End of the Line

9/2 0800 position 22-13N 159-30W.  At anchor in Hanalei Bay in 30 feet, sand bottom.

As the mighty Starr entered Hanalei Bay yesterday morning we could see pal Mitch Haynie tow in surfing on his foiling board on the reef at the entrance to the bay.  Lori told me by email that he'd be out there this morning, taking advantage of the season's first big north swell.  Fortunately, the swell wasn't big enough to ruin the Hanalei anchorage, but it will ruin our plans to head down to some of my favorite anchorages on the Napali coast and on Niihau.

We've adjusted our plans accordingly.  Don and Sharry have decided to hang out on Starr in Hanalei for the time being, and the rest of the crew is flying home to Honolulu this afternoon.

This crossing is in the running for smoothest passage from the west coast to Hawaii ever. We were extremely lucky with weather.

No glass balls though, and we didn't see as much garbage as we expected.  Clay says he saw a lot more junk on the passage from Seattle to Hawaii on his boat a few years ago, but he took a more southerly route.   He thinks we passed to the north of the highest concentration of garbage.  We'll likely never know.  I suspect the garbage patch grows and shrinks and moves around the ocean much like the North Pacific High Pressure Area does, but not as fast and perhaps not as far.

We all piled into Starr's new dinghy yesterday evening and powered up the Hanalei River to a dinner hosted by Don and Sharry at the Dolphin Restaurant.  The Dolphin overlooks the river about a mile upstream from the bay.  We found a place in the Hau bushes there to moor the dinghy.  It was a great farewell meal after a great passage.  To  make it more memorable, it started pouring during dinner and continued as we made our way back to Starr later.  We were all soaked to the bone!  You know it was a drama free passage when the worst weather we saw and most drama we had occurred on the Hanalei River!

It was great to cruise with Clay, Don, and Sharry again, and enjoy voyaging with a new shipmate, Donna.

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Land Ho!

9/1 0600 position 22-28N 159-12W. Wind NE@9 knots. Seas 3 feet. 21 miles from Hanalei.

When I came on watch at 1AM this morning I could just see the loom of Honolulu's lights off to the south. We never did see any lights on Kauai. Dawn broke this morning when we were still thirty miles from Hanalei, too far offshore to see lights on shore there.

We get a bit stir crazy during the night watches aboard Starr, staring at the instruments with nothing else happening. Clay noticed that our log, the instrument that tells us the miles travelled since it was reset, was approaching a special number, and we got a picture of it. Simple things for simple minds....

At 3AM a ship popped up on the AIS, our first in five days or so. It was the English flagged 250 foot "Petrel" heading for "Project Area Midway" at ten knots. It must have been some kind of research vessel.

At 6AM Kauai appeared on the radar, and a few minutes later we could see it ahead of us in the growing light. We should have the anchor down in Hanalei Bay before 9AM.