Apia: Lot's wife

        A broken Dartington crystal glass discovered last evening is perhaps the last of the damage from a wave that exploded onto and into GANNET last Thursday, 350 miles north of here, and for a few seconds, in which time slowed almost to a stop, held us in the balance.

        The immediate damage from the wave was a tiller pilot and interruption of solar charging; but I’ve continued to discover more daily.  A pair of shoes.  The LuminAID light.  A cracked headlamp.  A bar of soap.  A measuring cup I inelegantly call the piss pot.

        Not all passages are a pleasure.  This one was not.  Hot, wet and if not unexpectedly slow—we were crossing wind systems, not running with them—then certainly not fast.  We averaged six knots for only one three day period; and though we didn’t ever come to a complete stop, we had four days of less than 100 miles, not including the first and last partial days.   Curiously when I added up the daily runs a few minutes ago I discovered that we sailed 2266 miles, which is only six more than the 2260 distance between Honolulu and Apia waypoints.

        The slowest we went was not in the Convergence Zone, but the second day out when we made only 8.2 miles in six hours between 1200 and 1800.  

        My memory is that an object casts a wind shadow eleven times its height.  The island of Hawaii is roughly three miles high and so should have a wind shadow of thirty-three miles.  We were more than a hundred miles west of Hawaii, but I hypothesize that the island was still disturbing our wind which remained erratic until we reached the latitude of Hawaii’s southern coast and the trades filled in.

        I had not realized how heading to Hawaii would change the wind angles later.  Only rarely from Honolulu to Apia was the wind aft of the beam, and usually it was ahead of it.  A lot of water came aboard.  A lot poured over me.  A lot of clothes were so soaked I just took them off and threw them into the sea.  This in combination with GANNET’s cabin becoming an oven, meant that I have more salt water boils than Job and, to continue Biblically,  became from sea and sweat a pillar of salt without even the compensation of a momentary glance back at Sodom. 

        For those crossing the Pacific from North America, it is far better to head south for the Marquesas from where the wind will be well aft until they leave the tropics.

        Damage from a cyclone is still being repaired in Apia and, disappointingly, the marina has no showers.  That is what I was looking forward to most.  I did take a long solar shower in the cockpit yesterday, perhaps providing incidental entertainment to patrons of a nearby restaurant.  I was discreet; and anyone who wants to perve  on this old man is welcome to.  But the salt had to come off.  The spectacle will be repeated daily. 

        Early in the passage I made the transition from my usual starboard pipe berth, which was to leeward on this passage, to port.  It was easier than I expected, even moving the Avon RedStart.  But then, one afternoon while standing in the companionway I idly removed the Velcro I had put there to hold the failed cover and learned that the problem with the companionway hatch has been me.   With the Velcro off, I saw that I had blocked drains on each side of the hatch.  With them uncovered, the hatch is not deficient.  It is excellent.  Many subsequent waves broke over the hatch and the water drained harmlessly away.

        What I was thinking when I applied the Velcro, if anything, I don’t recall.  GANNET did not take many waves over the deck on Lake Michigan or San Diego.  

        The sailing I enjoyed most on this passage was one night in the Convergence Zone when the wind went north.  I was already in my berth when I heard the sails slatting, went on deck, furled the jib and eased the main, then went back below, where I lay for twenty minutes knowing that the asymmetrical was the right sail before I got up and set it.  This is something I never would have done at night before asymmetricals and gennaker furling gear.   Once up the sail moved us gracefully at five knots in about that much wind all night, until just before dawn the wind backed and I had to furl and lower it.

        I spent most of yesterday dealing with officials.  Today I’ll walk around and see what I can discover.

        Just before our first sunset about thirty-five miles south of Honolulu, a Navy ship with number 70 painted on its bow steamed toward GANNET at high speed.  As it neared I got the handheld VHF and called them.

“Naval Vessel 70.  This is the sailboat you are approaching.  Do you want something?”

“This is Naval Vessel 70.  No, sir.  We just saw this rather small boat some distance from shore and wanted to be certain you are all right.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine.  I’ve cleared for Apia, Samoa and am slowly sailing that way.”

“Very good, sir.  This is Naval Vessel 70 out.  Standing by on 16.”

“This is GANNET out.”

        I did appreciate their coming over to check on what is a very small vessel unusually far from shore, but not for her.  That was professional and humane even though in this instance unnecessary.

