Onrust

Spencer Yacht Owners Group

sv Onrust

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Onrust
Spencer 35 Hull 35

Onrust - Sailing to Hawaii

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May 26, 2006
Friday afternoon,
Onboard s/v “Onrust” in her home berth, Emeryville, CA
Dear friends and family, adventure followers:

This is the first email message I will be sending you all about my long awaited sailing trip to Hawaii and back. I can’t send from the boat on the ocean, but will try to send reports from stopping ports along the way once I reach Hawaii.

By the way, courtesy of my friend and crewmember Brian Leary, here’s how we get there:

Sailing Directions: San Francisco to Hawaii

“Sail out the Golden Gate and turn left just past Mile Rock. Sail south til the butter melts, then turn right and sail west til you hear ukulele music. Then turn left and sail til you see the coconut trees and you’re there.”

Actually, sailing a small boat to Hawaii and back is a bit more complicated than that. But Onrust is ready, the provisions are stowed, the crew is primed and we’re ready to go. We had planned to leave early tomorrow morning on the ebb tide, but unfortunately a strong gale is forecast for tomorrow with 10- to 14 foot seas so we’ve decided to wait until Sunday afternoon’s ebb or Monday morning. We just need to let the clerk of the weather get things settled down a little bit out there. 20 knot winds behind us would be great, but 35 to 40 is a bit much.

This is an adventure I’ve wanted to do for about forty years, starting with finding the book “Voyaging Under Sail” by Eric Hiscock one day in the Yale Co-op book store. What a thought, to sail your own small sailboat across the ocean. I always knew I would do it, just a matter of when. I am so fortunate to be able to finally do it. So many people have helped make it happen: John M who told me “set a date”; Interaction Associates who agreed to let me take the time off work to pursue a dream; Martha, who has supported and helped in countless ways from not freaking out when I told her I wanted to go to helping me find a wonderful crew, to looking the other way as money flew out the door week after week getting the boat ready and supplied, finding cutlery for the galley at the thrift store, baking two sets of cookies for us to munch on in our first week, and on and on so many ways that I can’t count them. So many others, in big and small ways, have helped, contributed and wished us well. Gratitude and love to all of you; you know who you are.

Here’s the cruise plan: We’re sailing to Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. (“We” by the way is me and two crew, Brian Leary and Sharon Albert, friends from Berkeley Yacht Club. Brian has sailed back from Hawaii to CA and taken his own boat to Mexico twice. Sharon has sailed down the Pacific Coast and once helped sail a boat across the Drakes Passage from Patagonia to Antarctica and back.
(Both are stalwart, easy to work with, and good humored. I think we’re going to have fun together.)

In Hilo Brian and Sharon have to get off to return to CA. Another friend will join me in Hilo to sail up to Honolulu via Maui and Lanai. My daughter Sarah and her boyfriend will join us in Lahaina, Maui for the trip to Honolulu. Martha will meet me in Honolulu July 8 and we’ll sail over to Kauai, hopefully joined by Onrust’s former owner who now lives on Kauai. Martha and I will stay at Hanalei Bay on the north side of Kauai (on the beach, rented cottage) for a week and then near the end of July I’ll start back to CA with two other crew, Richard Fadem from Orcas Island, Washington and Bill Auld from Penticton, B.C., Canada.

The trip over to Hilo from here will be about 2200-2300 nautical miles and take around 18 days. The trip back from Kauai will be about 2600 miles and take 20 -25 days.

The Boat: Onrust (Dutch word that means “unrest”) is a Spencer 35 fibreglass sloop built in British Columbia in 1968. She is a sweet sailing, traditional cruising boat. By today’s standards of sailboat design she is kind of narrow and doesn’t have all the “creature comforts” they advertise at the boat shows (no refrigeration, no shower, no trash compactors, microwaves, etc. etc.). What she does have is a solid shapely hull to ride through the waves, a stout mast and sails to take a heavy blow, good sea berths to sleep in even in a rough sea, and the pedigree of seaworthy boat design known as “classic.” Several of her sister Spencer 35’s have sailed around the world. I bought her three years ago and I’ve been spending the last couple of years getting her renovated and ready for this trip. But she’s done it all before. The young couple I bought her from sailed her from Seattle to Panama and back to San Diego, living and cruising aboard her for over four years. The people they bought her from sailed her from Seattle to Puerto Vallarta and then across to Hilo, eventually returning her to Seattle. She knows the way to Hawaii. I have complete confidence in this good old boat.

Our route will take us down the CA coast in most likely heavy following winds and seas for two or three days of potentially rough sailing. Then we should hit more balmy weather and continue south til we find the famous Pacific “Trade Winds” - northeasterly winds that will blow us with them day after day southwesterly toward Hawaii, running down deep blue seas and hopefully catching a dorado or two and getting fresh water deck showers in some tropical rain squalls. After cruising across the trade winds through the Hawaiian chain, the return trip will mean a long sail north into the northern Pacific to find the westerlies that should blow us home again.

I’m so excited and eager to be off. The extra day or so of delayed departure is hard to take, but some prudence given the forecast seemed like a good idea. It also gave time to come up with another list of boat projects to do! West Marine shareholders be glad.

Thank you again to everyone who has helped, sent good wishes, or even just thought about us for this trip. Send whatever message you can to the clerk of the weather to give us “fair winds and following seas.” Til next time in Hilo,

Jamie

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June 18, 2006
Hilo, Hawaii
Father’s Day
(written on June 19 at "Cronie's" Bar and Restaurant, Hilo, Hawaii)

We came in to Radio Bay in Hilo harbor, on the “Big Island” of Hawaii, quietly with the dawn. We had had a beautiful day of sailing the day before with steady wind on our quarter. In the afternoon several squalls overtook us with brief gale force winds and rain to enliven the action. One of them provided enough rain for me to shampoo my hair in the cockpit; but mostly the last day at sea was just perfect sailing over big rolling ocean swells of deepest azure - a bright warm sunlit sea, Onrust rolling gently and surging ever onward toward our destination “with a bone in her teeth.” During the night the sky gradually clouded over but the wind held northeast about 12 knots, allowing us to hold a good course direct for Hilo making about 5 knots through the water. I had the 3am to 6am watch and about 30 miles out I first saw the glow of the Point Humukahi lighthouse south of Hilo, flashing every 15 seconds and moments later, through the low cloud cover, I could just make out the city lights of Hilo. “Land Ho” I shouted down to Sharon and Brian, sleeping below. They both popped up to see the lights, still far away and dim, and opted to return to their bunks.

Closing with the land in the pre-dawn hours after 20 days at sea was a very powerful emotional experience, especially after the NE trade wind quit about 10 miles out and gave way to an offshore “eddy” of very light breeze flowing out onto the sea from the land, laden with the rich smells of earth and tropical forest. Faced with this soft redolent headwind I started up the engine and we motored the last 10 miles carefully searching for the lights to guide us in. It was confusing approaching a new port in the dark; the green lighthouse the chart said flashed every 6 seconds seemed to be flashing at 4 instead; in addition to the big Point Humukahi 15 second light I kept seeing another light that I couldn’t find on the chart; we never did see the channel leading light shown on the chart. But as we approached the critical turning point to start round the long black lava stone Hilo harbor breakwater, the sun began to rise behind us and morning light arrived to show us the way in. All three on deck now, thrilled to be reaching harbor, we rounded the end of the breakwater, passed the large green bell bouy and then for the first time in 20 days entered protected waters, flat and calm. As the morning light began to reveal the cityscape of Hilo and the top of 13000 foot Mauna Kea behind (bright lit by the sun above a layer of cloud) we crossed the main Hilo harbor and found little postage stamp sized “Radio Bay,” a snug corner of the harbor behind the Matson steamship terminal.

At 6:30 am we dropped the big bow anchor rolling out 25 feet of chain, backed down with the engine to give the anchor a “bite” and came to a stop. Just as we were anchoring a gentle and almost soundless rain began to fall, as if to welcome us by offering to rinse the salt off of Onrust and her crew. Engine off, sails furled, Onrust still and hooked with a chain to the earth, we hugged each other mightily. We have done it; just us in a little boat, crossed an ocean to the islands of paradise. (About an hour later a huge – 800 passenger or so- cruise ship came in and tied up to the other side of the terminal dock and began disgorging hundreds of people in bright colored Aloha shirts to a day of golf, bus tours, adventure helicopter rides, shopping at Hilo Hattie’s and other Big Island tourist attractions. Trying very hard to not be smug or judgmental about the adventures of the cruise ship passengers, the starkness of contrast gave us a few moments to reflect with gratitude on the wonder of our own.)

Our voyage to Hawaii (about 2200 miles as the crow flies- well crows don't fly it actually- from San Francisco to Hilo but more like 2400 to 2500 miles in sailing distance) fell into three main parts, a fast, hard and wet start, a mystically beautiful but slow mid-passage, and a third trade winds sailing adventure that tested our endurance and spirits with a couple of special challenges. I’ll tell the tales of the second and third parts of the trip in a few days but now, after just sketching the end, relate the beginning.

You know from my first e-mail we had a wonderful Bon Voyage party a week before our intended departure, the highlight of which was a special blessing of Onrust and her crew by our friend Taufa Talakai from Tonga. Sailing into the waters of Polynesia, it was indeed fortunate to have her stories, legends and gifts of the spirit of her Polynesian seafarer ancestors to bless our venture.

