If there was one thing we’d learned in our first couple of weeks in Costa Rica, it was that the country is absolutely brimming with life. All kinds of life, in all kinds of places. 

Our water tanks, for example, were being colonized by ­disconcerting white algae that had taken hold in the tropical climate. Black-and-white mold speckled the bottoms of ­cushions, the edges of books, and the damp corners into which breezes rarely ventured. On one memorable evening, as the last of the day’s sun diffused across the hazy horizon following an incredibly torrential downpour, a fledge of termites descended and covered the just-rinsed decks in a disgusting layer of insect ­paraphernalia. They dropped into the boat through the open hatches until we gave up and closed everything. We found them crawling up our legs, clustered in the corners of the settee ­cushions, and absolutely coating the cockpit, plastered down by rain. For days afterward, we found termite wings littering the boat, like stray confetti after a party.

We first arrived in Costa Rica in June following a monthlong passage south from Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. Wild Rye, our 32-foot 1971 Wauquiez Centurion, was coated in a stubborn layer of salt and dust, remnants of northern Mexico’s desert-type climate. My partner, Liam, and I were feeling equally grubby after the passage, our faces sunburned and clothes stiff from sea spray. The cool rains that greeted us in Costa Rica were divine. Having arrived at the start of the rainy season, we had no doubt that there would be more where that came from. For the next several months, our small world would be shaped as much by fresh water from the skies as by the salty ocean that held up our floating home.  

We started our explorations in Bahía Santa Elena. A bay within a bay on the remote northern edge of Santa Rosa National Park, protected from the southwest swell by its orientation and from the gusty Papagayo winds by the high hills to the north, it was a haven of stillness after a long month of constant motion. The only noise was the rush of wind over the hilltops high above and the constant background chatter of the jungle. Howler monkeys roared, tropical birds called, and, at dawn and dusk, enormous flocks of parrots filled the air with their strange, rambunctious conversation.

Paddling up the estuary in the dinghy on the rising tide was like entering another world. Light filtered through the mangroves, and the harsh midday sun softened to a dappled glow. Blue morpho butterflies winked in the trees like bright jewels, and colorful land crabs scuttled along mangrove roots suspended over the water. We spent hours drifting and listening to the unfamiliar birdsong, our ears transporting us even when our eyes couldn’t pick out the wildlife tucked away in the dense greenery. 

Another day, we hiked up to a ridge overlooking the bay. Our guidebook had an old map of hiking trails in the national park, but when we finally found the start of one, it clearly hadn’t been used for some time. The dirt road had been obscured by fallen trees and heavy curtains of climbing vines. Liam seemed to intuit, rather than actually see, the path under our feet; I crossed my fingers and followed. 

After an hour of serious bushwhacking, stopping every so often to pick small spines and burrs out of our clothes, we came around a corner and encountered a trail crew. The sight of two men with machetes and an Isuzu Trooper towing an ancient grader was decidedly surreal. We stretched our legs with pleasure on the crisp, newly cut swath, kicking up clouds of dusty red earth and admiring the strange mix of cactuses and deciduous canopy cover that characterizes the tropical dry forest in northern Costa Rica. On the return trip, we passed the trail crew again; they had made it about 300 feet farther into the dense growth before the grader overheated. Based on how many times my ankles had been snarled by strong, spiny vines, I was not surprised. The tireless growth of the tropical forests strikes me as a life force that far outmatches any human efforts to tame it.

For a tiny country, Costa Rica packs a mighty punch when it comes to ecological diversity. Although it makes up less than one-tenth of a percent of the Earth’s surface, it is home to nearly 6 percent of global biodiversity. Due in part to its geographical position—sandwiched between North and South America, as well as the Pacific and Atlantic oceans—and in part to its mountainous topography, the country contains a wealth of ecosystems and microclimates, from chilly, high-altitude cloud forests to coastal mangroves and everything in between. With more than 25 percent of its landmass protected in the form of national parks, reserves and refuges, Costa Rica has become something of a symbol of biodiversity.

As we meandered south, we visited as many of these protected areas as we could, enjoying the gradual transition from the tropical dry forest to muggy, muddy rainforest. For two Canadian gringos who have spent the majority of our short lives north of the 49th parallel, this land of eternal summer with creatures such as the tapir and tamandua, the kinkajou and bushy-tailed olingo, hummed with opportunity for new sights and experiences.

In the Curú Wildlife Refuge, on the southern edge of the Nicoya Peninsula, we stepped softly through groves of fruit trees and coconut palms left over from the area’s agricultural history. Feisty capuchin monkeys threw down half-eaten mangoes to defend their territory, and the air was heady with the scent of fermenting fruit. In the dim purple twilight, a coati sashayed past, tail held high, nose scuffling the forest floor. 

Farther down the coast, we anchored in front of Manuel Antonio National Park—the country’s tiniest and one of its most visited parks—and spent a day watching the local sloths as they blissfully alternated between snoozing and munching on leaves in the forked branches of cecropia trees. More than any other animal we were lucky enough to see, the sloths seemed to embody the mellow pura vida lifestyle for which Costa Rica is known.

With their goofy, blissed-out grins, I imagined them to be saying, “Take it easy, man, life is good.” And it sure is.  

On the Osa Peninsula, Corcovado National Park grows increasingly popular for its lush biodiversity; it’s one of the most biologically intense places on Earth. Instead of paying the steep park fees, we explored the fringes of the peninsula’s intensely humid rainforest. We anchored in Drake Bay to make use of the public hiking trail that runs for 10 miles along the coast, all the way to the San Pedrillo ranger station on the edge of Corcovado. 

We saw brilliant blue-and-yellow gartered trogons, and a family of capuchin monkeys, one mother still with a tiny infant clinging to her back. We hid from the daily deluge of rain under the broad, leafy canopy of a gnarled old tree, having foolishly declined a friendly fisherman’s offer to join him under the tarp shelter of his panga. We plunged through ankle-deep mud in our rain boots. Although we had anchored in Drake Bay with jungle exploration in mind, I instantly fell in love with the anchorage for its beach, as well: a wide, sandy crescent bisected by several creeks running down to the sea, with a high green hill at its back into which the town disappeared. The ocean, at its front, was as calm as a millpond.

The rich, life-filled wildness of the Costa Rican jungle is not ­limited to parks. Everywhere we went, we were struck by the denseness of the trees, which grew unchecked right down to the tide line. Even the largest coastal towns were half-hidden within a leafy embrace and hard to spot from the water, buildings further camouflaged by their tin roofs, which oxidized to a pale, mottled green. Every beach we visited was lined with verdant growth, trees wreathed in mist in the early mornings, and pools of shade in the heat of the midday sun. From their thick canopies came the strident song of kiskadees and the high, fluting calls of toucans. From overhead, I imagine the country looks like a sea of green, with canopies ruffled by the wind like waves on water. An ocean of trees.

Next to the lush forests—but in a way intimately connected to them, because it is the rain, in part, that fuels that verdant growth—what I will remember most about Costa Rica is water. At the end of our first week, we were running desperately low, a result of having placed too much faith in other cruisers’ assurances that it rained all the time. With only 2 gallons left in our last tank, we anchored in front of the small fishing town of Junquillal, just east of Bahía Santa Elena, and dinghied in to ask around. 

Feeling a bit shy after weeks of solitude, we approached the fishing dock and waved at a group of surly-looking fishermen playing cards in the shade. In response to our slow, heavily accented Spanish request, a fisherman walked over, grinned and said: “I like your little boat. And sure.” He shouted something in rapid-fire Spanish, and another guy walked over, dragging the end of a well-used and abused hose. The two men stood chatting with me (I used the word liberally; I probably caught about one word in five) while I filled our jerry jugs, and then they helped me lug them all back to the dinghy. As we cast off, dinghy loaded to the gunwales, the group wished us well with shouts of “Pura vida!”

We never ran low on water after that. Docks at every fishing pier and coastal resort, no matter how decrepit or luxurious, all seemed to have a water hose, and everyone was happy to share. As we headed south and the rainy season established itself, we reveled in the torrential afternoon rains that could fill our tanks in an hour. There was the cool relief of cloud cover as towering thunderheads built, fueled by the heat rising off the land; the crisp freshness of rain, washing away the salt of sweat and sea spray, delightfully and tinglingly cold on our skin; the relief as rain drove away the afternoon heat, and the equal relief as the next morning’s sun chased away the lingering dampness. Everything we had read and heard about Costa Rica during the rainy season indicated that it would be too wet and ­uncomfortable. The reality was that we absolutely loved it. 

Looking back, what we appreciated above all was the sense of transition, through ecosystems as well as seasons.

Looking back on our three months in Costa Rica, what we ­appreciated above all was the sense of transition, through ­ecosystems as well as seasons. As we floated south, we moved toward the rain in space and time: from drier to wetter forests, lower to higher average rainfall, and toward the wettest months of the year, which are August through October. It was a continuation of the transition we experienced when leaving Mexico’s arid heat and venturing into the humid tropics, which is itself the mirror image of the transition we experienced when we made that first big leap from Canada. As people whose home is forever on the move, it might seem like we’ve abandoned the seasonality of Canada for eternal summer, but we are moving through seasons, all the same. It’s just that the motion is geographical more than temporal. 

Now, as the rainy season approaches its zenith, we start to look ahead to the next change, the next place. Perhaps from here, Wild Rye will find her way out of the tropics and back into the higher latitudes. After a few magical years of endless summer, we think it might be nice to see some snow again. And so, the cycle will continue, until one day our season of travel comes to its natural end, and the next change, the next adventure, will be found back home where we started. 

Hilary Thomson and her partner, Liam Johnston, have been living and traveling aboard their 1971 Wauquiez Centurion 32, Wild Rye, since 2019. Their eastern Pacific journey encompassed points northward to Haida Gwaii, in northern British Columbia, and southward to Panama City.

Weather and Sailing Conditions

Costa Rica’s Pacific coast has two distinct seasons: dry, from December to May; and rainy, from June to November. The driest weather is in Guanacaste province in the north, and the rainiest part of the country is the Osa Peninsula. 

During the dry season, there will be more-consistent wind for cruising, but the country is affected by the Papagayo gap winds: strong, intermittent northeasterly winds that commonly blow 30 or 40 knots, with gusts up to double the forecast windspeed. They are strongest from December through March, when the northeast trade winds are at their height in the Caribbean. To sail through the Papagayos, follow the shoreline carefully to avoid the fetch that builds farther out to sea. 

During the rainy season, winds tend to be light. Take advantage of the regular afternoon onshore breeze if you want to cover any miles under sail. Rain squalls bring short-lived periods of stronger wind, often accompanied by lightning and heavy rain that can obscure visibility. The storms are most common in the late afternoon and early evening. 

