Yay, Shawnigan is on her last 3rd of our South Pacific Crossing! A little recap:
We departed from the Galápagos Islands on Tuesday the 17th of April at 10:30 local time (16:30 UTC). We left with 4 other kids boats that same day, and another 2 left 2 days prior and 1 left 1 day prior. That’s 7 kid boats in all! Another boat named Dol’Selene that’s in our fleet left with us as well. We call them the “big kids” , so if you count them, there was 8 “kids boat” that left within 2 days of each other to cross the big Pacific Ocean.
It’s been fantastic having a group “along” with us. I say that with parentheses because we are all spread out now with over 300 miles between some of us. We’ve been in contact with each other 2 if not 3 times a day. Always good to know where your buddies are and what the conditions are nearby. We’ve been holding up the rear, not because we sail the slowest, but because we only motored for a total of 5 hours the first few days of leaving the Galapagos. No complaints here, though. We took the relative path of least resistance and have had good wind and good sea states starting from day 3 onward. You can see our track here: http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Shawnigan
My apologies for the “bland” posts lately. The crossing has been great. It’s pretty much the same day in and day out. Wake up, drink coffee, make breakfast, start school, read, make bread (every other day), or prep for lunch, make lunch, read, more school, entertain Taj, afternoon nap (Christian), afternoon snack, make dinner, eat dinner, play games, read text family, I go to sleep at 7:30pm, Nina’s watch starts at 8pm – 11pm. My watch 11pm to 3 am. I do a little 30-40 min exercise routine at the beginning, then I read or write. Christian’s watch starts at 3 am to whenever I wake up (around 7:30am) then the day repeats itself. Did I mention reading?! Lots of reading going on. It’s great!
So here again back to the “daily log” style. We have approximately 1 week left.
Day 15: May 1st – May 2nd, 2018 – not too much excitement aboard Shawnigan today. Everyone a little more tired with the time change. Not seeing much out here, no boats, no dolphins, less fish , a few birds. I did forget to mention, however, that we saw a Oceanic White Tip shark swim by our boat a few days ago. Good thing we weren’t swimming! Just before 5pm we hit our “less than 1,000 nm to go” mark!
At 02/05/2018 16:30 (UTC) our position was 08°17.32’S -123°46.12’W
Day 15 completed at 0830 our time. Slower day, wind dropped to about 8kts over night . Comfortable sea state. Wing on wing.
Total miles: 2206 total
Miles over last 24h: 140 miles even lower, but should pick up the next 24h.
Day 16: May 2nd -3rd , we had dolphins visit us! Normally we’re not as excited to see dolphins, only because we’ve been spoiled and see them quite often. But on this crossing we haven’t seen much of anything. So today when we had dolphins visit, all of us stopped whatever we were doing and went straight to the front of the boat to watch. The dolphins seemed as excited to see us as we were to see them. The rest of the day was mellow. Light winds, causing us to slow down a bit, but comfortable seas.
At 03/05/2018 16:30 (UTC) our position was 08°30.32’S -125°58.12’W
Day 16 completed at 0830 our time. Another Slower day, wind dropped to about 8kts over night . Comfortable sea state. Still sailing Wing on wing. Otherwise, living “Groundhog Day” over and over only with less and less produce everyday and slightly different meals. All is well. Dinner last night was Mexican veggie stuffed potatoes.
Total miles: 2342 miles
Miles over last 24h: 136 miles (even lower)
Day 17: May 3 – May 4th. pretty uneventful day again. A few more dolphins a few more waves. Made veggie Pad Thai for dinner, always a hit.
At 04/05/2018 16:30 (UTC) our position was 08°50.32’S -128°26.12’W
Day 17 completed at 0830 our time. Just gybed I a starboard tack wing on wing to keep us from heading too far south. Wind just switched to a more ENE direction. Interesting trade winds this year.
Total miles: 2493 miles
Miles over last 24h: 151 miles (phew a little better!)
Miles to go: ~635nm
Day 18: May 4th – May 5th. Well, light winds, slow tracks, just sitting relaxing, waiting. Doing a lot of reading, writing, knitting, lego-ing. Veggie fried rice for dinner.
At 05/05/2018 16:30 (UTC) our position was 08°48.58’S -130°26.57’W
Day 18 completed at 0830 our time. Just gybed back to starboard tack wing on wing with Asymmetrical up. Wind just switched back to more straight E direction.
Total miles: 2615 miles
Miles over last 24h: 122 miles (ouch!)
Miles to go to Hiva Oa: 515 nm .
Day 19: May 5th -6th. Another slow day. Hoisted the Asymmetrical. Wing on wing back on port tack. At 12:15 we have less than 500 miles to go! It’s crazy to think that our passage from Mexico to Costa Rica took 19 days +many hours to go 1600 miles, and on the passage we’ve gone over 2,700 miles in the same amount of time. This is now officially our longest time out at sea. 
cinco de mayo dinner of Tamales, rice and beans and Mexican Slaw.
At 06/05/2018 16:30 (UTC) our position was 09°0.8’S -132°22.22’W
Day 19 completed at 0830 our time. Had Asymmetrical up all day until midnight when a tiny rain cloud and wind came. (Can’t quite call it a squall). Switched back to genoa wing on wing causing speed to drop .5 – 1 kt.
Total miles: 2733 miles
Miles over last 24h: 118 miles (even more ouch!)
Miles to go to Hiva Oa: 400 nm
Day 20: May 6-7th. Well we are officially out at sea longer than we’ve ever been before (not counting Christian’s experience as a child). Sunday fun day was pretty mellow. The 15 kt of breeze the grib was calling for never came. Wind was 8-10 kts most of the day.. by nightfall, however it had switched out of the south southeast picked up to about 10-14kts. We dropped the A sail with an impending squall, which happened to just nearly miss us, gybed the jib and started heading back on the Rhumb line with better average speed.
At 07/05/2018 16:30 (UTC) our position was 09°21.18’S -134°31.51’W
Day 20: completed at 0830 our time. Had a good day sailing yesterday. Wind switched out of SSE in the late afternoon. Slowly switched back toward ESE by this morning. Had some rain and skirted some squalls last night.
Total miles: 2862 miles
Miles over last 24h: 129 miles (even more ouch!)
Miles to go to Hiva Oa: 270 nm
Day 21: May 7-8th, 2018:
At 08/05/2018 16:30 (UTC) our position was 09°37.4’S -137°3.34’W
Day 21: completed at 07:00 our time (changed to Marquesas time during the day). 3 weeks! Another great day sailing. Wind speeds up, 12-18 kts. Boat speeds up 6-7 kts. Caught 2 fish at once with our 2 lines, one Yellowfin Tuna and one Mahi Mahi . Finally keepers on the hand lines. Almost 3,000 miles without any keepable fish on the lines. If we hadn’t speared the one Tuna last week, these would have been the only ones the whole trip. Had sushi for dinner. We had more rain overnight along with slightly increased wind speeds. Kept the jib slightly furled.
Total miles: 3015 miles
Miles over last 24h: 153 miles (yay, back up)
Miles to go to Hiva Oa: 118 nm
ETA to Hiva Oa: early morning May 9th.
So 3,015 miles in 3 weeks isn’t too shabby. We have one more day left, just over 100 miles until we reach Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.
I decided to save our last day for its own post.
Again, sorry for the lack of photos. The Iridium phone and email only permits small images. Will add them later.
A Family Afloat 