Our departure was delayed from Saturday the 27th until Monday the 29th due to vicious gales blowing up to 45 knots off the northern CA coast. Waiting those 2 days when everything was ready was excruciating, but in small boat sailing on the open ocean, the clerk of the weather has the final say. Monday morning, May 29, bright sunny day on the SF Bay, the forecast was for normal northwest winds to 15 or 20 knots offshore, a perfect day to leave.

I took Onrust over to the Berkeley Yacht Club from her home berth in Emeryville on Sunday evening. Next morning crew and a few family and friends gathered at the yacht club dock at 7:30 to load on the last minute fresh food stores, get in last hugs, kisses and pictures and cast off in time to ride the last of the morning’s ebb tide at the Golden Gate. At 8:15 am we cast off, only to find Onrust was aground! An exceptionally low tide had let her keel, 5 feet 3 inches draft, settle gently onto the bottom! Curses and gesticulations! But with some strong tugs on the lines and help from the engine in reverse, we got her off the mud and into deep enough water to depart. An hour or so later we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge healing nicely to a fresh westerly and waving to Brian’s family who had driven across the bay to see us under the bridge. Going under the bridge really felt like the beginning, yet before we reached Point Bonita and the open ocean the wind died to nothing, leaving us slopping around in the choppy confused waves of the Gate with sails slating noisily and the boat going nowhere!

Rather than waste hours going nowhere within sight of the bridge we turned on the engine to power offshore. By noon, about 5 miles out from Land’s End a very nice NW breeze began to ripple the water and within half an hour we were sailing at 6 knots southwest, “on our way” with a growing NW wind on the quarter. All day the wind and sea grew til we were reducing sail while going even faster in 20, then 25 and 30 knot winds. We did 7 knots then 8 knots and bursts above with less and less sail. By midnight we had just a bit of jib up, having first reefed then later handed the main completely, and we were rushing down the wind with a hard cross sea that rolled and slapped us, waves hitting the side of the boat now and then with the sound of cannon shot. Inside the boat the noise was awesome; creaking and groaning of the woodwork, loud sluicing shushing sound of water rushing past the hull, the vibration of the rigging, rattling of “stuff” in the lockers and the moaning of the wind transmitted to the hull through highly tensioned rigging; like being inside a cello when a virtuoso is playing the most energetic passages of a Bloch concerto.

Our first noon to noon run was 167 miles, a remarkable 24 hour distance for a full displacement boat of only 25.5 foot waterline. Sharon and I enjoyed a dinner of Martha’s lasagna which I heated up in the oven in spite of the rough conditions. Brian kept his watch, but didn’t feel like eating; in fact he had a few moments of reversing the flow of nourishment, if you get the drift.

During that first noon to noon ship’s day we settled into our watch schedule; alternating through the three of us with watches of noon to 3, 3 to 6, 6 to 9 , 9 to midnight, midnight to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 6, 6 to 9 and 9 back to noon. When on watch one is on deck, in charge of the boat, looking out for other vessels or dangers, trimming the sails, monitoring the compass course, etc. Fortunately we didn’t need to steer the boat all the time due to a perfectly wonderful invention call a windvane self-steering – the Monitor. But I’ll tell you more about that later. The short of it is that insofar as steering in concerned, the person on watch is most of the time essentially a personal assistant to the Monitor rather than tied to the wheel. We could read, listen to books on tape, even watch a movie on an I-pod (Sharon did that anyway), or just admire the wildness and majesty of the Pacific Ocean and the skies above.

Our second day was not as fast, only 135 miles, but still strong winds and heavy seas, taking us down the coast, gradually bearing offshore, past Monterey Bay and off the Big Sur coast, now well out of sight of land, and continuing fast, exhilarating, but tiring sailing, until several hundred miles offshore from San Diego within a few days. After the second day Brian got his sea stomach back and we were congratulating ourselves on such a fast start. However the weather maps (which I could receive as a “fax” on the computer over high frequency radio) were problematic. The “normal” Pacific high pressure areas that would give us northwest winds down the coast, curving gradually to north and northeast towards Hawaii as we went south, was not forming up. Instead there was a succession of gnarly low pressure storm centers moving across the Pacific much farther south than normal for June, generating very unsettled weather between CA and Hawaii - potential headwinds, and even gales and minor storms. All the indications were to keep going south rather than curve more westerly for Hawaii; a more southerly route would be warmer, more protected from the procession of lows, but would add greatly to our distance.

This situation generated one of the key themes of our voyage- when to go more south and when to go more west, and when to choose the one or the other based on the winds we were experiencing at a given and place vs the winds we might expect a day or two later farther down our path based on the ocean surface atmospheric pressure analysis maps I could get each day over the radio and computer. Every decision was, in effect, only an educated guess, playing a sort of half blindfold chess game with the clerk of the weather. The upshot is that we did a pretty good guessing job even though we sometimes went too far on one tack or the other. And the other upshot is that regardless of our guesses, we experienced a lot of slow sailing in part two of the voyage. While I had hoped we would take 16 to 18 days to get to Hawaii and we actually took 20, but then some folks have spent 30 or 40 days getting there from California!

Sightings during our “start” phase: the first day out, late in the afternoon after the wind had built and we were “flying” down the coast toward Santa Cruz, Sharon on watch saw three Orcas leap from the water together just a hundred yards or so from the boat. Very unusual for Orcas to be south of San Francisco. An Omen perhaps? Midnight second night out, Brian on watch, noted a ship coming up the coast, the last vessel we would see for over ten days. (From late afternoon of our first day outside the Golden Gate until we entered Hilo Bay - 20 days at sea- we saw a grand total of three other vessels including the one Brian saw the second night; just two ships and one sailboat. The ocean is a big empty place!) Nighttime- eerie phosphorescence in the bow wave and wake as Onrust’s passage disturbed the minute light producing krill creatures in the water to produce a blue and crystal white light sparkling trail beside and behind us. Nighttime- the Milky Way seen with a clarity and brilliance never possible on land; standing in the cockpit, holding on to the dodger handrails swaying with the roll of the boat and looking up into the sky, you can see the MW brighten the whole heavens above, and almost feel and hear the vibration of it’s intense luminosity, an arc of searing white light reminding one of the unfathomable hugeness of the universe. This incredible band of stars and gasses and burning fires in the sky is but a sidewise view through part of one galaxy, our galaxy, unimaginably large, yet itself only a minute speck in a small corner of creation. Truly, creation, your sea is so great and my boat is so small.

Those first few nights I slept almost not at all. I felt intense responsibility for boat and crew and Onrust's every new noise or vibration seemed to demand that I check it out. By the third night or so I hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours out of 72 and I was very tired; lying in my bunk off watch, unable to sleep with the lurching and rough rolling and the creakings, groaning, popping, snapping, clacking and banging's of a small boat surging through the ocean. Was my boat up to this? Was anything breaking? Was Onrust after all too old for all this stress and strain? Brian and Sharon seemed to sleep very well but they noticed my fatigue and very gently insisted I take extra bunk time to get some sleep. Earplugs helped a lot to dampen the sounds.

A scare: five days out, several hundred miles west south west of San Diego, I discovered salt water in the “dry bilge” - a storage area above the keel under the middle of the cabin floor. There was a clearly discernable little “weep” of sea water coming into the space through the hull. The “first directive” of ocean sailing is “keep the crew in and the ocean out” so you can imagine that seeing sea water entering my boat right where the hull transitions into the keel, was a despair inducing shock. Did we have to turn back to San Diego? Was there some critical failure imminent in our hull structural integrity? We had a satellite telephone on board so I called the owner of the Berkeley boat yard where I’ve had Onrust hauled twice and described the location and extent of the water entry. He assured me that it was nothing to worry about. Old fiberglass boats, well even new fiberglass boats he said, can develop small osmotic water flows like that under the stresses and strains imposed by the ocean. “Just keep a watch on it” he said. So we did. Every two hours we collected and measured the water in the dry bilge. ¾ cup; ½ cup; ¾ cup, ½ cup, then nothing. Within 8 hours of my call to the boat yard, the weep stopped and there hasn’t been a drop of seawater in the dry bilge since! In fact, far from “too old” or failing in any way, sweet venerable Onrust has proved herself an amazingly strong, loyal and ocean savvy vessel, reliable, knowing, trustworthy in every way. But more on that in the trade winds.

Within a day after the “leak” our voyage transitioned into the mid-passage – of wide flat and unbelievably blue seas, weak fickle winds, mists and mysteries, and the subject of my next report.

Now, here in Hawaii, after fulfilling a 40 year dream to sail across the Pacific, Sharon and Brian returned to their families and me left with Onrust in Radio Bay, bound next for leeward Hawaii, Maui and beyond, I feel replete with good fortune, full of gratitude to all the people who have helped make this dream come true, and awed with respect for the immensity and power of the sea and the strength and grace of my green hulled Onrust.