        Typing this reminds me that doing things in port is so easy it hardly seems sporting.

        Samoa has moved itself across the Dateline.  Therefore I am now a day ahead of the U.S. 

Honolulu: bumf; second verse

        I spent two hours and walked four miles this morning getting a worthless piece of paper.  The time was not all wasted.  I enjoyed the walk, my last for the next few weeks.

        Bumf is a British expression for useless paperwork.

        This particular specimen, an outward clearance, is in no way a result of U.S. bureaucracy, which does not require outward clearance of U.S. owned yachts.  An increasing number of other countries are requiring such clearance anyway.  This is foreign bumf.

        I also sent an email to a Samoan government agency advising them of my projected arrival about July 21.  Or I think I did.

        Sometimes I am asked what changes I have noticed in the forty years I have been sailing the world.

        The first is anecdotal, but I am with those who believe the climate is changing, that traditional weather patterns and pilot charts are less reliable, and that events that were viewed as aberrant have become much more common.

        The change that unquestionably can be quantified is that there are a lot more rules and regulations, all without any redeeming value.  I like to avoid hassles, so I do my best to comply with them.  But they are abhorrent.

———

        GANNET is for me a new song.  We are about to sing verse two.

        The rhumb line distance from Honolulu to Apia is 2261 nautical miles, not much more than from San Diego to Hilo.   However this passage, crossing the Equator and the doldrums, is more difficult to predict.

        My inclination is to keep east of the rhumb line until I reach the doldrums in order to have a better wind angle in the southeast trades; but the weather map last night showed east wind, both north and south of the Equator, and therefore no reason not to sail the direct course.

        I will still probably try to keep east, but will sail whatever angle drives GANNET best.

        My estimate is that the passage will take three weeks, but that could be significantly off, fast or slow.

        The Yellowbrick is again active.

        The tracking page is:  http://my.yb.tl/gannet I expect to be underway by 10 a.m. tomorrow, so you should see movement by 0000 UCT Wednesday.

        I wish you joy.

Honolulu: passage mode; between passages; thanks to Waikiki Yacht Club

        GANNET has been returned to passage mode.  It took about an hour and a half this afternoon, including filling and stowing three water jerry cans.  I have yet to touch the fourth which is aft beside the starboard quarter berth and still filled with San Diego water.  I will be sleeping on the starboard pipe berth tonight rather than on the v-berth forward.  

        There are other differences between passage and harbor modes.

        In harbor:

            I listen to music on the Bose speaker; at sea on the waterproof EcoXgear or FoxLv2.

            I usually have the hatches open.

            I shower and use toilet facilities ashore.

            I eat yoghurt.  (If I had a boat with refrigeration, my provisioning would be even simpler:  one yoghurt per day for lunch.)

            I often eat a meal ashore or buy a salad to take back to GANNET, and in late afternoon often have a cold drink from the yacht club bar rather than an air temperature one on GANNET.  (I am, in fact, doing so now.)

            I have been able to see some of the World Cup, but will probably sail before the U.S./Belgium match on Tuesday.

            I drink from crystal rather than plastic.

———

        The sail from San Diego to Honolulu via Hilo was the least expensive I can recall:  $52 to repair the asymmetrical.  I did spend almost a thousand dollars to have running backstays installed and water diverting vinyl curtains made; but those were additions not repairs.  The only damage was to the asymmetrical.

        I didn’t even have to do much maintenance before sailing on.

        GANNET has slab reefing and a loose footed mainsail, so the leech reefing lines are tied around the boom with bowlines.  During the passage these flopped around and twice came untied.  Not when a  reef was in and they were under tension.  So in Hilo I seized the bitter ends of the lines to the standing part so that can’t happen.

        I noticed that the starboard Harken 20.2 winch turns more stiffly than the port one, so in Hilo I disassembled and lubricated both winches.  The starboard one twice.  It still is stiffer than the port, but functions as it should.

        During my time in Honolulu I oiled GANNET’s wood, including the tiller, with Deks Olje and polished some stainless steel that isn’t quite stainless, particularly where shroud wires enter swaged end fittings.

        I’ve also made some changes in stowage.

        I installed the hardware for the vinyl curtains, though further adjustment may be required as I go along.

        Other than reprovisioning, that’s it.

        The little sloop has sailed 2500 miles with graceful ease.

——

        Waikiki Yacht Club has been an unexpected and serendipitous stop for me.

