Some people have been asking us to post details on our trip
from Palau to Guam. So here goes. As you know we decided to delay our departure
as a weather system was pushing through just as we were getting ready to check
out. That was a Wednesday. Ideally we would have liked to leave on
Saturday or Sunday to ride the coat tails of the system north east. In Palau however there is a $175 surcharge
for weekend departures so we opted for a Monday afternoon departure.
As we were leaving we heard some funny sounds from the transmission and had a bit of a mess coming up on the anchor chain. Both caused by being on the hook too long. The deck wash pump also swallowed a fish and ruined the diaphragm. That part isn’t too bad as the pump has been struggling for a while, but it would have been nice to wash the chain a bit better before putting it away. So we did have a couple of days of a rotten seaweed smell in the forward cabin to live with, oh well no one was staying up there this trip.
We left just after three PM and went out the eastern entrance. Pretty amazing currents swirling through this pass but once out we had a bit of breeze from the right direction and we were able to set sail. We were trying to keep our course a bit more east at first. There are two reasons for this. The main was that the winds tend to prevail from the east and this besides causing the wind to be from the wrong direction, creates a current which would be against us. By using the storm we could use the reinforced SW winds to push us east quickly and if the winds were to swing from the east again we could fall off a bit and still make way north. By going this route we also put the islands that are between Palau and Guam out of our path. If the winds were a bit more benign we would have stopped in Yap for sure, as we have wanted to go there for some time. The other islands are supposed to be pretty nice as well and it would have been a way to break up the trip. But with the series of lows that had been sweeping over us, we felt it best to run as quickly as possible with our weather window. Even choosing to motor if the winds dipped at all. In the end we had a system coming through just as we were arriving but it didn’t amount to much so our precautions proved for not. But it is always better to be safe than sorry.
The trip itself was pretty uneventful. We were able to give position updates and get emails out via the ham radio which we hadn’t been able to do since we were in the southern part of the Philippines. We did have a hose clamp burst during the last part of the trip on the main engine while we were running it to charge batteries. This was easily fixed but it did spray the engine room down with saltwater before we caught it. Later it wiped out our main engine charging system so we ended up having to rely on the genset to charge our batteries. We cannot run the genset in heavy seas or when we are healed over very far so we were happy that Guam was only a short distance away. We carry a spare alternator but the problem was with the external regulator and that we did not have a spare for. The seas started to build a few hours out of Guam so we opted to turn the engine on and leave it on while turning the genset off until we reached harbour.
We arrived on Sunday at about 2:30pm, so we made the trip in just a little under 6 days and with just a little over 800 miles traveled, we made very good time. The contrary current was pretty light until the last day but by then we had made the decision to motor sail and push hard to get in before the club closed.
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| approaching Guam |
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| land ho, Guam |
