Pacific Crossing to the Marquesas

Our voyage of approximately 3000 miles began on Monday, Feb. 3 around noon, when we left the Galapagos Islands. All is going very well. We are having a very fast passage under good conditions so far. We had to motor for about 36 hours, but have been using only our sails since then, and we are averaging over 200 miles a day (slower than a car, but faster than a horse!) We each have our assigned watches from 6 pm til 8 am, then it is free form: everyone sharing in the cooking, cleaning, sail handling, wash down, navigating, repairs and maintenance, with napping and snacking very popular activities.
We are on a beam reach port tack with about 15 degrees of heel with a little bit of roll and all movement requires careful balance and a handhold. Netta and Dylan have worked magic in the galley, coming up with delicious meals (and cookies!), undaunted by the tipsy-turvy conditions.
We have not caught any fish yet, but we have been collecting squid each day that have flung themselves on deck at night. Tonight is 'calamari' night. Yum or Yuck, depending on your taste.
We have set up a betting pool - each of us has written down our best guess for date and time of landfall at Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas. All I know is that it is not any time soon! I think we are about one third of the way there. There are no other vessels out here for hundreds of miles, which simplifies watch keeping - no freighters or fishing vessels to avoid. And so far the weather has been just fine. And, it seems that FIREBIRD LOVES TO SAIL! (She averaged almost 10 knots for a 24 hour period).
We are now using our 30 minutes of radio Winlink time each day for posting position reports receiving weather information, correspondence with our agent, and personal mail for all five of us aboard. We are "all alone together" out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and mail (and meals!) are precious moments of excitement, so please keep in touch.

Today we completed our passage from the Galapagos to the Marquesas. We made landfall on the island of Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 at 9:30 AM local time. We traveled 2985 nautical miles from the Galapagos to Fatu Hiva. The passage took us 14 days, 22 hours, and 45 minutes, for an average daily run of 197.6 miles per day. This works out to an average speed for the passage of 8.2 knots. We had almost perfect weather for the whole passage. The first few days and the last two, we did not have much wind, so we ended up motoring for about 5 1/2 days. The other nine days we had glorious sailing conditions with the wind off our port quarter at 15 to 18 knots and we had many days of 200+ nm of sailing. All systems performed well and we had no major breakdowns. One brisk day we blew out our cruising spinnaker, but all and all we had a wonderful and very fast passage with a full moon to light our way.
We trolled for fish across the Pacific and were rewarded many times, catching mahi-mahi, tuna and sailfish, and our freezer is now well stocked. We had tuna sashimi for lunch today! Every day we managed to prepare really great meals, and every evening we all had dinner together in the salon, while Firebird tended herself. We have had fresh fruit, vegetables and bread throughout our trip, and even had some ice cream. Everyone participated in the preparation, with Dylan and Netta in charge in the galley, and never failing to delight us with their efforts and creativity.