19 year old crossing the Pacific alone

I'm Garrett, I'm 19 years old, and for the last year and a half I've been learning to solo sail in Hawaii and prepping my boat, the North Sea 27, to travel the world. After a long time of being at the harbor working on my boat, it's time to leave the dock and sail to French Polynesia. This is a 2,400 mile upwind trip and should take about 25 days. I just left the Ala Wai Harbor for Papeete, French Polynesia. I have a good feeling about this day, doing this. I tried already once, but I had problems with my wind vane and it was super windy. But today is really nice. There's lots of people out on kayaks further than they usually are, so that tells me it's probably pretty calm out there. And the forecast is really, really good, so I'm feeling good about today. So, I finally picked up some wind. I'm going about 5 knots, maybe 3 miles away from Oahu, Diamond Edge just over there. Really nice seas out here. It's maybe blowing 13 knots, pretty light. But I'm making 5 knots and it's really comfortable so far, so I'm not complaining. I'm about 40 miles into the trip. I think it's gone really good so far. I'm not feeling seasick to the slightest. I'm not even really feeling nervous anymore. Not compared to before I left, I was feeling pretty nervous then. But yeah, I feel good out here. It's enjoyable actually at this point. Conditions have been really good. It's been blowing maybe 15, but from the northeast. So I'm actually headed downwind basically to go south, which doesn't usually happen here. So I'm happy with that. Definitely happy with that. But tonight it might get kind of sporty. The Alinuihaha Channel is coming up. And that's usually double the forecast or so from what I've heard. It is 12.16 of the first night out here. I've gotten probably 30 minutes of sleep total, if even that. It's just, I don't know. It's hard to sleep when the boom is just kind of slapping back and forth from the low wind. But I am able to sleep and I still don't feel sick. So I'll be alright. I decided to start the engine and motor for a little bit. I'm pretty close to the channel I think, but at the speed I was going it would have taken me a long time. It's also kind of fun to test out my new autopilot. The information display here is gathered from my satellite tracker and shows how many days I've completed. Nautical miles traveled since the last entry. Nautical miles traveled total and coordinates. It won't always perfectly line up with the footage, but it is always based on the same day. The wind started to pick up at about 2.30 last night and it's been pretty decent since. I'm mostly in the channel now and I'm making good speed. 5-6 knots. I'll be in the channel for maybe 6 hours. Not bad out here at all. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Then I'll be in the protection of leeward Big Island and hopefully try to get some more sleep and make an actual meal. I just got my first boat pet up on the bow. My booby, named Dennis. He's pooping everywhere. I don't really appreciate that too much. One of the challenges of a small boat like mine is the severe limit on water I could bring. I left Hawaii with about 40 gallons that leaves one per day to use safely. That's only to drink, nothing else pretty much. I had to filter the tank water with a backpacking filter to make it clean enough to drink. I thought I was going to get lucky, but it looks like I'm going to be stuck in the wind shadow. It's calming down quite a bit really fast, but maybe it was just a squall. We'll see. Yeah, so the wind is pretty much dead now. Main sheet and the boom is just flopping back and forth, banging around, causing a ruckus, so I sheathed them in. But I think the waves are giving me enough progress that I'll eventually make it to the south point of the Big Island, which is kind of where the wind should go back to normal trades. But for now I'm just going to try to get some sleep and maybe eat some food. I'll get through this. I'm not too concerned. It was expected. I was hoping this forecast was going to be good enough that it wouldn't happen, but it is what it is. I had good wind before this. So it seems like things are starting to look up. Is that the right word? Wait. I've got wind now, maybe about 12-15 knots. I'm going 5-6 knots and the seas are relatively chilled out compared to what it was earlier. Hopefully these are the actual trade winds, because if they are, then I'll just ride this all the way to the equator. I'm guessing it'll take me 22 days or so from here, which is 22 times my next biggest sailing trip besides today. South Point, Bad Sight 8, light lift number 28007.13 has been reported missing. All mariners are advised to transit with caution and report all sightings to the Coast Guard. They reported a missing buoy or light tower or something floating around pretty much where I am right now. So hopefully I don't bonk that. That would be a unique way to end this journey early. But other than that, it should be all good. Dennis the bird got scared of the dark and he's hanging out in the bowsprit again. I don't remember much from last night, which means I slept a lot, which I think is a good thing, even though maybe a little bit irresponsible. But honestly I think the risk of sleep deprivation is worse than the risk of getting smoked by a ship out here. There's really nothing out here. I just passed the 200 mile mark from Wahoo. So from this point on, the number one goal is just to make as much easting progress as I possibly can. So that when I make it to the southeasterly trades, I'll have enough progress to not have to tack back and forth once I make it closer to French