Solo Pacific Crossing: One Sailor, One Boat, 3,000 Miles

Solo ocean crossings exist in a strange territory between ­spiritual pilgrimage and ­borderline madness. You have to be part navigator, part ­mechanic, part therapist. There’s no one to take the wheel while you sleep. No one to help reef the sails when the 2 a.m. squall hits. No one to tell you that you’re not going crazy when you wake up from a dream shouting for someone who’s not there.

Most people who take on the Pacific leg of the Coconut Milk Run—the jump from Mexico to French Polynesia—do so with crew or partners. It’s the first and longest bluewater crossing for many sailors. The gateway to a life afloat. For me, it was something else. It was the thing I had to do while my 38-foot Hans Christian, Kessel, was in its prime—and while I still had the fire in my gut to prove that I could.

This crossing, from Mexico to French Polynesia, wasn’t a whim. It was a ­calling. There are maybe a few thousand active cruisers sailing the world’s oceans. Of those, only a small fraction attempt the Pacific crossing in a given year, and even fewer do it alone. It’s a 3,000-mile stretch of open water where your only companions are the stars, your thoughts and whatever stares back at you from the deep. Those who cross this part of the world return changed.

I didn’t grow up on the water. I’m from Oakdale, California—a landlocked town better known for rodeos and almond orchards than reefing sails and reading isobars. But I’d always been drawn to the edge of things, to adventure, to the kind of stories that begin where the pavement ends. I got a taste of sailing one summer at Boy Scout camp, on a lake in Oklahoma, where the first merit badge I earned was for small-boat sailing. Years later, I was mesmerized by the yachts tied to the ­moorings off Catalina Island as I sat in my lifeguard tower watching the scouts at Camp Cherry Valley. 

In college, I shared a leaky old boat with three freediving roommates who had a copy of Chapman’s Piloting that was more salt-stained than legible. We cobbled together our own education with YouTube videos, borrowed tools, and trial-by-fire weekends out to the Channel Islands. There, in the wild of anchorages such as Prisoners Harbor and Smugglers Cove, I found what I didn’t know I was seeking. Salt. Silence. Self-reliance. Pure adventure.

From that point on, I was all in. I worked as a fireman, hoarding every paycheck to feed the habit of tools, gear and materials. Each upgrade was a step closer. Every busted fitting I replaced by headlamp was a lesson earned.

And then, I found Kessel. It was more ­ruin than boat, left forgotten in the Mexican desert, but it was the one. I saw past the grime and rust to the heavy displacement curves, the sheerline, the potential.

This 1978 build was from a time when boats had thick hulls and even thicker souls. It was meant to cross oceans, to laugh in the face of squalls. Its slip felt like a cage. The rigging was shot. The systems were failing. But beneath the corrosion and peeling varnish, I saw a warhorse.

I rebuilt Kessel plank by plank, wire by wire—not just to bring the boat back to life, but also because something in me needed it to be whole.

We weren’t just going sailing. We were going to cross an ocean together. We were going to explore the world.

Something Bigger

The first three days of the crossing were pure stoke, riding the excitement of the journey as La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico, shrank in my wake. It had been my mission to settle into things and find routine, which I would soon learn was a fluid thing. On Day 3, I wrote my first log in PredictWind to keep friends and family informed.

We were alone out here. And it was ­beautiful. Every time I glanced at our wake, I felt that primitive, ­impossible truth all over again.

“I woke up with salt on my face and the sky bleeding soft light over a restless ocean. I’d spent the night in the cockpit, unable to sleep below. The sound of the hull flexing, the groan of strained rigging—it was all too alive down there. Up top, though, I could see stars. I could feel the rhythm of the sea. It was a violent lullaby, but a lullaby nonetheless.”

Kessel was galloping. Ten- to 12-footers from the northwest rolled beneath us like sleeping giants. The wind held firm. We were closehauled at 7 knots, rising and falling like a heartbeat. Every time I glanced back at our wake, I felt it again—that ­primitive, impossible truth.

We were alone out here.

And it was beautiful.

Days of Grace

There were moments that made the whole thing feel enchanted. I streamed my sister’s college water polo game via Starlink from 800 miles offshore. I cried watching her score goals in a pool half a world away. The loneliness cracked open, and for a moment, I was there. With her. Home.

On Day 7, the wind finally came to stay. The trades hit like a gift wrapped in foam and sun. Kessel surged under the rasta-­colored asymmetric spinnaker, galloping over the swell—7, 8, sometimes 10 knots. Flying fish exploded from the water like skipping stones. I stood barefoot at the helm, cackling into the wind like a lunatic. This was what life was about, what I was built for, why I existed. In that moment, every tear, every busted knuckle, all the worst days were all worth it.

These were the days of joy. Champagne sailing. Salt in my hair. Sun on my chest. Kessel and I were the stuff that books and ballads are written about, the reason young men and women embark on these quests.

