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.

Meteor!

8/31 0600 position 25-17N 156-31W. Wind E@4kts. Seas 2 feet. 245 miles to Hanalei.

I'm sure Fred's advice on the lures was correct, but when the ocean is full of mahi mahi, and not ahi, mahi is what you catch. We put an ahi lure out and caught three more mahi in quick succession, just keeping the last and largest one. We hooked up the second fish before the lure was even all the way out again after releasing the first one. The second was probably one of the first fish's buddies that followed her into the boat as we reeled her in. Interestingly, all the mahi we have caught have been females. After the third mahi we put the fishing gear away. I never thought I would write these words, but we are tired of catching mahi. It is a first world problem.

We had yet another windless day with flat seas yesterday, and the forecast into Hanalei continues to improve. We have been incredibly lucky with the weather on this crossing. The good weather the first week (except the sloppy seas on the first night out) was expected, but beyond seven days forecast reliability falls apart and it becomes a roll of the dice. The mighty Starr has rolled well.

Last night was an excellent one for star gazing with a cloudless sky and no moon. The Milky Way sat like a lighted arch above us all night. Clay and Sharry were on watch just before midnight when a huge meteor entered the atmosphere in front of Starr, arced across the sky, and exploded in a burst of light. Clay couldn't determine if it exploded in the atmosphere or upon contact with the ocean. We see the coolest things out here.

There was no sign of other human life on the planet again yesterday. No ships, no planes, and almost no rubbish. With all the fish we are catching, I am surprised that we haven't seen any fishing boats. The area south of Hawaii outside the US economic exclusion zone is full of fishing boats. I've seen them on all my passages south. I wonder why they aren't up here north of the islands?

Green Flash

8/30 0600 position 27-55N 153-50W. Wind E@4kts. Seas flat. 457 miles from Hanalei.

Yesterday morning we decided it was time to bust out the fishing gear again and snag something for dinner. Within an hour we had landed two mahi mahi. The first went into the freezer. We threw the second one back and put away the rod and reel. Not bad. We've fished for just over an hour total and landed three mahi mahi.

The skipper declared that we've caught enough mahi. It was time to catch some ahi. How do we do that? I texted my daughter Kendra's boyfriend Fred, a legendary offshore fisherman, for some advice. He responded, "7-9 inch, green lure, bullet shaped... and Kendra is gonna be jealous that I got a text and she didn't! Haha."

It was glassy all day yesterday, and once again there was relatively little rubbish in the water, just a few floats and the occasional smaller stuff just below the surface. We didn't see any ships. I did see a contrail above us parallel to our course. Must have been a HNL-SEA flight.

A couple of us saw a green flash at sunset. The air was exceptionally clear with clouds disappearing over the horizon. That's the second time I've seen it this summer!

We are in just about the same location where I've had to make some hard decisions during multiple Transpac races to Hawaii. After six days on starboard tack, the decision on when to make that final jybe to port tack is critical and often determines the winner of the race. Jybe too soon, and you'll have to jybe back to starboard, the lifted tack, at the end of the race. That means more miles sailed and a slower race. Same thing if you wait too long to jybe - wasted miles. It is difficult to pick a lay line from 400+ miles out but it sure feels good when you get it right.

Headwinds

8/29 0600 position 30-26N 151-05W. Wind NW@3kts. Seas 2 feet and confused.

The forecast showed that the southwesterly headwinds we experienced yesterday morning would be light and short lived. They were neither. The wind slowly increased as the day progressed, and after dark last night it was up near twenty knots with a good sized wind chop. It got a bit uncomfortable aboard the mighty Starr heading directly into it at nine knots, but at least we were dry in our climate controlled wheel house. I'm glad I wasn't aboard Keith's Cal 20. I'm sure his evening was worse than ours. The wind started to clock and die off just before I came on watch at 1AM. There is still some left over slop this morning, but it is disappearing quickly.

Surprisingly, the updated forecast models missed the strong southwesterly completely. It showed light northerly winds and small seas. That's the first time in a long time that we've seen the models get it wrong. The models are calling for a flat calm day today. We hope they are correct.

The rougher weather yesterday made it harder to see rubbish in the water, but we saw a lot less than we expected. It was pretty clear that we were passing through an area of far lower garbage density than the day before. We haven't seen any garbage in the past hour since it got light this morning. Perhaps the worst is behind us.

