Looking back at our passage and hearing the reports from the other cruisers as they arrive from the tropics, helps to put things in perspective. The bottom line is that like with an airplane, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. For cruisers, it is also important that you don’t break anything. In our case we had no issues. Others have not been as fortunate. Shorter passages are always better. Ours was 8 days (2 days shorter than last year). Others that left in the same weather system we did came in about 20 hrs earlier than us by motoring about 1.5-2kts faster than we did (4-4.5kts for us vs 5.5-6.5kts for them). Cruisers that came down in other weather systems did the trip in as little as 6-7 days and others 7-10 days. Those that did the trip in the shorter time frame saw heavier winds and sea-state than we did for greater periods of time than we did. In the grand scheme of things, both Cindy (and Jen) are probably very happy with the trade-off of calmer seas and a longer passage time. While I would have liked to have sailed more and motored less, in the grand scheme of things, we would have to consider this a good passage.

(Thanks to SV Whistler for the picture as we were getting ready to exit Navulu Passage into 25kts and 2.5m seas for our first day going south.)