PACIFIC CROSSING: WEEK ONE

And We’re Off!

Mon Apr 14 2025 16:03:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

Tino Pai has departed Mexico, and we’re on our way to French Polynesia! We left La Cruz at 18:40 local and are currently motoring out of Banderas Bay with 10 kts on the nose. We’re excited, relieved, and experiencing lots of emotions. It was nearly 19 years ago that we decided to do this, and here we are!

Season Premier: The Passage

Tue Apr 15 2025 09:42:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

In this, the premier and Day One of The Passage, the plucky crew of SV Tino Pai are settling into their journey. Seventeen hours after departing La Cruz the wind arrived and all 3 sails are up! After motoring through the night to get offshore, the crew are happy to be under the canvas. So far the only glitch has been the tachometer slipping, fixed by a slight tightening of the V belt. The sea state is benign, the water is blue, and morale is high!

Day: 1
Distance so far: 95 NM
Hours motoring: 17
Cruise ships sighted: 2
Lowest wind: 0.2 kts
Highest wind: 9 kts True
Raids on the treat bag: 2

Half Way! …To Socorro

Wed Apr 16 2025 11:27:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

Got your atlas ready? Day two and we’re halfway to Socorro Island, part of the Revillagigedo Islands (go on, try and pronounce that one properly!). That’s our first major waypoint; from there we’ll head for Clarion Island and the trade winds, which we want to ride SW in towards the ITCZ and equator. But that’s all in the future…

So far, so good! We’ve been sailing in relatively light winds since yesterday, apart from about 1-1/2 hours overnight when the wind dropped away. We did have a bit of a moment at that time when the engine started & died on us a couple of times, but starting with more revs seemed to fix the problem.

Shan heard a couple of whales surfacing and puffing near the boat during her night watch, and Andy had a dolphin come by to say g’day during his dawn watch. It was a comfortable night with a single reef in the main, we’d heard there was a system off Baja that could possibly affect us, and decided to play it safe. It didn’t, of course.

We caught a couple of Skipjacks - which are not good eating - and released them with a warning to stay off our lawn. Otherwise, we’ve set up our monitor wind vane “Maurice” and had him going nicely until the wind got too light and he stopped playing. He’s like that, if there’s not enough action he sulks and takes his ball away.

Day: 2
Miles today: 115 NM (noon-noon)
Miles so far: 210 NM
Boobies on board: Birds 0, Shan 2
Cargo vessels sighted: 4
Cargo vessels we made change course: 1
Lowest wind: 4.9 kts True
Highest wind: 13 kts True
Sulky wind vanes: 1

Socorro Drive-By

Thu Apr 17 2025 10:36:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

Day 3, the bronze medalist of the “days from departure count”. From here we’re into the non-medaling days, at least until we get to the “days to arrival” count. Day 3 is the day we’re supposed to be mostly settled in, getting our routines in place, have watched at least one miniseries on the iPad over night watches, and have finished our first audio book. We can report that we both finished watching “The White Lotus” season 3, and Andy was bummed about the ending. Shan thought it was OK. Shan did finish her first audiobook.

More importantly, news from the past 24-hours on the boat! We had our first stowaway yesterday afternoon, a tired little Brown Headed Cow Bird, who flew around the boat for a while before getting enough courage to land on the lifelines. A cute little guy, he was good enough to only poop once in the couple of hours he was with us, and we dubbed him “Larry Bird”. He obviously needed a breather, 150 nm from the nearest land, and he was definitely no sea bird! We thought we’d let him ride to Socorro Island with us, unfortunately a flappy change in the sails scared him away. We wish him well.

After a gorgeous sunset, the night was uneventful and we passed the north side of Socorro at 8:30 am local time. We were greeted by a pod of dolphins, leaping about around the boat, complete with young‘uns. They were enough to raise Shan from her sleep all topless and distracting (at least for Andy). Still the only boobies on the boat, not a bad thing, though other boats have reported visits from the blue-footed variety.

And Socorro! Jewel of an island! Home to wonderful aquatic life such as Oceanic Manta Rays, many shark species, bountiful tuna, octopus, dolphins, and whale sharks. Dive there if you can. Seriously do it. It’s gold-tier bucket list stuff. Though today we sailed on by, recalling our more submersive visit a couple of years ago. Socorro will be the last land we see until Hiva Oa in roughly (we hope) 19 days (refer count down, above). Now it’s just the two of us, Tino Pai, and hopefully a few more boobies.

