A Pacific crossing seems like something from a dream, yet owning a decent boat gives you the keys to the kingdom. South Seas veteran Rod Heikell gives you a few tips to help you on your way
Sailing in the South Pacific seems like one of those far off dreams where a barely recognised reality merges with some sort of hedonist’s utopia. The name prompts memories of the Mutiny on the Bounty and dusky maidens. Of exotic fruits plucked straight from the trees. Of coral atolls and turquoise water teeming with fish. Of Tahiti and Gauguin and those dusky beauties again. It’s Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson mixed with a twist of lime in the gin and tonic in a far off tropical place. And you know, it really does feel a bit like that.
The coconut milk run is that bit of the South Pacific where yachts coming from west coast USA and Central America and those coming from Panama via Galapagos meet up in the Marquesas. The route from the Marquesas through French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Tonga and Fiji down to New Zealand has long been termed the ‘Coconut Milk Run’. It is pretty much all Southerly Trades blowing at 10-20kts and puffy trade wind clouds. Some of the distances are considerable, in fact the passage from Galapagos to the Marquesas at something around 3,100nm is the longest non-stop passage that most yachts will make on a circumnavigation. And you really do feel you are on the edge of the world.
Typical South Pacific routes
● From Panama, yachts will usually make for the Galapagos
● Galapagos to Marquesas, usually Atuona on Hiva Oa or Taiohae on Nuka Hiva
● From the Marquesas, yachts will generally head down to the Tuamotus
● Most yachts go to Tahiti, if just to provision and then onto the Iles Sous Le Vent
● From the Iles Sous Le Vent, usually Raiatea or Bora Bora, yachts go to one or several of the Cook Islands and Niue
● Tonga is the next logical step and from here some yachts go to Fiji
● From Tonga or Fiji most yachts go down to New Zealand for the cyclone season
● Yachts bound for Australia will usually go to Fiji and Vanuatu/New Caledonia and then across to the Gold Coast The season for cruising the South Pacific runs from around May to October to miss the cyclone season, hurricane season to North Atlantites, between November and May. Cyclones rarely affect the sea area around Panama to the Galapagos and hardly ever touch the northern bits of French Polynesia like the Marquesas and even Tahiti and nearby islands, so you can effectively come through the canal and into the Pacific earlier than May. Most yachts will leave the