Days of Reckoning

But then there were the other days—like Day 10.

The wind was up, passing 20 knots. I ­decided to douse the kite and go to a conventional sail plan. It should’ve been ­routine. But while dousing, the hood of the kite fouled itself in its rigging. In my anger and haste to retrieve the sail, the sock tore open, releasing the mass of canvas to the howling breeze.

The only way to retrieve and salvage the sail was to dump it. I released the halyard, slowly at first, but with no one to assist, I inevitably had to surrender the sail over the side of the bulwarks.

The Pacific crossing doesn’t make you ­better; It makes you real. It’s the highs, the lows—the whole truth of who you are, stripped bare.

Kessel rounded up. Water poured over the rail and through the cockpit. Belowdecks, the galley seemed to explode. Something had knocked the faucet open, and fresh water flooded the sole.

I dragged the soaked sail onto the foredeck by hand, inch by inch, like pulling in a drowning body. I had to use a sheet winch. My only hope was that it hadn’t wrapped itself around the rudder. I was abeam to the waves, conditions nearing a gale, a thousand miles from land and entirely alone. By the time I’d cleaned up the mess, I was shaking. But we were still sailing. Kessel had held its ground.

That would be the worst of it,I thought.

The Intertropical Convergence Zone had other ideas.

Fierce, whipping squalls marched like crusaders across the horizon, dark and black, set on descending upon me and my good ship. One would come, and I would prepare. Kessel and I would battle 50 knots with sea spray that I swear would break the skin. Waves would tower half the height of the mast. Then it would be gone, and we’d wait for the next one. Again and again, the only way to survive. 

For days, it teased me with lightning and silence. I hallucinated voices. Woke up shouting names. My steering cable slipped. The autopilot failed. Solar panels couldn’t keep up. The backup system glitched. 

All the while, squalls came and went like whispers of war.

There was no rhythm. No wind. Then too much.

The Equator

I crossed into the Southern Hemisphere sometime around 2 a.m. Half-asleep, I took a photo of the GPS. No rum, no ceremony. Just me, tangled in my sheets, too tired to be poetic. But something shifted that night. Not on the water. Inside me.

I wasn’t a kid chasing a dream anymore. I was a sailor halfway across the largest body of water on the planet. And I wanted to go home. 

Traditionally, a sailor crossing the equator for the first time is initiated into Neptune’s domain. The transformation from pollywog to shellback is usually marked with ridiculous costumes and ­salt-soaked theatrics. For me, it happened in silence. In the dark. Alone with Kessel and the ghost of every sailor who’d crossed before. That moment meant everything. And nothing. The real ritual was surviving the days before and after.

People ask why I did it solo, and nearly a whole year later, I still don’t have a perfect answer. Maybe it’s because I wanted to see if I could. Maybe I wanted to prove that the years spent bringing Kessel back to life weren’t just about the boat.

Landfall

The last 72 hours were punishing. Wind at 30 knots. Seas building to 15 feet. Kessel screamed through the waves at 8 to 10 knots, surfing down troughs like a creature reborn. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I just held on.

And then, suddenly, we were there.

The dark cliffs of Fatu Hiva rose from the sea like something out of a forgotten myth. The Bay of Virgins opened like arms.

I dropped the hook. The engine cut out.

And for the first time in 23 days, everything was still. I could finally sleep.

People ask what it’s like to cross an ocean alone. I tell them the truth: It’s all of it. It’s the highs that crack your heart wide open and the lows that grind your bones to dust. It’s frying your last egg and swearing at the sky. It’s watching the ­sunrise after a night you thought might never end. It’s rebuilding your autopilot with one hand while clinging to the lifelines with the ­other. It’s talking to your boat like a friend—and sometimes, like a ghost.

The Pacific crossing doesn’t make you better; it makes you real. And that’s enough.

Kessel and I dropped the hook in the lush embrace of the Marquesas Islands. One chapter closed; another began. We were in paradise.

There’s no sugarcoating the challenge of singlehanded passagemaking. But I ­also don’t think it’s possible to describe the beauty, or the absolute elation, that comes with it. It was one of the best trips of my life. Would I do it again? Probably. Would I choose to share it with someone next time? Absolutely.

The completion of this crossing was the beginning of a grand Pacific tour, one filled with new people, new anchorages, love, laughter, and lessons I’ll carry forever. To anyone who feels the call, in whatever form it takes: Go. Do it. You’ll find what you’re seeking. 

Peter Metcalfe is a solo sailor and self-­proclaimed adventure junkie. After ­reaching the Pacific aboard Kessel, he continued sailing in search of wind, landfalls and adrenaline, eventually landing in Brisbane, Australia, where the boat is listed for sale. He is not done sailing but is moving on to bigger opportunities.

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