Sailing Pacific Islands

October 11, 2018
Travel Blog

Colin sailing throughout the PacificColin invested 5 years (three of them solo) cruising a tiny watercraft across the Pacific Ocean. It had been an odyssey that began in Canada and finished 20, 000 km later on in Papua New Guinea. It had been never ever meant to be an expedition – only an adventurous lifestyle that satisfied a boyhood fantasy. Below Colin shares just what it took getting this ambition off the floor, and start of the voyage.

As a guy I see the guide Dove which details the voyage of Robin Lee Graham, the youngest to sail around the globe solo. The vivid descriptions of tropical countries, exotic people and stormy oceans captured my imagination, and I decided that we also would 1 day purchase a sailboat and head out to ocean.

Money had been scarce in those days, and I obtained two report channels once the first rung on the ladder in achieving my objective. By quality eleven I'd conserved adequate to purchase a ’14 Enterprise sailboat which permitted me to start discovering the basics of cruising.

Tropical paradise achieved after cruising over the Pacific OceanA senior high school buddy, Dan Audet, indicated curiosity about my programs, plus it had beenn’t a long time before we started preparing the voyage together. After doing twelfth grade, Dan and I worked hard at various jobs including tree growing and fishing, and it also had beenn’t a long time before we'd saved up enough to purchase the decrepit 27’ sailboat, Ondine.

We spent several months making Ondine seaworthy – overhauling the single-cylinder diesel engine, changing the companionway, inspecting and fixing the equipment, etc. With a finite spending plan, we had a need to acquire a sound understanding of offshore sailing as cheaply as you possibly can. We sailed in local waters placing into training just what was indeed gleaned from library books. This was augmented with a three-day cruising course on coastal cruising.

On July 1st, 1992, at many years of 18 and 20 respectively, Dan and I also sailed away from our home town of Comox on Vancouver Island. Numerous in the farewell audience of family later on admitted they thought they might be saying goodbye for the past time. The fact that neither Dan nor I, had any overseas experience, and therefore each had inputted only $8000 in to the project, appeared a formula that strayed from convention; easily regarded as a recipe for disaster.

We, having said that, believed confident once we sailed the very first time to the exposed seas of the Pacific Ocean. We knew the vessel had been seaworthy, and everything else arrived down to our own actions.

1st knee was a non-stop run across the storm-tossed coasts of Washington and Oregon towards San Francisco. Thirty-foot waves and forty knot winds buffeted the ship and we also had been fatigued, needing to guide non-stop. Unfortunately, luxuries such as for instance self-steering methods performedn’t squeeze into the budget.

Source: www.angusadventures.com
Share this Post