A little odyssey with some surprising new along the way…
Our Pacific passage should go from Ecuador to the Easter Islands. This would be with a good 2300 nautical miles the longest passage that we have undertaken so far. But there were a few surprises that made the trip a little odyssey and we should be on the way longer and further than planned. Corona had quite an impact to our plans (as it had for many others).
Actually, we wanted to sail to Easter Island, but the border was closed while we were already on the way. Not really the news you want to hear when you are approaching one of the most remote islands. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean we changed our destination and sailed directly to Gambier / French Polynesia. We had enough food and water, but the distance was still quite something…
For the statistics: We covered well over 3800 nautical miles in 52 days. We were relatively slow on the way. Even on our fastest day we were slower than the average speed on our Atlantic crossing (over 120sm/day). On the slowest day we only covered about 10sm. An etmal of 20 to 30 nautical miles was often the daily result. In this respect the “Pacific Ocean” lived up to its name. Whereby one must also say that sometimes it wasn’t so quiet at all (e.g. during the thunderstorms charged with a lot of rain or the squalls that occurred again and again).
Sailing more than 50 days non-stop is exhausting and in the end we were very happy when the anchor dropped and we could finally recover. It was quite demanding for the boat and for the crew. However, all in all, we can say that the crossing was a great experience that we will probably never forget.