Costa Rica sits on the southern edge of the Northern Hemisphere hurricane zone, which affects Pacific Central America and Mexico as well as the Caribbean. However, Costa Rica is far enough south that the risk of a hurricane landfall is low.

Anchorages

Many anchorages on the Pacific coast are fairly exposed to southwest swell; be prepared for a lot of rolling, especially from May to October, when the southwest swell is at its largest. Setting a stern hook to hold the bow into the swell will help keep the boat comfortable. Exposure to swell also makes for sporty (or occasionally ­outright dangerous) dinghy landings. Expect to navigate many surf breaks, and watch the local pangas for an indication of the best approach. To escape the swell, consider exploring the Gulf of Nicoya and Golfo Dulce, which are sheltered by Costa Rica’s two large peninsulas and have many interesting anchorages. 

In the dry season when the northeast trades and Papagayos are blowing, swell will be less of an issue, but protection from northerly winds and fetch will be important. 

The Pacific coast of Costa Rica has significant tides (­generally around 8 feet), so plan your shore arrivals accordingly, and make sure to tie your dinghy well.  

Formalities

Upon entering Costa Rica, cruisers are given a 90-day cruising permit. Extensions are no longer permitted at the expiration of the cruising permit, and it is not possible to reenter Costa Rica for three months. When we were in Costa Rica in 2021, all cruisers were required to use an agent to check in because of the pandemic. For us, the use of an agent made an otherwise-­lengthy process easy. I was quoted prices between $375 and $450 for the check-in service, with a significant discount (around $100 off) for members of the Panama Posse, a go-at-your-own-pace cruising rally between Southern California and Annapolis, Maryland, via the Panama Canal.

Ports of entry in Costa Rica include Marina Papagayo, Playa del Coco, Puntarenas, Caldera, Quepos and Golfito. Marina Papagayo is the northernmost port of entry; customs and immigration officials are located in Liberia, and the port captain is in Playa del Coco, each about 25 miles away, so hiring an agent might be cost-effective compared with the taxi fares and time required to do it yourself. Golfito, the southernmost port of entry, has several marinas with immigration, customs and the port captain located nearby, so clearing in or out here on your own is straightforward. Our exit clearance, which we were able to complete ourselves, cost about $15. Many officials in Costa Rica speak English, but don’t count on it. All marinas will have helpful English-speaking staff.

Cost

We found daily items such as groceries, beer and fuel to be cheaper than or on par with American prices, while tourist-oriented items such as marinas and dining out were often more expensive. Marinas ran from $2.50 to $3.50 per foot per night; beers were about $1 each. Dining out was variable; the cheapest meals were reliably found at soda restaurants (much like American diners). Free potable water is available nationwide, and hoses can be found at most docks.

Guidebooks and charts

We used Sarana’s Guide to Cruising Pacific Costa Rica and Panama(2015) by Eric Baicy and Sherrell Watson. It’s an affordable e-book with useful sets of waypoints for ­approaching anchorages and navigating tricky areas. Also available is Charlie’s Charts: Costa Rica by Margo Wood. We found Navionics to be fairly ­accurate throughout the ­country; however, many hazards are uncharted, and we would not recommend traveling this coast without a detailed guidebook. —HT

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Imagine losing your chart plotter midway through a passage. Now, imagine tossing out your autopilot, compass and all the paper charts too. Navigating thousands of ocean miles without modern navigational equipment takes sailing to a whole new level. 

Or, rather, it returns us to the roots of ancient sailors, using nature to find our way. 

More than a millennium ago, traditional Polynesian explorers voyaged between far-flung islands using a suite of natural clues: the direction of swells, the flight path of birds, the position of stars, the color of clouds. 

The Polynesian Voyaging Society is reviving the art and science of wayfinding with replicas of ancient voyaging canoes. Since its inaugural voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1976, the society has inspired people worldwide to embrace traditional navigation and Indigenous knowledge. The voyages made by hundreds of crew members have sparked a cultural renaissance. 

“We use voyaging to inspire other Indigenous communities about reclaiming their culture and how that’s connected to caring for the Earth and oceans,” says Sonja Swenson Rogers, the society’s communications director.

Last week, the society announced the Moananuiākea Voyage, a four-year circumnavigation of the Pacific that will launch June 10 from Juneau, Alaska. Two canoes, Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia, will carry 400 rotating crew members an estimated 43,000 nautical miles. The plan is to visit 36 countries and archipelagoes, nearly 100 Indigenous territories and more than 300 ports—all using traditional wayfinding.

“Every day, a navigator needs to make 5,000 observations, of a wave or a bird or a star, and make 500 choices about trim, course, steering, and then make two decisions at sunrise and sunset,” says Nainoa Thompson, CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society and a master navigator.

Thompson was the first Polynesian in at least 600 years to use wayfinding for long-distance, open-ocean voyaging. He studied under Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the Micronesian island of Satawal, who led Hōkūleʻa to Tahiti on her first voyage. European colonizers believed the native peoples accidentally drifted across the sea, but modern wayfinders have proved that skilled explorers can navigate purposefully and precisely between Pacific islands just as their ancestors did.

During the past four decades, Thompson has dedicated much of his time to training new navigators from Hawaii and other Pacific islands. He says the goal of the Moananuiākea Voyage is to ignite a movement of 10 million “planetary navigators” to help steer “our island Earth” toward a healthy, thriving future. “This is about not just the oceans; this is about taking discovery and moving it towards choices and…action that we believe is going to help build a future that is good enough for our kids,” Thompson says.

Moananuiākea (the Hawaiian word for the Pacific Ocean) will be Hōkūleʻa’s 15th major voyage. Hōkūleʻa will be shipped on a barge from Hawaii to Tacoma, Washington, on April 16, then make its way north to Auke Bay in Juneau, Alaska, the traditional lands of the A’akw Kwáan. On June 15, Hōkūleʻa will begin its circumnavigation of the Pacific after a ceremony with leaders from Taiwan, French Polynesia, the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, and New Zealand (which the Maori call Aotearoa). Traditional canoes from First Nations will also be in Auke Bay to pay homage to Indigenous peoples and communities in Alaska, Rogers says.

Hikianalia will join the voyage in August in Seattle, and then the sister canoes will navigate south along the west coasts of North and South America. In spring 2024, the canoes will begin sailing through Polynesia, arriving in New Zealand during the first half of 2025. From there, the voyage will move north to Melanesia, Micronesia, Palau and Japan, where the canoes will be shipped to California at the end of 2026. The circumnavigation will wrap up with a sail from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and a round-trip visit to Tahiti in spring 2027. 

“The incredible, beautiful cultural revival—it’s a big part of the voyage,” Rogers says. “We want to share our story and hear others’ stories.”

Follow the Moananuiākea Voyage and learn more at hokulea.com and waahonua.com.

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“Nineteen,” my wife counted, staring up into the night sky.

She was leaning against me as we sat in the starboard cockpit of Migration, our 46-foot Cross trimaran. We were anchored at San Benedicto Island in the Revillagigedo Archipelago, 350 miles off the Pacific coast of Mexico.

“Twenty,” she said, a few minutes later. “There, just to the right of the mizzen.”

I squinted toward where she was pointing and finally saw the small dot moving among the stars.

That night, like most nights in the largest marine-­protected area in North America, the sky was glorious. Both the Southern Cross and the North Star can be seen hanging low in the star-strewn sky. So many stars.

And so many satellites. 

I forgot the exact count that night, but we spotted ­somewhere around 25 in just under an hour. We’ve always loved looking for satellites but had never seen so many in such a short time. It was surprising. And, somehow, upsetting.

The next day, diving into the waters of the Revillagigedo Islands, we were overwhelmed by the beauty of what appeared to be pristine ocean inhabited by dozens of sharks, whales, turtles, dolphins and manta rays. We surfaced shouting with joy. But those who visited 30 years ago would have rolled their eyes at our enthusiasm. They were diving when the area was brimming with hundreds, not dozens, of these charismatic species. The baseline has moved. We can compare now only to what we’ve experienced. As time rolls forward, we don’t know what we don’t know.

If you dreamed of cruising in the 1970s, ’80s or ’90s, you most likely read Dove by Robin Lee Graham and Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Maybe Bernard Moitessier’s books, as well as those by Robin Knox-Johnston, Sir Francis Chichester, Steven Callahan, or Miles and Beryl Smeeton. Though diverse in their stories and experience, all the writers had one thing in common: Voyaging changed them deeply. Their journeys were not just about sailing great distances, but were also about introspection. Perhaps you’ve been aboard a sailboat far out at sea during the past decade, under a glorious sky that forces you to think of the size of the universe, and your place in it, and how the natural world rolls on and on. The sails are drawing the boat forward with that inherently beautiful, astonishing, magical power. Everything in tune, the compelling energy of it all rising from the sea, through the boat, into your body. And you know that it is impossible not to be infinitely grateful for where you are, who you are. You feel the deepness of the sea, the universe, existence—and the awe of it all is ­complete. Nothing is needed at the moment except to sit. To sail. To be.

Then, you jump up to get the phone. Or the drone. Or the laptop. 

And post.

There’s a very good chance that several of those 20-some satellites we saw were those of Starlink, SpaceX’s ­constellation of more than 2,500 satellites, launched to provide Internet access to nearly every spot on Earth. Internet access in midocean isn’t new; if you have a big enough yacht, and the wallet to go with it, you can have pretty good access via satellite almost anywhere. Starlink will make that possible for the rest of us. We already have 24/7 texting and tweeting using Iridium Go for less than $150 per month. We are only a few years away from everyone having full Internet access 24/7 for a couple hundred dollars.

But will anyone ask, “Do I want it?”

If you’re a young sailor who learned about cruising from famous vloggers, you might think the cruising life means sharing everything you do all the time (well, that, and making sure you video lots of bikini’d bottoms). That’s a natural assumption since the rise of social media. The baseline for someone who spent much of his early adulthood with a phone in hand is that you shoot and post and tweet and are connected to the Internet all the time. It’s what you know. It’s what you do.

Many sailors have grown up learning that you can make money by selling the cruising dream online via blogs, vlogs, coaching and sponsorships. Some might not be aware that dreams were once shared in person, exchanging ideas and plans freely with other sailors at dockside. Or spontaneously hanging on the words of an experienced circumnavigator who invited you aboard to see her boat. Or intimately curling in the bunk of your half-refurbished boat, reading and dreaming along with the intensely personal reflections of a lone sailor at sea who had no contact with the outside world. Those dreams were often based in a desire to be free from the constraints of life ashore, unchained from the anchors of the daily slog. To live differently, expansively, individually. Can one be free when an invisible wire tethers you to civilization? Is it even possible to make the decision to cut that wire if one has never known a life without it? 

