TWO PACIFIC CROSSINGS

After one stress-free trip, you might find the ‘coconut milk run’ doesn’t always do what it says on the tin

- ELLEN MASSEY LEONARD

Crossing the Pacific Ocean to the Polynesian islands is generally considered the ‘coconut milk run’, an easy downwind passage in the warm weather of the tropics and the consistent breezes of the trade winds. For many people this is true, or it would not have gained that reputation. It is also easy to assume that the crossing is always something similar to one’s own personal experience with it.

I first crossed the Pacific when I was 21 years old. Seth (my 24-year-old boyfriend) and I had a lovely coconut milk run. This experience fully reinforced everything I’d read and heard. Fellow sailors we met in the Polynesian islands – most of whom had come on the same route from the Galapagos as we had, though a few had come from Mexico – related similar tales of pleasant passages. For the North Americans, this was generally their first ocean crossing, as it was ours. The British and European sailors tended to say they had experienced even better passages across the Atlantic from the Canaries to the Caribbean, with fewer squalls, more consistent winds and more regular swells, but from what I understood, most of them had at least found the Pacific crossing to have been a downwind run.

So it was with some surprise that Seth and I studied the weather forecasts for our second Pacific crossing and saw strong headwinds. The idea that this is a milk run is so ingrained and had been so confirmed by our first trip, that we could hardly believe the weather data and Passage Weather charts. In addition, we very much wanted it to be a milk run, with plenty of relaxed time for reading, fishing, and star-gazing. We’d spent the past five years in the high latitudes and were ready for a bit of a change. We wanted it to be like it was on our first Pacific crossing.