Day: 3
Dolphin visits: 2
Sailboats sighted: 1 (SV Psipsina)
Stowaways: 1 (“Larry” Bird)
Bananas left: 0 (burp!)
Total miles: 363 nm
Miles noon-noon: 153 nm

Yes, There’s a Booby

Fri Apr 18 2025 09:44:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

Day four! An exclamation mark deserving day on Tino Pai, but fear not! All is well with our intrepid explorers. Why then, you ask, use the most emphatic of punctuation marks? For four - ha! - reasons; our wind vane, the washing machine, milestones, and… boobies!

We’ve dialed in the Monitor wind vane and he’s made a huge difference, using no power, and steering silently all night and day to the wind, with only minor adjustments needed. What a champ! He’s also remarkably good at dealing with the messy swell. Which segues rather nicely to…

“The washing machine” is a nickname given to the ocean around Socorro and Clarion islands, an area of confused seas resulting from the North Pacific swell meeting waves from systems out of the Sea of Cortez. It’s a mess, frankly, and we can have it on the beam - or worse, the quarter - for the first few days of this passage. We experienced the full joy or it over the past 24 hours, and it continues as I blearily write this. Let’s just say I understand the need for lee cloths much better, and naps shall be had!

Happily, we reached a milestone at 11:15 local today, our first 500 miles! That’s a sixth of our estimated 3,000 nautical miles to Hiva Oa. Or 16.66667% for you decimal types, but for this one I’m on team fraction.

Finally, a Booby has landed! During my dawn watch a Booby circled the boat a couple of times, and came in for the Bimini solar panels like a Grumman Hellcat landing on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. Perhaps it was the awkward motion, or perhaps it was me waving my hands like one of those paddle guys on said aircraft carrier, but he touched down, aborted the landing, and flapped away. He didn’t try again, which is good as far as poop on the panels goes. As far as Booby experiences go, it was a bit like being flashed.

Days: 4
Flying fish on deck: 1
Sleepless nights: 1
Andy being flashed: 1
Amp hours saved by the wind vane: 100+
Miles noon-noon: 144 nm
Total miles: 507 nm

Winging It

Sat Apr 19 2025 11:05:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

Day 5 is here (already!) and, as predicted we’re getting through the worst of the washing machine, with a more settled swell of about 1.5 to 2 metres from the north. We‘ve had another day of decent progress, especially so because we’ve had a reef in both the main and Genoa to balance the boat better in the swell to make it a bit easier on Maurice the Monitor wind vane.

We did have about four hours wing on wing with the Genoa poled out to Starboard, but running directly downwind started pushing us too southward. It was exhilarating while it lasted, at 8+ knots SOG and at one time surfing down a swell at over 10 kts. It was about that time we decided to reign her back in! Tino Pai can perform better than we’re letting her thus far; we appreciate her patience and have reminded her that there are plenty more miles in this here ocean.

Poignantly, with enough miles under our keel since passing Isla Socorro and well south of Isla Clarion, it was time to lower the Mexican courtesy flag that has flown proudly from our spreader flag halyard for the past 2 1/2 years. Not knowing the appropriate Mexican tune, The Last Post was burbled badly as it came down. Mexico, we salute you, and thank you for the wonderful time we had in your beautiful lands and waters.

Overnight we were visited by Nazca Boobys, who are whiter than their blue, yellow and red footed cousins, and unique to the eastern Pacific. They should not be confused with NASCAR boobies, which are found in various motor oil company calendars. These birds are beautiful, persistent, and full of guano. During Shannon’s second night watch (2am - 5am), several repeatedly tried to hitch a ride on our aft solar panels. Despite her efforts to shoo them off, at least one sneaky feathered fiend managed to stay long enough to leave a craptacular mess over not one, but three of the four panels and the Bimini beneath. Andy enjoyed cleaning that up when it became apparent just after dawn, together with the slimy stink from a flying fish that landed in the cockpit during his night watch. It was thrown back safe enough, but not before it slimed the cockpit like an extra from Ghostbusters. Ah, the romance of sailing.

Day: 5
Boobys on solar panels: 2+
Flying fish rescues: 1
Sail changes: 4
Miles noon-noon: 141 nm
Total miles: 655 nm

Happy Easter!

Sun Apr 20 2025 10:01:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

Day 6 is quarter day! In nautical mileage, at least. Though our full day actually clocks over at 00:40 UTC because we departed La Cruz at that time, and we’re a little shy of 6 full days as I post this, it’s day 6. Details, details… what matters is that we passed 750 nm around 03:00 this morning! We expect our total distance traveled to be around 3,000 nm to Hiva Oa, so we’re quarter the way there! Wow, it’s actually gone by pretty quickly.