Cruising has changed, and will continue to do so, from sextants and paper charts to Mario Kart-ing a triangle of your boat on a screen at the helm, and from finding a secluded anchorage because you know it’s not listed in the popular cruising guide to finding a secluded anchorage because you know it doesn’t have a mobile signal. 

When I mention the possible detrimental effects of technology on the cruising lifestyle, some sailors shoot back, “If Capt. Cook had GPS, he’d surely have used it.” I agree, but he would also have a man in the rigging on lookout. Just because a technology exists doesn’t mean we must use it as we are directed, whether those directions come from marine-­electronics corporations or social media giants. There is nothing inherently good about technology. It just is. How it affects our lives, by making us safer, healthier or more joyful, is based on how we choose to use it.

It’s all our choice: going to sea, multihull or monohull, cutter or sloop, wood or glass, Dacron or carbon, west or east.

As an individual, you most probably cannot choose whether the sky that humans have gazed at with wonder for millennia will be crisscrossed every couple of minutes by satellites. But, when you sit beneath those stars and satellites, whether you remain present and revel in the life you are living or get up to post—that is your choice. 

Bruce and his wife, Alene, have sailed their 1969 Cross trimaran, Migration (svmigration.com), more than 65,000 nautical miles over the past 17 years. He has ​authored several children’s books and is the founder of ­thechartlocker.com.

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The sea will allow you to ­encounter yourself, if you let it. At age 16, James Frederick traveled to San Francisco, stood on the beach, and saw the ocean for the first time. “I just stared at it,” Frederick says, recalling the moment. “All I could think was: This water has never stopped moving.”

Frederick grew up in the California ­desert. At 15, he dropped out of high school and lived on the streets of Los Angeles. In the ’90s, he worked as an artist and musician, performing experimental soundscapes at galleries and museums across Europe. Today, at 47, with tattooed hands and gauged ears, Frederick looks more punk rock than Polo. But he’s an ocean sailor. And his recent 32-day solo voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii is about more than a dream realized; it’s about what happens when life goes to crap, plans are shattered, and the only thing left to do is to go to sea.

In 2014, Frederick was in Russia, on the island of Kronstadt, studying maritime history as an artist in residence with the National Centre for Contemporary Arts. He was interested in boats but believed that sailing was out of reach. However, after landing an art residency that teamed scientists, sailors and artists on an expedition boat in Scotland’s Orkney Isles, Frederick felt a call. 

“When I stepped off that sailboat, my future was forever changed,” he says. “But I had no idea what was to come.”

Frederick abandoned his pursuit of art and made sailing his life. Back in Los Angeles, he used meetup and crew-placement websites to get on any boat he could, racing and delivering yachts up and down the West Coast. In 2017, he found Triteia, a 1965 Alberg 30, rotting between an oil refinery and a recycling facility where old boats are cut up and carried to the dumpster. 

“It’s a heartbreaking place where boats go to die,” Frederick says. “But there were angels playing trumpets when I saw this boat.”

Frederick bought Triteia for $2,400 and began sailing Southern California. Months later, he met Camille, a fine artist, and the adventure began. Together, they circumnavigated Catalina Island, anchored in the Channel Islands, and married aboard Triteia.

“Waking up under anchor with the person I love gave me a glimpse of the life I had been dreaming of living,” Frederick says. 

But there was a bigger dream: He wanted to sail the world.

Working paycheck to paycheck, Frederick readied Triteia for cruising. He swapped the seized engine for a rebuilt Yanmar, built a custom compression post, and installed an integral freshwater tank and a custom mast. He upsized the rigging, and upgraded the ground ­tackle, hard dodger and windvane. Triteia’s ­four-year refit was extensive; the labor was hell. Nearing completion, Frederick was so beaten, he thought that finishing the boat might break him. You are doing this for the magic hours you will experience at sea, he told himself. 

“That first day was incredibly difficult … I was stunned and alone, sailing for Hawaii in hope that the solitude might help heal my shattered heart.”

In June 2021, Frederick embarked on a 2,300-nautical-mile solo voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii. If all went to plan, Camille would join him there and cruise the islands. 

But there was trouble. Thirty miles out, in heavy wind and pounding seas, the bolts that secure Triteia’s ­self-steering windvane began to back out. Later, 262 miles off the California coast, the bolts stripped and failed.

He turned the boat around, limped back to Los Angeles, and fixed the windvane. With Hawaii on pause, he and Camille made a new plan to cruise the West Coast. Then, only days from departure, things went sideways. Camille left James; their marriage came to an abrupt end. 

“I was on a mooring ball in Redondo Beach with no dog and no wife, completely shattered as to what happened to my life,” he says. “But I also thought: The boat’s ready. The boat’s provisioned. I’m sailing to Hawaii.”

At a guest dock in Marina Del Rey, a small group of friends streamed in and offered support, including Capt. David Stovall, a former bosun’s mate in the US Navy. “When you’re hurting, isolation at sea isn’t always helpful,” he says. “But James is a good guy with a strong value system, and he’s an expert sailor. So if anyone could handle a long solo passage amid this kind of loss, it’s James.”

On August 12, 2021, Frederick woke ­early, went to the market, and bought a few provisions. On the walk back to the dock, fear washed over him. “I did not want to go,” he says. “I don’t rattle easily, but I felt so scared and vulnerable. Still, my feet kept moving forward.”

Frederick put the food in Triteia’s fridge, started the engine, and did a final equipment check. “Almost every aspect of my life has turned upside down and changed,” he said in a video recorded that morning from inside Triteia. “The only thing that makes sense is to put to sea.”

A second push to Hawaii would begin better than the first. In mellow conditions, Frederick got his sea legs and motored offshore from Marina Del Rey. But as Triteia found course for Hawaii, Frederick was reeling. 

“That first day was incredibly difficult,” he says. “My wife had made it clear that there was nothing I could do to get her to stay. I was stunned and alone, sailing for Hawaii in hope that the solitude might help heal my shattered heart.”

Years earlier, when Frederick lost his mom, he hid from the grief. This time, he knew he would need to accept the pain. The first night of the passage, he slept in the cockpit under the stars and woke every 15 minutes to watch for ships. He wrote in Triteia’s log: 

Have you ever thought about what it means to be alone? I mean, truly alone and on your own? Sometimes we reach crossroads in our lives that make us just want to sit in silence for a bit.

Sometimes that silence is extremely loud. Other times, the silence is far too quiet.

On the morning of Day Two, Frederick unfurled the headsail and enjoyed 10 knots of warm air. If things went well, he’d reach Hawaii in 22 days. On his satellite phone, encouraging text messages streamed from his brother Colby and close friend Sarah. Meanwhile, Frederick’s brother David and Stovall monitored Triteia’s position on PredictWindand alerted Frederick of nearby ships.

Brooding clouds brought drizzle and dumped rain, and fluky wind combined with tall seas. Frederick trimmed the sails, wrote, read, and edited video as Triteia logged miles. “Ship’s business kept my mind distracted, but every time I laid down in the bunk, I’d remember I didn’t have a family,” Frederick says.

Late in the night, on Day Four, while sailing through cold and fog, Frederick awoke from his sleep. “Absolute terror,” he says. “The masthead light and sails were casting an ominous shadow that looked like the mainsail of another boat. I about sh-t myself.”

A few days later, Frederick had another scare. One mile off Triteia’s port bow, a tanker was lumbering past. Triteia’s AIS had been working at the start of the passage but had quit several days out. 

“I wasn’t on their radar, and they weren’t on mine,” Frederick says. “But sailors on small boats have long navigated oceans without electronics. Equipment is going to break. It’s just the reality of sailing.”

Frederick has a low tolerance for BS and a high threshold for stress. He also does a tremendous amount of reading. In the boat’s library, he brought Two Against Cape Horn by Hal Roth and Boundless Sea by David Abulafia, along with a cruising guide to the Hawaiian Islands. While reading, he highlighted details and jotted notes, imagining himself exploring Hawaii’s bays and coves, and snapping photos of Triteia in picturesque anchorages. 

On Day 10, a wave rounded down Triteia as a gust hit, blowing out the clew of the mainsail. Later, another gust came. “With full sails up, we were hit with 20 knots and completely laid over,” Frederick says. “The winch was totally awash. I had to reach into the sea to release the jib sheet and depower the sail.”

Offshore, the dolphins, terns and sea life vanished. Frederick was actually alone now. Then, the albatrosses appeared. Among the largest and most legendary birds, albatrosses are endangered and often employed metaphorically for a person bearing a burden or facing an obstacle. Frederick watched as they glided in circles overhead and followed Triteia. He wrote in his log:

According to sea lore, to spot an albatross is a good omen. It is said albatrosses are the souls of sailors who were lost at sea, watching over earthbound sailors as they cross the oceans. I will never forget this experience.

Heartbreak is real, but beauty is medicine. White clouds contrasted with shifting hues of blue sky over the Pacific, reminding Frederick of American sculptor James Turrell. A Quaker and a pilot, Turrell’s work explored light and the connection between humans and space—even empty space. Alone at sea, Frederick knew that he was inside that void. At the same time, there was compassion in the vast emptiness of the sea.

On Day 13, Frederick and Triteia passed the halfway point on the rhumb line ­between Marina del Rey and Hilo, Hawaii. Squinting at his chart, he ­celebrated by nodding and climbing back into his sleeping bag. Later, he wrote:

It was a day of endlessly adjusting course and lying in my bunk wondering at what point in life my passions had become so masochistic? Why couldn’t I be passionate about log cabins? Log cabins are lovely, are they not? But alas, here we are 1,100 nm from any other humans besides all the other sailors on ships plying this sea. Here’s to halfway!

After two weeks at sea, trouble ­arrived. Frederick was in the trade winds, hand-steering in 17 knots of wind and following seas, when the tiller went slack. One thousand miles from Hawaii, he’d lost the ability to steer. 

“I felt time come to a standstill,” he says. “I sat dumbfounded, just staring.”
Frederick clipped into his harness, went forward, and dropped the sails. In rolling waves, he put a GoPro in the water and performed an initial inspection. Good news: No water was coming into the boat. Bad news: The rudder was damaged.

Stovall was in Santa Monica when he got an emergency text message from Frederick over Iridium Go!: “I was immediately alarmed,” he says. “A lot of fine yachts have been abandoned at sea due to rudder failure.”

