Circumnavigation

This is the hardest blog entry we’ve ever had to write as evidenced by the fact that we are publishing it more than 2 months following our safe arrival in Mauritius. We will cut to the chase and simple say that as we were crossing the Indian Ocean our beautiful, Read more

Hello!  The crew of Che Figata here, reporting from beautiful Cocos Keeling Islands.  As you know, next on the hit parade following our departure from Lombok was the sail west across the Indian Ocean. The rally had us following a fairly typical sail plan with several stops along the way. Read more

We made it. We “sailed” the 920 nautical miles from Darwin to Medana Bay Marina in Lombok, Indonesia. Sail is in quotes because we really only sailed half the time. We mean that quite literally. While our sail began on a glorious beam reach with 15 knots of wind it Read more

Greetings from the sea! When we published our last blog entry on July 7 we had just arrived at Darwin, Australia following our somewhat inauspicious sail up the east coast of Australia and we were a few days into the throes of preparing for our departure back home.  With an Read more

Greetings from Australia! We made it! 8 months and approximately 9,200 nautical miles. For those curious, each nautical mile is about 1.15 miles so we covered a distance of about 10,600 miles and all at an average speed of approximately 6.5 knots (or 7.5 miles, about the speed of an Read more

We departed for our 450 nautical mile sail From Musket Cove, Fiji to Port Resolution, Tana, Vanuatu at 11:00 AM on September 2 as planned. Consistent with the forecast, the winds were light, and right on our nose, at the start of our sail but we had just enough wind Read more

After an amazing (albeit cold, soggy and windy) anniversary we woke up to more rain, wind and cold on August 2. Ready or not, it was time to move on to Fiji. The rally organizers had arranged a special clearance process for us between August 3 and 8 in the Read more

Do you remember that nursery rhyme about the girl with the curl? It went like this: There was once a girl who had a curl in the middle of her forehead. When she was good she was very, very good and when she was bad she was horrid. That pretty Read more

When we left off in our last blog entry we had just completed our tour around the Society Islands with our last stop in Bora Bora. There we enjoyed a 2 tank dive and some snorkeling but our visit was mostly about getting ready for our first significant passage in Read more

We set sail for the approximately 180 mile journey from Rangiroa (our final stop in the Tuamotus) for Tahiti at 7:30 AM on June 2. Once again, our departure was bitter sweet. There was so much more to explore and do in the Tuamotus (we easily could have spent another Read more

We sadly left the dramatic Marquesas Islands at 6:00 AM on May 15. Destination: Fakarava in the Tuamotus. As we mentioned in our last blog post, the Tuamotus are one of the five archipelagoes in French Polynesia. They are comprised of just under 80 islands and atolls and cover a Read more

We arrived in Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands on May 1, 2023. As we mentioned at the end of our last blog entry, Hiva Oa is the entry point to French Polynesia when traveling from East to West. French Polynesia is comprised of 130 islands in five archipelagoes: the Read more

We just completed our 19 day, ~3,000 nautical mile, passage from the Galápagos Islands to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands. Our longest passage ever! (Hooray for us!) Rather than give you a day-to-day account of a nearly 3 week sail, at a high level we’d sum up the experience Read more

What a magical place! We were so looking forward to our visit to the Galápagos Islands and our experiences lived up to some very high expectations. As you know, we arrived to the islands on March 27. We conveniently passed all of the various inspections (health, sanitation, hull, etc.) and Read more

After an insanely busy 10 days getting ready for our Panama Canal transit, our visit to the Galápagos Islands and our ~3,000 nautical mile passage to the Marquesas, we were very excited to begin our next passage. The sail to the Galápagos Islands from the Las Perlas Islands is about Read more

Greeting from the Pacific Ocean! We made it. When we published our last blog entry on March 11 we had just arrived in Shelter Bay Marina on the Colon side of the Canal. As you know, Colon is the East entry and exit point for transit through the Panama Canal. Read more

As you all know by now, we arrived in the San Blas Islands totally exhausted after a short, but really sporty, 2 day sail from Santa Marta, Columbia. The crew of Che Figata had very little sleep during those 2 days and the mood was less than festive even as Read more

When we published our last blog entry we had just arrived in Santa Marta, Columbia after a very sporty 5 day sail. (Well it is was about 3 hours shy of a full five days for those who followed our sail via our tracker). After cleaning Che Figata from stem Read more

After our 2 year wait we really, truly and finally did leave for our circumnavigation on February 18. We had a somewhat dreary day for our launch — cloudy and rainy — but seeing the entire fleet, about 30 boats in all, at the start line gave us all that Read more