SERENITY NOW

Day 8. (Sunday 26 March) Light winds (just above flappy) calm sea, clear skies, sunny and very hot. Honeydew melon for brekkie. We’re coming to the tail end of the fresh produce we bought in Panama. We had some back and forth email chats on the Iridium with two different agents in the Galápagos - starting to feel a lot more positive about the quick pit stop now. There’s even a possibility that as well as the required diesel we may be able to pick up some fresh fruit and veg whilst we’re there. Saw our first rain since leaving Panama City today. Enough to wash the decks, but not quite enough to fully clean off the inky remnants of the 5 suicidal squid who had chosen Serenity Now as their final resting place. ..and then all this became utterly trivial with the worst possible news from UK home. My mum has passed away overnight. Until now, she’s been a major driver for me to keep this diary/log - I’d send her updates when wifi would allow. She’d dubbed it her ‘holiday by proxy’. Day 9. (Mo...

  Day 1. (Sunday 19 March) The sun is shining, the wind, for now just a pleasant breeze. Today’s the day: We’re off. We buzzed around getting the boat ready to depart, and just shy of 10am we up anchor and leave. Away we go from the Las Brisas anchorage in Panama City, heading out towards the Marquesas for a month (or so) of adventure on the high seas. The new VHF radio and the repaired autopilot seem to be behaving themselves for now, the iPad (used for navigation) is however struggling to find the boat’s GPS location. Not a show stopper by any means, but a little frustrating for day 1. Sails up by noon, dolphins shortly there after. They’re far too busy to stop and play, heading directly for an area of ocean being dive bombed by pelicans, boobies and frigate birds. Not a good place to be a fish. That said - in the flat calm of the afternoon we saw large shoals of bait fish breaking the surface in long rippling waves. This gives an idea of quite how calm the water is, that ripple...

  (Pacific leg1) Day1... Take 1! Todays the day - limited wind forecast initially, so we know we’re in for a few slow days… maybe a week, before we get into some decent trades. I took the last of the rubbish to shore this morning arriving at the dock a little earlier than usual. Now.. I’m not one for omens/portents and the like, so hopefully the five ugly breakfasting vultures who maliciously eyed me as I approached the bins means absolutely nothing! You know what - regardless of my views on superstitions, this is not the way to start the diary entry for the biggest adventure of a lifetime - so I’m drawing this particular entry to a close. I’ll start again elsewhere!

  We’re waiting here in Panama City for some suitable weather for our crossing down to the Marquesas. The usual forecast winds seem to have deserted us for now, with the predicted El Niño year disrupting the more normal patterns. Thankfully it’s a less rather than more wind scenario, and it appears that it may be resolved this coming weekend - there’s some favourable blows forecast, but we’ll see. With time on our hands, and for once being (close to) on top of the boat jobs list, we became tourists for the day. Took a taxi to the old town ( Casco Viejo) Our drive to this touristy area took us through some decidedly more rundown and gritty parts of town. Considering the amount of money that must come in to the country, it’s sad to see such poor struggling neighbourhoods next to skyscrapers and tourist hotspots. In Casco Viejo we spent the morning strolling around and taking in the architecture. Followed by an exceptionally good lunch at a very un-Panamanian sushi restaurant. The old...

After a nice evening on one of our new friend’s boat (Mai Tai), our upcoming plans have possibly altered somewhat. Ollie - a generous, friendly and one legged English host, suggested we could buddy boat together down to the Marquesas. This would add a level of safety to the trip which a single boat alone could not hope to achieve. So having made that decision over a couple of cold drinks last night, this morning - still thinking it a great idea - we upped anchor and headed the 30nms back to Panama City for final provisioning and to check out. The plan from there being to re-rendezvous with Ollie and his crew back in the Pearl islands this coming weekend ( 4 days away as I write this). The journey back to Panama City was noteworthy for a few natural reasons. There’s a marked contrast between the seemingly barren Mediterranean Sea where we began our adventures 5 years ago and the absolute abundance of sea life that surrounds us here in the Pacific. The calm water as we slowly travelled a...

Having made our sedate way over the short 30 miles to the Pearl islands - our first foray into Pacific Ocean sailing, we dropped the hook just off the shore of Isla Bayoneta. There we really started to relax. A welcome pause after the stresses of the last few weeks. (The crash, the bank, rudder repair, canal transit, broken impeller, outboard overheating.. to name a few). To give an idea of our new surroundings, the islands around us have been used by various TV shows as the perfect idyllic desert island location: The American show ‘Survivor’ has shot three series here, and Bear Grylls ‘The island’ has shot five. We’ve anchored close to our new friends John and Debbie on ‘Ballyhoo’ with whom we spent a pleasant evening sharing a few cold beers, some sailing stories and our future plans - suspect we’ll meet them again in a month or two in French Polynesia a mere 4000 miles away! We’ve spent days either on the boat or strolling the empty beaches around us, picking up shells, listening to...