Manini, 7-18-2017--Ruminations on plans

By David and Pearl

Since David's medical issues during May and June prevented our sailing for almost two months, we've been periodically discussing how that would affect our sailing plans. Since many of you who have been following the voyage are no doubt interested in our thoughts on this, we want to share them with you.

Since our very first conversations about doing this voyage, some 27 years ago, it has been about sailing to the South Pacific. As we focussed more closely on the details during the past couple years, we thought of it as beginning in California and ending somewhere between Tahiti and Australia. Wherever we ended the trip, we would sell the boat.

In terms of weather, cyclone season is the limiting factor for sailing in the South Pacific. The safe season is considered to begin in March and end in late October. At this point, we have 3-1/2 months left in the sailing season.

Our permit for French Polynesia ends August 31, which gives us another 5-1/2 weeks to explore these islands. If we were to try to sail on to Australia, it would involve sailing through the Society Island group of French Polynesia (Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, Bora Bora), then on to Tonga, then Fiji, then New Caledonia and finally to Australia. The total distance is just under 4000 nautical miles. Given our average daily mileage, it would leave only about a week or two at most in each of these island groups.

Racing through paradise, with long ocean passages followed by short island visits, doesn't really appeal to us. Instead, we're leaning toward making the most of our permitted stay in French Polynesia.

The island of Raiatea, which is near the western edge of French Polynesia, is reputed to be a good place to sell a boat, so our current inclination is to make it our eventual destination.

There's a lot more detail we can go into, but the general drift of our thinking is above. Below are more of those details in case they're of interest.

If we were to sail on west from French Polynesia, we'd be more or less committed to sailing all the way to Australia, since our options for selling the boat between French Polynesia and Australia are much more limited. Tonga appears to be a very unlikely place to sell a boat. Fiji might have more possibilities, and New Caledonia even more, but if we got that far, we'd probably just push on and sail for Australia.

Having spoken with one seasoned Australian sailor from Brisbane, we know they do sometimes with very careful attention to the weather forecast, sail from New Caledonia to Australia through November. Not sure that we'd want to push that window, though, because Minimus being a slower boat than most, would need 10-14 days to make the passage, which is outside the forecast range.

If we were to spend all of our permitted time in French Polynesia, then continue sailing west in late August, we'd have just two months to cover the remaining 3500 nautical miles to Australia. Based on our daily average distances so far, that would require about 45 to 50 days of sailing. That would leave us with only 5 days to explore each of the three island groups along the way.

The alternative would be to cut short our stay in French Polynesia. If we were to continue sailing west within the week, we would still only have about 10 days in each island group. Given that some of those groups have many dozens of islands, we couldn't do more than a cursory exploration of each group. That's just not our preferred way of travel.

So, that's our conclusion at this point. It's possible we're overlooking other possibilities, so if any of you have additional thoughts, we'd enjoy hearing them.

And, assuming we continue along this line of thought, we're still pondering what we might do after the sailing.