In Maine, Noah Peffer also received a message over satellite phone. Peffer worked with Frederick in the art world; he’s crossed the Pacific, and cruised the East Coast, Caribbean and Bahamas. “I know people who are complete Vikings,” he says. “They all said: ‘Holy sh-t! No rudder? A thousand miles from Hawaii?’ Nobody thought this would be easy.”

Stovall contacted the US Coast Guard in Hawaii, and provided Triteia’s position, Frederick’s overall condition, and the amount of food and water aboard the vessel. 

“At that point, there wasn’t much [the Coast Guard] could do,” Stovall says. “If they rescued James, he’d have to scuttle the boat.” 

To scuttle is to intentionally sink, and Frederick wasn’t having it. 

“My whole life and everything I owned was on board Triteia,”he says. “I knew I would exhaust all possibilities before it came to that.”

As Triteia drifted, Frederick put on diving gear and lowered himself into the water. From what he could see, the rudder post had separated from the rudder itself; there was a chip out of the rudder, and near the damage, Frederick noticed flecks of red paint. They were evidence, perhaps, that the boat had struck a submerged object.

Back aboard, Frederick tucked in a third reef and deployed his rigid Sea Squid drogue to limit Triteia’s progress off course. Then, he collapsed into his bunk and slept. Later, he wrote in the ship’s log:

My heart was already in tatters, and now my ship, my home, and all of my dreams were adrift in one of the most remote places on the planet. I sat in the cockpit staring at my beautiful boat, imagining her cabin filling with water.

After some sleep, Frederick tested potential steering solutions. Triteia’s windvane has an auxiliary rudder, but it would steer the boat only with the sails down and the motor off. Alternatively, a floorboard could be fashioned into an emergency rudder. But hand-steering for 1,000 miles wouldn’t fly.

“I know people who are complete Vikings. They all said: ‘Holy sh*t! No rudder? A thousand miles from Hawaii?’ Nobody thought this would be easy.”

Frederick remembered his heroes. Tami Oldham Ashcraft survived 41 days adrift after dismasting in a hurricane while crossing from Tahiti to San Diego. Miles and Beryl Smeeton twice pitchpoled their ketch on attempts to round Cape Horn. Beryl was thrown overboard and broke her collarbone, and the boat nearly sank. Still, the Smeetons built a new mast inside the cabin, and sailed on to Chile. 

“These stories had me feeling grateful that my ship was stout,” Frederick says. “I also knew I had the necessary equipment on board and the good fortune of a great shore team.”

Peffer and Stovall believed that the best way forward was to steer Triteia by drogue, a device that can towed behind a boat to slow forward progress and make the boat easier to steer in heavy weather. Receiving instructions via text on Iridium Go!, Frederick lashed a spinnaker pole to Triteia’s stern. He fed two lines through blocks amidships, ran them back aft through the ends of the pole, and tied them to the drogue. 

“At first, I couldn’t get it to work,” Frederick says. “With wind on the beam, the boat would run off and ignore the drogue.” 

At Stovall’s suggestion, Frederick added a 4-pound dive weight to submerge the drogue. Meanwhile, Peffer advised Frederick to drop the main and run on headsail alone. Test, fail, adjust, repeat. “Sometimes I’d pay out too much headsail and overpower the drogue,” Frederick says. “The other key was to maintain enough resistance to control the drogue while not killing the forward momentum needed to steer.”

It took three days to dial in the system. By the fourth day, Frederick was running on full headsail. 

“I was relieved and amazed,” Frederick says. “For the first time since leaving California, I felt happiness.”

Still, Frederick’s shore team had concerns. “One of my worries was that he’d fatigue from having to constantly manage the setup,” Peffer says. “But one of the best surprises was that he could lock down the system and not touch it for hours.”

Drogue in tow, Triteia inched along at 1 to 3 knots. By Day 20, nearly six days after rudder failure, with Hawaii still 800 miles away, it was clear that there would be no shortcut in this journey. The experience of being rudderless, both in life and at sea, was here for Frederick to deeply ­experience. He wrote in Triteia’s log:

Sometimes we need to see the brilliant blue skies fall into the night—a night that holds an impossible number of stars—and to feel the sea humble you while never even taking notice as she continues to move. You might not believe this, but you would be amazed at what you could do when you are forced to. Sometimes the only path forward requires a certain amount of resistance.

For 18 days, Frederick steered by drogue. Sometimes the jury-rig would fail, and Frederick would be forced to hang off the back of the boat and hand-turn the windvane rudder to maintain course. Wet, cold and pounded by seas, he often screamed at the waves. But intense moments of beauty emerged. Schools of yellow dorado and albacores offered transcendence. Pacific bluefin tuna brought magic. Golden sunsets with albatrosses invited wonder. 

“The colors were as vivid as a Flemish still-life painting,” Frederick says, “where the darkness plays as much of a role as the color.”

 On Day 31, after hours of squinting at the horizon, Frederick spotted the island of Molokai, 41 nautical miles off his port bow. “Yes!” he screamed. 

The channels between the Hawaiian Islands can be treacherous. Nearing Oahu, James radioed ahead to arrange for a towboat, but none were available. 

“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “Even this close to Honolulu, I was on my own.”

Frederick started the engine and motored Triteia slowly, so as not to overpower the drogue. For the final six hours of the passage, he hung off the stern and steered with a foot to manage the increasingly ineffective windvane. 

At Diamond Head, the prominent ­volcanic crater visible on approach to Oahu, the wind was blowing at 20 knots. Large waves were breaking on the reef. Entering the harbor rudderless would be risky, if not crazy, so Frederick dropped anchor at Waikiki Beach. 

Capt. Mike La Rose, who runs tour boats in Hawaii, had been following Frederick’s passage via Instagram updates from the shore team. La Rose reached out to help, and soon arrived aboard his Sunnfjord 38 trawler. 

“It’s so crazy,” Frederick said as La Rose towed Triteia into Ala Wai Harbor. “I can’t believe it’s done.”

After 32 days and 2,300 miles alone at sea—1,000 miles without a rudder— Frederick made landfall at Oahu. He stepped off the boat and collapsed on the dock, the dream of sailing to Hawaii now living within him. Later he wrote:

I’ve stared silently at some of the most beautiful sunsets, screamed into the air until my throat felt broken, cried for lost love, and laughed with joy at the sight of the albatrosses. I have learned a great many things in the past 30 days, but may have more questions now than ever before. 

The sea is full of contradictions: welcoming and hostile, violent and serene—inviting us into a meditation on power and powerlessness, fear and awe, holding on and letting go. As for Frederick, it’s clear that his experience at sea has forever changed him. At the same time, he’s still very much that kid he was at 16, standing on the beach, staring speechless at an open expanse that never stops moving.

James Frederick’s harrowing sail to Hawaii, told by David Blake Fischer, appeared in the June/July issue. Check out James’ thoughts on the article, below.

James Frederick is currently cruising the Hawaiian Islands aboard Triteia. A video of his 2021 passage from Los Angeles to Hawaii is available on YouTube. Additional details can be found in his book, The Logs of the Good Ship Triteia. Follow him on Instagram @james.the.sailor.man.

David Blake Fischer lives in Southern California. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Buzzfeed, the Moth, Good Old Boat and other publications. Follow him on Instagram @sailingdelilah.

The post Finding a Way Forward appeared first on Cruising World.

Of all the ways I have traveled, I love my sailboat the best. A wanderer since childhood, I have climbed glaciers with a heavy pack, forded African rivers by motorcycle, and ­landed on remote fjords by floatplane. None of it compares with cruising. I am certain there is no better way to encounter the world than by boat.

I’ve discovered that my humble craft has an alchemical quality, a certain trick of distilling the places, weather, events, people, and, yes, the scares and repairs too, into an extraordinarily pure essence, a rare and wonderful possession for life. This treasure can only be earned, never purchased, and cannot be lost or stolen. A few words are enough to conjure it all. 

“Did you go up the Rio Dulce?” another sailor might ask, and we are instantly in Guatemala. We feel the alertness and unease of anchoring off Livingston, an unpredictable frontier town, waiting for the tide to rise high enough to bump and scrape our keel over the river bar. We know the sense of wonder around every bend in that lush and mighty river canyon. We’ve seen a man from another century approach in his dugout canoe and ask if we might help charge his cellphone. 

When I began roaming on my own boat, the 36-foot Beneteau Liberte, a salty friend put it best: “Right now, all you see is charts,” he said, “but sailing will turn every one of those places into a story.”

Today, I still have the crude map I drew for myself before I began cruising. It was mere wishful thinking. I didn’t even have a boat. Still office-bound, I sat through many meetings where the clients probably thought I was taking diligent notes. Instead, I was tracing and retracing my dream route, making lists of gear and ports of call, my head already out to sea. 

My anticipatory dotted line led from Bellingham, Washington, to Cuba and on to the Bahamas, a course I did indeed follow with my wife, Rebecca, during 10 incredible seasons. Today, every one of those dots puts a massive grin on my face. 

First there was Vancouver Island, which Liberte circumnavigated counterclockwise in 2009 as a shakedown cruise. I went in March, April and May, with three buddies as crew. It was definitely early season. The lads and I wore our fuzzy caps most of the way and kept a close ear on Environment Canada’s weather forecasts. The payoff for this gamble was clear skies, consistent wind, no fog and no bugs. I remember running tidal narrows, feeling our way into stunning anchorages we had all to ourselves, and flying the spinnaker up Queen Charlotte Strait on a rare and glorious easterly. I remember rounding notorious Cape Scott under sail alone, tacking furiously against a foul current, and then shooting down the coast once we rounded. As we came into Quatsino Sound that evening, a family of bears was feeding along the water’s edge at low tide, scarcely giving us a glance as we crept past, wing on wing, riding every remaining zephyr. The boys and I didn’t want to start the engine and break that spell, so we simply coasted to the dock at Winter Harbour.

There was one big blow, with hurricane-force winds ripping down Brooks Peninsula, but my crew and I were safely tucked into shelter, playing pool at the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 180, in Port Alice, where they deemed us local celebrities (“You’re the guys with the big blue sail!”) and would never let us buy our own drinks.

At Nootka Sound, we met Mark and Joanne Tiglmann, some of the last remaining lightkeepers in North America. They told us that we were the first boat to round the island that year. In Tofino, we waited until all the day-trippers had gone, and then we hiked through the rainforest to the best hot springs I’ve ever found. We saw wolf tracks on the beach. I watched three ravens steal baitfish from a charter fishing boat. They were nimble grifters, with one bird on high lookout, one perched on the rail, and one helping itself to the bait. Then they would rotate so that the next bird got its share. They spoke in murmurs so as not to tip off the seagulls.

