One Ocean is currently 340 nautical miles off the coast of Chile. We left Callao on Wednesday evening and—somehow—it’s already Sunday. We’ve been averaging 120 nautical miles a day heading south. Conditions have been kind, and once we cleared 150 miles offshore, it felt as though we were completely alone—like we had the ocean to ourselves.
Alone, that is, except for one fishing boat.
One.
Single.
Fishing.
Boat.
More on that in a moment.
I thought it might be interesting to give readers a glimpse into a day in the life aboard One Ocean, and January 24 turned out to be a memorable one.
1200–1500 | My watch
Mark wrote about one of the events of this day in his most recent blog, but the headline moment came when we were 340 miles offshore and the bilge pump alarm went off.
Mark was napping. Jon was in his bunk. Tess was up. It had been a fairly relaxed day until the unfamiliar sound shattered the calm.
When I opened the salon basement compartment, water was gushing in—already above the level of some of our survival suits.
You might think fear would be the dominant emotion in that moment.
It wasn’t.
It was pure task mode.
Everyone moved. Everyone focused. No panic—just action.
Mark solved the mystery quickly, using the time-honored sailor’s method: he tasted the water.
Fresh.
Crisis downgraded.
Jon discovered that a hose connection to our water pump had come loose and was gushing water. Once the connection was secured and the bilge pumped dry, I had a moment to feel deeply grateful—for the tracker following our progress, for the Garmin onboard, for the fact that people knew exactly where we were.
But most of all, I was grateful for a crew that meets potential catastrophe with calm competence.
For more detail on this moment, Mark tells the story beautifully in his blog, A Point in Time.
1500–1800 | Jon’s watch
Just before dinner, I was finishing yoga on the aft deck when Jon spotted a fishing boat—the only one we’d seen in days. He thought it might be heading toward us.
It definitely was.
There’s something deeply unsettling about a boat aiming straight at you when you’re the only two vessels for hundreds of miles. We’ve had plenty of “lookie-loo” fishing boats come uncomfortably close to One Ocean, so we assumed this would be the same.
The boat passed within a hundred yards before finally altering course and motoring away.
1800–2200 | Tess’s watch
While Tess finished making dinner, Jon and I took turns on watch. Not long after—just as I had dished up my dinner, because timing is everything—I noticed our speed drop from 6 knots to under 4.
I checked both our GPS speed (speed over ground) and our water speed (speed through the water). Normally, if your GPS speed is higher, you’ve got current helping you. If it’s lower, you’re fighting it.
But this time, they matched.
No current.
Puzzling.
Jon and I kicked around theories, none of them particularly satisfying.
Then Jon looked astern.
What he first thought were dolphins swimming toward the boat turned out to be something far less charming: a fishing line, complete with floats, bobbing cheerfully behind us.
I put the engine in neutral immediately, convinced the prop was already doomed. The water was clear enough to see the line trailing under the hull.
Mark handed Jon a pike pole we once used in the Arctic to push off ice floes.
Jon hauled the line up and cut it free.
The ends drifted away.
It wasn’t wrapped on the prop.
Somehow, we had managed to snag the one fishing line in the middle of the Pacific. Well...not the only fishing net...as we know there are loads of it littering the ocean.
2000–2400 | My watch overlaps with Tess
I didn’t nap before my 8 p.m. watch—my adrenaline was still running a little high. Instead, I watched a gorgeous Chilean sunset.
Yes, we were officially in Chilean waters.
As darkness settled in, the watch was fairly uneventful, aside from constantly shifting winds and the ongoing debate about which tack would make for a more comfortable ride. Everything feels lumpier and bumpier at night.
While Tess and I played cards, we heard a massive thump against one of the salon windows.
Then another.
We quickly discovered we were being pelted with fish.
Flying fish—the size of my forearms—were slamming into One Ocean’s windows. The sound was deeply unsettling: thwap, followed by frantic fluttering on the roof.
0400–0800 | Morning watch
I woke from a very short, very deep sleep. My watch overlapped with Tess again, and she was sitting quietly in the dark salon.
When One Ocean is on a good course, Tess and I work like clockwork—trading half-hour stints of sleep and watch, exchanging quick updates, rotating between sleep and wake with practiced ease.
I took the first half hour and stepped into the cockpit.
I was instantly hit with a smell that can only be described as weaponized seafood.
I shone my Petzl headlamp across the deck.
It was littered with gray squid.
Their large, dark eyes stared back at me.
As dawn broke through the peaked clouds, it became clear we had enough squid on deck to host a respectable calamari appetizer.
Unfortunately, we also had the smell.
That smell lingers. It embeds itself in everything. Even after scraping dried squid off the deck—leaving behind little inked body outlines like a crime scene—we couldn’t escape it.
Their inky silhouettes decorated our windows.
The aroma haunted us.
Each morning began with the ritual cleanup of stiff flying fish and sticky, dried squid.
Yes. It’s true.
I am developing a complex about calamari.