We often heard or read that French Polynesia is an expensive place for provisioning while we were getting ready to come here last year.
In fact it is.
How Much ?!?
How Risky ?
We had to do a lot of research to understand the risk associated to Tropical Storms in French Polynesia, and thought of sharing our findings here. Albeit specific to the 2017 season – consisting of a weak LaNiña/Neutral one, pursuant to a strong ElNiño year – the sources we used in it could be of use to anyone interested on these waters.
French Polynesia Cruising Season Review
INTRO: We just completed 9 months of full time cruising in French Polynesia, having crossed from Mexico during the first half of April 2016. We stayed the first two months in the Marquesas, followed by four months in the Tuamotus and the remaining three months in the Societies. Follows some highlights of this cruise.
Eastern Pacific Crossing Voyage Review
Thoughts and Learnings from our 3,111 mile passage between Mexico and the Marquesas.
Eastern Pacific Ocean Crossing
In the first quarter of 2016 we departed the west coast of Mexico, sailed across the eastern Pacific Ocean on a 3,000 mile non-stop passage across the equator, and reached French Polynesia.
These two posts cover our preparations for the passage:
We then captured our daily activities and emotions on the last few days leading up to departure:
We departed Mexico on March 18th and were having good progress when a failure on our rigging forced us back to port. These four posts cover this event:
One week later the broken part was fixed, redundancy provided, and a new weather window was about to manifest. We departed Mexico a second time in anticipation of this window, so as to catch it in optimal conditions already well into the open ocean. We wrote and published posts during each day of the passage:
- Day 1: Gone Again
- Day 2: Stillness
- Day 3: Pesto has Boobies !
- Day 4: Overdrive
- Day 5: Lemons and Lemonade
- Day 6: Slam !
- Day 7: Shaken AND Stirred
- Day 8: A Week
- Day 9: A welcome slowdown
- Day 10: The Middle
- Day 11: That ain’t working
- Day 12: Ping Pong
- Day 13: Interlude
- Day 14: Becalmed
- Day 15: Wet
- Day 16: Zero
- Day 17: Bliss
- Day 18: The Inception
- Day 19: Go Pesto, Go !
- Day 20: There !
After arrival we published a series of three posts with images from the passage (which we were not able to upload while under way):
- Puddle Jump in images 1 (Photos, first half of the way)
- Puddle Jump in images 2 (Photos, second half of the way)
- Puddle Jump in images 3 (one short video of us weathering a squall)
And finally, here is a summary of the main highlights and learnings from this experience:
THANK YOU for following us on this Journey !
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