Return to Palmyra — Same Boat, Different Feel
There are certain places in the world that refuse to stay in the past. You carry them with you, quietly at first, until eventually they demand a return. For me, that place has always been Palmyra Atoll. Sailing there again, years after my first landfall, was a return to a measuring stick, the place that defined what “pristine” meant before I had the miles to truly understand the word. And this time, I wasn’t alone.
There’s something strange about stepping back onto a boat that used to be yours. A boat you lived on, depended on, trusted across oceans through fear, failure, growth and triumph. A boat that helped define who you became. Being on Tiama again with Jenny was a bit like hanging with an ex and her new lover, which is strangely how Jenny and I met.
I had spent nearly five years and more than 50,000 miles solo circumnavigating aboard Tiama. I knew every locker, every creak, every quirk. I could find tools in the dark, feel when something was off. Stepping aboard again, I felt like a guest in my own past. Jenny had made the boat her own. Lines led slightly differently, gear organized with her logic, not mine. The feel was familiar, but not identical, like hearing a favorite song played on a different instrument.
For this trip, I would be captain again. But it was her boat, her journey, her dream taking shape. That dynamic somewhere between teacher and passenger, between past and present, set the tone for everything that followed.
Preparing for a 1,000-mile offshore passage is, in theory, a big deal. In practice, after enough miles, it becomes routine. We prepared methodically: safety gear checked and rechecked, rigging inspected, systems tested. Food provisioned, and one last pilgrimage to Costco for the kind of haul that only makes sense when you’re about to disappear into the Pacific for 10 days.
Jenny’s nervousness was visible, though she tried to hide it. I understood it completely. The first time I made this exact passage, it was the beginning of everything. My first true offshore leg of what would become a solo circumnavigation. The ocean felt impossibly large. Every decision carried weight. Every mile was earned.
Now, a decade later, I had the opposite problem. Experience dulls fear. A thousand miles had become, in my mind, almost trivial. Not easy, but a familiar routine. To me, this was a grocery run. To Jenny, it was the longest passage she had done, multiplied by 10. Somewhere between those two perspectives, our journey began.