Looking back on this passage I remember how hard it was to do things in the middle of the ocean, feeling a bit lonely and worried about what might go wrong. Any boat can break. When I sailed on another boat to the Azores we heard a mayday from a brand new French boat on its maiden voyage. Their rudder had fallen out of the bottom of the boat and the crew abandoned it, probably after reading their insurance policy a couple of times. True Blue broke too, despite being a strong, purpose built blue-water boat. Everything that broke was equipment of some kind, and equipment that deteriorates over time.

We spent a lot of time in the Marquesas considering how to change our ways to try to avoid the tough parts of our passage. Based on this and our subsequent experience we made some decisions on how to go about cruising from now on:

- Look to the primary equipment of the boat before anything else – hull, rudder, rig, sails, and to a less extent the engine. We will chose a new boom over a water-maker. Seems obvious, but it is tempting to buy all the ‘must have’ gear and put off pulling the spar, and we are not immune to this.

- Stay with the same sized boat. If we had needed to do the same repair on the typical forty foot sloop with a 55 foot mast it would have been much more dangerous and difficult, if not impossible.

- Replace the rigging wire every 5 years. It is not a very hard or expensive job, just time-consuming.

- Carry spares for each pin and fastener. It is easy to drop them over the side. We also carry three foot lengths of various sizes of threaded rod and lots of nuts. You can make your own bolts by cutting it to length with a hacksaw and putting locknuts on both ends. Not perfect but better than nothing.

- Replace sails regularly, well before they start to weaken and tear or split, and triple sew all seams.

- Use twin jibs downwind. Set up two poles on the mast on tracks as per the Pardys’ advice. Use hank-on sails on the second forestay as a backup to the roller furling genoa. It is hard to take roller furling sails up and down at sea to repair them. I wouldn’t do without the roller reefing, though. It has never failed us.

- Get an SSB. I bought one for the final passage to Australia, when I was single-handing. I never used it on passage. The purpose of the SSB is not to call for help but to talk to your friends, especially the partners who got dragged along on their partner’s (normally the husband’s) dream. A bit of catharsis would have been good for morale. It was good, however, to be forced to make our own decisions and not be tempted to call for help out of anxiety or fatigue. A lot of people make decisions by committee, and in the long run that is a trap. I prefer the freedom of not being expected by anyone to call in or answer the radio.

- Re-power the boat when it needs it. A dependable engine is a great comfort. Ours was a lot of trouble our whole trip, mostly because it was losing compression. We will change to a folding propeller for more speed while sailing. Half a knot over a week is 84 miles more progress. Having fresh bottom paint would have given us another knot easily, and more importantly would have made the boat’s motion easier and reduced the stress on her.

- Maintain the boat better in general. Spend the time and money to make the boat in as-new condition before starting another major voyage. Next time we will do this even if we have to work for a year extra to get the money. This doesn’t mean we might not sail to Asia to do some of the work, but the sailing machine will be in top shape before we leave. I am a bit slack so I will have to pay out more money rather than do all the work myself, but it needs to be done. My current list of repairs and revisions comes out to over $25,000, but at the end of it I will have a boat as capable as any on the market, and better than all but a few.

- Remember we are more fragile than the boat. At no time on our trip were we in serious danger of dying. In the worst case we would have lost our mast and had to limp in a week or two later than we did. Typically our hardships were less daunting following a cup of tea and something to eat. Talking later to other boats we learned that a lot of tears got shed that passage. Crew relations are the most important part of the whole thing, except for maybe not sinking. This is the bit Alison and I have right. In sailing, navigating and operating the boat what I say goes, and Alison does what I ask fast and without debate. For everything else there’s Alison, the Admiral.