        Members and staff have treated me with great hospitality.

        The facilities are first-rate, as are the docks, which are the nicest I can recall.

        For me, provisioning one back pack at a time, the club is very convenient with a huge shopping center, including supermarket, just across the street.

        I thank everyone at the club, as well as a sailor on neighboring Kauai, Doug Tiffany, who was instrumental in making this happen.

Honolulu: a productive day

        Above is Sam the rigger.  Not perhaps his best angle, but one I was very glad to see.  

  He was due to work tomorrow, but had time today; and GANNET now has running backstays.  Excellent.  More than excellent.  Excellent+.

        In this photo, from the left you have the adjustable backstay, the main halyard, and the two white lines are the running backstays, intended not to support the mast, though they could, but to be tensioned just enough to keep the mast from pumping.

On the forward side of the mast at the level of the runners, is the spinnaker halyard.  And then the headstay with furling jib and the upper shrouds.

        Here are the runners at deck level.  Only the windward one would be set, and then only when needed.  I will have to experiment with the best point for the blocks to avoid chaff against the lifelines.

I also had an email from the sailmaker that he has finished his work and will deliver to GANNET tomorrow morning.

And I had my laundry done.  

I’m not sure what a small Chinese lady put in the machines, but some of my passage clothes now smell wonderful.

        The result of all this is that my departure for Apia next Tuesday, July 1, which is the date for which I have been aiming, looks as certain as anything in life can be.

Honolulu: the voyage can now continue; me; present position; when

    When I reached Hilo I had only two moderate measures of Laphroaig left.  I drank one not to celebrate the end of the passage from San Diego, but to celebrate the passage itself; and the other when I arrived here.

    Not finding Laphroaig in any local shops, I went online and found a source a mile away.  I walked there this morning and bought their last two bottles.

    Ten year Laphroaig is expensive here, as are many things.  I paid $72 for a bottle that in Evanston costs $45.  The flatlands have their advantages.

    The voyage can now continue.

———

    On the advice of Steve Earley, a culinary expert who sides as a professional photographer and open boat sailor, I traded in my GoPro 2 for a GoPro3+Black  Edition. 

    I’ve had the 2 for a while and its clunky operation and menu system have been insuperable barriers.  Steve told me that the 3+ linked to and controlled by an iPhone/iPad app is a joy, and he is right.

    I set the 3+ on a rail mount on GANNET’s stern to take time lapse photos at 60 second intervals, went about my business and then walked to the yacht club bar to have a martini and watch the deciding game of the college world series.

    When I came back I found that it had taken more than 100 photos before the battery ran down.  This is one of them.

    The camera angle is extremely wide which induces distortions.  GANNET’s tiller is not that curved.  However, I’m going to try to do this at sea from time to time.  Some of you, including Steve, have requested more photos of me while sailing.  We’ll see what we get.

———

    I deactivated the Yellowbrick when I arrived at the Waikiki Yacht Club without realizing that I had done so before it had transmitted my final location.  The last position the tracking map showed was at 8 a.m. local time just as I was about to turn into the entrance channel. 

    This afternoon I activated the Yellowbrick and sent a manual update which is now on the tracking map if you want to see where GANNET presently is.

    I have again deactivated.

———

    Several have asked when I am moving on.

    Unfortunately that is not in my control.

    For the past few days I have been a beast of burden, carrying backpacks of supplies, mostly cans, bottles and cartons, back to GANNET.  A friend noted that I have only a small back pack.  When it is full, it is more than heavy enough as my back can testify.

    I’m through.  Except for a few minor items and those things I’ll buy fresh the last day, GANNET is reprovisioned.

    I’m waiting for the sailmaker and the rigger.  When they do their work, I’ll go.  And if they don’t do it soon, I may go anyway.

    A reader sent me a link to an online discussion of this voyage.

    One man wrote, “I’ll bet he bails in Hawaii."
    I’m not going to, but I must confess to having considered responding, “You lose.  Send me all your money.”

Honolulu: free light; hardcore; more passage photos

    The above LuminAID has become one of my two primary cabin lights.  The other is a Navisafe Navilight 360°. 

    Because all electricity on GANNET comes from solar panels, all light could be considered free; but the Navisafe runs off three AAA batteries that require recharging.  The LuminAID has solar charging built-in.  Part of my morning routine is to fold it up and place it in the sun. 