I saw all that, and so much more, with my own eyes, felt it with every bit of my senses. All of it made possible only by running away on our own boat, by being intimidated, overwhelmed, sleepless, but always there. 

Cape Mendocino will always be that place where I underestimated the weather and paid the price all night long, running hard in big seas in the dark, waiting for something to break. At dawn, a pod of spinning dolphins told us that we would be OK.

I remember humpback whales breathing. I remember crossing under the Golden Gate Bridge, the pea soup clearing just enough to see the legendary span above, high-fives all round. I remember the sound of sea lions all night long on Pier 39. My crew and I rang the bell for admittance to the Dolphin Club, where we took the ceremonial plunge into chilly San Francisco Bay, and then felt the blood return in the sauna amid the banter of bums, poets and billionaires.

On Catalina Island, we hungry sailors tried our best to get into a private buffet line and got busted by the host. Later, he brought us three plates of food, with all the filet mignon, lobster and mashed potatoes we had coveted earlier. “At least you guys weren’t jerks about it,” he said. “There’s plenty. Eat up.” He was a top-selling yacht broker. As we devoured his food, he let us in on a trade secret: Moor the prospective buyer’s boat next to an even bigger boat. “They can’t stand the other guy being higher than they are,” he said.

To the uninitiated eye, the Baja peninsula looks like a whole lot of nothing. But that stretch of rock and sand is filled with hidden delights. My fellow cruisers and I can point out where the whales come right up to your dinghy at Bahia Magdalena. We can show you Los Frailes, where we took our first luxurious swim off the back of Liberte. We can guide you to Los Islotes and its frisky sea lions.

Not far from Isla San Francisco, one memorable day, I went overboard to rescue Samantha, our Jack Russell terrier, and suddenly needed rescuing myself. All these years later, I can still feel the intensity of that moment when Rebecca hauled the dog and me safely back onto Liberte, the huge adrenaline buzz and those first sweet deep breaths of air.

In the little fishing village of Agua Verde, people came out of their homes to wish us good morning. The dirt streets were swept and tidied, and the whole place was as neat as a pin. The headlines were filled with swine flu and travel warnings. Rebecca asked, “Why aren’t the news crews here instead?” The village Romeo, a black dog named Osso, took a shine to Samantha and trotted along, and when we kayaked back to Liberte, Osso swam after us for a long way, every bit the lovestruck village lad pining for a passing sailor girl. 

All along the Baja, I can show you where to find waterfalls in the desert, orange groves, and tiny mountain towns with their churches and horseback festivals. I know which vendor in Santa Rosalia has the best hot dogs.

As I dream backward now, the entire thing looks like those place mats of the West that I loved as a kid at breakfast diners. They were filled with routes that could take you anywhere, with miniature drawings of each marvel: redwoods, rivers, volcanoes and Sasquatch.

I was also obsessed with space as a boy, and even though I don’t expect to blast off with Elon Musk in this lifetime, I realize that my cruising boat has become a longed-for spacecraft. I have flown through stars. I have touched down on strange new worlds and climbed through primeval plants and mysterious stones, my faithful rocket ship waiting for me down there in the bay. 

In Acapulco, with warnings about violence ashore, we easily could have chosen to sail on by. Instead, we entered the bay, and I will always remember our anniversary night, snuggled up with Rebecca on Liberte’s rail, watching all the city lights come on around us, a sparkling bowl of diamonds. 

Zihuatanejo was the dinghy concierge, the huge outdoor market, and my day of surfing with two locals who carried their boards old-school on top of their Volkswagen Beetle, with towels for a roof rack and ropes lashed through the windows. It was where we helped rescue a boat that dragged anchor, which then proceeded to try to anchor in exactly the same place again (directly upwind of us!). Alan on motor trawler Beverly J, with an entire workshop on his aft deck, expertly crafted another metal pin for the one that had broken on Liberte’s autohelm. Thank you, Alan; thank you, buddy boats; and thank you, locals who helped us all along our way, most of whom we will never meet again.

We had read about the Gulf of Tehuantepec, and anticipated and dreaded it in equal measure, but nothing could prepare us for actually being in that place. There’s no way we could anticipate that, instead of spindrift fury, it could be mirror-calm. And that, on Rebecca’s birthday, she could dive into that infinite blue with dolphins so curious about us, we were certain that they had never seen another human.

As I consider our route, I still know the harbors and hazards by heart. I can still point, more or less, to the spot where I hit an unlit panga. It was dense-black in the early morning. Liberte had a nice head of steam, sailing upwind with full sails in that fragrant offshore night wind, so perfectly balanced that she was steering herself without the autopilot. At first impact, I thought we’d hit a log, which is not uncommon near these river estuaries. But when I aimed my spotlight behind the boat, two men looked back at me with wide eyes. My guess is they’d been fast asleep. Out of nowhere, I’d hit them hard, hooked their anchor line, and was now towing them. I had a sharp knife in hand but resisted the urge to cut their only line. I luffed sails, untangled our boats, and made sure that the guys were OK, apologizing profusely in my best broken Spanish.

Never did I ever expect to intentionally put my boat into a surf break. That is the stuff of a sailor’s nightmares. But along El Salvador’s coast, Rebecca and I did exactly that to get to the anchorage. We waited our turn, put Samantha below, cleared the deck, locked the hatch boards, and made sure that the engine would hit max revs. The previous day, a boat had come in slow, gone sideways on a wave, and been pooped and flooded. Our guide on his personal watercraft raised his hand and signaled us forward. Rebecca steered while I redlined the Yanmar. We surfed one, two, three quite-sizable breaking waves, and then we were through and into the flat lagoon. Rebecca grinned and said, “Let’s do it again!” 

Vast, unpredictable and a long way from anywhere, the Golfo de Fonseca is where I did my customary engine check and discovered a bilge full of oil beneath my faithful Yanmar, in the most remote place we’d been so far. All cruisers know that feeling. And they know the improvisation it takes to keep going without the right parts. Rebecca created a tray from aluminum foil to catch the oil, and every few hours of motoring, we’d pour all that oil right back into the engine again. We did a lot of miles that way. 

We had heard tall tales of the Papagayo winds, and one day, there they were, howling, as advertised. Liberte flew down the Nicaraguan coastline, a triple reef in her main. It was uncanny, sailing in 40 knot winds in absolutely flat water while being sandblasted from shore. In Bahia Santa Elena, at the north end of Costa Rica, we hunkered down for several days waiting for those gusts to dial down, just a little.

In Costa Rica, while other cruisers complained of their ­clearing-in woes—including surf landing while trying to keep ­documents dry, catching a local bus, and waiting around for hours
—I took the easy way out. I found myself squired around by an extraordinarily beautiful agent. At every stop in ­officialdom, the bureaucrats, obviously eating out of the palm of her hand, waved us through cheerily. It was the best clearing-in experience ever, and it was also the most expensive. That invoice was shocking.

Costa Rica was monkeys stealing our breakfast. Rebecca and I swam in waterfalls and went skinny-dipping off Liberte into the warmest water, the bioluminescence so powerful that it outlined our entire bodies as we moved—an utterly hallucinogenic encounter yet with an entirely clear head. 

Panama was astounding: a land of tall shiny buildings, riverbank tribes, and the bucket-list adventure of navigating the Panama Canal in our very own boat. As they rafted us together with two buddy boats, I looked over at our friend Steve in the middle boat as the first locks opened. “You feeling OK?” I asked. “You bet!” he said. “I’ve got the world’s biggest fenders, one on each side.” 

We cruised the San Blas Islands for six enchanted off-the-grid weeks. We anchored at Bug Island and fed our organic waste to the island pig. We were guests in a Guna Yala village when we smelled smoke and heard screams. Within a few minutes, the village was on fire, the flames jumping easily from wood hut to hut. We picked people out of the water. There were no lives lost, but more than half the village was burned to the ground, most likely from a cooking fire gone out of control.

We went back the next day, the ruins still smoking, and donated all the items we could muster. The villagers saw us coming and broke into a wailing, chanting choir of welcome, the memory of which still sends chills up my spine. We watched them test the fins and masks they needed for fishing, and try on our clothes. Within minutes, they had strung their new blue tarp overhead for shade and were stirring something inside the big crab pot.

All my life, I will remember these things. I will recall anchoring up Panama’s Chagres River, listening to the howler monkeys and other creatures we could not identify, the jungle coming alive at night all around our solitary boat. Sometimes these thrills come at a cost. I somehow scratched my eye. In the jungle and in that climate, infection happened quickly. By the time we reached the fabled island of Escudo de Veraguas, I was in bad shape and there was no time to search for those pygmy three-toed sloths. From Bocas del Toro, I flew to the Johns Hopkins hospital in Panama City so that a medical team could save my eye.

The next season, after the boat summered in Guatemala’s Rio Dulce, we enjoyed Placencia immensely and explored the outer atolls of Belize at a leisurely pace. Half Moon Caye, shared only with our buddy boat, was wild and alive with creatures above and below the sea. Our land-traveling friends had raved about Ambergris Caye, but we found that we preferred the peace of quieter spaces. By cruising in our own boat, we had become immeasurably spoiled.

The thing I love most about my boat, and some days hate, is that it always brings me into direct and undeniable contact with the world. I challenge you to come up with a better way to eat, sleep and move within the natural rhythms. 

In control of our own boat, we cruisers have what writer Tim Kreider describes so well (although he is talking about traveling by train) as “the ideal living situation…constant change within a framework of structure…the cozy in-betweenness of it, being suspended between destinations, temporarily exempt from the relentless press of time.”

My map always led to Cuba, where X marked the spot of my unending intrigue. As Americans on a US-flagged vessel, we were presented with a tough proposition. But in 2016, my dream came true when we signed up for the Conch Republic Cup. Instead of import and export regulations and travel bans, we were now participating in a goodwill event between nations, and Liberte was a piece of athletic equipment. With the all-important US Coast Guard CG-3300 form in hand, giving us permission to cruise to Cuba and return to the United States without penalty, we made the voyage. I’ve long been fascinated with Ernest Hemingway, and so to follow in his wake from Key West, Florida, to Havana across the Gulf Stream, in my own craft, was a special treat. Liberte even won a racing trophy for one epic stage: the Cuba Coast Challenge. If thieves ever decide to break into my house, they can have the few other possessions I own. Just leave that simple, sheet-metal Cuba trophy on my shelf, please.