Jamie

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June 21, 2006
Radio Bay
Hilo, Hawaii

Tonight I’m writing in the cabin of Onrust. We are tied “Mediterranean style” (anchor off the stern and two angled out bow lines tied to the dock in front of the boat - head in parking for boats) to the wall at the head of Radio Bay. It is raining and the boat awning I made for a sun and rain shade in port is keeping the rain off the cabin top so the hatches are open and the warm moist Hawaiian night air is flowing through. Other than the sound of the rain it is completely quiet. Right next to me is another Spencer 35 boat – a rather famous one called Haulback. Haulback and it’s owner Jim Kellam have just completed a two year solo circumnavigation which started here after they raced solo from SF to Hawaii in 2004. They are about to depart to return to Jim’s home in Vancouver B. C. “to go back to work.”

Onrust and Haulback

Onrust’s “mid-passage” started about the fifth day out around latitude 30 N and lasted until we hit the true NE trade winds quite suddenly at about 7:45 am on 12 June. During this 6 or 7 day period we had both exceptionally beautiful and very frustrating conditions. Some of the treats of the mid-passage were the mists and clouds in the night and early mornings – early one morning on my watch with the sun just coming up behind us and heavy mists on the water in front of us I drove the boat right under a full tri-colored rainbow. Sharon in particular loved the misty conditions. She said the air felt “carbonated.” It was refreshing and cool. No squalls, just wet air.

We also had a couple of magical evenings with simultaneous golden cloud sunset in the west and orange moonrise in the east, fire in both ends of the sky with us in awed equipoise between.

Our winds were variable. Sometimes a nice northern or easterly breeze; sometimes nothing at all. The seas were calm and during the day we felt we were in the middle of a big flat blue disk that moved with us under the matching blue sky above; why the ancients may have thought you’d fall off the edge of the ocean was very easy to understand. When we did have a good sailing breeze it was sailing over liquid velvet; smooth, easy, warm, quiet inside the boat with only the sound of water running by.

In the 30’s latitudes there is an amazing and horrible amount of plastic trash floating around, old bottles, fishing net debris, jugs, floats and junk. There was almost always some piece of human trash in view giving a reminder of the tremendous impact we humans are having on the planet – even hundreds of miles out in the ocean, constant reminder of our sloppy habits, excess and throw away culture.

The lower 30s and high 20s latitudes – lying between the westerly winds of the high 30s and 40s and the trade winds of the mid to low 20s - are fickle winded and called “the Horse Latitudes” presumably because the Spanish explorer mariners jettisoned (or ate) their horses while becalmed in these latitudes. We didn’t jettison or eat anyone, but we did have our times of being becalmed. Being becalmed at sea, especially after such a fast start and with so far to go, can be very frustrating, and was. In very light airs it’s also hard for the Monitor to steer the boat so in addition to going slow we had to hand steer a lot which is tiring under a hot sun and with sails that do not want to stay full. Fortunately we had an engine which we ran at various times for about 30 hours total when the wind left us completely.

It was during these days that our weather map information was most important and also most perplexing. The Pacific high still was not forming. Low pressure systems were way farther south than they should have been. As weather situations changed, we decided we should go south, we decided we should go west, we decided we should just aim straight on the rhumb line to Hilo. Each decision was no doubt completely correct and quite wrong. Mostly we just tried to keep the boat moving in the general direction of Hawaii. We always knew we had a long way south and long way west to go. We used every sail combination we could generate. Main and jib on the same side reaching; main on one side and jib poled out on the other to run straight down wind; twin jibs, one on each side with the main down; drifter (a very large light weight nylon head sail for light airs) with or without the main; spinnaker with or without the main. It was a lot of work, but we did keep her moving through the light and shifting airs slipping over the deepest pellucid blue sea you can imagine.

Excerpt from Onrust’s log:
“3 June 1900 hrs.
Beautiful again. Out of the cloud and mist band sailing nicely over gentle sea with the main and drifter. Still headed south looking for the trades. Great dinner tonight; kippered herring on crackers, cook in pouch, Indian fare over rice dinners with red wine. Spectacular blue Pacific; making good time in the right direction.”

4 June
“Conversation in the cockpit over breakfast: man’s impact on nature; mortality and the primordial emotional basis for exceptionalist religions; items of floating trash observed in the sea; delight at being able to sail on a course direct for Hilo today; possible destinations of the airplanes whose contrails we see overhead.”

A note on time: Anyone who read my first report very carefully may have thought he or she found a contradiction. I said our night watches were midnight to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 6 and then 6 to 9, but describing arrival at Hilo I said I was on the 3 to 6 am watch. So what’s up? We kept California time on the boat the whole trip even though we crossed three time zones. So my “6 to 9” morning watch was 3 to 6 Hawaii time, hence dawn. Also, the log is kept in a 24 hour time so 0900 is 9 am and 2300 is 11 pm. In addition to boat time vs local time we had to keep track of “Z” or “coordinated universal time” which is the standard time of the sea, based on Greenwich England time. Z is what is used for celestial navigation (which we did not do) but more importantly for the schedules of high frequency radio weather fax transmissions which we tried to get every day.

Log:

“6 June 0100 Hrs.
at Latitude 28 degrees 20 minutes North
Longitude 134 degrees 30 minutes West
Wind NE about 14 knots
Course SW
Speed 5 knots

Midnight watch. There is some light mist over the ocean now but nothing like the heavy persistent wetness of last night. Sails are full and quiet; one reef in the main and the No. 3 jib. We could carry more sail easily in this breeze but this combination seems easy for the Monitor to keep on a very broad reach so we don’t have to steer staring into the compass all night. Since seeing a few boats and ships just outside the Golden Gate the first afternoon out we’ve only seen 2, a large container ship and a sailboat 2 days ago. It’s a huge ocean. There’s lots of plastic trash floating around every day. Distressing waste. This morning on my 6 to 9 watch I could hardly keep my eyes open and couldn’t wait for my watch to end. Right now though I don’t want this watch to end for a long time. The water and wind sounds, gentle rolling of the boat, moonlight on rippled water, kiss of soft following breeze, it’s all much too beautiful to end.

It’s magic out here. Polaris is shining clearly on our starboard side and a waxing half moon looks down on the port side. Magnificent clouds loom all around whitening the night sky with reflected moonlight, and off the starboard quarter opposite the moon, an arching moon-bow describes a ghostly dimly lit arc of luminous mist touching down to the sea at both ends - a nighttime rainbow without colors.”

Toward the end of our mid-passage we woke one morning to a dead calm. The sea was beyond blue and the air crystal clear and absolutely still. The surface of the water was like glass, not even a ripple. A very long slow swell was moving gently from NW toward SE. The wave height was only a couple of feet but the wavelength was a hundred feet or more; evidence of a far off powerful storm wind that generated huge wave energy somewhere days ago. Proceeding south under engine power it was entrancing to sit on the bow of the boat and watch the gentle undulations of these one time monstrous seas sedately sliding under us. After several hours of motoring a faint ripple appeared on the water surface, first in patches, then filling in more generally over the whole disk of sea we inhabited. It was coming from the west; a perfect direction since this was a day the skipper had decided we should be going south. Forty five minutes after the first ripples appeared little wavelets began to form and we stopped the engine and set sail on 6 knots of breeze that gave us about 3.5 knots of boat speed on a beam reach.

For the rest of the day the westerly built hour by hour until we were racing along at 6.5 knots under all plain sail churning a bow wave that chuckled and sang to us with delight. Into the night the wind stayed with us, steady, stronger, insistent, beginning it’s own wave train atop the old swell that began the familiar rolling and twisting motion of a seaway. The night noises in the cabin returned- groans, creaks and clatters of loose things in lockers. Before midnight the westerly began to bend more to NW and increased to about 20 knots until we were sailing on broad reach at 7 knots, both main and jib sheeted out to their limits.

When you are alone on deck driving the boat at night and the boat is sailing fast in the dark, except for the phosphorescence you cannot really see the water going by; you only hear it. With vision limited the sound of the water and the feel of the wind on your face become your only bodily referents to speed. The water rushes and hisses past; bow wave, quarter wave and wake all speaking their different voices to each other and to you; each one laughing and shouting for attention over the other - “I’m going faster, I’m going faster.” The wind whistles through the rigging saying “let’s go! let’s go!” You feel the press of the wind on your face and even though the boat is really going not much faster than a good long distance runner, the sound and the wind make you feel like everything is going twice as fast as it really is. The sounds and the heavy breath of the wind give a sensation of leaping and flying forward. You spread your feet to either side of the cockpit foot well for a wide stance to balance, you bend your knees and sway your hips with the rolling of the boat to keep your upper body erect and as still as possible, you relax your arms and shoulders for a light hand on the wheel and by feel and hearing and anticipation of the rhythm of the unseen waves gently grip and manage the wheel - now to the left, now to the right, now hold center, back to the left, hold center, turn a bit down that wave lifting the bows, back to center - to keep 13000 pounds of boat at just the right angle to the wind, on course but not so far downwind that the boom might accidentally gybe. It’s exhilarating, rushing through the night, at one with the ocean and the boat - fly baby! fly!

Then in my dawn watch, after each of us had had a watch of fantastic sailing through the night, wane sunlight through morning clouds, rain squalls beginning to form around us, wind gusting to nasty 25 and 30 knots near the edges of the cloud cells, seas choppy and confused, skies turned unfriendly grey and edgy, suddenly, without warning, the main gybed over and the jib backed. The wind all at once had shifted from NW to NE, almost 90 degrees. We had in an instant crossed over the line of a weather front at the very southern edge of the “Horse Latitudes.” 50 yards to the north of that line the wind blew 20 knots from the NW and 50 yards to the south it blew 20 knots from the NE. Imagine the confusion of air at the interface of these moving bodies of wind. With the morning of the new day we had reached the NE tradewinds which we sailed in for the rest of the trip. Having begun with a bang, the trades held some special surprises and challenges for us, the story of which is yet to come.

