Jadamama - Jadamama blog- Back to life...back to reality

So I left the lads facing into the ‘big jump’ across to French Polynesia, and I can honestly say I never wanted more than to just go with them. I flew to Guayaquil, in Ecuador, on to Madrid and back to a (remarkably dry and warm) Dublin. But sadly I my adventure had to conclude in Galapagos.

It’s funny coming back everyone asks ‘how was it?’, ‘it must have been the trip of a lifetime?’, and the only honest answer is – yes it absolutely was! It really was everything I could have imagined and more.

Galapagos was spectacular. From about 150 miles out, it was a breath-taking blur of sea-life - sailing through pods of pilot whales, to enormous sperm/Brydes whales, to playful dolphins at the bow. Red-footed boobies hitching a ride on the boat, to swimming through shoal after shoal of fish, snorkelling with turtles and diving with sharks. The sea lions are everywhere. The pups are so playful and agile in the water, twisting and turning at angles you wouldn’t believe. The landscape is pre-historic, and full of seeming incongruence: volcanoes, obsidian rock, pristine beaches and very little inhabitation outside of the towns, but then so full of life. The circling frigate birds, giant tortoises and iguanas only add to the Jurassic feel. It’s their world and we are only observers.

I had never done any offshore sailing before this trip and the feeling of connectedness is something that will stay with me forever. The nightscapes – the magic that no camera (I own at least) will ever come close to capturing. The sunrises… the sunsets. The stimulating debates and discussions that only killing a couple of hours in the middle of the night on watch can generate. And the craic – my time with the lads on Jadamama was just great fun.

There is something fantastic in arriving to a new country by boat, raising the anchor, setting sail (usually in the middle of the night as is Moss’s preference!) and landing at dawn on another island or another country. The community in the Arc is really special. It was so lovely meeting such a diverse range of people from so many different walks of life, but with that same common goal and purpose.

As I sit at my desk in work back in Dublin, I am fondly thinking of my adventure: from the Pitons of Saint Lucia, to the jungles of Tayrona, from the tropical San Blas islands to the engineering feat of the Panama canal. I am enormously grateful for the experience and the time I had on Jadamama.

Mícheál