Yacht Delivery Blog

This is our last full day and night at sea. Tomorrow, we'll be tied up in the marina in Tahiti , and I'll be turning off the engines for the last time. The main and headsail will be dropped and stowed away, and I won't be touching the sheets or halyards again. It feels peculiar to think that Namarie and I have kept each other safe throughout this incredible journey, and in a few days, I'll be on a plane heading home. On this yacht delivery Namarie and I started in the Bay of Biscay and headed south into the Atlantic, getting to know each other along the way. We made a brief stop in the Canary Islands, our last contact with Europe before heading further south and leaving footprints in the red dust of Cape Verde. We left West Africa behind and headed further west across the Atlantic, dodging hurricanes and grabbing fuel and provisions in the southern end of the Caribbean. From there, we pushed onwards through the Caribbean Sea to Panama and the canal. Pretty soon after, ...

We popped out the bottom of the Tuamotus late last night and now have a relatively clear run to Tahiti, aside from one more small island. The wind is directly behind us, but it's not quite strong enough for us to move as fast as I'd like, so we're using the engine to help our speed. Our estimated time of arrival (ETA) in Tahiti is very early Friday morning, so we'll sit off the coast for a few hours until daylight and then head in. Remember the old sailor's saying, "All the wrecks are on the rocks" and "Another night at sea never unalived anyone"? That advice holds true for navigating the pass into the marina area, which is definitely not a place to enter at night unless you were born there. This trip has been extraordinary, taking us on a journey that's probably only completed by a few hundred people a year. And almost non would do what we have done and sail so far in one go. It's around 4,600 nautical miles from Panama to Tahiti, and wh...

Yesterday, we motored all day and most of the night in flat calm conditions. Then, at 2:57 AM, it was as if a wind switch was flipped, and the wind started blowing 35-40 knots. The wind angle is around 90 degrees, not quite as easterly as I expected. We had the deeply furled headsail up until now, and at 7:00 AM, the wind is slowly dropping to around 30 knots. When Adam gets up in a couple of hours, we'll pull up the reefed main and get this show on the road! I'm eagerly waiting for the GRIB s to be updated, but I don't expect the wind to go above 30 knots now. We've had one or two monstrous waves into the cockpit, but Namarie can handle it. It seems like Namarie and I have something in common: after the last 40-knot winds on our way to Panama, we both felt we had proven ourselves and didn't need to do it again. Yet, here we are. With years of experience in the yacht delivery industry, Yacht Delivery Solutions is your trusted partner for safe and reliable transpo...

Yesterday was a fantastic day, a stark contrast to the first three quarters of the trip. The wind wasn't quite as strong as I would have liked during the night, but the sea was flat, the sky was completely clear, and Venus was shining brightly during the sunset. As the sunset progressed and evening set in, all the other stars appeared, with Orion behind us and the Milky Way, the galaxy we are in, sparkling across the sky. Late yesterday morning, we decided to pull up the gennaker, even though it seemed like we were tempting fate after such a successful day. The sock isn't long enough to contain the gennaker, which was already trying to escape. With everything set up and ready to go, Adam stood by on the sheet while I started to pull up the sock. (I am not sure what you call the fiberglass 'funnel' on the base of the sock but it has already been a problem and fell off a few times. I thought it had been fixed with several cable ties. It looks like a shoe horn so we will c...

Yesterday my request for the wind to ease off wasn't specific enough. It died down pretty much immediately and it was supposed to be after midday, which was disappointing. As a result, our 24-hour run was only 186 nautical miles, which is still impressive but not quite the 200 nautical miles I was dreaming of. We ended up motoring for the night with less than 10 knots of breeze, except for a brief burst of excitement this morning when the wind picked up to over 30 knots for a while. It's back to less than 10 knots now. We'll need to put the clocks back another hour as the sun didn't rise this morning until 7 AM. The day is pretty dreary so far, with a gray sky and drizzle. Hopefully, it will clear up soon. I'm also hoping the sea state will allow me to take the lid off the water barrels and pump fuel into the tanks this morning without spilling any. We also had a very exciting encounter yesterday: we spotted a ship, not with our eyes but on the AIS! It's the fir...