In the late afternoon I bring it in.  And in the evening, endlessly renewable light.

    The LuminAID has two brightness levels.  I always use the higher, which is still soft, but adequate in GANNET’s Great Cabin for most purposes.   I hang it from the u-bolt in the sliding companionway hatch.  If I need brighter, I turn on the Navisafe.

    On GANNET two of the LuminAID’s greatest attributes are that it folds down to the size of a playing card and it is waterproof.

    I thank Steve Earley for bringing it to my attention.

———

    Yesterday I bussed to West Marine.

    At the cash register a very pretty young woman glanced down at the debit card receipt, looked up and gave me a big smile.

    “I know you from the magazines.  You’re the hardcore dude.”

    First “beast” and now “hardcore dude.”

    Hawaii has been kind to me.

———

    I’ve uploaded photos to a Dropbox folder to send them to CRUISING WORLD.  However, you are welcome to view them, too, if you wish.  
    The link is:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wbodq7751cdemg8/AADzHlrtloeo0DBWCSpVteura

Honolulu: the great and the small; an open boat around Britain; not bad

        On the Tuesday morning I was in Hilo, I looked up from Central and saw a wall outside the companionway.  Considering that we were on a mooring well away from shore, this was disconcerting.  I pulled myself up and discovered a cruise ship, THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA, moving slowly toward the pier.

        That evening as I enjoyed a libation I watched her head back to sea.  And that I thought was that, until a few days ago I received an email from David—a lot of you people have the same name.  I don’t know how you tell yourselves apart—who is half owner of a Moore 24 named GRUNTLED, as well as second captain on THE SPIRIT OF AMERCA, and recognized a sister ship in GANNET, tracked me down, and offered a tour of the ship when she was in Honolulu last Saturday.  I have never been on a cruise ship and have never met a Moore sailor I didn’t like, so gladly accepted.

        From a GANNET eye view, THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA looked big.  From her upper decks, she looks even bigger.  This is like being on top of a 14 or 15 story building.  I’d rather have a parachute than a life jacket.  The water is a long, long way below.

        If I remember correctly, roughly 90% of the 900 crew are involved with passenger services.  Less than a hundred run the ship.

        The passenger amenities are luxurious.  Theaters, restaurants, swimming pools, state rooms, a wood paneled library that could be in an English country house.  But, naturally, it was the workings of the ship that most interested me.  Up in the bow, winches drawing dock lines the size of my arm bow tight and an anchor chain one length of which would be an anchor for GANNET.

        The bridge is huge.  The wheel unexpectedly small, smaller than that on your car.  But then no one is going to muscle this floating city around, so why not?  And, in fact, the ship is really steered by joy sticks.

        Now I’m not sure I got this right, but I think the two propellers are electric powered, with the electricity coming from diesel generators.  

        There is no reverse gear, but the entire underwater assemblies can pivot 180°, providing equal thrust forward and astern.

        There are also three 13,000 hp bow thrusters.

        Wind and current can complicate docking with the hundreds of stateroom balconies becoming sails catching wind.

        I was treated with great kindness by everyone I met, and very much enjoyed seeing this other way of the sea.

        Among the things some of the ship’s officers and I have in common is that we eat the same oatmeal breakfast each morning.  I do think that they cheat and heat the water, though.  And I’m reasonably confident that they don’t lean over and wash their bowls in the sea.

        Thank you David, Kjell, and everyone I met aboard THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA.

———

        Bill in England sent me some links about two men attempting to break the record for sailing an open boat around Britain.  I didn’t know there was one.  78 days seems slow to me.  Baring mishap, they should do so easily.

        However, I am going to criticize them.  Not for making the attempt; but for claiming they are doing so to raise money for a charity.  That the charity—a very worthwhile one—is so uptight it has disavowed them is irrelevant. 

Sail because you want to sail.  No pretense or pretext needed.

        Here is a link to their Yellowbrick tracking map.

        http://yb.tl/hafren2014

        And to their website.

        http://www.xtremedinghycruising.com

———

        Many of you have read my books more recently than I.

        I have been doing this for what is now a long lifetime and don’t remember every word.  Sometimes they come as pleasant surprises, as did the following which Lynn emailed me a few days ago, for which I thank him.

        Not bad, if I do say so myself.

        This from STORM PASASSAGE was probably the first time my most famous line ever appeared in print.

