Santa Cruz harbour, in the Galapagos, is a rolly place and the water is murky. We’d arrived here from Panama, having quit our jobs and set sail from Edinburgh, Scotland, two years earlier: me, my wife Helen and two sons aged five and seven – on a mission to see the world without flying.
I was happy with the performance of our Maxi 120 on the passage from Panama, so there wasn’t too much to do in preparation for the 3,500 mile journey to Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas. I managed to get someone to weld a repair on the broken jaws of the spinnaker pole, and straighten the bracket on the mast car that had led to the break in the first place.
My brother and his wife, Lisa, had flown out to crew for Helen and me. I tasked them with cleaning the hull. William found it difficult to freedive, so he did the waterline and left the keel for me
We watched the weather and waited for our buddy boat, Selkie, to recover from COVID-19 so we could leave together. Galapagos to the Marquesas is the longest unavoidable journey in a circumnavigation, so provisioning is crucial. We did one last order of fresh fruit and vegetables from the market, then stowed it in all the nooks and crannies in the bilges, behind seats and under beds. You can tell which boats in an anchorage are due to leave as they have a head of bananas suspended in the cockpit.
First challenge
I woke up on the first morning at sea to find that the stove wasn’t working. Despite having installed the Wallas diesel stove myself and fixed it numerous times on this trip already, I kept worrying about the
