[tevake]

Thanks for posting that "realities of boat life ". Video, Jolly.
Those folks seemed to be headed for a crash course in the demands sailing / cruising.
And yet they are now 1/3 of the way around the world. The luck of the innocent I guess.
Buy the boat, take a five day course, head out. Yikes!

I spent years in preparation for sailing across the pacific and still felt really cautious on my first passages.

The Pacific Ocean can get rough at times, especially in the southern ocean, where storms can travel completely around the world unimpeded by land, building in intensity as they roll along.

It's big and has three active hurricane zones. Large swells can radiate across the pacific from many directions.

I'll share a sea story with ya.
On our first trip out of New Zealand on Tevake, heading for Tonga, we narrowly missed being caught up in an extreme out of season storm ( became called the Queen's Birthday Storm) that rolled over a whole fleet of cruising boats doing a rally to Tonga. Many boats were damaged, crews were injured, some boats were lost with all of their crews. Even ships that diverted to offer aid were damaged. This was a whopper of a storm with hurricane strength winds at times.

As I said we narrowly missed this storm as we had departed two days ahead of the rally boats. And we're making pretty good speed which carried us clear of the dangerous parts of this event. Whew, we really caught a break on that one.

But a close brush with that sort of dangerous out of season storm does give one cause for ongoing concern.

On two other trips out of N Z. Heading eastward, so requiring southern routes for favorable winds, also brought brushes with big weather systems and attendant giant swells. It's routenly rowdy down there.
They don't call it the roaring 40s and furious 50s for nothing.

Cheers Richard

Ps. In thinking about it later, I may have shared that story here before, sorry.