And who does not dream of cruising to a place like the Bahamas, where we roamed for three fine seasons? Every spring, Rebecca and I would return to Indiantown, Florida, put Liberte on the hard, and fly home to earn what Jimmy Buffett calls “fun tickets.” Every fall, we’d splash and dash across the Gulf Stream. When I look at those Bahamas charts, I still remember watching intently, often impatiently, for favorable conditions to cross. I remember seeking shelter from those cold, blustery northers. I remember the Exumas rolling by, dreamlike, and the entertaining anchorage at Staniel Cay. In the Bahamas, we flew the spinnaker in wind and flat, warm water: a sailor’s nirvana. We watched curious rays and sharks under our paddleboards at Manjack Cay. We paddled the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, snorkeled the sunken drug-smuggling airplane at Norman’s Cay, and ran Liberte gingerly through the notorious Whale Cut Passage into our beloved northern Abacos. I remember sipping Goombay Smashes on Green Turtle Cay, perfectly in the moment and thoroughly on island time. 

In the town of New Plymouth, population 400, was a small customs office where I filled out forms in triplicate while an evangelist preached at high volume from the TV set. A Bahamian cut my hair in his living room and told me about his ancestors, the Loyalists who had fled there after the American Revolution. “Where are you going next?” he asked. “Back to the States,” I said. “You be careful there!” he admonished. Cruising is always a chance to flip the script and see things from the other side.

In every place we visited, we found what you might at first be tempted to call pluses and minuses. It’s easy to chase the mirage of the best place, even the perfect place. But as the world unfolds further beneath your keel, you realize that’s a faulty point of view. Any place you take your boat can be heaven or hell. It is entirely up to you.

True exploration means embracing and relishing it all, and always finding that cruising magic in the moment, even if the ­no-see-ums are chewing you to pieces, the norther lasts for days, and you’ve blown your whole budget on just one provisioning run at that shockingly expensive island store.

Every challenge offers a chance to open a little wider, to be curious instead of fearful, to invalidate your favorite biases. Do that and you will always have a good time, no matter where your own dotted line may lead. 

I still have my little hand-drawn map. By now, I know exactly where it leads and why. To other sailors on the fence, I would repeat Joshua Slocum’s advice: “I would say go.”

Cruising has a value that defies ordinary calculations. In deciding where to cruise, or whether to cruise at all, it would be a big mistake to analyze only nautical miles, engine hours and clearing-in fees, to pore over projections as if sailing were some kind of a business venture. How much does it take to cruise? As much as you have. Wherever I go, people tell me that “boat” stands for “break out another thousand.”

Fair enough. But the cruising sailor knows that’s not the whole story. There’s another acronym for boat that Rebecca and I have adopted during our travels in Liberte, one that feels much closer to the truth. For anyone who has cast off the lines, followed those dots, and found themselves wealthy beyond belief in anchorages, stories and friends, boat really stands for “best of all times.”

It stands for shooting stars on watch, sunrise at sea, and new islands off the bow. A world more vast, astonishing and splendid than seems possible. 

So grab that chart, draw an X on some destinations, then sail there. When you do, I promise that those little X’s will come wonderfully alive with stories all your own.

David Kilmer runs a private sailing yacht and wrote A Peril to Myself and Others: My Quest to Become a Captain.

The post Exploring By Sailboat, From Washington State to the Bahamas appeared first on Cruising World.

Before we entered our first reef pass in Tahanea, in the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia, we were quite anxious. We’d read ­several atoll-pass horror stories featuring punishing currents, breaking waves and dangerous eddies. To our surprise and relief, as we sailed toward Tahanea’s entrance, we found the broad pass laid before us at slack water with no visible threats. Our entry was entirely unspectacular. The weather was calm. We had arrived at the right time.

Predicting slack water in a lagoon pass is not always easy—atoll entry is a hot topic during South Pacific sailor sundowners and at beach barbecues. Different kinds of software tools designed to assist entries are passed around between boats. But often the data intended to help is completely off, particularly when the local seas run rough and the swell is high. Experienced cruisers and guidebook writers recommend rule-of-thumb slack-water estimates, but those estimates often yield contradictory results. Understanding how the tides inside a lagoon work can help avoid some nasty surprises.

During our eight seasons of cruising the South Pacific, we found generalizations such as “slack water can be found around high tide” should be taken with a grain of salt. Different lagoons can behave very differently. Lagoon-pass differences come primarily from the size of the lagoon and how well it is enclosed. For the following considerations here, we ignore the influence of a local high swell and assume calm conditions.

Imagine an open lagoon with several wide passes. Such a lagoon behaves basically like a bay, where the water level follows the tides immediately. In this case, slack water would generally occur in a pass at high water and again at low water. The current comes in during the rising (or flood) tide and flows out when the tide is falling (ebb tide).

The situation is entirely different when a lagoon is well-enclosed. Consider a lagoon with a high reef around it and a tiny pass that can carry only a small amount of water. Such a small amount of water exchange does not alter the water level in the lagoon considerably. If the lagoon behind a small pass is huge, the water level remains basically constant and no tides can be observed inside. The pass will have an incoming current whenever the ocean is higher than the lagoon (strongest around high water) and an outgoing current when the ocean is lower (strongest around low water).

In a closed lagoon, slack water occurs at the midpoint between high and low tide, when ocean and lagoon levels are the same. Just as a river always runs downhill, at the same hour an open lagoon has slack water, the pass of a neighboring closed lagoon has the strongest currents.

Most of the atolls in the Tuamotus are somewhere between these two extremes. The passes cannot fully level out the tidal changes in an open lagoon, but the amount of transported water is enough to cause the lagoon levels to rise and fall. The tidal range inside a lagoon is smaller than outside, and the tidal cycle inside the lagoon lags behind the ocean tides. If ocean swell is not a variable, slack water can be found when the lagoon has a high or low tide. Depending on how closed the atoll is, this might happen up to three hours after the high (or low) water of the outside ocean.

When ocean swell or wind waves reach a certain height, they start breaking over the barrier reef and transport water into the lagoon. Walking along motus during rough weather is interesting because one can clearly observe riverlike streams in the channels between the motus. The barrier is typically high enough for these streams to be one-way, regardless of the tide. This extra amount of water has to find its way out of the lagoon through the pass(es), adding extra current. Depending on the capacity of the pass(es), the lagoon dams up to a certain level. In a ­rather open lagoon, this might be just a few ­centimeters, but in a closed one, it can reach several feet. We spent a lot of time in Pacific atolls such as Maupihaa, in the Society Islands, and Raraka, in the Tuamotus. During high-swell periods, we could clearly observe such raised water levels on these islands with tiny passes. All the beaches and even some of the motus were flooded for days.

The increased lagoon level changes the times for slack water in the passes considerably. As the level rises, the phase with incoming current becomes shorter, while the phase with outgoing ­current gets longer. This occurs until, from a certain level on, the incoming phase ceases altogether. The current in the pass flows out regardless of the tide; moments of slack water disappear. In such a scenario, the current in a closed lagoon is weakest when the ocean reaches high tide, and in an open lagoon after the middle of the rising tide.

Although an engine might help the skipper navigate a tricky pass, the risks of ­relying solely on the engine for safe passage are steep. In our years of cruising atolls, we have met more than one captain with his 50- or 60-footer on the hard for rudder repairs after a reckless pass transit. Keep in mind that the current might be too strong to motor against; standing waves can be brutally steep and high, particularly when the wind blows hard against the current. Hidden eddies can turn the transit into a roller coaster. To minimize the risks, a pass transit should be attempted at or near slack water, when little or no current flows.

Ideally, there should be no amplified waves and no visible eddies. A tide table of the lagoon or a nearby landmark can help, but note that the tables are for the high- and low-water times of the ocean, not the lagoon. In a closed lagoon, the tides can be delayed by up to three hours. Some places such as Rangiroa can be predicted, while others—such as Hao, in the eastern Tuamotus—cannot. Check slack-water times with sailors and locals inside the lagoon via VHF radio, and ask around for personal experience of the area via single-sideband radio nets.

We always try to arrive at a pass early in the morning in order to observe the pass and determine whether the current is going in or out. When the current flows out, waves and agitated water are apparent outside the pass, sometimes up to a mile out. When the current goes in, the boiling water can be seen inside. If the waves are steep and high, we wait for the current to slacken. With an early arrival, there is no rush: We can wait for good conditions and a safe entry. During rough periods with high waves and swell, the best time to attempt the pass is about two hours before high tide. If we’re anchored inside a ­protected ­ lagoon and the seas are ­building, we prefer to stay put and delay the next passage until the seas have calmed down.

The current is usually strongest and the waves highest in the deepest section of the pass. Although it is tempting to approach the pass on its leading line and stay in what feels like the safe center, this is exactly where the witch’s cauldron bubbles the hottest. If the pass is wide enough, we try to stay to one side and attempt to sneak through without getting bashed. Sailing in or out of a ­lagoon smoothly gets easier with experience, but ­approaching an unknown pass is always an exciting moment.

Birgit Hackl and Christian Feldbauer departed the Mediterranean in 2011, sailing via the Atlantic and Caribbean to the South Pacific. They’ve explored Tonga and the Cook Islands, but their favorite cruising ground is French Polynesia. For more information, visit their blog.

The post Pacific Atoll Passes Require Planning and Timing for Safe Entry appeared first on Cruising World.

Long before Cruising World magazine, before production fiberglass boats or even square-rigged tall ships, there were a variety of different canoe designs sailing the trade-wind-kissed waters of the Pacific Ocean. Widely recognized as one of the first bluewater fleets in the history of the world, the multihull canoes of the Pacific covered vast expanses of water as pioneering voyagers and nomadic islanders settled everything from volcanic island chains to tiny, geographically disparate coral atolls. Of these many different canoe designs that sailed the Pacific, few were as grand as the mighty Fijian drua.

The drua were revered throughout the Pacific for their ­incredible size and performance, along with their huge ­cargo-carrying ability. The largest of them were more than 120 feet long and capable of carrying up to 200 warriors to ­windward, at speeds of 15 knots.

Around the world, the boats of our ancestors have been replaced by modern craft with engines and composite ­construction. The boats of Fiji are no different, and the introduction of the combustion engine signaled the death of the drua. Drua were originally built in the Lau group of islands in eastern Fiji—islands revered for their legendary boatbuilders and high-quality timber. The drua left the islands one by one and disappeared over the years. While there are records of when each drua left the Lau group, there’s not a single record of a drua returning to those islands in modern times.

Meet i Vola Sigavou, which translates to “the new rising star.” A drua built using fiberglass and modern building methods, i Vola Sigavou is a reproduction of the lines of Ratu Finau, the last known drua built in the traditional sense back in 1913. Launched in 2016, the 40-foot i Vola Sigavou is based in western Fiji and is part of a nonprofit organization called the Drua Experience. The drua takes tourists and locals sailing as part of an effort to ­revitalize drua sailing culture and traditional navigation.