Jamie

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June 24, 2006
2030 HRS
At anchor
Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii

This is the bay in which the British Royal Navy Capt. James Cook landed in Hawaii – the first meeting of Europeans with the Hawaiian people. (I don’t’ say “Capt Cook discovered Hawaii” of course because the Hawaiians did that when Cook’s and my ancestors were skulking about in the European Dark Ages.) On first meeting the Hawaiians thought he was a long prophesied god of some kind and gave him and his crew a fabulous welcome. Unfortunately on a second visit, a dispute over some crew member’s property (private property not being a concept familiar to the Hawaiians, a knife or something “borrowed”) led to a heated fracas on the beach, the shooting of two Hawaiians and the killing of Capt. Cook. Later the Hawaiians returned parts of Capt. Cook’s body to his crew. There is a small corner of the land on this Bay which is sovereign territory of the United Kingdom, a gift of the Hawaiian kingdom before the islands were annexed to the US. British Navy men after Cook were instrumental in helping King Kamehameha unite (for which read conquer) the other islands (excepting Kauai) to form the 19th century Kingdom of Hawaii. The Hawaiian Kingdom’s and now Hawaiian state flag is based on the Union Jack.

We arrived here just before sunset; not a good time to enter a new harbor where you need to anchor. We want to drop the anchor in a sandy patch where the anchor can get a “bite” and dig in, not on coral or lava rock where the anchor might just skip and drag over the hard surface. With sunlight the sand patches are easy to see, but with the sun dropping below the horizon it isn’t really possible to tell what you are dropping on. We dropped the anchor on we’re not sure what and we’ve put out lots of chain. The boat isn’t moving and we’re hoping for the best. Fortunately it is a very still evening so there isn’t much force of wind to cause us to drag. As soon as we felt the boat was secured we jumped in the water to cool off and remove the worst of the dried sweat from a 36 hour sail from Hilo around the two southern capes of the Big Island, Cape Kumukahi (of the 15 second light) and Ka Lae (South Cape). So the inter-island adventure has begun.

Kealakekua Bay is certainly one of the most beautiful places in Hawaii; a deep indentation in the Big Island coast with great bluffs on the north side and low points of lava rock and surf on the south. Old style houses with gentle sloped roofs and pastel colors are built up to a seawall on the south side and in the deepest part of the bay on the north side the trees and rocks come right down to the water. Behind the bay the steep slope of Mauna Kea rises up into the clouds, green and increasingly tree covered as the slope rises. The water is crystal clear in the daytime, and the inner part of the bay is a marine preserve where people kayak around to snorkel dive over pristine coral beds.

But what of the last part of the voyage over? Flying fish, fear and fatigue. . . .

Yes Virginia, some fish really can fly. Well, they leap out of the water and soar just above the waves for several hundred feet with a slight buzzing sound, two specialized long fins giving glide lift til they splash back into the side of a wave. Sometimes in the course of their flight they skip off wave tops like a well thrown skipping stone. The mature ones grow up to about 12 or 14 inches long and fly a hundred yards or more. The babies, from an inch to two or three inches, hop and dance above the water when it is churned by the wind or the boat, and often land on deck. Every day after reaching the tradewinds we cleaned a dozen or more off the deck. Watching the flying fish became an entertainment during the last third of the trip; sometimes a whole school of them would take off together, probably to escape some predator fish, or to escape the threat of a large green and black hull thrashing through their domain.

The evening after we entered the tradewinds proper the wind and seas really began to build. Wind speed climbed and wave heights with it til we were in full gale conditions. It’s easy to say “40 knots of wind” but the effect on the sea and on small boat sailors is not so easy to describe. First is the noise, the insistent sinister moaning and whining of the wind through the rigging and over the sail (we left up only a small jib at the height of the blow), and the constant rushing and growling of the waves, hissing and banging on the hull, a constant water-fall sound. The boat noises I’ve already described of course are magnified as the forces on the rig and the hull multiply geometrically with the increased force of wind and water. Second is the motion, all the rolling and rocking is faster, sharper, more sudden, violent and unexpected. You have to constantly be holding on to something solid even to adjust your position seated in the cockpit. Then there is the whole incredible visual experience of the dominating power of the seas; huge swells rolling up from behind in endless succession, frothing at their tops, glistening on the faces from the sun or the moonlight, streaked with windblown foam, chaotic wind driven wavelets going in every direction as the interface of wind and water becomes a battle ground of contesting fluids. Water is very heavy and doesn’t like to go up; but the continued force of wind scratching and clawing at the water surfaces eventually pushes the waves to 15, then 20, then 25 feet. These waves come up behind the boat, towering over the stern rail looking for all the world like they want to break and crash down upon our stern, but Onrust just lifts her stern up, up and up, pointing her bows down the front of the wave, and wave after wave simply slide under, rushing the boat forward til the next one again comes to lift and accelerate us ahead. By now we have only a “postage stamp” of a sail up front; the Monitor is steering. We can sit in the cockpit and look aft, marveling at the force of the wind and the trains of waves coming at us, and marveling at this boat taking it all in stride. Every tenth wave or so may be much larger than the rest, or confused by a cross swell, or both. Sometimes on these waves Onrust’s stern will be thrown to the side; she’ll roll heavily to one side and slide around with a roar of water, but then she’ll pick herself up, straighten out and rush forward, back into the groove, 7 or 8 knots, every line and shroud straining and humming.

So yes, it was scary. It was magnificent and beautiful but also fearful. Someone once said there are no atheists in a small boat in a gale at sea. I don’t know about that, but I do know that for the first hours, when the gale is howling and you don’t’ know how bad it’s going to get, and you don’t yet know how you, the boat and the crew are going to handle it, your mouth gets dry; your stomach tightens and when you take a hold on the binnacle bar or a grab rail for support, your grasp is tighter and your knuckles are whiter than usual. You silently ask someone, anyone, anything, for the grace and protection you need to get through it. Faces get drawn; small talk goes away; there are long silences as we each stare at this ocean gone into a rage and ride the wild sleigh ride. Half a day into this event I got a weather fax that showed no storm pattern in our area but a hundred miles to the south of us a curiously bent isobar (line of equal atmospheric pressure) with the notation “Tropical Wave.” I suppose this Tropical Wave, a localized perturbation of atmospheric pressure, which can precede the formation of a low pressure center, had something to do with the gale, but nothing more dramatic showed up to explain why we were experiencing gale conditions.

In the midst of fear and getting used to handling these conditions, we had the same question as in the mid-passage - go more south? Go more west? We had to take this wind and the seas on our quarter - no choice but the “run before it” – but did we want to take it on the port quarter (go more south) or the starboard quarter (go more west). At first I decided on south, thinking that if we went south we would get farther away from the high pressure center that lay to the north and find more moderate winds. That was before seeing the weather fax with the Tropical Wave on it. After viewing the map I decided going south meant heading right for the area of the tropical wave that might turn into a depression and worse winds. So in the middle of the gale we gibed to go west again. Gybing with only a small jib up is not so daunting as gybing with the mainsail up, but when the little jib emptied on one side and suddenly filled with wind on the other side it sounded like a cannon shot and shook the whole rig.

The gale lasted about 48 hours. After 10 or 15 hours we mostly got over the fear. We knew we and Onrust could handle it. Steered competently by the Monitor, Onrust just sailed magnificently, hour upon hour, daytime and nighttime, wave after frothing angry wave, 20 footers, 25 footers, she was teasing and laughing at the mountains of surging water, dancing the heavy dance and skipping away from every crest before they could fall on us throwing a wide bow wave and spray all around. But it was so tiring! Sleep was impossible and every single movement aboard was a labor; even sitting in one place required constant holding on to something for bracing. By the time the wind settled down to a mere 20 to 25 knots we were all very tired indeed and just wanting it to be over with.

We were thankful for the Monitor always, but especially during the gale. Frankly, it steered a lot better than we could have. In those conditions no one can handle the wheel with safety and good control for more than 20 or 30 minutes. We’d have been truly exhausted if we had had to steer watch on watch for 48 hours. OK, so what’s the Monitor? It is a fiendishly clever device (invented originally by a Brit, Col. “Blondie” Hasler, when he wanted to sail his 25 foot sailboat solo across the Atlantic and realized he couldn’t steer all the time). To understand how it works, remember when you were a child and you used to stick your hand out the window of the car and make a “wing” of your hand. If you rotate the leading edge of your hand up the wind catches the palm and pushes your hand up and if you turn it down the wind hits the back of your hand and pushes it down. You did that right? -flying your hand up and down in a sinuous wave dance while your parents in the front seat told you for heaven’s sake get your arm back in the car! Monitor uses a vertical wind vane like your hand. It stands up on the back of the boat where the force of the wind on its side causes it to tilt. The bottom end of the vane is attached to a pendulum that pushes a trim tab in the water and the force of the water on the trim tab, transmitted through a series of ropes and pulleys to a drum on the wheel will turn the boat’s rudder. The trick is to set the vertical windvane to “split the wind” standing up completely straight when the boat is on the course you want relative to the wind. Then if the boat turns, it’s like turning the leading edge of your hand; the wind will pressure one side of the vane pushing the trim tab to the side in the water and water pressure on the trim tab will cause the wheel to correct the rudder back onto course. Monitor will hold the boat very well to a given course relative to the wind. If the wind direction changes you need to adjust since Monitor doesn’t know about the compass; but with a strong wind it is very sensitive - and it doesn’t get tired. For the twenty days and nights we were at sea, the Monitor probably steered the boat 85 to 90% of the time. It is subjected to a lot of force though especially when the sea kicks up. A day ago we discovered that a 3/8 inch thick bolt in the frame had sheared it’s head right off – a repair job to come, the part of the frame formerly held by the bolt is currently held together with cord and stainless steel wire.

