Sailing Plans Are Written In The Sand At Low Tide
By James Frederick | SV Triteia
One of the most important things I have learned since sailing off into the sunset is the need to be flexible when it comes to plans. Sometimes, this is easier said than done. Having just completed the longest and most intense sailing season yet, I am writing to you from a hotel in Bali. I should be writing to you from a marina slip in Langkawi, Malaysia, where I had intended to end the year. Critical breakdowns early in 2024 caused me to be unable to make it to Malaysia before the NW monsoon set in, altering my plans by a year.
My first attempt at leaving for full-time cruising was on June 13th, 2021. I was bound for Hawaii solo, with plans to sail on to Alaska, where I was to be met by my then-wife, Camille, and our dog. We planned to cruise down the west coast of North America to the Sea of Cortez and spend a year in Mexico before continuing south to Chile. On June 17th, 250 nm from the California coast, my self-steering windvane was working itself loose. Stripped threads in the housing and none of my attempted fixes made a difference. Knowing this was not something that I could fix at sea, and that I still had more than 2000 miles ahead of me before reaching Hawaii, I made the tough call to turn back.
Two months later, my life changed dramatically; my wife abruptly left me, taking our dog with her. It was well into hurricane season at this point, but I felt I couldn’t bear to stay in California until November and just head to Mexico. So, with the windvane repaired, I again pointed my bow toward Hawaii. I was still planning on sailing north from Hawaii, but the season was so far along that I didn’t know how far north I could manage to get.
Once I got to Hawaii, I had to do some serious repairs to my rudder, which had failed 1000 miles from the islands. This meant there was no way I was sailing north anytime soon. Captain Noah Peffer, one of my dearest friends and a key member of my shore team, suggested I think about heading south instead, since I was already halfway to the South Pacific.
A NEW FUTURE
I tend to be more interested in out-of-the-way wild places like the Aleutian Islands or the canals of Chile. Cruising in places like French Polynesia and the Caribbean was far less appealing to me, so I knew almost nothing about cruising in the South Pacific when he suggested it. I quickly realized that getting down into the “Coconut Milk Run” would allow me to cover a lot of ground and visit some amazing places.
In the summer of 2022, after getting some major boat projects knocked out in Hawaii and repairs to my rudder completed, I pointed the bow toward the Southern Cross. The first nine days of that passage were still the worst nine days of sailing I have ever endured, beating hard into the trade winds and the seas they generated. I wanted to make landfall in the Tuamotus and see the “Dangerous Archipelago” I had read about in “Two on a Big Ocean” by Hal Roth, as well as the novel about the Kon-Tiki expedition. It would have been easier to make landfall in Tahiti, but then I would be downwind of the Tuamotus, so I figured I would just beat my way east until I reached the doldrums. Soon, I was enjoying beautiful sailing and made landfall at my first-ever tropical atoll. The 2022 season was really my first taste of serious cruising. I sailed from Hawaii to French Polynesia, from the Tuamotus through the Society Islands, to American Samoa, and on to Fiji, where I cruised from Vanua Levu to the Yasawas to Viti Levu and on down to New Zealand as the cyclone season arrived, covering over 5500 nm of mostly ocean passages.
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