Mostly cloudy and grey skies have dominated as we sail southwest, causing a deepening deficit in our batteries as our solar panels are fed only weak soup. We’ve been reluctant to turn the engine on, and it’s been too rolly to pull out Gene the portable generator. Today’s the day though! We’re at enough of a deficit to call on his service. He’s noisy and sings like a choir of lawnmowers, but he’s a champion. Literally; he’s a Champion 2500 generator. We’ll endure his song for a few hours while taking turns with the noise canceling earphones.

We’re in a more regular swell pattern as reported previously, yet we still gat whacked occasionally by “sneakers”. These odd buggers seem to come out of nowhere; sometimes larger than usual, sometimes out of phase, sometimes from an unexpected direction, and sometimes a mix of all three. We copped one of these in an unexpected moment while Shan was in the galley yesterday, braced for the regular swell. She received a nasty smack on the side of the head as the boat lurched sideways. It hurt like hell and gave her a headache for a while, but happily she’s okay apart from bruising and a small egg on the noggin over her ear. It was not the Easter egg she was hoping for. On a brighter note we were visited by the Easter Bunny! Chocolate!!!

Otherwise, you’ll see from our track that we tuned south during the night. The wind dropped too much to continue running, so we brought the main across to starboard as we gybed into a broad reach. As the wind picked up this morning we’ve gybed back and are once more running wing on wing southwest with the main prevented to port and the Genoa poled out to starboard. We’ve another 200 nm miles making southwest until we close in on, and need to assess how we enter the ITCZ and the squalls of “Squallywood”.

We also hit the edge of our Mexico nautical chart yesterday and had to put the Pacific Islands SD card into the chart plotter. Islands, here we come!

Happy Easter, everyone!

Day: 6
Milestones: 2*
Eggs: Noggins 1, Easter 0
Booby mentions: 0 (dammit! …1)
Distance noon-noon: 144 nm
Distance total: 799 nm

*we also passed 7,000 nm since leaving San Francisco today!

One Week In!

Mon Apr 21 2025 09:51:00 GMT-0930 (Marquesas Time)

It’s been a week! Day 7 dawned mostly cloudy with light grey clouds on a lattice of blue sky, providing hope that our solar production might improve today. Especially after 4 1/2 hours of Gene the generator yammering away in the corner of the cockpit yesterday afternoon. He’s a nattering little yellow bundle of government bureaucracy; annoying, but necessary to keep things running.

Our NNE wind was forecast to weaken overnight, and we prepared to gybe south to keep the sails full as needed. That never happened, in fact we saw it strengthening to 20-25 knots through the night. We ran before it like a bear from a bushfire, lumbering (yet with grace! Have you seen a bear run?) in a hefty swell. Our SOG stayed mostly in the mid-7 kt range, though we’d make as much as 8.5 kts at times. It was spicy, though never unsafe and we’re always impressed with the seaworthiness of our Norseman 447. We even had a sneaker wave break into the cockpit just after midnight! Cushions, not spirits were dampened, we’re getting both figuratively and literally saltier out here. These sporty and fun conditions meant we made 161 nm noon-noon, our best for the passage so far, and that with both sails reefed. You’re a good lass, Tino Pai, a good lass. We’ll shake out the reef when conditions are more comfortable now we’re more familiar with the wind vane.

We’ve had a couple of repair & maintenance jobs, not unusual on passages, but the most concerning was at our boom vang. We’d had riggers reattach it together with the boom after we’d replaced our gooseneck back in La Cruz. I’d specifically asked them to use Loc-Tight anti-corrosion sealant when securing the stainless vang bracket to the mast, but during a deck inspection I noticed that the screws were loose, and the bracket was moving slightly under load. The nut on the pin bolt connecting the vang and bracket was also loose. I tightened everything, only for Shan to note that occasionally the vang was jumping slightly on the pin I’d just tightened. Closer inspection found that the riggers hadn’t replaced all the washers needed between the bracket tangs and the neck of the vang. I was able to cut a plastic washer to slot in temporarily, but we’ll need to take off the vang and add a permanent washer once we’re in calmer waters. In the meantime we’re inspecting it regularly. Boat = Bring On Another Task!

Day: 7
Waves into cockpit: 1
Hours enduring Gene: 4.5
Light rainfall: 1
Spirits: Rum! Just kidding… High
Oxford commas: 4
Distance noon-noon: 161 nm
Distance total: 960 nm