachts in it. We were to see just 3 other boats in 3000 miles.
The weather for our departure could hardly have been more auspicious. 18 knot SE trades on our quarter, which our boat speed brought forward onto the beam. La Novia settled down at 10 knots over the ground with no sense of being pressed, wonderfully steady in the 6 - 8 foot seas on our quarter that lay over a 12 foot swell from the south. In the first 24 hours we had covered 238 nautical miles. Perfect we thought - only 11 days to go!
48 hours later we felt quite euphoric with 705 NM under the keel in the first 3 days. Then the wind began to back behind us and ease off, not in a great rush but a few degrees and half a knot lighter each day. Our first week was still amazing. Despite one very slow day, we averaged 9.1 knots or 218 nm a day for 1458 miles from anchor up to the mid way mark. Easily our best ever sustained performance. From then on, the winds became harder and harder to find, We changed course to the south in response to our weather forecast and kept running under sail for another 4 days until the wind died completely, still 603 NM out of Hiva Oa. So on went the engine and we motored in, sometimes in no wind sometimes with enough to fill a sail as well.
We arrived safely at Atuona on Hiva Oa at 1730 local time just as the sun was setting, having completed the 2920 miles in 14 days 6 hours anchor up to anchor down with no gear or equipment failures except for our electronic barometer which expired on the trip and didn’t respond to the usual 2 repairs ( change batteries and bang barometer on the table several times, for those of you interested in the technical details!)
Hiva Oa is a spectacular place to arrive at the end of such a journey, a truly operatic landscape. The island from the sea resembles a huge sleeping dragon with a ridged back. The boys had a happy hour picking out the different bits of the beast as we moved down the coast. We took an early night and slept undisturbed for 10 hours. Bliss.