Summarizing our 2024 sailing
Our 2024 sailing year stated waaaay back in Santa Rosalia, Mexico. Soon after we met up with my brother and his wife for a week long visit in the Bay of Conception, then crossed the Sea of Cortez for a long stay in Gyuamas for some major upgrades to Meriwether. Once we got moving again, it was a 500 mile sail straight to the tropics where we stopped in to see boobies and crocs before settling into our final stay in Mexico to prepare for the big jump across the Pacific.
By April we had set out for a 26-day ocean crossing (crossing the equator) to the Marquesas Islands where we explored numerous islands, villages, waterfalls, and anchorages. With the 90-day clock ticking we moved the 300+ miles to the Tuamotu Archipelago and all it’s atolls, each separated by an overnight sail. Another 300+ mile hop brought up to Tahiti, Mo’orea, and to our last French Polynesian island of Maupiti.
We had a steering failure during the 1300 mile passage between Maupiti and Tonga which prompted us to make an unscheduled stop at the amazing Beveridge Reef after 950 miles and 9 days at sea. The week long stay at Beveridge gave us the weather window to visit the island-country of Niue, before making the 300+ miles passage to Tonga (crossing the international date line) where we were finally able to slow down and relax a bit. After 5+ weeks in Tonga we rode a perfect weather window the 400 miles to Minerva Reef where we stayed for two more weeks waiting for weather to allow us passage to New Zealand.
The stats for the year are as follows:
Over the calendar year Meriwether took us on 40 voyages totaling 7,930 nautical miles and 1,675+ hours of travel, by far our largest year ever… more than twice our next largest year actually. 1675 hours equals 69.8 days, or nearly 20% of the total year the boat was in motion. Our tally of experience now consists of 377 voyages, 3,600+ hours, and 17,000 miles! This year we broke our longest sail record, now 26 days and 2900 miles in a single passage. With much of our time being spent in the trade winds, and on long passages, we sailed 77% of all miles over the course of 2024. We also anchored 40~ more times, adding 196 more nights spent at anchor (751 total) to our resume. And lastly, we completed our 85th night under sail.
Awesome! Great job. Would love to hear how much of your sailing was in high winds.
Mostly we had 20-25 knot wind speeds, which is great for down wind sailing. Not really “high winds”. It does seem that we would be tickling 30 knots for good portions of a day/night about every time we set out on a multi-day passage, but again down wind or reaching made it tolerable. We had only one occasion of getting hit by a gale, during our big Pacific crossing, with right around 40 knot winds. Luckily, that only lasted a few hours.
It wasn’t long ago that 25 would be “high winds” to us, but nowadays that doesn’t really bother us. Tapping the 30’s for short periods isnt too bad either, but anything above that is still “high” for us and choose to just stay at anchor.
All that and you are in New Zealand!