Sailing in the South Pacific seems like one of those far off dreams where a barely recognised reality merges with some sort of hedonist’s utopia. The name prompts memories of the Mutiny on the Bounty and dusky maidens. Of exotic fruits plucked straight from the trees. Of coral atolls and turquoise water teeming with fish. Of Tahiti and Gauguin and those dusky beauties again. It’s Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson mixed with a twist of lime in the gin and tonic in a far off tropical place. And you know, it really does feel a bit like that.
The coconut milk run is that bit of the South Pacific where yachts coming from west coast USA and Central America and those coming from Panama via Galapagos meet up in the Marquesas. The route from the Marquesas through French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Tonga and Fiji down to New Zealand has long been termed the ‘Coconut Milk Run’. It is pretty much all Southerly Trades blowing at 10-20kts and puffy trade wind clouds. Some of the distances are considerable, in fact the passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas at something around 3,100nm is the longest non-stop passage that most yachts will make on a circumnavigation. And you really do feel you are on the edge of the world.
The season for cruising the South Pacific runs from around May to October to miss the cyclone season, hurricane season to North Atlantites, between November and May. Cyclones rarely affect the sea area around Panama to the Galapagos and hardly ever touch the northern bits of French Polynesia