Polynesia. Now Dennis has a friend. I'll name him F22 Booby. Dennis doesn't like him very much. I'm trying to bite him. Well, I found my first leak. It's not a ton of water, but it's enough that I want to fix it. I'm not sure where it's coming from yet. I noticed it a tiny bit earlier, but it wasn't this much. Hopefully it's not coming from the seacock. That would be not awesome. But yeah, I'll figure it out. I just had my first guard alarm go off on the AIS. They're going to be really close, like within a mile. Yeah, less than a mile, so I'm going to call them on the radio and ask them to bear off. Because I don't want to move. I just called that boat on the radio and they were happy to move out of the way. But we would have came within a tenth of a mile, which is pretty close. It's good to know the AIS is working properly. Early in the trip, I realized that unless I was super sleep deprived, I wasn't able to sleep during the day no matter how hard I tried. That made things quite a bit more difficult. I'm making pretty decent progress today. This morning was a little frustrating because I was pointed as close as I could into the wind, but still wasn't making 180 degrees south, which even then is not enough to make Ted Keaty irritating. But I think the wind normalized a little bit the further I got away from the Big Island, the south point of the Big Island, and I've been playing around with sail trim more. I think part of the problem is that I'm so used to sailing around Hawaii with a second reef and furled jib that I was kind of nervous to use that much sail out here, but I've been doing way better since I put more sail out and focused more on the sail trim. So, last night was going pretty good. I was making really good easting progress, but the sea state picked up so much that it had to bear off. I'm still headed at like 165, and I'm going pretty fast, like six knots, but the sea state's just pretty messy. Not very enjoyable. Lots of big slams, and it sounds like a gunshot going off when the boat lands back in the water, and I hadn't slept one minute because I was out there just watching, making sure I don't get hit by squalls or anything. I also got a good amount of water coming into the cabin from, I think it's a leaking stanchion base, which it's not dangerous, it's just super annoying, and it's probably going to cause some water damage. On day four, I had a pretty strong realization that I was out at sea alone, and that if I needed help, nobody was out there to help me. The wind gusts up into the 30s didn't help with that, and either the sleep deprivation or that feeling went away pretty quickly. I think the sea state has calmed out a little bit since last night. It's still pretty choppy, but I'm making really good progress, like five, six knots, so hopefully that lasts, and I'm kind of struggling to make enough power to just run the AIS and charge my phone and electronics and stuff. There's not a single speck of blue in the sky right now, it's just clouds, so that doesn't help. The waves are pretty hairy this morning, but I usually don't get scared. I had my little hatch open for like a couple minutes, and stupid wave, first of the day it came here. My bed is absolutely soaked, my pillow is absolutely soaked. So that's awesome. I guess I'll be sleeping on a sleeping bag from now on. No matter how well you tie something down, it always seems to come undone when you're sailing. So on day five I had to go under the deck and tie down all the water jugs a little bit harder. I like to use zip ties so that you don't have to untie them every time you're sailing. So that's awesome. I guess I'll be sleeping on a sleeping bag from now on. But at least I put duct tape over there to stop water from coming in, because that could have fried my panel. Yeah, peak luxury on sailing vessel hooligan right now. I like to use zip ties so that you don't have to untie them and re-tie them every time. You can just cinch them down. So I think the conditions might be getting a little bit more organized. So it is day four. I'm 450 miles from the starting point of Oahu. Right now I'm just enjoying my second meal of the whole trip. It's one of these freeze-dried adventure meal mountain house things, but it's actually pretty good for being freeze-dried. Yeah, the wind is a little light right now to make good easting, but I think it should clock back around to northeast tomorrow or later today. Today is just pretty much east, so I can't really make easting progress. But yeah, it'll switch around back and forth like this probably until I make it there. Wow. I'm just going to start sleeping outside during the night. I think I'm causing a bad habit from going inside and just crashing for four hours at a time at the night. Because that's when it's easiest for me to sleep, but there's risks of hitting squalls and having too much sail out and that kind of thing. So I'm going to sleep in the cockpit on this little West Marine fishing I have at night. I kind of actually enjoy the night. It's kind of a cool experience. It's better than just being inside during the day in the sun. That's not enjoyable. It's super hot. Can't get any sleep because I'm just sweating. My bed's completely soaked. That happened again today. Even with the hatch closed, the wave just hit the boat in a strange way and it got a lot of water inside, but it's all good. I put duct tape on my panel a day after I left Hawaii and that was probably one of my brighter ideas of this trip because it would have been toast by now. But yeah, things aren't actually going too bad. Pullian calling Vessel Solage. We are on a direct collision course on the AIS. There's a