I write to several possible audiences. I write to myself. I write to those I love and to my personal friends. I write to an unknown boy who lives in a crowded city far from the sea. I write to those who love solitude and sailing and the sea. And I write perhaps most of all to a being who may exist only in my perhaps-too-vivid imagination.

One night more than a year ago, a few months after Egregious had been built, I sat looking up at the stars from her deck. In the southern sky was the constellation we know as Scorpio, with its brightest star, Antares. I had been wondering how many other planets have oceans and beings who love to sail upon them; and as I gazed toward Antares, I became convinced that at that moment someone on the third planet of Antares was preparing to sail across its seas, just as I was ours, and that he was thinking of me, as I of him, and that across space we both knew and understood. So I write this also to my friend on Antares.  A fanciful, childish thought? But I don't wish to grow any older.

I claim for myself that I am an artist and an original and an

anachronism at age thirty-three. A sailor is an artist whose

medium is the wind; a writer an artist whose medium is words. I am both of those. A voluptuary is an artist whose medium is flesh. I have been such. And I may in the course of this voyage become an ascetic; an artist whose medium is spirit.

I believe in greatness, the heroic, the epic, pride, honor, and my dreams. And I believe the hardest people in the world are not cynics, but those romantics who will not compromise; who insist that their dreams become reality. I am an adamantine romantic.

Honolulu: progress; one back pack at a time; the real FRANKENSTEIN

        Sam, the rigger, a very nice young man, came to GANNET this morning, went up the mast to take measurements, and will return a week from today to install the running backstays.

        Assuming that Marc, the sailmaker and also a nice young man, has finished his work by then, I will be very pleased.

———

        I have begun reprovisioning for the passage to Apia, one back pack at a time.

        This morning I essentially took care of breakfast:  three cartons of Quaker Oatmeal and a box of trail mix.  I already have one unopened carton of oatmeal on board and plenty of powered milk.  I will need a bit more trail mix and instant coffee.  But that is it for breakfast.  And, as you know, I have enough dinners aboard to sail to the moon.

        By the way, I have a new hobby:  picking bits of white chocolate from trail mix I bought in San Diego.   I do not want candy for breakfast and am well aware of the lamentable tendency to put it in trail mix.  I try to be careful, but missed the white chocolate.  So I pour some into my left hand, pick out and throw away the chocolate, add the winnowed trail mix to oatmeal.  Repeat.

———

        I don’t know how it is possible that I had never read Mary Shelley’s novel until the passage from Hilo, but I hadn’t.  Perhaps the story was too familiar through the movies, but the novel is completely different, unexpected and superior.

        If you have been as negligent as I, I think you will enjoy the real FRANKENSTEIN.

------

        The top photo is the sheer north side of Molokai.

        Here is GANNET in her present location at Waikiki Yacht Club. 

 

And here the view from the companionway at night.

       

       Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go over to Dior for a fitting.

Honolulu: next; passage clothes; speed error; runners; an exceptional three

        Above is a screen shot of iNavX on my iPad mini into which I just put a waypoint at the entrance to Apia, Samoa.  The straight line distance is 2260 nautical miles, only a little more than San Diego to Hilo.  However, crossing the doldrums and the Equator for what I think will be my fourteenth time, more difficult to predict.  

        I plan to sail well east of the rhumb line until I reach the doldrums, which may be wider and calmer than usual this year.  Also, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve never crossed the Equator this far west in the Pacific Ocean.

———

        Just across the street from the yacht club is a huge shopping center which includes a supermarket, where I can easily reprovision.  Fortunatetly, also among its hundreds of shops are Dior and Versace, so I will also be able to pick up some new passage clothes.

———

        A reader, David, figured out why the SOG of the first position of a passage is so inaccurate.  He surmised that the figure was the average speed during the six hours before the position, including time when GANNET was not underway.

        This caused me to email Yellowbrick, and, as usual, I received an almost instant response from Nick.

The speed is an average speed between the last point and the current one, not an instantaneous one. So the first (and probably last) position you transmit is likely to be different from your actual instant speed at that point.

Because of the way the Yellowbrick works, the GPS is not kept on long enough to get a good 'instant' speed reading, so we tend to use the average one.

        Thank you David and Nick.

———

        Hopefully a rigger is going to appear at GANNET at 7:30 tomorrow morning.  I doubt he will do more than assess the job, but it is a step in the right direction.