RELATED: Canoe Kids in the Solomon Islands

“Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are no tourists in Fiji, and we are not expecting any tourists in the foreseeable future,” said i Vola Sigavou skipper Setareki Corvus Ledua, in August 2020. “We thought to ourselves, this could be the perfect time to go out to the Lau group and do more research and collect all of the evidence that still exists.” The ambitious voyage saw the drua sail around most of the main island of Viti Levu before crossing eastward toward the Lau group. The voyage was dubbed na lesu tale voyage, which translates to “the homecoming,” and it marked the first time in modern history that a drua sailed into its ancestral home of the Lau group.

The two-month journey from September to November 2020 saw the drua and its crew of six Fijians sail more than 500 nautical miles around much of the country. Beginning in Fiji’s touristy western division, the crew sailed i Vola Sigavou north and east over the top of Viti Levu, and then waited for proper weather before sailing across the Koro Sea and crossing to the remote Lau group. With more than a dozen stops along the way, the drua’s ultimate destination was Fulaga Island, the captain’s native home and the beating heart of drua culture.

The voyage was part of the Drua Experience’s larger goal of establishing a traditional navigation and canoe-building school in Fiji to reconnect youth with traditional sailing culture, navigation and the ocean itself. The voyage was conceived as a way to revitalize ancient customs and traditions while collecting knowledge from living elders before that knowledge dies out forever.

The post Ancient Fijian Culture Brought to Forefront with Sailing Drua appeared first on Cruising World.

I’m walking down the street with a roll of new navigation charts under my arm, and it makes me smile like a drunken fool. The tight, heavy roll gives off the sour scent of new paper, telling me that I’ll soon be smelling the salty air of the sea.

I want to shout, sing, crow out this welling of joy. I want to call out to the woman with the kid hanging off one arm and a shopping bag on the other: “Hey! I’m going off to sea. Look at my new charts! Yes, I’m going sailing ­somewhere new!”

The thrill began as soon as I stepped into the map seller’s shop. The fact that I stepped through that door meant I was a sailor because no one else does business there. I told him my plans, the region of the world I wanted to see in paper and ink. Out came the catalogs, and we compared scale and coverage for the waters I’d planned to sail. I jotted down the numbers of the charts I wanted, and he went to the storeroom to retrieve my order. I browsed the bookshelves filled with almanacs and pilot guides, and admired brass instruments measuring time, humidity, and pressure and space—and I waited for my treasures to appear.

I had second thoughts when the map seller jotted up the total—Holy! I could buy new running rigging for that! Heavyweight, 50 percent cotton nautical-chart paper isn’t cheap, with each sheet big enough to paper your bulkhead. But the ink doesn’t run when the sea finds its way through an open hatch to douse the navigation station. Paper charts are so expensive that I’ve been forced to sell mine after a long voyage to pay for my flight home.

Then the map seller updated my charts, accounting for all the changes that had taken place in the physical sea while this chart lay waiting for me. With a fine-point violet pen, he noted changes in depths, buoys that had moved, and coordinates that might be off by a second or two. If there had been land reclaimed or new sea walls built, he would have glued an entire patch onto the chart, bringing it up to date. Then he rolled them tightly and wrapped them in protective paper, and finally I felt their precious weight tucked under my arm.

I bought a chart that shows an entire sea, its ratio 1-to-3,500,000, which means I’m going on a long voyage. Long enough for the weather to change, the waves to turn against me, and the sea to show its rage. We’ll lose sight of land for days and nights, and maybe even a week, just to get across this one chart. The harbor charts, 1-to-10,000, show me the rocks that the locals know by heart, the sandbanks and the curve of the jetty wall. These charts mean I’ll arrive in unfamiliar waters, where strange lights will wink at me in the night. I’ve bought the chart for that little port, this protected bay. I have charts for places I don’t plan to go—small insurances in case we don’t make it across the sea and must run and hide due to a broken spar, a storm that blows too hard.

It’s a dying thing, these lithographic charts. Most commercial ships don’t carry them anymore. Charter yachts no longer have a navigation table big enough to spread out a chart, or a designated cupboard to store them in. On my yacht, the paper charts are a back-back-backup plan for chart plotters, a handheld GPS and a smartphone. I’ve sailed many miles with only the glow of a digital screen to guide me—it worked out just fine. Chart plotters track your every mile, show you exactly where you are, and contain more chart information than you will ever need. Paper versus digital has been debated ad nauseam, and paper lost. I don’t need paper charts—just like I don’t need to write with a fountain pen or whistle when I walk through the park—but I buy them because they give me joy. They give me a joy that a zoomable, adjustable screen with endless functions can’t deliver.

I know that once at sea I’ll spend more time staring at my chart plotter than I will poring over my very expensive paper charts. But it’s a tactile thing. The snap of the rubber band that holds the roll together. The yesteryear quality of the paper. The ritual of unrolling them on my dining table at home, weighting down the paper and letting my finger trace the depth lines. Tiny squiggles and letters and numbers, each rich with meaning. The comforting palette of mustard yellow and pale blue with magenta highlights marking the traffic zones. Calibrating my brass divider on the left-hand side, and then dancing it across a clean chart like a ballerina twirling across the stage. The deliciously monumental first pencil mark, the first tiny X at a crucial waypoint. Carrying the charts in a cardboard tube as I board an airplane that will take me to a foreign port and a waiting boat.

It’s the little surprises I stumble upon while perusing a chart, seeing the entire coastline in one sweep of the eye. Finding out that there’s a beach on the far side of that peninsula. Spotting the rock that lies in wait just outside the fairway into the harbor. Intricate observations of the land, towers, steeples and cliffs. And the names you’d never been aware of before, the wakes left by captains and heroes passing centuries ago.

It’s the pleasure I get from reading the notes in the corner, warning me of whirlpools and shifting sandbanks. And, on the most often used charts, for familiar home waters, notes have been added over the years, marking good anchorages and fishing holes. Like when I borrowed a friend’s boat and sailed it in the Finnish waters he’s explored for 70 years. With the boat came his charts, marked with tiny X’s where he had anchored over the years. He requested that I mark my own spots, adding to his boat’s long narrative.

I enjoy sitting inside a cozy saloon after a long day of sailing, planning the next day’s voyage with a wee dram of rum for company. I pore over the precious sheets of paper, imagining what each mile will bring. I explore the coastline and poke into little coves and find they are too shallow for my yacht. I land on pebble beaches and slip through turbulent channels—the tip of my finger a prow that leaves a wake in my mind.

All of this is yet to come as I exit the map shop into the sunny, crisp afternoon air, the stiff roll of charts nestled under my arm. I feel jaunty with anticipation of the voyage to come, the romance of a sailor heading off to sea.

I can’t hide my smile, and it’s all I can do to keep from laughing. To the guy in the suit, on his phone, walking and talking like he owns the place, I want to shout: “Look how thick this roll of charts is! They cost me an arm and a leg, almost as much as your suit, but these charts mean I’m going sailing!”

Cameron Dueck is a sailor and writer, based in Hong Kong.

The post Point of View: Paper Chart Dreams appeared first on Cruising World.

In the wild elasticity of time since coronavirus shadows began gathering, it feels like ages since we canceled plans for the South Pacific – yet it’s been barely a week.

Since February we’ve been in prepare / wait-and-see mode. The worst-case scenario, in early days, was rerouting to Tahiti; later, waiting out a delayed departure. In terms of seasonal weather, we could comfortably leave from Mexico as late as middle or late May; lots of time to decide! In hindsight, this rationalization earmarked my first stage of grieving for the loss of those plans: denial of the reality that was trying to get our attention, lights flashing.

When I wrote about provisioning for a pandemic, my heart of hearts wanted to believe that the deep stores we were packing onto Totem would be carrying us across the water to French Polynesia and beyond. That the methodology dovetailed with an approach anyone can use to think through stocking up for pandemic isolation was a tidy convenience. But the beliefs that had for a week been flitting in the edges of consciousness coalesced into reluctant acceptance that day. The telling moment of the mental shift was when my shopping buddy, Karri, offered to share a six-pack (hey, it’s Costco) of two-pound bags of masa (corn flour for tortillas) …and I declined. We can’t get that in Fiji, but it’s on every tienda / super-mini shelf in Mexico. I didn’t need it.

Later that day – March 16 – we texted our intended crew, advising him that plans were on hold. Jamie and I slowed down our manic prep pace long enough to do some concerned thinking: wait-and-see no longer made sense, even with a two-month window to dawdle. We would not go to the South Pacific this year.

If you had told me even a month ago that we couldn’t sail to French Polynesia this year, I would have been crushed. Devastated! We love Mexico, but our feet are itchy: everyone aboard is very ready for passage-making to fresh horizons again. The possibility of not going was unfathomable until it was undeniable. But once we woke up to the reality, this was an easy decision to make.

• Coronavirus was spreading fast, and globally
• Sea time as quarantine is a fallacy for most crews; asymptomatic transmission could harbor a virus stowaway
• Remote countries and territories – perfectly exemplified by our intended island destinations – are particularly vulnerable; they do not have the medical facilities or transportation to cope

Those reasons are logical enough. Then, there’s action and reaction in our intended stops at that stage:

• Four days elapsed since French Polynesia had cut off cruise ships to repatriate their passengers
• Borders were closing (a few by the 16th; now, it’s nearly all Pacific island nations)
• Signs on beaches in French Polynesia asking visitors to stay on their boats and not come ashore
• Islanders’ comments in news articles and social media online expressing bitter feelings toward visitors

Is some of this surprising? When you consider that people of these islands were nearly wiped out by the diseases brought by European sailors to their shores in the 19th century, the growing xenophobia in the time of Coronavirus is easier to appreciate.

Right now, the people and government in French Polynesia might as well be beacons signaling “don’t go! you’re not wanted, you may hurt people!” On March 18, French Polynesia announced closure to non-residents and repatriation plans for existing visitors.

The next day, two options were outlined for new arrivals by sea. Simplified, these are: 1) you may provision and sail away (after 14 days quarantined at anchor – and to where? Most Pacific nations are now closed), or 2) you must sail to Tahiti to store your boat, and fly away. Staying was not an option; no more visas are granted. It’s been nearly a week, and since then, the country went into lockdown: everyone stays at home. For cruisers, even swimming around your boat is specifically prohibited.

Yet despite these messages, cruisers continue plans to go this season. Every day there are requests to join the Pacific Voyagers Facebook group from people who answer in the screening questions that they intend to depart. Even today, a boat departed from Panama bound for Marquesas, and others there contemplate the same – as if this was going to just blow over, near term. It is hard to see this as anything but choosing personal desire over greater good, at a time when the greater good really matters.