fishing boat or something on AIS on a pretty much direct collision course. I'm trying to call on the radio. I've been yelling at them for like 15 minutes trying to get them an answer. They're going to come really close and I don't know if I should bear off or try to motor into the wind or what because these guys aren't answering. It's a freaking sailboat. What are the chances I see a sailboat this close out here? Well, anyways, if anyone knows the sailboat captain of Solage, tell him he's an idiot. It's too bad they didn't answer on the radio because that would have been a fun chat to see where they're going and where they came from. They probably came from French Polynesia or Christmas Island. But yeah, just keep your radio on. Come on. But yeah, I slept decent last night. The cockpit was getting absolutely soaked, but this new foul weather gear works as it should. What I ended up doing is turning on the engine and motoring upwind closer than I can go just by sail. If I didn't do that and I didn't adjust the mainsheet to be closer hauled, we would have been, I won't say we would have hit because I don't know that, but we would have been very, very, very close. I had great conditions this day and most of the next, but that changed in the evening pretty quickly. The sea state is absolutely just messed up now. I got a wave. This was closed. All this was closed. The towel wasn't on there, but a wave came over the entire front of the boat and somehow managed to make its way into here. It got a couple of gallons of water into the bed, so that's unusable for the rest of the trip. I got water here. I got water all over here. This is freaking messed up. It's northeast, so I don't think it's a storm, and I don't see a bunch of clouds or anything. You can see the cabin is just a freaking disaster. I don't know. Maybe I'll put another reef in the main or heave two tonight because that was freaking huge, like twice as big as anything I've seen. I'm looking outside, and they're like 10, 12, 15 feet on the big ones. It's nuts, but whatever. I'll figure it out. Today, I have completed my first week of the passage. I think I'm about 765 miles from Hawaii now. The last few days have been pretty hectic. Yesterday, the seas picked up to the biggest I've ever seen by far. They were breaking over the boat. I asked my person that's doing the weather outing for me why that was happening, and she said it's because there's a big current that flows northwest at that area, so that was causing huge waves, and it was also blowing maybe 25, 30, so that was an uncomfortable night, and I'm pretty tired. This morning, I was just checking my position, and my phone, I think it's broken. It was making weird green colors and flashing and all sorts of stuff, so I dipped it in some isopropyl alcohol, and I'm soaking it in rice, and I'm hoping it works, but if it doesn't, which I don't think it will, then I'm going to have no satellite communication for the rest of the trip, which isn't ideal, but maybe it's good for me to fully ditch the phone for a while. I noticed that these stupid hatch ends, like there and there, they don't actually seal. I knew about that one. I just didn't care because the water doesn't flow there, but this one I thought sealed against it. It does not. Water just comes right through there when a wave comes over. I remember on this evening, the conditions got way better than they were earlier in the trip, but it was colder, and I'd find myself at night wearing four or five layers of coats and clothing outside when I tried to sleep. Losing my phone changed the trip in a pretty big way. I had no communication, no weather, no music, no audiobooks, no movies or anything, so it made the experience much more genuine, I think. Day 8. My phone is fried, so no more sat phone, no more weather, no more music, no more movies, no more audiobooks, but who knows? Maybe that's a good thing. Not bad conditions right now. I'm making really good easting progress. It's definitely not comfortable, but whatever. It's not as bad as before, that's for sure. This evening I saw something go up behind me that looked similar to a flare or a plane, so I ran downstairs to get my camera, and by the time I got back outside, it was gone. I still, to this day, don't know what that was, and I don't think I ever will. I just had my first real pretty big squall. It came in fast. I didn't really see it coming until maybe a couple minutes before, and it started blowing 15-20 above the normal wind speed, so it was probably blowing 30. But I got a couple boobies now, hanging out. Yeah, today's been the first day of actually enjoyable sailing in a while. Before, it was just kind of a beat, and I wasn't having much fun. It was just kind of miserable and a big slog, but today has been slightly better, and I think the sea state's calming down quite a bit because I'm getting closer to the equator. Yeah, pretty soon it should be calm. The chances of that being my first squall of the trip were extremely low. I should have had way more of the northern hemisphere, but I didn't, and in that way, I was very lucky. There's the squall that just got me. So, last night I had quite a few squalls, maybe three or four. None of them were as bad as the first one. Looks like I'm coming into a big one right now, but I've got the sails reefed, and I'm totally fine. I am in the doldrums now, so that explains it. I don't know if I'm seeing things or if I'm just tired, but this morning I woke up, and I was sure that my wind indicator up there was totally broken, like bent and messed up. It's not. It's perfectly fine. So, hopefully that was a dream. Maybe I'm going crazy. Who knows?