The 27 days of our Pacific crossing!

27 days, 4037 nautical miles (twice the Atlantic crossing).

You can imagine our heart beating as we arrive at the Marquises, Fatu Hiva island. It’s night, the moon is hiding behind the clouds so we still can’t see anything, but the smell … the smell is overwhelming! It’s like opening your “Tahiti” shower gel … hmmmmmmmmmmm

So what do you do during 27 days surrounded by water?!

1. Sleep, sleep and sleep? Euh not really… Let’s say we are resting a lot as in we’re down in a horizontal position… However the tiredness of the last weeks to prepare the boat and passage is very very heavy. Geoffrey had a bit of a “malaise”, but it disappeared a few days into the passage. We think he just needed to get going again 😏  Oh and just for those who don't know, we do not throw anchor every night and go easily to sleep. We really do not have more than 3000 m anchor-chain on board 😝
2. The first two days we need a very tight watch as there are still many ships arriving at Panama. We share Geoffrey’s Bose earplugs to have some quiet time: I’m sleeping and Geoffrey is sleep smiling while listening to “les grosses têtes” podcasts 😋 We haven't seen any boat anymore afterwards!
3. Bracelet making with daddy! I finally got my birthday present 😍 
   
4. We pass most days “La vie en rose” with quite beautiful sunsets!!!  
   
5. But sometimes we spent our time just changing sails: spinnaker, gennaker, main sail and genua, and then we take everything down again to set the spinnaker … The wind is a bit decision less and goes from 2 knots to 25 sometimes 30 at night …
6. So in order to take good decisions, we get the meteorological updates 3 times a day (nothing much else to do anyway 😎).
7. We read, read, read ah no, no more books left! Luckily we have received a hard drive full of books from our wonderful Parisian/“Breton” friends that are now sailing through the Bahama’s.
8. Anxiously waiting for the thunderstorm with lightning all around the boat to just go away! We were lucky but it remains one of the most terrible nightmares…
9. Only twice we had dolphins swirling around the boat and no more whales sniff sniff… The waves were too big to spot them I guess.
10. We’ve been fishing perfectly. Every time we were hungry we got the line out and caught a small tuna, lots of Mahi Mahi (bigger and bigger) and when I begged Geoff to catch something else: a huge tuna! 10 kg of meat alone !!! Louise had a wonderful time exploring the head 😜 
     
    
    
    
11. We also had a lot of calamari and flying fish jumping on the boat. Quite annoying when you smell it, but can’t find the damn fish! What’s funny though is that you can see them swimming at night. As you cross a flashlight over the water surface you see red eyes everywhere! We learned later that it was shrimp instead of calamari! Really shrimp over 3000 metres?! Nature is amazing!
12. Geoffrey had a very bad watermelon experience that occupied him for a few hours. First of all he detests watermelons, second it exploded in his face during his night watch, third …
13. The girls read “Boule et Bille” with daddy… 
    
14. Draw and draw and draw… Make some "soup" and watch movies...
      
15. Build houses everywhere and watch a movie in there houses … At the table, in bed, in our bed …  
    
16. Play monkey …
17. I kept telling Geoff it was smelling like petrol in the back and finally he believed me and found out the reservoir in our dinghy was still open and had flipped over! We had to wait a few more days for calmer weather to close it 😱
18. As to make matters worse, it was raining for 3 days in a row. 36°C inside and no possibility to air the boat! Sheets on the bed got wet, everything wet, … but “don’t worry, be happy”, only 21 days to go …
19. We have a dress up moment when we pass the equator ! We give Neptune some arranged “juice”! It was only 10 o’clock, but hey it was 5 o’clock somewhere in the world 😜 We’re not especially generous either, the girls agree: Neptune’s not always nice with us anyway. 😳
    
    
    
    
    
20. Just in front of the Galapagos we had an extra passenger on board, we named him: “Gerard”. Beautiful bird! After one day he was sitting at the helming station and we were sure he would be at our table the next day. But then he invited some friends over and we did enjoy their company until we saw the “mess” they left behind! Dude !!! We’re going to need a high pressure hose to get rid of this!!! 
    
      
21. So 6 days into the passage, we cross the Galapagos … should we have planned a stop? Tempting to just get off the boat, walk, dive, … but no we just got used to it again. The Galapagos is for a next time when Louise and Anna can enjoy the diving with us!
    
    
     
    
     
      
    
    
22. Smooth sea, time to clean, clip some nails, go for a swim and re-energies ourselves with a Wonderfull Canarian potatoes dinner ! These were the last potatoes! Fresh fruits and vegetables were gone after 9 days of sailing. Awful!!! Geoffrey was getting a bit anxious that maybe, maybe we did not buy enough food …
23. Besides fish we caught a bird at the Galapagos. 
    
    Geoffrey thinks it wasn’t his first time as he knew exactly how to get him hauled in. We managed to get him loose. He’s just going to have difficult to swallow his fish for a couple of days 😏Louise was ready to prepare him for dinner 😮
24. And as a revenge, about 30 other birds come to tell us we’re too close to their island! They try to get our windex (wind velocity metre) from the mast. So after horning, shouting, screaming, we turn on the engine and leave the Galapagos full throttle!
25. We discuss with the girls to tell them how lucky they are to be doing this trip with us, however all they want is return to Grimbergen, Belgium. To their friends, their grandparents, … Maybe we are not such extraordinary parents after all… I’m thinking at the same time that what I was teaching to my students and what I was thought was just bull”s…”, since we have not seen these trade winds until the last ten days of our passage … I guess, you have to keep faith, … keep faith!
26. We try to exercise, while lying down… and sometimes we go for a walk … around the boat to get rid of the flying fish! 
27. Anna suggest we beg Neptune for some fresh fruits and vegetables. I reply he only eats fish and algae so she asks me “why did we have to give him our orange juice then?!”. One point for you again, my dear Anna!

Voilà, I hope you enjoy the stories. I have some more ready, however internet is really really slow and villages with internet hard to find (or we are not really looking for it 😏). But it's coming your way!!! 

I guess you noticed I keep a balance between extraordinary moments and some more annoying events, I guess it's just tiredness and to make you notice it's just exactly the same as home 😜😘😘😘