Waikolu

At anchor in Waikolu Valley, north shore Molokai.

One often repeated definition of "cruising" is "Working on your boat in exotic places."

Things are always breaking on boats, and if you don't fix them as they fail, pretty soon nothing on the boat is working and you can't enjoy your cruise. Bo's list of things that need fixing is getting pretty long. We are trying to resolve the problems that would cripple us going forward, but with just a day left in this epic cruise, we are ignoring those issues that don't affect us significantly.

This morning our windlass decided that it was going on strike. Great. We had all 150 feet of 5/16" chain out with a 44 pound anchor at the end of it. I pulled much of it in by hand, but when I got to where I was lifting the anchor, this 66 year old body could pull no more. I recalled a trick I'd seen racing yachts, that don't have windlasses, use back in the '70s. They hook their spinnaker halyard into the chain and pull it up using a halyard winch. Mark swam over from Puanani to help with the grinding, and we got the ground tackle back up into Maka'oi'oi. Thank you. Mark!

It was only 1-1/2 miles from Keawanui to our next anchorage at Waikolu, so we powered The distance. It is one of the most scenic mile and a half's on the planet. A 3,284 foot inverted cliff hanging over the water, sea caves, offshore spires... For those that have the courage, and the intrepid officers of the squadron did, a must do is traversing the 50 yard wide pass between Okala Island and the adjacent headland that protects the Waikolu anchorage. It was butt puckeringly tight contemplating the impact of a steering or engine failure at the wrong moment... but the fleet made it through safe and sound. And then, almost immediately, we were in the calm waters of Waikolu, just a mile east of the Kalaupapa peninsula.

Anchors went down just before noon. A celebratory beer, then lunch, and now we are looking forward to going ashore to explore this afternoon.