We got two dinners out of our mahi mahi. Don made an excellent lemon/butter/caper sautéed mahi the first night and a tasty fish soup the second with onions, potatoes, shrimp, ham hocks, and clam broth. We've had a couple of days of no fish. Perhaps it is time to put the line out again?

Don and Sharry had a flying fish come in through their open cabin window the night before last. It got stuck on the window sill and didn't make it into bed with them. There would be a better story if it had.

We haven't seen any ships for more than a day now forcing the crew to create its own entertainment. Books are being finished and sudokus completed. We've solved most of the world's problems during our night watch discussions so we're spending more time listening to podcasts. Hidden Brain is a favorite.

Net Dodging

8/28 0600 position 32-59N 148-05W. Wind SW@7kts. Seas flat.

It was another glorious day yesterday spent piloting Starr from the flying bridge. The wind was still from the NE, directly behind us, basically blowing the same speed we were going so it was like a calm day at the beach. There was a lot of lounging, napping, and reading up there by the off watch crew.

Visibility is much better from Starr's flying bridge, ten feet higher than the wheelhouse. As a result, we could see a lot more of the rubbish that sits just at or below the sea surface. It was everywhere, and we were never out of sight of small pieces of plastic. We passed a few nets as well. They weren't huge nets, but might have been large enough to foul Starr's prop had we hit them head on.

It was stressful looking for nets ahead of the boat, particularly during the late afternoon when the sun ahead of Starr created a glare that prevented the watch stander from seeing submerged items until the boat was nearly on top of them. That tug boat captain we spoke to a few days ago was right about nets after dark. There is no way we'd see them, even with our infrared camera. We are depending on luck to avoid those, and so far luck has been with us.

This morning it is looking like garbage density is less. Perhaps we are through the worst of it? We shall see.

The wind shifted overnight and is now coming from ahead of us. The seven knot breeze combined with our speed through the water makes an apparent wind of fifteen knots over the deck. That might be too windy to enjoy life on the flying bridge today.

I tried to contact Keith on his Cal 20 by text via his Spot Tracker system but never got a response from him. We are now past his probable position so it doesn't look like we will see him out here.

We did pass a 750 foot cargo ship yesterday headed from somewhere in Asia to Peru. She looked like an empty grain carrier heading for South America to pick up a load to take back to Asia. Do the Chinese eat quinoa?

Into the Tropics

0600 position 35-24N 145-00W. Wind NE@6. Seas almost flat.

Yesterday it felt like we were in the tropics. The wind was from the Northeast, directly behind us, and blowing at the same speed Starr was powering, about nine knots. That made the apparent wind close to calm, and it was glorious on deck.

Don dug out the flying bridge cushions from the lockers, and all of the crew spent time up there during the day. Sharry read her book for a few hours in the shade of the bimini and Donna spent her entire three hour afternoon watch scanning for nets from the upper level control station. It was easier to spot rubbish from that higher elevation, and debris density increased to the point that there was always some pieces of plastic in sight. Interestingly, it was almost all smaller than a dinner plate in size. We continued to see the occasional plastic fishing float, but haven't seen any other large pieces of garbage, We've only seen two nets so far.

I sighted my first malolo, or flying fish, during my afternoon watch. Yep, you're in the tropics when the malolo are around.

The barometer is telling us that the high, or one of them, is behind us. After steadily climbing for a few days, it started dropping a day ago. Barometric pressure is down from a high of 1024 to 1015mb. Usually a significant amount of wind accompanies a pressure gradient that steep, but we haven't seen it.

We reached the halfway point of the passage yesterday afternoon. The forecast shows that the high is starting to get better organized behind us, and the North Pacific is moving back into a more typical summer weather pattern. Fortunately for Starr, the trades won't return to normal until we are just two days out of Hanalei. Until then we should be enjoying flat water and light winds.

Last night we could see squalls filling in all around us on the radar, and dawn revealed what will likely be a wetter day than yesterday. Starr can use the rinse.

Our new watch system has a problem we need to sort out. We have been allowing the nighttime standby watch stander to nap in the wheel house day bunk. The current watch stander rotates into the standby position at the 10PM, 1AM, and 4AM change of watch. We don't want to rouse the soundly sleeping former standby person, ("Wake up, it's time to go to sleep"), but there is no place for the new standby watch stander to nap unless we do. If we don't deal with this quickly, Don may come up to the wheelhouse for his 7AM watch to find Donna at the wheel and Clay, Sharry, and I spooning in the day bunk!