Plans for the Passage South
30 April 2011 | Majuro, Marshall Islands
Joan
Well, we are wrapping up tasks and getting ready to leave the Marshalls. We are planning setting sail Tuesday or Wednesday. This passage to Fiji will be our most complicated to date because we will be sailing based on what the wind will allow. The prevailing wind is East to ENE above the equator, then shifting E to ESE south of the equator. We have to get most of our easting in above the equator. Just north of the equator at between latitude 02-04N there is a east setting counter current. The rest of the passage will be a west setting current that we will be fighting as we try to go east. If we can find the equatorial counter current, we will ride this as long as we can to take us east. We will be making a course line directly towards Canton Atoll in the Phoenix Island group (in the northern Kiribati). We will be tacking back and forth trying to reach Canton. We may not get that far, but it is a good line of reference so that we can get eastward. We will continue our passage towards Canton for about two weeks. If we get there, great, if not, at that time we will turn southward, hoping to keep our easting as much as possible towards Fiji. We do have a plan B tucked in for in case the wind won't allow us to get east. If this happens, we will fall off the wind, and sail to Vanuatu, and not go to Fiji at all. We will be checking into the Pacific Seafarer's net as well sending posts here on the blog. You can use Google Earth and it will show our progress. The passage will take about 27 days to complete. We would like to see Canton, so that will be a stop, and we may make stops at Wallis, Futuna, or Tuvalu....all depending upon how the weather works out. We will be traveling with the same plans as S/V Happy Monster from Holland. Hopefully we will both have an uneventful passage south.