Yacht Delivery Blog

It's been a mixed bag of everything the South Pacific has to offer over the last 24hrs: from 4 knots of wind to 28, completely overcast to blue sky, southerly to easterly winds, its been main up, main down, engine on, engine off, and i have also had to deal with some very vicious flying fish. In a fit of rage, one of them almost made it into the saloon, and I was lucky to have the boat hook handy to help get it away.  We're currently motoring at about 5 knots with a light breeze thats useless for sailing and directly from behind with a rather lumpy sea, so I'm hoping either the breeze picks up or the sea calms down. It's also back to being overcast. At the moment we are making the best of it while the water maker is filling the tanks. We've also been calculating the complexities of changing the clock back an hour to get onto local time and how to adjust the watches so someone doesn't get stuck with an extra hour. It's been some tricky mathematics! ...

With only 100 nautical miles to go until we arrive at Puerto Ayora, a town in central Galápagos, we’ve started to slow down to time our arrival for first light tomorrow morning. I’ve already been in touch with the agent to begin the formalities for clearing in and ordering fuel. Yet again, Starlink proves to be an absolute game-changer for this kind of thing.  Believe it or not, I finally had to put on a long-sleeve top last night! It seems to be getting colder the closer we get to the equator! It remains completely overcast and drizzling, so it's no surprise the seabirds have decided to hitch a ride.Their preferred place to relax seems to be the worst spot on the boat. They like being right at the front where the motion is strongest and then stand on the lifelines, which are 6mm stainless steel wire. It looks exhausting trying to hang on with webbed feet, getting covered in spray, and trying to balance while you’re asleep. They must know something I don’t. Perhaps they know if the...

I think this is the fourth day since we left Marina del Rey. The days tied to the dock and sleeping all night seem like a hazy dream. Now, we are fully immersed in the rhythm of the sea and the sky, sailing towards our next destination: Sabang. The wind picked up at sunset to a very appreciated 16 - 21 knots and I guess you can see the bump in the boat speed - the extra couple of knots of breeze makes a huge difference. We are making good progress, averaging about 7 knots over the ground. The boat is handling well, with a reefed main and a full genoa. The autopilot is doing the steering, and we take turns to keep an eye on the instruments and the horizon. We have around 1200 nautical miles until we get to Sabang, which is located on the northern tip of Sumatra. It is one of the main ports of entry for Indonesia, or in our case exit, and a popular stopover for yachts cruising in Southeast Asia.  We have settled into our watch system of 3 hours on and 3 hours off, with some flexibili...

Marina Del Ray was actually named after a guy called Ray who is the owner. Yes, that's right, it's literally Marina of Ray. How hilarious is that? Anyway, we had a nice time there catching up on some sleep. You know how it is when you sail for a long time, you get used to the watch cycles and you wake up every few hours. It was great to have a few uninterrupted night's but after sailing for long the watch cycles have become a habit so we'd still wake up occasionally. We also managed to get some projects done on the boat, like fixing the rudder that was giving us some trouble. I came up with a very high tech solution involving 2 blocks of wood. Don't worry, it's totally safe and reliable. Trust me, I'm a professional. Besides the rudder, we also worked on some other things, like changing the oil in the engines, changing the filters, checking the rigging, and topping up the water tanks. Nothing too exciting, but necessary to keep the boat in good shape. Like w...

As our access to onboard technology continues to improve we have to keep adapting. Since we now have Starlink for communication and weather downloads we no longer need to have a predictwind account, the downside is that we lost the tracking and associated blog. It took a while but I've come up with a solution. We can use the Garmin inreach for tracking and I've downloaded an app to make a blog. Amazing? Or very amazing?  So this is a test to see how it goes.  Don't get over excited. My blog entries covering our yacht deliveries are pretty mundane and I have, in the past, received constructive criticism saying "a bit more information would be nice" (Thanks Gary), and "you do know other people read this as well?". That came after I wrote that some fisherman chased after us while we were sailing and shouted over "do you want to trade rum for fish?" and I replied "Yes, but we haven't got any fish".  Yacht Delivery Solu...