Fatigue was the main factor after the gale. We just wanted to “be there” but we still had 650 miles to go. We spoke to a ship over the VHF radio one day under bright sunny skies. We had gentle tradewinds one day and heavy ones the next. We had blue seas and blues skies and we had gray clouds and rain squalls. The miles rolled on averaging about 110 per day (the boat’s day is noon to noon). One afternoon near gale force winds came back to remind us who is master out there, but this time they lasted only three or four hours and it was a matter more of annoyance than fear this time. Three days out of Hawaii we had a “crew meeting” to talk about the fact that we were all very tired. We admitted at that point that it had stopped being fun sometime during the gale and we were all just working now to get there.

But then there was that marvelous last day - the sea settled into regular large smooth ground swells of deepest cobalt blue. We began to see more birds. We put Hawaiian music on the stereo. The wind was a perfect 15 or 16 knots and just the right direction so we could reach with a good sized jib and one reef in the main at hull speed on a course direct for Hilo. Several large squalls came over us with strong wind and refreshing rain and we each eagerly took the wheel from Monitor to hand steer because, well, because it was just so much fun to drive the boat in perfect sailing conditions. Sharon called her husband on the satellite telephone and was heard yelling “whoopee!” hand steering thru a squall for the pure joy of it. In one squall there was enough rain that I managed a fresh water shampoo in the cockpit. We were giddy with anticipation of reaching Hilo in the early morning. The fatigue melted away and gave way to a great joy of impending accomplishment, satisfaction with a job well done and a crew that enjoyed doing it together.

Then there was the last night, each of us in turn on watch while the others slept below, looking through the nighttime gloom to seek out the Cape Kumukahi light, our sign that we had reached our island destination. It fell to my watch to see it first. “Land HO!”

Jamie

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June 30, 2006
Manele Bay Small Boat Harbor
Island of Lana’i
Hawaii

My daughter Sarah and her boyfriend Brian (not to be confused with Brian Leary, crewmember) are fixing dinner in the cabin below as evening creeps toward us. Sarah has put a CD on the stereo. We are snug in an actual boat slip here for three nights before heading on to Moloka’i and Honolulu - feeling very lucky to have a slip since there are only 24 in this tiny harbor. We sailed over here yesterday after two nights at Lahaina, Maui. Sarah, Brian and I spent the whole day at a beautiful beach on a little bay called Hulopo'e, just across a sandy ridge from here. Michael went inland to Lanai City to see what the only town on the Island looks like. In the slip next to us a scuba diving tour boat is unloading its passengers after a day outing to the reef and the crew is cleaning up the gear for the day. The evening trade wind is blowing gently through the harbor, setting the sun awning aflutter over my head as I sit in Onrust’s cockpit.

I got an email in Lahaina from a friend asking what was it like day by day on our cruise to Hilo for the crew? For those who may have wondered, here’s a flavor.

On a 35 foot boat, with the forepeak (front end of the cabin) full of sails and stuff, there is very little room. The crew is physically very close all the time. There isn’t really any place to “get away.” Before the trip we joked about creating bit of space in the forepeak behind the only door in the cabin for anyone who needed some “time out” but in fact we never used it that way. (Later in the trip I arranged a “nest” for myself to sleep up there.) The main cabin – about 11 feet long and 9 feet wide) is arranged so that each of us had our own bunk giving each a bit of our own space, but not much.

When sailing watch on watch around the clock, there are actually few hours when the whole crew is up together. The two off watch are trying to sleep at night of course, and also often trying to catch a nap during the day. When you are on watch, you are on deck and really in charge of the boat – watching for other ships or boats, paying attention to the course, sails, wind, etc. keeping the boat under control. However when the weather permitted (most days) we did have a pre-dinner hour together sharing some kind of snack (kippered herring on toast with lemon juice or chips and salsa, jicama with paprika) and a glass of wine from one of those boxes of wine with a bladder inside – cheap wine, but avoids the problem of half empty bottles. The alcohol rule on Onrust was only one drink a day and none later than ½ hour before sunset – a basic safety consideration.

Our pre-dinner social hour was a fun hour; especially on the good weather good sailing days when the wind was right to move us along at hull speed without trying to blow our socks off. Brian is full of jokes and stories. Sharon is a food expert and story teller in her own right. With two former lawyers on board, lawyer jokes were “a dime a dozen” but we never did come up with any good food scientist jokes. We did agree though that any complaints about the food could only be made over the lee rail.

Although Sharon had volunteered to plan the food for the trip (Thank heaven for that –what a load off my mind!) we all understood that did not mean she was the cook. We took turns making meals. Dinner was main meal each day. Whoever cooked did not have to wash the dishes. Some sample meals – canned chicken added to a packaged chicken stew; stir fried red cabbage, onions and carrots with tofu in a Chinese sauce; fried polenta with chili and tortilla strips and cheddar cheese. For the first two nights out we had wonderful frozen dishes made by Martha and Tom before we left, a great lasagna and peanut sauce chicken stew. Martha and Brian’s wife Jan also provided us with lots of homemade cookies.

We did cook breakfast sometimes – my specialty is fried eggs on top of corned beef hash- but breakfast was more often just coffee and some cold cereal with canned milk. We had pancakes one morning. Lunch might be tuna sandwiches (until the bread got moldy) or cup-a-soup or an apple and energy bar. We had great coffee. Sharon’s husband Tom prepared bags of Peet’s coffee specially ground for our individual French filter coffee mugs. We had apples and oranges, lemons and limes for the whole trip; lemon or lime juice made the water taste pretty good. Sharing out the cooking and galley cleaning worked very well without a formal rotation or assignment.

Overall we ate quite well thanks to Sharon’s planning. We spent almost no time wishing for some food we didn’t have (well, I did wish for a COLD beer a few times). Even so, with the constant exercise and reduced size of meals Brian and I both lost about 8 or 10 pounds during the trip. I assume Sharon lost some too but we didn’t talk about it.

Before the trip we agreed on the institution of “crew meetings” in which anyone could call for discussion of what was going on, exchange of requests, feedback, concerns, etc.

We had crew meetings like this about 5 or 6 times. Mostly the crew meetings were about small things were quickly ironed out; example, after about five days Brian brought up the fact that our watch schedule worked out so that he had two full dark night watches each night while Sharon and I had only one full dark watch. We quickly agreed on rotation that, together with the gradual shift of time zones, evened out the two night watch burden over the course of the trip.

One of the crew meetings was about Sharon’s and Brian’s concern, several days into the trip, that I was not getting enough sleep. I admit, I don’t sleep well on the boat. The weight of responsibility of owner/skipper plus being a light sleeper to begin with, had me lying awake in my bunk constantly vigilant and listening for every small noise or bump way too much. They nicely but firmly began to insist on me getting more rest and would often insist that I stop doing something else (writing in the log, staying on deck past my watch, fiddling with stuff) and go to bed! In spite of getting more sleep toward the end of the trip, I still got very tired, physically and mentally and frankly I still am. Cruising in Hawaii is very demanding - high winds, difficult anchorages, uncertainties about whether there will be a place or not in an intended port of call, wear and tear on the boat.

On night watches we had different approaches to dealing with the dark hours alone in the cockpit. Sharon had an Ipod which her husband Tom had loaded with movies, TV shows and music. She spent a lot of nighttime hours entertained on the little screen. Brian listened to books on tape and golden oldie rock tunes on his portable CD player. “Nature boy” that I am I mostly watched the stars, moon and waves or gave Monitor a rest to drive the boat hand steering. I also read a couple of naval adventure novels with the aid of a little headlamp flashlight.

Safety was a constant concern. Those of you who ever have sailed with me know I have three paramount rules on Onrust:
Rule 1: Do not fall off the boat.
Rule 2: Pay attention to not get hit by the boom.
Rule 3: Refer to Rule number 1.
Pursuant to rules 1 and 3, while on deck everyone had to wear their PFD and harness. At night anyone out of the cabin had to be tethered to the boat with a short a heavy line attached to the harness and to a firm piece of the boat. Special rings are bolted in the side of the cockpit so you can attach as you come up out of the cabin. Going forward out of the cockpit (for example to the mast the reef the mainsail or to the bows to change headsails) required “clipping in” – attaching one’s tether to the “jack lines” which are heavy duty webbing strips that traverse the length of the boat on the decks on both side of the cabin. Falling off the boat at night would be a sure death sentence.

