Without doubt, safety has been the biggest improvement to long-distance cruising over the last 50 years. This is my own experience, as well as something highlighted in my surveys. There is, however, an important distinction between personal safety and that of the boat.
In the Suva survey of 1979, when I spent two months interviewing cruising boats passing through Fiji, neither the participants nor I had any serious concerns about their own safety simply because there was no reason to worry, certainly not in that peaceful part of the world. But we were all extremely worried about the grave risks involved in depending on astronavigation as our sole means of position fixing. While techniques had improved, fundamentally it had little changed since Captain Cook’s days.
Utter fear
Remembering the sleepless nights and constant worry about the safety of my family still makes me shudder. I honestly doubt anyone used to satellite navigation can comprehend the utter fear felt by sailors of my generation when sailing blindly through areas of known dangers.
Having recalled all this I pulled out my treasured Admiralty chart 783 of the Pacific Ocean, published with corrections in 1966, but based on the original engraving of 1875. Depicted on it in faint pencil marks is our own route through the southern part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in May 1977.
PART 2
Having reached the Pacific Ocean via the Panama Canal in late 1976, rather than take the traditional route to the Marquesas via the Galapagos Islands, we agreed to make a detour to Peru.
This was at the request of our children, Doina and Ivan, who wanted to visit the home country of their favourite hero: Paddington Bear. And why not? After all, this is the true beauty of sailing; going out of my way to explore an interesting destination has been my wont throughout my eventful and tortuous life.
From Peru we took the rarely travelled route to French Polynesia via Easter Island and
