The world’s largest ocean, endless route options for three to four weeks at sea, and a healthy dose of weather unknowns: around twenty Pacific Puddle Jump 2026 crews share their transpacific experience. Whether they sailed via the Marquesas or the Gambier, in a monohull or a multihull, shorthanded or with a fuller crew, their feedback is already full of lessons — and their first impressions of Polynesia deeply moving.

The great majority of the Pacific Puddle Jump fleet, whom we surveyed by questionnaire, once again chose to aim for the Marquesas this year, with more than three-quarters of the crews dropping anchor at Hiva Oa, Nuku Hiva, Fatu Hiva or elsewhere in the archipelago. It’s a more downwind, more direct route — and it remains the rally’s historic destination. Jen Danger, sailing two-handed aboard the Excess 13 Karma, for instance, reported a less punishing passage than the crews who went via the Gambier, despite conditions that were at times strong: “The Parasailor (spinnaker) behaved beautifully in the downwind swell. It was very comfortable.” The crew most likely didn’t have it set when it came to facing squalls of more than 40 knots on the approach to Fatu Hiva.

Coby Kritzinger, aboard Takaya 6, an Excess 14, confirms this downwind character typical of the Marquesas route, with a south-easterly wind of around 15 knots for most of the crossing — conditions far more favourable than those met by the boats that went via the Gambier. Tim Cooper, on Vaihere, a Nautitech Open 44, made the same observation, reaching Hiva Oa in just 18 days with a steady dead-downwind breeze at 160 degrees; he particularly appreciated “how easy it was to sail dead downwind” with his Parasailor.

Among the monohulls, the feedback confirms that same easy broad-reaching trend: Greg Torok, on his KP46 Kaliyah, sailed in 15 knots of wind on a reach all the way to Hiva Oa, while Brendan Greetham, on the Hollman 52 Eos, made the most of a sustained east-south-easterly trade wind of 18 to 20 knots to Nuku Hiva. Both crews also had their share of cross swell and heavy weather, a reminder that the Marquesas route is no easy cruise all the same. Liliane Foederer, sailing two-handed on Fulmo, a Hallberg-Rassy 42, reached Nuku Hiva from Chiapas (Mexico) after 36 days at sea, a passage marked by repeated squalls — which leads her to advise, for weather tracking: “Turn on Starlink and don’t switch it off for the whole crossing!”

Daring the Gambiers

This season, a handful of crews made the rarer choice of routing via the Gambier archipelago. “It’s a more southerly route; you head toward slightly colder weather, with bigger swell, stronger wind, and more on the beam than downwind,” sums up David Allouch, organiser of the Pacific Puddle Jump, who followed several boats on this less-travelled path this year. The first to commit to it was Kookabura, an Outremer 45, which reached the Gambier in just 14 days — an average of more than 200 miles a day, a remarkable performance on this route. The crew’s only gripe: a bent bowsprit fitting, after holding the Code Zero on the same tack for two weeks.

Pélican, an Excess 14, also took the Gambier route, confirming multihulls’ growing appeal for this more southerly destination (Kasafari, an Excess 11, headed instead for the Marquesas) — even if Lise and Nicolas Plantey, aboard Boudu, a Nautitech Open 40, are quick to point out that the route is no stroll. Having set out from Panama toward Mangareva, they met tough conditions at times over the 3,900 miles covered from Panama: “Three metres of short swell (6 seconds) at 30 degrees off our course, combined with a wind sea of 3.5 to 4 metres at 90 degrees (5 seconds), with 30 knots of wind.”

Nicolas Chable de La Héronnière, aboard Pélican, an Excess 14, with his wife and their two young children, met fairly similar conditions, describing “a generally rough sea, with beam waves coming from different angles.” A route, then, clearly more demanding than the Marquesas — but one that did nothing to blunt these crews’ performance.

Performance and sail choices: what the two routes reveal

While the Gambier route forces a less downwind angle and a rougher sea state, it takes nothing away from speed — quite the opposite. The season’s record belongs, without question, to Kookabura and its 200 miles a day; Pélican is right behind, with 2,964 theoretical miles (3,076 in reality) covered in 18 days and 12 hours, and a peak of 200 miles in 24 hours. Boudu also posts 205 miles on its best day. Toward the Marquesas, crews didn’t hang about either: Coby Kritzinger (Takaya 6) claims 196 miles in 24 hours and Tim Cooper (Vaihere) 190 miles.

The choice of headsails tells a story consistent with these two sailing profiles. On the beamier Gambier route, crews bet on versatility. Nicolas Chable de La Héronnière (Pélican) carried a multipurpose code sail, “which works well when the wind isn’t too strong,” while Boudu had a North Sails Helix gennaker, flown for only five days across the whole crossing because it was “limited relative to the strength of the wind” and had a narrower usable wind-angle range.

On the Marquesas route, broad-reaching and downwind sails largely dominated: Parasailor for Karma and Vaihere, plus a multipurpose code for Takaya 6, whose skipper Coby Kritzinger notes that “without it, we’d have been much slower!” Several crews stayed faithful to the plain genoa, like Chris Fratini on Kehaulani or Liliane Foederer who, on their Caliber 40 Fulmo, praises its effectiveness because it is “big enough to catch the wind well and easy to handle.” While the engine sometimes had to be fired up, the figures are surprisingly close between the two routes: 15 hours for Boudu as for Pélican on the Gambier side, versus more variable use on the Marquesas side depending on the calm spells — from 0 hours for Vaihere to more than 90 hours for Kaliyah.

First Polynesian sensations

This is surely where the two routes come closest: the relative hardship of the crossing is quickly erased by the mood of the arrival. In the Gambier, the emotion owes as much to the scenery as to the welcome. Nicolas Chable de La Héronnière recalls with feeling “arriving off the Gambier pass at sunrise, in the first light of day,” and praises the warmth of the local welcome. Lise and Nicolas Plantey, for their part, above all remember the utter change of scenery: “Amazed by the vegetation of the Gambier, that mix of palm trees and conifers rising out of nowhere… Magical!”

In the Marquesas, the sensory shock is just as powerful but takes another form: the one that runs unanimously through the accounts — the smell of land found again after weeks of ocean. Brendan Greetham (Eos) evokes “an incredibly intense smell of earth at Nuku Hiva,” Liliane Foederer (Fulmo) “the wonderful smell of earth and vegetation, even before we arrived.” Chris Fratini (Kehaulani) sums up the archipelago in a few words that ring out like a declaration of love: “Magnificent, wild, fragrant, untamed.”

PPJ key figures

26.3 days. That’s the average crossing time of the 15 PPJ participants who fully completed our survey. Although the advocates of the southern Gambier route sailed on average 500 nautical miles more than those aiming for the Marquesas, the average crossing time is the same. A tie that owes a great deal to the excellent 6.9-knot average posted by the Excess 14 Pélican.

Route	Avg. distance	Avg. duration	Avg. speed	Boats
Gambier	3,712 NM	26.3 days	6.1 knots	3
Marquesas	3,252 NM	26.3 days	5.2 knots	12

Survey results	Value
Monohulls / Multihulls (%)	66.7 / 33.3
Average speed (knots)	5.4
Average speed — monohulls (knots)	5.1
Average speed — multihulls (knots)	5.9
Average duration — monohulls (days)	27.6
Average duration — multihulls (days)	23.7
Average number of crew	3.1