Until the last few days of the crossing, nights were cool to cold and often wet with rain or mist or spray or all of the above so we were also wearing foul weather gear or sailing jackets at least. Wet jackets, shoes and sailing gloves were festooned around the cabin all the time. Other than that though the cabin stayed pretty dry. I had made a lot of effort to seal and caulk all thru deck fittings and bolts before the trip to keep drips out and it paid off with dry bunks for the duration of the trip.

Sharon liked her “teapot” baths. Every few days she would heat a teapot full of water and banish Brian and me below with the companion way door closed and wash herself with a small wash cloth and one teapot full of water out in the cockpit. I never did get to see how she did it, but she always came back after these baths quite fresh. Brian and I also made sponge baths for ourselves now and then with Sharon taking some alone time below.

We got along very well. Personal compatibility is essential on a small boat and we were very fortunate in this account. Even when the going got rough, we managed to stay in good humor with each other. If tired or afraid, or needing something, we were able to say it to one another. Egos stayed in check and mutual respect was high. We shared laughs often. We laughed at Brian’s jokes; we laughed at Sharon’s gadget mania; we laughed at my inability to sleep. The stories are told of the sailors who jump ship immediately on arrival and never want to see their crewmates again. Sharon did leave the day we arrived but to spend time with her family who was there in Hawaii. Brian left the next day to fly back to California for the birth of his first grandchild. But I think I speak for all three of us in saying that we’d be very pleased to ship out together again some day.

We tried fishing on many days, dragging one or two long lines with various lures on the end. No luck! Not even a bight. Most accounts I’ve read of sailing to Hawaii report catching at least a couple of fish, but we missed out on that.

We did get tired as I mentioned in my last email. Fatigue creeps up on you on a long trip in a small boat; especially when you have a lot of heavy weather as we did in our last 6 or 7 days. I only called one crew meeting during the trip and it was about three days before our arrival in Hilo. We were fatigued and dispirited. I noticed that we were not pushing the boat along; leaving sails alone when they might be changed or trimmed for better performance. We discussed the tiredness and the impact it was having on each of us. Just admitting to each other how tired we were and that for a few days the fun was gone seemed to spark a new energy and attention to keeping the boat moving at her best.

Overall it seems to me life on the boat was like life on land in some ways – it has ups and downs, people need to share resources and talk about what’s happening, a little bit of privacy is a good thing, allow some individualism but keep a team spirit, avoid rigid role casting, respecting and liking who you work with is really important, humor helps, and if egos can stay under control, people are likely to be able to work together through hard stuff and still remain friends.

Next – cruising through the Hawaiian islands to Honolulu.

Jamie

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July 1, 2006
Haleolono (Home of Lono) Harbor
Moloka’i

This is an abandoned commercial barge harbor, a couple of acres of protected water behind two breakwaters entered through a natural channel in the long barrier reef on the south side of Moloka’i just a couple of miles from the western end of the island. We have stopped here for the afternoon and night to break up our crossing from Lanai to Honolulu where we are headed tomorrow. There are a couple of fishing boats in here with us and an old apparently abandoned multi-hull without a mast. Several family groups are camping on the shore and enjoying a small beach at the west end of the harbor. The wind blows smartly over the breakwater to the east of us, but our anchor is firmly embedded in the mud bottom and it feels very secure here. They used to take sand and gravel out of here on barges for road building and construction on Oahu but that was stopped about 15 or 20 years ago so now the harbor isn’t maintained anymore and serves only as a resting place for small boats and fishermen. A steep reddish and gray cliff of volcanic rock provides a backdrop to the place; there are no buildings or facilities here at all.

Lono, for whom this harbor and the point of land nearby are named, was one of the four most important gods of the Hawaiians – a busy god apparently as his portfolio included agriculture, weather, clouds and medicines. We’re appreciating his attention to our weather and clouds especially and hoping we won’t need to call on him about medicines. (Preparing for this trip I put together an extensive- and expensive- emergency medical kit with help from a nurse and my sister who is a doctor. Fortunately the only things used so far are a couple of band-aids and a dollop or two of Polysporin for a little infection on my big toe.)

Cruising thru the Islands:

I had several days in Hilo between departure of Brian and Sharon and arrival of Michael. After giving the boat a thorough clean-up on Monday I rented a car and spent a wonderful Tuesday afternoon driving along the Hamakua (windward and wet) Coast of Hawaii north of Hilo. I visited spectacular little Onomea Bay and a state botanical garden and Akaka Falls State Park where 800 foot high Akaka Falls is surrounded by rain forest and the loudest cacophony of bird song I’ve ever heard. While in Radio Bay I enjoyed talking with Jim Kellam, the solo round the world sailor of another Spencer 35 named Haulback. He had arrived in Radio Bay just a few days before us in completion of a circumnavigation he began from Hawaii in the summer of 2004. His last two passages before arriving in Hilo were about 50 days non-stop from Panama preceded by about 60 days nonstop from Capetown, South Africa to Panama. That guy really loves to sail! Interestingly, for someone who revels in sailing long distances by himself, he is a remarkably friendly and outgoing person – loves to make friends and talk. We shared fresh pineapple from the Hilo farmer’s marketplace on the dock with Jim and another Canadian couple who had just arrived on their boat 52 days nonstop from Ecuador.

With Michael Bornn on board we left on Thursday late morning to sail around the “back side” of Hawaii to Kealakekua Bay. This trip began with an afternoon of perfect sailing (14 knots of breeze, close reach, 5.5 knots, full sails) before rounding Cape Kumukahi, continued with a spooky night sail past active lava flows into the sea (bright orange-red lava flows rolling off the edge of the island and great gouts of steam from the boiling sea – all the spectacular work of Madame Pele, Hawaii’s goddess of fire and volcanoes), a dawn rounding of bleak Ka Lae (South Cape) and a long motor in windless waters with a 2 knot adverse current up the west coast past lava cliffs and steep rising bluffs to Kealakekua Bay.

While in K Bay I visited with old friends Jeanne Oshima and Tom Bailey and Tom joined Michael and me for the short (4 hours) lazy warm afternoon sail up the Kona Coast to Kailua Bay. We anchored out in Kailua Bay and Jeanne and Tom kindly offered me a clean dry soft and motionless bed in their home for the night. Michael volunteered to stay on the boat for anchor watch, but he did join us for great sushi dinner ashore first. Up at Jeanne and Tom’s house in Waimea near the old Parker Ranch lands (very cool evening at elevation around 2800 feet) it felt great to take a shower in a real bathroom and sleep in a bed that didn’t move for the first time in almost a month. Unfortunately, early the next morning while I was still slumbering harbor authorities came by in a powerboat and knocked on Onrust’s hull waking Michael to tell him we had anchored in a forbidden area (not so indicated on charts) and we had to move. By the time Jeanne and Tom and I got back to Kailua Bay it was time for us to leave anyway. The anchor though wasn’t quite ready to come up. It had gotten very solidly hooked under some lava or coral and Michael and I struggled for almost an hour working the windlass to pull in the chain link by link, powering the boat this way and that, and getting fearful that it would never come up, before it finally broke free.

We then had an overnight sail ahead of us about 70 miles to Lahaina, Maui, the old whale ship gathering place and favorite residence of Hawaiian royalty in the protected waters between Maui, Kahoolawe, and Lanai. We had pleasant sailing beating to windward for several hours off of Kailua Bay (did you get my email sent from the boat at sea?) but as the wind went light in the evening and we had along way to go before we cleared the north cape of Big Island, we turned on the engine and went under power til dawn.

Although the general flow of wind in Hawaii is the NE tradewinds that blow hard and steady for the most party, on the leeward side of the islands, currents and winds are fickle and complex. It may be blowing 25 knots from the northeast on the windward side but only 5 from the south or even west on the leeward, for example. With the morning light we came abreast of Upolu Point, the northernmost tip of Hawaii and coming out from behind the island we found a strong NE tradewind and rolling sea. In 20 to 25 knots of wind in the early morning we galloped across the Alenuihaha Channel separating Hawaii from Maui with a double reefed main and tiny little jib, making 7 plus knots on a heaving ocean. Actually we had a little jib problem during the crossing. The roller furling control line broke at the roller so that we could not furl the jib. Unfurled, that jib is really big – way too big for the wind we had. We had to furl it by hand at the bow, lash the whole thing so it wouldn’t unroll, put up an inner forestay and hank on the “yankee jib” all while the boat was crashing along in steep seas and heavy wind. Wet work! The “yankee” is a great little used sail I bought for $75 from a yacht surplus store and it has given many miles of great service for the investment. The Alenuihaha crossing was but one of its contributions.

Entering the channel between Maui and Kahoolawe Island about 9:30 in the morning, was one of the most spectacular sailing experiences of the trip. Maui’s lush green Mt. Haleakala (“House of the Sun” - topping over 10,000 feet) on the right, red and green and brown flat topped desert like Kahoolawe on the left, little black Molokini dead ahead, we were racing along at 7 knots, rig thrumming, over trade driven seas with diving birds, flying fish and dappled sunlight from a silver morning sun through towering clouds of mist – unforgettable!

