Ensenada, Mexico
31°' 51'N 116° 37'E
to Rangiroa Atoll, French Polynesia
14° 58'S 147° 43'W

We departed the dock in Ensenada on February 20 with just enough daylight to get outside the port’s entrance and drop anchor before dark. Early the next morning we began the voyage in earnest with a first night at sea in 30 knots of wind. The ship moved a lot and we all had to make a rapid adjustment from land body to ocean body!

We were headed back into the South Pacific, after our Homecoming Tour, and had a four thousand mile journey ahead of us. But we wanted to make a stop at the island of Socorro, one of the Mexican-owned Galapagos Islands, 800 nautical miles south east of Ensenada. Our arrival to the island was magical - we caught a 70 pound yellow fin tuna, the largest fish any of us have ever seen on board and a sign of hope for the purpose of our visit - to study the reef around this volcanic island, which rises to 1,130 meters.

As we came closer to the island we could see humpback whales blowing close to the coastline and as we dropped anchor two huge manta rays circled nearby with wing spans of 3 meters. At sunset a mother and baby humpback whale passed very close to the ship. As if this wasn’t enough to welcome us to this land, that night as we went to sleep we could hear the whale songs resonating through the body of the ship.

During our time anchored off Socorro Island, we surveyed approximately 70% of the island’s coastal zone and found the underwater landscape to be varied. We took detailed observations on the health and vitality of more than five hundred coral colonies finding more than 50% of them to be healthy. The major condition observed was algal smothering, this affected 46% of coral colonies observed.

The humpback whales impressed us continuously with their spectacular acrobatics, lifting themselves completely out of the water, often several times in succession. They would slap the water’s surface with their enormous pectoral fins (a third of the whale’s body length) so we could see this from quite a distance. But the most beautiful moments were when they dived, their huge tail fins hovering silently in the air before sinking below the surface. As we were returning from a dive, a mother and baby surfaced very close to the small boat, perhaps only 5 meters away! A few of us were lucky enough to see their gentle movements through the water and watch the calf sheltering under its mother as they swam together.

After ten days of these amazing encounters, we left Socorro overwhelmed and ready for our voyage to the South Pacific. We raised anchor and departed accompanied by whales and dolphins! A spectacular send off.

We had 2,955 nautical miles to go to arrive at the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia. This voyage was amazing in terms of perfect sailing conditions, a sharp contrast to the North Pacific journey just six months ago. The ship, with all masts and sails overhauled during the dry dock, had a new lease of life and we sailed with ease and glorious swiftness, first with the north-east trade winds north of the equator and then the south-east trades after crossing into the southern hemisphere. Even at the equator, we managed to escape being trapped by the doldrums.

The only moment when the wind dropped was when we came close to the Marquesas, our first sighting of French Polynesia. We were just ten miles off the coast and drifted for two days until the wind returned.

One of the most exciting elements of this voyage was that we traveled using the skills of celestial navigation. For five weeks the GPS was off and we were guided by the skies. It was amazing to calculate our position using the stars and to really begin to understand our planetary position within this universe.

We also witnessed a ‘St Elmo’s fire’. This occurs when a build up of electricity in the air can be heard in the form of a buzzing sound around the ship. We could also see it in the tips of our radar antennae as the energy focused at the highest points on the ship.

At one point, we thought we had made an open-ocean scientific discovery – nudibranchs floating on the surface of the sea. We brought them on deck to take a closer look, identify them (Glaucus spp.) then return them to their home.

The week before arrival to Rangiroa we had constant strong winds and big swells. This was a little concerning as we knew we could not enter the atoll in these conditions. But luckily, on the morning of arrival the wind dropped from a force 6 to a force 3 and we entered the atoll with perfect timing at slack tide. Bad planning could have meant a six knot current against us. With careful maneuvering of the ship we entered the lagoon, dropped anchor and arrived safely at Rangiroa, the world’s second largest atoll, ready to discover the state of its coral reefs.