        In preparation I asked Buzz Ballenger his advice on where the running backstays should be attached to the mast, and, as usual, received an almost instant reply:

You will want the runners to oppose the headstay. The idea is to keep the headstay load on the runners to keep the load from pulling the mast forward when the load increases. You could install them 4 inches or so over the uppers.

———

        I have mentioned in this post two of the three best companies I have done business with since owning GANNET, or for that matter ever.

        Ballenger Spars; Yellowbrick; and the third is Rudder Craft.

        All are at the very top of their game, make excellent products, reply extremely quickly and usefully to queries and questions, and are a pleasure to do business with rather than an ordeal.      

        All three are run the way all business ought to be, but few are.

        If you need any product they make, do yourself a favor and buy it from them.

Honolulu: Hilo to Honolulu log

June 15, Sunday

Hilo; Pacific Ocean

1100  Waited for the wind through a lovely, sunny breezeless morning.  Ripples slowly moved across the harbor and finally reached us.  Tides here are only 1’-2’, but we’ll have the tide carrying us out until 12:30, and better with than against.  Raised mainsail.  Dropped mooring.  Unfurled jib.  GANNET underway headed toward the shore.  Tacked.  Making 3 knots across smooth water toward the end of the breakwater more than a mile away.  The illusive mountain has shown itself this morning.  At least mostly.  I can see the summit.

1130  We cleared the end of the breakwater, hardened up to close hauled starboard.  Seas flatter and less chaotic than when we arrived.  Also better to have extremely light wind ahead where apparent wind is greater than behind.

1200

19°45’N   155°05’W           first waypoint  75 miles  324°

SOG  4.0    COG  356°           Honolulu about 195 miles

1315  Off Pepeekeo Point.  Falling off to beam reach.  Wind up to six or seven knots, as is our SOG.

1700   Two hundred miles is an awkward distance.  With a dawn start and good wind, we could make it before the second sunset; but an early start was never likely from Hilo, so no matter what we do, it is two nights at sea and killing time the second night.

Rain formed to the east of us and the wind increased to perhaps fifteen knots.  A lovely white-capped sea.  Our speed went up to the 7s and 8s, which is fun but simply means killing more time.  In view of the channel ahead and preferring not to reef at night, I reefed the mainsail and partially furled the jib.  Now the wind has lightened and veered.  Main blanketing the jib, so I furled it completely.  This entire brief passage will be made with the brakes on.

However, I did see the first Yellowbrick position update at 1400 local time.  Again the position was correct, but the speed was not.  It showed 1.9 knots and we were then making 3 to 4.

I’ve changed stowage, most significantly by fitting the Avon RedStart at the aft end of the port pipe berth rather than in the bow.  This is possible because of some stuff I disposed of in Hilo.  And I have only two jerry cans of water, rather than four.  One is port of the main bulkhead; the other at the aft starboard end of the space between the pipe berths.  I also moved the second anchor, a fifteen pound Delta from between the pipe berths, to just aft of the end of the port berth.

I can’t say that I notice any difference in GANNET’s sailing qualities in these past few hours.  She sailed wonderfully before.  But the changes seem  good.

1820  Probably to no one’s surprise I did not eat a lot of freeze dried food in Hilo.  There were several nice small restaurants on the mile and a half walk I took around the Japanese gardens and peninsula and Uncle Billy’s General Store, which had some excellent prepared salads that I took back to GANNET for dinners.  

Tonight a return to freeze dry.  Alpine Aire  Dijon Chicken.  A superior product, particularly when laced with a spurt of boxed white wine.

A lovely late afternoon once the rain cleared.  Trade wind clouds.  The peak of Mauna Kea is visible.  I can at times clearly see the domes of four of the observatories up there.  How spectacular that must be.

GANNET continues comfortably on at five knots under reefed mainsail.  With full main and jib she would be making at least seven.  But I still wouldn’t be in Honolulu before Tuesday morning.

1900  We are even with the northern point of Hawaii and so entering the Alenuihaha Channel at sunset.  So far no dramatic change.

June 16, Monday

Pacific Ocean

0700  An uneventful night.  We had a smooth a crossing from Hilo to Maui with only light winds and moderate seas.  I was up several times, once when a red moon rose behind us and again at 0200 when I noticed a green light blinking on the Yellowbrick and realized that it was transmitting the 1200 UCT position.

