WKP's South Pacific Adventure

You can follow Willy's adventure (detailed below) on his blog:
http://willieinthesouthpacific.wordpress.com
For easy future access you could just hit the same button/link that I've posted at the bottom of the blog intro above.

Here's Willy...

I am going for a world record in getting time off from being a responsible parent and dumping everything on my wife in the interim. I like to think of it as paving the way for more timid husbands to stretch the boundaries; trailblazing if you like.

The truth is that I would really like to take Sarah, but she is not into crossing oceans, yet...   
Those of you who know her, please look after her while I am gone.

My next big adventure is to sail half way across the Pacific Ocean crewing on a 53 foot blue water ketch. The boat is an Amel Super Maramu. There will be four of us on board. The owners, who sailed the boat to the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal last year, myself and one other crew, who I have yet to meet. I fly to meet everyone in Panama and we start by transiting the Panama Canal to the pacific side. Once we provision the yacht we will do a shakedown and training cruise to the Las Perlas Islands. The Las Perlas Islands are the little group of islands in what looks like a bay surrounding Panama before you reach out into the Pacific proper. 
Assuming everything is in working order, we will then set off for the Galapagos islands about a thousand miles away. The timeline is about a week to get through the Canal, a week to provision the yacht on the Panama side, a week shake down cruise to Las Perlas islands and then a further week at sea non-stop to the Galapagos. More on subsequent plans in later posts but overall the aim is to get to Tahiti and fly back by mid/late June. The yacht and the rest of the crew are carrying on to New Zealand but my licence from the family rightly does not extend that far. 
Wish me luck and look out for subsequent posts.