Just past Molokini (a blown out little volcanic cone where 8 or 10 boats were anchored in the lee with snorkel diving parties) the wind died out completely and the engine came to life again to motor us the remaining 30 miles or so into Lahaina. Lanaina’s harbor is completely filled with commercial and private boats and virtually inaccessible to the transient cruiser, but the Lahaina Yacht Club maintains a small fleet of mooring bouys outside the breakwater. We called and got permission to tie up to one. Sarah and Brian were on the shore waving to us from the deck of the Yacht Club as we tied up, about 3/4 mile offshore! Whew! It was a long paddle in to the harbor in the Avon inflatable dingy. (I don’t have an engine for the dingy.) I was rowing and Michael sitting in the back giving me direction by pointing over my shoulder – almost rowed us into the breakers!

After getting ashore and checking in (for a COLD beer) at the LYC, Brian Sarah and I ate a late lunch/early dinner at “Cheeseburgers in Paradise” topped off with Mai Tais, strolled under the famous banyan tree in central Lahaina - so old that Mark Twain wrote about it - walked the bay front street with hundreds of tourists and gawked at the art galleries and Tee shirt shops. I stayed overnight on shore with Brian and Sarah in a cute little Inn on the edge of Lahaina - old style Hawaii place – low key, screen doors, ceiling fans instead of A/C, small kitchenettes, beautiful garden kept by the owner, modest price, actually pleasant Hawaiian music playing softly. A good night’s rest and much needed; cruising in Hawaii is beautiful but taxing. The next morning the harbor mistress miraculously found us a place in the harbor to tie for our second night in Lahaina – a special treat avoiding a long row in the dingy and a rolly night on a mooring in the roadstead. After getting the boat secured in the harbor Sarah, Brain and I went surfing at a nearby beach while Michael caught up on some correspondence and work at an internet café in town. We all had dinner together at the Lahaina Yacht Club which has a wonderful deck right on the water looking across the Lahaina Roads to Lanai. (“Roads” in this usage means an area of somewhat protected waters where ships anchor out of a harbor, a “roadstead.” In the early19th century there would be dozens of whaling ships anchored in Lahaina Roads during the whaling season. Kamehameha II or III – can’t remember which one - built a special fort and jail on the water front to try to keep the whalers in some modicum of control around Lahaina.)

For our second night in Lahaina, I treated Michael to a room ashore, Sarah, Brian and I slept on the boat, securely tied up in the harbor – to be awakened at 4 AM by the shouting, provision loading and engine starting of the fishermen! So the security of the harbor came with a price.

Next – the island of Lanai, the Pineapple Island and sailing to Honolulu.

Jamie

PS- A while ago I decided - reluctantly and not without a lot of anguish - to end the voyage here in Honolulu and either ship Onrust back to San Francisco or hire a professional delivery crew to take her back for me. The bottom line is that as much as this trip has been inspirational and dream fulfilling, I am very tired, I might even say exhausted. Between the demands of ocean sailing in a small boat, built up sleep debt, my sense of responsibility for crew and vessel, and a nagging four week old neck ache, I'm just not physically or mentally ready to go to sea for a month again right now. The thought of taking off on a very demanding "uphill" 25 to 30 day ocean voyage in another few weeks is not workable. In short, I think I "bit off more than I can chew" when I planned two ocean crossings in something less than 3 months. The responsibility for this decision is mine and mine alone. I feel very badly for Richard and Bill, my intended return crew, as both of them commited to me to make the trip and made their summer plans around the expectation they would join me in Kauai and sail to San Francisco. Their disappointment is great and I am truly sorry. Not fulfilling their expectations and commitment is the one great sadness I have about my decision to end the voyage here in Honolulu. I wanted to be able to talk to both Bill and Richard before "going public" with this decision and therefore have kept quiet about it until today when I was able to reach each of them on the phone for a live conversation after leaving phone messages a week or so ago.

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July 3, 2006
The “Aloha Dock”
Hawaii Yacht Club
Ala Wai Marina
Honolulu

I just came down below after sitting on the cabin top to watch a July 4 eve fireworks show a mile or so down the beach from here. Tomorrow there is a big bar-b-que here at the Hawaii Yacht Club in the afternoon followed by the July 4 fireworks show that will be set off just outside the harbor. The way Onrust is tied up, stern facing the harbor entrance, we should have a perfect view of the show from the cockpit. Sarah and Brian went to a hotel this morning but will join me here tomorrow afternoon. Michael has taken leave to go back home to Los Angeles so I have Onrust to myself for a couple of days until Martha gets here on Thursday. I’ve missed her tremendously!

This morning was a huge boat clean-up; setting to rights everything from our cruise through the islands, washing down the whole boat inside and out, putting up the sun awning . . . . It’s nice to be in a clean re-organized space. I even put the table back in place in the main salon (taken down and stored in the forepeak for the cruise) and laid the beautiful Oriental rug Martha bought for me back on the teak and holly wood cabin sole. It’s very cozy in here now. Someone is playing a guitar and singing up on the yacht club deck and all the hatches are open with a cool evening breeze blowing through the boat. But back to the inter-island cruise . . . . .

Lanai, the Pineapple Island.

Lanai is the smallest of the six main Hawaiian Islands. (Two others - Kahoolawe is not inhabited as the US Navy has used it as a bombing and artillery practice range for many years and Niihau is wholly owned by one family and kept as a preserve of sorts; only pure blooded Hawaiians live there in the old style. Tourists are not allowed without permission and permission isn’t given very often.)

Lanai is just 10 or 12 miles across the Lahaina Roads from Lahaina and rises something over 2400 feet above sea level in its center. We left Lahaina mid-morning to make the short crossing to Manele Bay on Lahaina’s south coast. There was only a very slight wind and it was blowing straight from Lanai so after beating slowly for an hour or so, we put on the engine and powered the rest of the way. The sea was lumpy and bumpy from swells in different directions and reflection off the steep coast of northern Lanai. Sarah did not take well to the boat’s motion and made several offerings to the sea over the rail. Motoring can be really unpleasant in a windless sea like that since there is no force of wind in the sails to help stabilize the boat, the engine noise drones steadily, and diesel exhaust smell travels along with you all the time.

Several hours later we found little Manele Bay. The harbor was built in the 1960s by construction of a stone breakwater off of a rocky point deep in a natural indentation of the coast. There is a huge lava cliff rising 800 feet or so straight out of the water on one side of the bay. The resulting small harbor is very tight; the entrance channel turn around the breakwater, marked by three small unlit buoys, is about the narrowest I’ve encountered. I’d hate to try to enter it in bad weather, but we had fine weather and good day light to go in on. Manele Bay harbor is also very unique in that the 24 slips are laid out in a semi-circle so the slips between the finger piers are actually pie shaped. I think the Army Corps of Engineers must have just decided to follow the natural curve of the beach without paying much attention to the reality of berthing boats- they are not generally pie shaped!

Fortunately we had called ahead and the harbor mistress, Sheri, had a slip for us for three nights. Sheri works half days. If you arrive in the afternoon it’s just honor system to take the assigned berth and fill out a form to put in the box by the office front door. On shore there are some fishing boats on trailers, a picnic area, a restroom building with cold water showers and some lawn and shade trees; altogether a very nice stopping place.

Though small Manele Bay is a busy harbor. Several large catamarans arrive each day with dozens of tourists from Lahaina on board coming over to snorkel or explore Lanai City, and several scheduled ferries bring guests for one of the three hotels on the island and residents who go back and forth to Maui. Still, Lanai is very quiet. The only town, Lanai City, has a population of about 2500 and sits in the middle of the island up at a cool 2000 foot plus elevation graced with pine trees.

Lanai is called the Pineapple Island because it used to be wholly owned by Dole and had several tens of thousands of acres of pineapples. The pineapple fields were all up in the center of the island surrounding Lanai City. The island is one single volcanic caldera. From the sea cliffs it slopes up gently to the rim of the caldera, inside of which is a huge open relatively flat space where the top of the volcano blew off leaving just the rim enclosing a gently sloping bowl of land. The whole economy of Lanai for several generations was pineapples - planting, tending, irrigating, harvesting and shipping to the canneries in Honolulu. When I was in college I lived in Honolulu one summer and worked in the Dole cannery there for a couple of weeks to earn some extra bucks. It was grueling labor in the noisiest factory I ever worked in. But I can only imagine the field work must have been much hotter and harder – and more dangerous. Workers had to buy their own all over protective clothing – leather chaps, heavy gloves, face and eye protection – due to the sharp spiky stiff “leaves” of the pineapple plant growing like little clusters of green daggers around the fruit. Lanai City was built as an agricultural factory town and its well organized rows of small but neat wooden houses (very colorful painted in bright pastel colors mostly) speak of industrial paternalism of a past age.

The pineapple business is totally gone now from Lanai, exported to South East Asia; the last pineapples were grown probably 15 or 20 years ago. Lanai’s fields lie empty. Wrenching changes have led now to an economy based on very limited hotel and tourism (3 main hotels – two of them elegant Four Seasons resorts where the rich and famous play and one old lovely 14 room hotel on the edge of town), and the variety of internet and entrepreneurial businesses that can survive in an isolated rural environment.

Sarah, Brian and I hitchhiked up to Lanai City together one day. We were picked up by Mike, a Lanai native, mostly Hawaiian ancestry I think, who works for the big catamaran company. He was busy on his cell phone for part of the 20 minute drive up to the City, but was very friendly and told about how when he left the island as a young man to join the US Marines the pineapple was still king but when he came back 20 later it was entirely gone. He said the crime rate on Lanai is close to zero. There was a murder once he said, back in the change time when stresses were very high, but there hasn’t been one for 15 years or so.

