Hitchhiking the high seas of the Pacific as volunteer crew is an adventurous and inexpensive way to see the world.
We sailed into the Kingdom of Tonga at dawn after five days at sea. The verdant shores looked like broccoli tops through the wet haze. Huddled under my rain jacket, I stood at the helm of Compass Rosey, a 43-foot Polaris older than me, with my Nescafé. I breathed a sigh of relief when the hills blocked the ocean swells. During my watch, our speed had dropped to 3 knots in the light air, making the broadside rollers particularly nauseating as we pitchpoled between them.
During the past six months, my husband, Rob, and I had bobbed for 33 days from Panama to the Marquesas, and crewed on several multiday jaunts between anchorages in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands. You’d think that after crossing 4,500 miles of the world’s largest ocean, I would be a seasoned bluewater salt, right? Immune to rollicky seas, with legs of steel? Happily singing chanteys while munching on canned veggies and soggy crackers?
Nope. This passage had been just as uncomfortable and monotonous as the last several.
Sipping my tepid coffee, I reminded myself why I’d upended my life at age 33 to hitch rides across the Pacific. To see the infinite blues of the sea and sky. To marvel at the fact that two hunks of canvas can cart us across hundreds of miles. To embrace the solitude of gliding alone across watery wilderness. To take pride in managing my mind, body and boat at sea. And the cherry on top, the real reason I’d signed up for all these ocean crossings: to visit crystal-clear lagoons and postcard-perfect islands.
Snorkeling and exploring South Pacific islands was the reward for long sails
We’d made it to the reward again. As the water under our keel turned from cerulean to jade, the boredom and discomfort from the passage evaporated.
I steered us toward the biggest horseshoe-shaped island in the clump of 30-odd specks that comprise Vava’u, one of four island groups in Tonga. In the center of the horseshoe sat Neiafu, the second-largest town in the kingdom, with 3,900 people. All told, Tonga’s islands take up nearly as much ocean real estate as the Caribbean islands but have a tiny fraction of the Caribbean’s humans. I grinned, excited to explore the deserted beaches and miles of teeming reefs.
I set our autopilot and roused the rest of the crew. Our captain, Mark, called the customs office on the VHF radio to announce our arrival, and then perused the charts for moorings. Rob groaned as he hefted himself into the cockpit, draping himself on the bench beside me. He suffered from seasickness, so the slow rocking last night hadn’t done him any favors.
“Smell that?” I asked as I gulped in an exaggerated breath. The pungent scent of flowers and fruit was striking after days offshore, both pleasing and overwhelming. “Dirt, baby.”
“Mangoes, here we come!” Rob said with a fist pump. It had been a month since we’d been anywhere with enough soil to grow food.
Compass Rosey was the fifth boat we’d crewed aboard since leaving our home in Montana. Originally, as we plotted our midlife escape from landlocked 9-to-5 jobs, Rob and I had dreamed of buying our own boat to sail the South Pacific. We’d created budgets and voyaging itineraries, researched trade winds and provisioning ideas, and saved as much money as we could.
One year into planning and scrimping, we realized that it would take many more years to make our dream a reality—unless we used someone else’s boat.