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From Dreams to Plans: How to Sail Across the Pacific
Taco Truck social hour 6:30 to 7:30
Talk at 7:30


Have you ever dreamed about sailing across the Pacific – Hawaii, perhaps, or French Polynesia and beyond? The Galapagos, Easter Island and Chile? Or Micronesia, Japan and back to Alaska?

Every Southern California sailor knows that out beyond Catalina, out beyond the Channel Islands, there’s an immense ocean full of life-changing destinations. The Pacific is more than twice the size of the Atlantic and greater than all the Earth’s land masses combined. From space, it is a brilliant blue orb; from the deck of a sailboat, it is an infinity. It contains some 20,000 islands, including some of the most magical and remarkable places and people on Earth.

Humans have sailed in and across the Pacific for tens of thousands of years, including some of the finest navigators ever known. Recently, many more cruisers are taking modern vessels across the Pacific, particularly the well-known Coconut Milk Run through French Polynesia to Tonga, Fiji, the western South Pacific, New Zealand and Australia.

From the Marina del Rey breakwater, all you have to do is set sail… But transpacific crossings have been changing: boat sizes are getting bigger; multihulls are far more common than they used to be; new developments in technology and alternative energy are enabling more complex systems, better communications, more comfortable boats and safer passages. The pandemic changed the Pacific too, and not always for the better.

Find out what the latest transpac trends are, where the routes less traveled could take you and how to turn a dream into a reality at our Friday Night Speaker event on December 6th, when Francis Hawkings will tell stories and answer questions on sailing across the Pacific.

Francis has been sailing his Tradewind 35 Plainsong in the Pacific since 1993, including voyages to Hawaii, French Polynesia, Easter Island, Chile, Cape Horn, Japan and the Phi