We sailed under just the reefed main until a few minutes ago when I unfurled some of the jib.  I’m still keeping GANNET hobbled, but we were only making three knots and that is too hobbled.

We are presently six miles north of the east end of Maui and have about 120 miles to go.  Trade wind sky.   Pleasant morning.

1030  I set the jib for a while, but it began to be blanketed by the main, so furled it and unreefed main.  We continue on a sunny morning sailing about five miles off the north coast of Maui at five knots with a hundred miles to go.

1200

21°05’N   156°17’W       Next waypoint  21 miles

SOG 5.2   COG  298°       Honolulu about 90 miles

day’s run  106    (this connects noon positions and runs across land; distance sailed greater.)

Beautiful trade wind day.  I can see the summits on Maui and distinguish Molokai ahead.

I keep adding waypoints to this route.  The next is off the east end of Molokai; then one off the west end; and several off Oahu leading to the harbor entrance.   

1545  Six miles off the east end of Molokai.  Wind and waves have increased.  May be twenty knots in the channel tonight.  Three islands in sight:  Molokai; Maui; and Lanai.

GANNET is sailing under partially furled jib alone.  The wind is well aft and I don’t want to risk accidentally gybing the main, and I can control our speed better by how much I furl the jib than I can with the main which has only four options:  all the way up; one reef, which is in fact a second reef due to the sailmaker’s mistake; a second reef which is in fact a third reef; and all the way down.

I recently emailed Buzz Ballenger, who made GANNET’s mast and boom, about sailing this rig under headsail alone.  He warned of the dangers in inverting the mast—having the masthead bent forward; and of the mast pumping, and suggested that if I want to do this I should consider having running backstays installed. 

Thus far I have seen no sign of the mast pumping; but I did have running backstays, as well as a fixed one, on both EGREGIOUS, which was cutter rigged, and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, whose mast did pump.  I’m going to try to find a rigger in Honolulu to install running backs.

We have about seventy miles to go.

June 17, Tuesday

Honolulu

0830  Docked at Waikiki Yacht Club

We sailed slowly and mostly comfortably under deeply furled jib through the night.  The Molokai Channel was not rough or blustery.

I got some sleep early at 2000, but then was up and down the rest of the night.  Just before the moon came up at 2230 we were three miles off the west end of Molokai which was completely invisible.  Only a handful of lights shown on that north coast which is a long cliff falling hundreds if not a thousand feet into the sea.

At first light we were just off Oahu and at dawn Diamond Head.  We’ve all seen Diamond Head hundreds of times in movies and television; but from the sea at dawn on your own boat is special.

I brought the parts of the Torqeedo into the cockpit and dock lines and two fenders.  

After we rounded Diamond Head, the seas flattened and I was able to mount the Torqeedo on the transom.  The only hard part is getting the shaft on the outboard bracket.  I do tie a line around it, but so far have been able to pick my time and not had problems.  Once the shaft is secured, the battery and tiller arm are easy.

I also got the dock lines and fenders in place.

We continued under jib, now no longer furled, until fifty yards from the outer buoys marking the marina channel.   A light wind was blowing directly out, so instead of short tacking up the channel, I furled the jib and Torqeedoed in.

As I slowly moved up channel, a man kayaking out identified himself as Dave—not the one in Hilo—with whom I’ve exchanged emails; and a bit farther in a man at the helm of a sailboat waved and shouted, “GANNET.  I’ve been following your voyage.”

A nice welcome.

The Waikiki Yacht Club has graciously found space for me.  Presently I’m in a slip, but will exchange places with a boat on an end tie when the other owner is available.  This was not at my request, but I like end ties.  A cooling breeze is blowing through the open hatches, a pleasure I do not often experience at sea.

I have rearranged stowage and GANNET is now in port mode and I will sleep tonight on the v-berth for the first time since leaving San Diego.

I think a sailmaker is coming to GANNET tomorrow; and a rigger sometime later in the week.  I liked sailing GANNET under jib alone last night and if I can get the work done will have running backstays installed here.

I also need to provision and write an article.

I had a hot shower and a cold drink.

GANNET did not ship a wave through the companionway between Hilo and Honolulu.

I did, briefly, feel motion after I stepped ashore, particularly when I closed my eyes in the shower.

After arrival I deactivated the Yellowbrick and brought it below.  It is still showing 87% charge.

I don’t think two days constitute a passage, but to be consistent:  passage over.