The Dangers of the Sea

During the past week, the Pacific has proved contrary to her name. The wind has been blowing between 20 and 30 knots with 10 to 12 foot waves in what would be classified as a 7 on the Beaufort scale and technically known as a “near gale.” Audentes has performed admirably in these conditions and […]

Easter in Isolation

Last week’s desperate plea to Neptune for wind seems to have been answered and our only regret is that perhaps we should have only thrown one shoe overboard instead of two. Soon after making our offering, the wind piped up and continued to blow throughout the entire week. By Tuesday, we had 25 knots of […]

Wild On the Galapagos

Having departed New York on Thursday, Joe and Sashin arrived in the Galapagos on Friday morning via Bogota, Quito, and Guyaquil. After meeting them at the airport on the tiny island of Baltra, we proceeded to take a bus to the southern tip of the island, a ferry to the northernmost point of Santa Cruz, […]

Adios Panama

I spent the first half of the week preparing for our passage to the Galapagos. The preparations focused on provisioning and preparing the boat for several long passages. Due to concerns about the availability of food and boat parts in the Galapagos and Marquesas, we attempted to obtain everything that we will need over the […]

A Floating United Nations

During the past week, we have had guests aboard Audentes from Panama, England, Canada, and Poland. Much like the UN, everyone dislikes Americans but is polite enough not to say so to our faces. Also similar to the UN, we Americans do whatever we want and don’t care at all what anyone else thinks. There […]

The Sailor of Panama

The differences between the anchorage in Balboa on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal and Colon on the Caribbean side are incredible. A 50-mile motor through the canal took us from a post-apocalyptic world of drugs, prostitution, and rampant crime to a cultured, scenic, urban wonderland. Instead of an anchorage constantly under attack from […]

Hazing Kuna Style

Super Bowl Sunday began with a great deal of promise but, ultimately, ended up being far from super. Due to a communication failure, likely resulting from our nearly complete lack of understanding Spanish and our total lack of understanding Kuna Yala, the grande fiesta that we were told was to take place on Sunday was […]