“Where, exactly, are you going?”

We leave one month from tomorrow.  Whoa.  As the departure date approaches, the main question we hear (aside from “are you getting excited?!”) is “where, exactly, are you guys going?”  Here’s the answer:

On March 26th, we fly from Missoula, Montana to Cabo San Lucas in Baja California.  We’re hoping to meet up with our friends, Katie and Mark, on their boat, Selkie, in La Paz.  The goal is to spend a couple of weeks decompressing from work, packing, and leaving our way of life.  We plan to leave Mexico refreshed and ready for a big adventure.

On April 10th, we fly from Cabo to Panama City, where we’ll make our way to Colon to meet Llyr in the Caribbean Sea.  We’ve signed up to crew on this 53-foot steel ketch, and are excited to help Janis and Brooks, and their teenage boys, Connor, Rowan and Gavin sail her across the Pacific.  We’ll have to wait in line for a week or two to squeeze Llyr between mega-tankers, cruise ships and other yachts for her trip through the Panama Canal. We’ll likely head through the Canal by the end of April.  Once through the Canal, we’ll provision with food, water, diesel and other supplies while we wait for a good weather window to begin our “Pacific Puddlejump.”

By the beginning of May, we’ll start our 40-day journey across the Pacific Ocean, heading south over the equator and (hopefully) catching a smooth ride on southeast trade winds as we sail west.  We should reach our first landfall in French Polynesia’s easternmost island chain, the Marquesas, by early June.  

Rob and I may continue with Llyr to Tahiti, the capital of French Polynesia.  Tahiti is kind of like the “transit station” for the South Pacific, where we’ll find lots and lots of sailboats from all over the world heading to different islands.  We plan to find one to crew on to the next island stop.  From here, plans get fuzzy (which we like).

Our goal is to hitchhike on sailboats from July through November.  The sailing season in the South Pacific typically ends in November as the summer months mark the start of hurricane season in the southern hemisphere.  Most folks head to Australia and New Zealand, but Rob and I are hoping to spend the summer in either the Soloman Islands, or north of the equator in Micronesia.  Below is a map of our potential route, though it’s all up for grabs post-June.

For us, the beauty of this trip is our freedom — we aren’t sure where we’ll be in a few months, and we like it that way.

View On the Horizon Line – Adventure Route in a larger map