The #1 questions everyone is asking…. What is your Route? When do you leave? How long will it take you? How many crew do you have? How do we follow your journey? What is your biggest fear? When are you coming back to the Pacific Northwest?
Ultimately our goal is landfall in New Zealand with an estimated arrival in mid-October 2019. However, the more important goal is to make safe decisions and enjoy our 14 month journey along the way. We officially leave Poulsbo on Friday, August 31, 2018. My plan is to spend 2-3 months exploring New Zealand returning to the Seattle area in February 2020. Jeff is going to join Diana to bring SV Arctic Loon back to Poulsbo.
We will have extra crew on the overnight passages such as :
- Poulsbo to San Francisco (Sep 2018), San Francisco to the Channel Islands (Sep 2018)
- San Diego to Cabo San Lucas/Mexico (Nov 2018)
- La Paz to Mazatlán (Dec 2018)
- Puerto Vallarta to Marquesas/French Polyonesia (Mar 2019)
- Tonga to New Zealand (Oct 2019)
You will meet members of our crew in future blog posts. They say it is not the sailing skill that is important for crew members, it is their personality and willingness to do what it takes. We can only hope that we have attracted and selected properly.
Why does it take so long and why are we not sailing straight to New Zealand? Part is to explore destinations along the way and more importantly is that our schedule is dictated by the weather windows. Our 1st is the waters off Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. This is the time of year when boats head South; the winds are blowing from the North/Northwest and the winds have calmed down from 35-40 knots from earlier this summer to 15-25 knots. People head South from here at other times of the year, but we are looking for following the prudent course. Next, Insurance Companies don’t allow customers to enter into Mexico until after the threat of hurricane season around November 1st. Then we will winter in Sea of Cortes and Mexican Pacific until March to avoid the Cyclone season in the Marquesas and South Pacific Islands. Finally, our weather window to leave for New Zealand is mid-October when the cyclone season returns to the South Pacific Islands.
Thanks to Jeff, SV Arctic Loon has lots of technology, including a manual Jeff wrote to teach us how to use it all. In addition to these blog posts on globalsailinglifestyle.com, our friends and family will be able to track and follow us along each stage of our journey. SV Arctic Loon’s blog is www.arcticloon2018.com. Jeff has set it up so that our location will be sent via a Twitter post every morning, follow us on @ArcticLoon2018.
My biggest fear up to this point has been whether I would get my life of 56 years packed into storage so I could leave on August 31st. Thanks to all my friends who are babysitting my furniture, artwork, etc. It has been fun gifting items and also downsizing. Who knows, after living on a 45’ sailboat I will either want a huge house and a large yard with a garden or more likely I will want a tiny house and will purge more of the stuff that I have left in storage. Now I can move my focus back to our incredible journey of a lifetime. I will miss all my friends and family, and my life as Captain Anne in the San Juan Islands, so don’t worry, the Pacific Northwest is already calling me back home…