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| Sure it will be a wonderful cruise............ |
Job
one was to provision for the 21 (or more?) day trip to Hilo. It took
two trips to the supermarket plus sides trips to stock up on water.
Coleridge's rime was pasted on the water book as a grim reminder of what
running out looked like. Amazingly we found places to store it all with
the aft cabin doubling as a "bodega" for the fruit and veg in baskets.
We departed heavily laden for a mini shakedown cruise to Cabo san Lucas -
and of course the final night out on land for a long time. We had an
excellent meal at a Brazilian restaurant along with enough wine to sooth
any lingering doubts about the voyage at hand.
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| Los Arcos at Cabo |
We
departed Cabo at noon and soon were sailing past the busy tourist
traffic at iconic Los Arcos headland. The wind picked up as we cleared
the tip of Cabo and it was reef #1 time already. We were happy to be
sailing fast but we were way south of the course we wanted. It certainly
was rough with the washing machine effect of wind waves at ninety
degrees to the swell. Little did we know that this rolling would persist
most of the way to Hawaii. We did not have much of an appetite but
managed to down the prepared meals John had cooked ahead of time. We
settled into our 3 on and 6 off watch routine which worked very well for
us.
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| Helga takes charge |
The
wind stayed fairly steady out of the North West, driving us further
south but only requiring two hours of engine run most nights to keep the
batteries up. Six days out we deployed our Hydrovane (Helga) which
worked well as long as the apparent wind was nine knots or more. This
also saved a lot of power compared to running the auto pilot (Otto).
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| Four strands left! |
The
morning of day 7 John called me to come quickly to the mast. His first
light rig inspection revealed the mast baby stay had failed and was just
hanging on by 4 strands. The Genoa was furled and we jury rigged a
strop around the first spreader with an old halyard to the bow and then
back to the lazy genoa winch. This restored the mast bend and
re-tensioned the the aft lower stays. We got an email out to Blackline
to organize a replacement and to confirm the stability our our jury rig.
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| Jury rigged stay installed |
We
got fairly regular connections with our SSB and kept our grib files and
Pacific surface forecast up to date. Connie and Peter sent us updates
as well on our Delorme inReach. This device was invaluable for instant
SMS text messages to friends and family dependably anytime day or night.
We also used it for the spot forecast service from Ocens which is a
very worthwhile addition - similar to the bouy weather format.
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| Wing on wing stormsail |
The
wind finally veered to the east and allowed us to make some decent VMG
for Hilo. Next we were all downwind, wing on wing with the main and
genoa, substituting the spinnaker in daylight when the wind eased. By
day
16 we deployed the storm jib alongside the poled out genoa and made
hull speed, easily handled by Helga all day and night for the next week.
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| Nice jicima salad Al! |
The
food was excellent for the trip with Al and John outdoing each other
with creative meals on the dwindling fresh food supplies. Al caught a
beautiful ma-hi ma-hi and made a delicious ceviche followed by grilled
fillets for dinner. Captains hour was eagerly awaited each day with some
great appies to go with the nightly beer or G and T. Strict water
management eased mid trip when we realized we were well under the 10
litre daily allowance.
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| Champagne all around at Hilo |
|
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| Stern tied in Radio Bay, Hilo |
We
arrived at Hilo at noon on Saurday, 21 days for the trip. Many thanks
to CBP officers Valdez and Foss for clearing us in and sparing us a
week-end waiting on the boat.
We enjoyed a few days together
checking out the big island including a helicopter volcano tour and
going snorkeling at Captain Cook. All in all a great trip with two of
the best crew - Al and John - that you could hope to get.
 |
| The final track - 2,500 NM |
"And it is an interesting biological fact that
all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our
blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our
blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we
go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going
back from whence we came. "
— President John F. Kennedy