Mike also told us the island is now almost entirely owned by one person – that is to say one person owns the corporation that owns the island. He is in his 90’s but has agreed to very strict permanent development restrictions and conservation agreements that will limit hotel and tourist and other development. Mike was on the planning commission of the island for several years after he came back and feels the development restrictions are a good thing – to preserve a unique and beautiful island landscape and community. More than one developer has bought up land in the hopes of major development only to sell it off when the restrictions held. While there is an obvious economic tradeoff here, it seems likely the island will remain mostly rural and natural for a long time.

Mike dropped us off at the Ko’ele Lodge (one of the two Four Season Resorts) just on the edge of Lanai City. It has a wonderful botanical garden, gracious lawns with croquet courts, and a stately lobby with inviting lounges near the fireplace that obviously invite naps. A local artist was painting in the lobby, his easel set up so anyone walking through could stop and watch. After enjoying the beautiful grounds of the Ko’ele Lodge we walked past multicolored homes with flower and fruit tree bedecked yards back into the town proper. “Downtown” surrounds a graceful central square park (“Dole Park” of course) with the town’s places of commerce and social activity lined up around the four sides – three cafes, two art galleries, a playhouse, a family run coffee house (no Starbucks or Peet’s here!) the combined elementary and high school, governmental buildings, two markets, the bank, etc. It is a charming little town with the feel of a century ago. There were children – many shades of black, brown, white - playing ball and games in the park under towering pines, with the complexions and accents of Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Philipino and Caucasian. Booths were being erected for a weekend festival – the Pineapple Festival, of course, including a cancer fund raiser. We spent a delightful hour in an art gallery talking with the wife of the painter we had seen at Ko’ele Lodge and ended up buying two small prints of his work. The very beautiful young woman who also worked there – ¼ Hawaiian she told me, just graduated from U. Colorado at Boulder – said she wasn’t sure where the pineapples for the Pineapple Festival were coming from, don’t grow them here anymore. I’m guessing they would have to come over from Oahu where Del Monte still operates a few pineapple fields for local consumption and shipment of fresh fruit to the mainland.

On Lanai we also enjoyed a beautiful beach, craggy lava cliffs and tide pools at Hulopo’e Bay, just a short walk from the harbor. The other big Four Seasons resort hotel overlooks Hulopo’e Bay, but it still remains largely a locals camping and swimming place with families pitching tents under the trees above the sand. One day the local fire department crews all gathered there for a picnic lunch during the work day.

We met an older couple aboard their boat in Manele Bay and they told us about Haleolono Harbor on Moloka’i, suggesting that it made a good stopover place on the way to Honolulu. This sounded good to Michael and me since Sarah and Brian had never sailed at night on the ocean and getting to Honolulu involves crossing two interisland channels which can get pretty rough. When we left Manele Bay we shaped a course around the south end of Lanai again having to motor in light contrary winds on the leeward side of the island till we reached Kaena Point, the northwest corner of the island. Here we suddenly found strong NE trade winds blowing through the Kalohi Channel that separates Lanai from Molokai. Within a couple of minutes we went from motoring in almost no wind to sailing 7.5 knots with reefed main and partial jib well healed to very fresh trade wind. As we stretched away from the point into the Kalohi Channel we found nice big rolling swells and wind waves and enjoyed a fast beam reach for 18 miles or so across to the western end of Molokai. Our informant couple on Lanai had told us the entrance to Haleolono was under “the fourth lava cliff east from the point.” Moloka’i southern shore has lava, lava and more lava, but putting together pieces of the puzzle from their description, the large scale chart and my cruising guide book, we found the entrance by early afternoon.

There is a barrier reef along most of the Molokai’s south shore so out of excess of caution I turned on the depth sounder as we approached the opening between the two old breakwaters. Fine, no problem, 24 feet, 20 feet, 18 feet 16.5 feet, 18 feet and we’re in! We turned right into the protected bight of the old harbor and dropped anchor in about 17 of water, let out lots of chain and reversed the engine to bite into the mud and coral debris bottom. On approaching the Molokai side of the channel the wind had lightened up a bit, but once in the harbor it whistled over the breakwater and rippled the flat water in the bay making us swing this way and that on our chain. I figured that the big lava cliff right behind the harbor deflected and constricted the wind to accelerate it over the harbor close in. In spite of the windy conditions in the harbor we felt very secure and all took long swims and walks on the shore. However I distinctly recall that while I was swimming the half mile or so from our boat to the beach at the other end of the harbor I found myself wondering if sharks ever came into the harbor. On this, the leeward side of the island the land is dry and covered with brushy trees and thorn bearing shrubs.

Our last dinner aboard “at sea:”

Begin with cocktail of fresh squeezed lime juice in sweetened coconut flavored rum, neat, with appetizer of chips and salsa; main dish of Spam “steaks” grilled with mango chutney sauce and a topping of pineapple chunks served over lemon rice– a true Hawaiian delicacy! Try it at home some time!

The wind kept whistling and crowing all night. I was up a couple of times to check our position and assure we were not dragging. Not far behind us there was another sailboat anchored, without a mast. I’m guessing she lost it somewhere in the channel and was anchored there waiting the owner to figure out some way to get her to Oahu for repairs. That forlorn mast less boat was a reminder that Hawaiian waters are not to be taken lightly. This impression was reinforced by the radio weather reports I listened to after dinner giving small craft advisories and predictions of “fresh” trade winds to 25 knots in the channels with NE wind waves 9 to 10 feet over a southerly swell.

Next morning I bent on the trys’l to the mast, just in case the channel between Molokai and Oahu kicked up really heavy. The trys’l is basically a storm sail you put up in place of the mains’l when even the double reefed main would be too big. It has its own separate track on the mast. It’s really small. I also made sure everything was fully battened down and ready for potentially big seas and wind on our last open water passage – about 30 miles from Laau Pt., the westernmost tip of Molokai, to Diamond Head on Oahu. The anchor came up easily from the mud bottom and we motored out of the harbor while setting a double reefed main to find moderate seas with a good sailing breeze. As we sailed down the last three miles of Molokai to the beginning of the Kaiwi Channel, the breeze freshened some and we shortened the jib twice. From there on to Diamond Head was wonderful sparkling sailing with the 20 to 25 knots wind predicted but moderate seas – just enough to give us a sleigh ride now and then and give the flying fish something to skip off of. I took the wheel away from Monitor for the last half of the crossing just to enjoy driving my boat down the waves. Sarah, who used to squeal with concern whenever Onrust would heel over in San Francisco Bay, was delighted and smiling over the great wind, rolling blue waves and white horses – no squealing any more, just happy laughter.

Finally, Diamond Head Light abeam, the famous finish line of the century old Transpac Yacht Race, then the towers and glittering shore of Waikiki, (“Wickywacky” as my friend Sandy Alexander calls it) slid by on our right, surfers and canoes rode the surf inshore of us, tourist sailing cats glided by with bright colored sails, and we found the red and green entrance buoys for Ala Wai Marina, the sailing cross roads of the Pacific, which led us into the friendly welcoming Aloha Dock of Hawaii Yacht Club. A young couple from a trimaran helped take our lines and tie us up “rafted” next to a 43 foot ketch from Vancouver, B.C. – also with a green hull. Sails down and lashed, motor shut off, hatches opened, wet gloves off, a feeling of home away from home; a voyage ended with all safe and sound, tired but happy and satisfied.

Since writing most of the above on the 3rd, I’ve been working on the problem of returning Onrust to San Francisco, eagerly awaiting Martha’s arrival here, enjoying the amazing just off the breakwater fireworks show on the 4th (Hawaii, or at least Oahu, is a very patriotic place – Pearl Harbor happened here within the living memory of many and about every third person is either in or family related to or retired from the military services – and besides, everyone likes a good firework’s show!), getting in a day’s work for IA with a client here, and doing little odd jobs on the boat, getting a little time at Waikiki Beach, doing laundry, spending time with my daughter, etc. The man with the green boat we are rafted with has invited Martha and me to sail with him on his boat to Kauai and if I can get arrangements for Onrust’s delivery back to SF completed in time we will sail with him to Hanalei Bay.

I feel very full and satisfied with this cruise. I am still very sorry about dashing Richard’s and Bill’s hopes to sail to SF with me, that being the only dark spot. Deciding not to sail Onrust back myself was difficult but I know it was the right choice all things considered; I thank those of you who have commented supportively about my decision.

In writing these emails I have tried to give you a sense of the experience of this trip – the sights, sounds, thoughts and emotions I and my crew have had, as well as some of the craft challenges and joys of sailing on the ocean and a bit of the lore of the places we’ve visited. For me, sharing this experience with friends and family in this way has been very important and an integral part of the adventure. I am so fortunate and blessed to have been able to do it so I felt compelled in some small way to share and extend the experience to others; it would be selfish to keep it all to myself. I hope you’ve enjoyed these reports and perhaps found some joy, amusement, inspiration or new perspective of your own in them. Thanks for letting me send them to you.

Jamie

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All information was provided by Jamie Harris - Skipper and Owner of Onrust - Spencer 35 Hull 35

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