I had to wait a while to write this, for a few reasons. First, because I harbored deep stress and a lot of despair that boats continued to depart, or make active plans to depart – hearts set on sailing to the south seas. Second, to allow time to process some swirling emotions around these choices, and try and to understand and express them rationally. Third, because in the vortex that has been Coroninsanity, it feels each day there is a meaningful, further shift that’s necessary to roll into the full picture. The tipping point to put this down: that there aren’t more voices saying “don’t go!” – and a lot saying “but I think we still can!” Time to shift from posting factual updates to the news feed of Pacific Voyagers as they unfolded, and be frank.

The initial working titles (saved on my phone in awkward insomniac thumb typing) for this post are telling of my mindset:

• Don’t Go!
• Arrogant Cruisers
• What The Hell Are You Thinking?!

See, waiting was good! Now, as I process thoughts on how we’re all coping in the face of this unprecedented (in living memory) pandemic, these responses make more sense. An excellent HBR article illuminates how many of our reactions to the coronavirus pandemic are, in effect, signs of grieving. It outlines how we are grieving collectively, for what has changed and is lost. We are also grieving in an anticipatory way, for the uncertain future.

I’m trying to find compassion for those cruisers by filtering their decisions through expressions of grief. Denial: I won’t be part of the problem! Bargaining: I can help with my tourist dollars, they will be welcomed! Anger/defiance: I can go if I want! Grief, yes, but also I, I, I… self-centric expressions of personal desires, in person and email and social media, blind to begging otherwise for the greater good.

What about boats that left before those lights flashed brightly enough, or even did more than glow? Many wait under lockdown and quarantine, not quite cleared in, not really able to stay. Those with time to make routing changes largely have; it’s a diminishing set of options. In the South Pacific, just Fiji and American Samoa. In the North Pacific, Hawaii (with 14-day quarantine). The brave could route upwind to the Americas where only the USA, Mexico, Nicaragua remain open.

The impact of actions today on the reception of future arrivals is worth considering. The cumulative impact of the collective stress right now is hard to contemplate. There is a meaningful burden on those there now to be models of the best of cruiser culture. In the Marquesas, cruisers at anchor observe others failing to respect the articles of lockdown. All eyes are on them.

And then, even for those trying to do the right thing – departing before Coronavirus blew up, arriving in remote islands after the fact – their mere presence creates complication. Recent arrivals to Gambier islands shared their discomfort. “The locals do not want us here, and seem to feel we are bringing disease. Local authorities announced to all cruisers there were no provisions or fuel for cruisers. They report being overwhelmed by local needs. The supply ship left. All cruisers here need diesel, propane, and provisions. We are hoping another supply ship will come in the next month. But not sure they will have enough for us.”

In case that’s not clear enough, her partner offered: “For those who are contemplating it, I would humbly and respectfully propose that they seriously consider not leaving, and also consider the growing impact that all of us cruisers will have on the islands.”

What will Totem and crew do? There is a very real question of greater good when considering where to remain in Mexico, or if we remain in Mexico, and a lot to think about in working towards an ethical choice. Even though we are low risk, that “What If?” tickles the back of my mind. Should anyone on our boat need help – we could take resources away from someone else who needs it. It is incumbent on us – on all cruisers – to be model citizens in safe behaviors, if we choose to remain guests of a host country. Repatriation isn’t an option for us; we have to be very conscious instead.

For now, we’ve resumed life on our floating island – engine work completed, the umbilical cord of a marina cut. Our expectation is that we’ll meander north into the Sea of Cortez for hurricane season, but first, a period of self-isolation. We’ll try to make sure we’re OK, and stay tuned into what’s happening around us. It’s going to take a while, but we’re prepared – very prepared! Totem’s lockers are stuffed with provisions (dark chocolate, capers, gin…ok rice and beans), we generate our own power, some fuel is the tradeoff to make water, and there’s enough propane for several months with a solar oven to stretch even further. We’re hoping to keep largely to ourselves, enjoying socially-distant socializing once that feels appropriate again.

Is it stressful? Sure it is. We face an unknown future, like everyone else. It is the biggest shift that has ever happened in the lives of our kids, who don’t remember or weren’t born on 9/11. The economic hit coming could be very tough to our family, too (…our coaching service is OPEN again, by the way!).

If there is lightness to be found it’s in some of the memes going around. I’m still waiting for the one from a cruiser that cries out “ISOLATION – THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN TRAINING FOR!”

The post Sailing Totem: The South Pacific is Closed appeared first on Cruising World.

They arrive shortly after we throw the anchor in a wide, protected bay in the Western Province, Solomon Islands. The scout boat stands off, cautiously waiting for our cue. We wave and ask, “You got something?” Our inquiry is met with bright smiles and whispers as the two girls in the dugout canoe tentatively paddle closer. Once they finally reach the boat, the girl in the bow holds onto the toe rail, and there are more whispers and giggles. This shy stalemate could last forever, and so we ask again, “What you got?”

“Lemons!” they declare. They proceed to hold up a small plastic bag filled with limes, the words interchangeable here.

“Yes, we like. You want trade? You want money?”

“Lollies?” they respond.

They, like kids the world over, want candy. But unlike children from wealthy countries, these kids likely don’t have access to toothbrushes and toothpaste and oral-hygiene lessons. We’ve seen too many kids with outstretched hands and rotten teeth asking for lollipops. We never give out candy; we don’t even eat it ourselves.

“Mefella no got lollies (“We don’t have candy”),” I tell them. “Sugar tu mas, bad lo teeth. (“Too much sugar, bad for your teeth.”)”

They are crestfallen for a moment, and with the prospect of exotic candies squashed, they instead ask for money. The negotiations begin.

“How mas?” I inquire.

twenty!” they reply boldly in unison.

“twenty?! No, tu mas.” The kids think they can pull one over on me, but we both know how much a heap of limes sells for at the market. “Five dollar?” I counter, exactly what I pay at the nearest town over 20 nautical miles away, about 75 cents in US currency.

“Yes.” They pass over the bag knowing the offer is fair.

The fruit is bright green and fragrant, a few stems and leaves still attached. Limes grow wild throughout the islands, and these little girls saw us slowly motoring into the harbor and went to raid the nearest tree.

I pass over a $5 note and say thank you, either in pidgin (“Tank yu tu mas”) or in a local dialect, Roviana (“Lena hola”), which is spoken by most people in Western Province. My Roviana is almost always met with giggles of amazement. They sing a “thank you” in return and happily paddle away with a little pocket money, no doubt to buy lollies at the tiny local store.

Meeting them halfway to shore are three more canoes. The paddling slows, a few words are exchanged, and then the three continue to head our way with renewed vigor. The word is out: The yachties are open for business.

The “canoe kids” are at every village we stop at, and for months we have no need to find a town that hosts a market because all of our fruit and veggies come to us. Eggplants, local sweet potatoes, pineapples, guavas, capsicum, ginger, chilies, mushrooms, rambutans, tomatoes, beans, avocados, mangoes, pawpaws (papayas), pomelos and a variety of local spinachlike greens arrive via canoe. Occasionally we are presented with a few eggs, pale and small and probably stolen from one of the wandering chickens in the area. They are gingerly carried out in the folds of the paddler’s shorts as they sit cross-legged in their canoe.

In most villages, boys who are 8 to 10 years old are keen to take our requests for green coconuts. They paddle away to shimmy up a tree with their machetes, tools we see wielded with skill by even 6- and 7-year-olds. I hear the commotion in the forest nearby as the giant nuts fall through the trees and land with a sickening thud. A few moments later, the boys are back with a half-dozen neatly trimmed coconuts, ready to cut open and drink.

RELATED: You Can Go Back

When kids have multiple items to sell, I always ask them, “How mas all together?” encouraging them to do the math. The girls never seem to have troubles, but I have watched more than one boy wiggling fingers and then toes as he tallies the sale in his head.

Most of the exchanges are for money, but some of the teenagers want to trade: a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, a hat. A few kids ask for notebooks and pens for school. In villages quite far from a township, the young boys are keen on fishing line and hooks, and the girls light up when I offer elastics and barrettes for their hair. We carry extra salt, sugar, rice and tea—popular trade items everywhere we visit. But by far my favorite trade has been digital music files transferred to a memory card. It’s not because it costs us nothing other than time to do the transfer. It’s because I know there will be hours of enjoyment listening to the music, even if it is through the tinny speaker of a cheap mobile phone.

In one anchorage, the parade of canoes continues all afternoon. Most of the kids are little ones, ages 3 to 6. They arrive three or four in a canoe, cautious but curious; they have come both for the sale and the spectacle. Some run their hands down the hull of our Newport 41, Kate, like they are stroking a kitten—gently, lovingly, thoughtfully. Others stare at us with stony expressions, not too sure what to make of us “whitefellas,” maybe the first ones they’ve ever seen. Several show up more than once, hitching a ride in whatever canoe is heading our way. Almost everyone shows up with a bag of limes.

In one canoe, a girl of 5 presides over the two older boys with her. When they approach, she holds up an extra-large bag of limes, and smiles. She is dimpled, with skin the color of caramel and a head of soft curls. She hands over the bag and asks for $5. I tell her no. For a moment her face freezes, she can’t believe I have refused her. Leaning over the rail and weighing the bag in my hand, I say to them in pidgin, “Yufella bring STAKA limes; mefella tink $10, OK? (You guys brought a LOT of limes; I think $10 is fair, OK?”)” “YES!” she squeals, as I head below to get some money. I see her turn to her friends and laugh, clapping her hands like she was just told that Santa was on his way. When I hand her the money, she thanks me, and as the older boy paddles away, she turns to smile and wave. A few hours later, she returns with another paddler, another bag of limes and another smile. She leaves with another $5.

By midafternoon, we have more limes than we need, but I can’t help but buy every bag that is offered. It might not be much, but the children have made the effort to go out and pick the limes and paddle out to the boat. I am willing to spend a few extra dollars to reward their determination. At the end of the day, we have a huge basket brimming with well over 100 limes, probably more than we can use before they spoil.

The canoe kids come in canoes so leaky that we wonder how they stay afloat. They come with fruit in the scorching sun and with veggies in the pouring rain. They come with warm smiles and bright eyes and hope. And how can you say no to that?

Heather Francis is from Nova Scotia, Canada, and has worked and lived on boats since 2002. In 2008, she and her Aussie partner, Steve, bought Kate, a Newport 41, in California and have been sailing full time ever since. They are currently in the Philippines looking for wind. You can follow their adventures on their website (yachtkate.com).

The post Canoe Kids in the Solomon Islands appeared first on Cruising World.