Arrival at Hilo, Hawaii.

Yahoo!

..and Leta and Shack were there to greet me.  Fantastic!

The winds have played with me today.

I made numerous sail changes through the day and night;

adjusting to wind shifts around storm clouds,

huge changes in strength and direction.

Even so, Hawaii is coming closer:

sometime this evening it will be 100 miles away.

 

More traffic:

saw a freighter (I think) last night passing astern of me.

That’s an average of one boat every ten days. 

 

The wind died this morning, and I motored for 4 hours...agony!

I’m so pleased to have a little wind now.

Leta has booked a flight to meet me in Hilo, on the big island,

so I’m pushing (motoring when necessary) to arrive about when she does, Tueday afternoon.

They say you shouldn’t go sailing if you’re trying to stay on a schedule...

Twice last night, the wind died completely. Yikes!

That’s much worse than anything else I can imagine.

Luckily, it didn’t last long.  I think it was just an effect of some passing storms nearby.

The Hawaiian Islands look so small on the chart plotter.

What are the chances that I could miss them and sail right by?

It’s a big ocean...

Brilliant blue color in the sunshine, and darker steel blue under overcast skies.

The color of the water changes with the light, but it always looks impressive.

Hawaii is 5 degrees south and 5 degrees west; just over 400 miles away now.

The winds vary in strength during the day and night and passing storms,

but the direction is relatively constant, so there’s not much sail-work to do.

I’m just watching the days go by.

Several little ‘flying fish’ were on deck this morning,

ranging from 1 inch to 6 inches long, with definite wings on them.

 

In the past few days I have seen jet trails in the sky.

Originally, they were going my way (a good sign!),

but today I noticed that they aren’t exactly going the same direction.

I now see that I’m close enough to the Hawaiian Islands that

planes headed to Honolulu, for instance, would be on a different heading.

I am just over 500 miles from the big island of Hawaii, but the islands themselves

are spread out over hundreds of miles themselves.

The wind picked up a lot since yesterday’s picture.

It was a rough night.  Couldn’t sent the email update.

I no longer look or feel like the guy in yesterday’s picture.

Winds have slowly been picking up today; only motored for an hour this morning.

More garbage in the water.  A plastic milk crate went by a few feet from the boat.

That’s the sort of thing that gets me jumping when it bumps and drags along the boat.  Makes me wonder what’s happening.

A few birds (seagulls?) circled the boat for about an hour today.  They looked interested in landing, but couldn’t get enough nerve.

 

I’ve been listening to Captain Bligh’s story of the mutiny on the Bounty.

I paid close attention to the details of the voyage that he made when they were set adrift:

23 ft boat, with 18 men in it, travelled a distance of 3,600 miles, over 41 days.

They ate an ounce of bread and a quarter pint of water each day.

Luckily, they were able to catch some sea birds, and eat them up, bones and all.

Maybe that’s why the birds didn’t land on my boat today.

Anyway, it made my food and water situation look pretty good!

 

 

A long, slow day.

Motored for 3.5 hrs., ghosting along otherwise, at about walking speed.

I head directly south when motoring (slightly more wind to the south), instead of directly toward Hawaii.

More garbage in the water today.  I see something every half-hour or so.  Plastic net, rope, and a bottle!

I actually turned around and tried to pick up the bottle.  It was corked, and might have had someone’s last message in it...

I didn’t quite reach it, but I was close enough to see nothing inside of it, so I passed on.

Later, a huge bird swooped by.  “Albatross” I said as I saw it’s 5 or 6 ft. wingspan.  Neat!

...and it’s getting warm.  Shorts only, and stay out of the direct sun.

I woke up to a fish in the cockpit this morning.

It was about a foot long, needle-like, and a brilliant blue and silver.

I tossed it overboard before getting a picture – oops.

If I ‘catch’ one again, I’ll take a picture.

 

Then, during the day, I saw 3 pieces of garbage.

The stuff was fairly close together, so I thought maybe I’ve crossed the path of another boat (no sign of any).

 

My GPS tells the distance to go to reach Hawaii, and later today I will be at 1000 miles to go.

I’m going to use this as an excuse to have one of the chocolate bars that I said I wouldn’t eat.

Then more celebrations at 750, 500, and 250 miles to go.

Food takes a different role when there’s little to do but watch the day go by.

I found some flavoured porridge the other day (from last year), and it disappeared quickly. Yum.

Unlike Shackleton, I don’t save the best ‘til last.

Most of the good food was gone long ago.

Good news: reached the half-way point!

Bad news: very light wind (ghosting along right now) and even less wind forecast for next several days...

Motored for 2 hrs this morning.  Overcast & drizzle.

The motoring provided hot water for a wash-up and some laundry.

My standards have been quite low as far as cleanliness goes.

This afternoon the sun came out, and it warmed up considerably.  I put shorts on!

Some time tomorrow I should be at the half-way point (distance-wise) of the trip.

Hopefully, the second half will be a bit quicker;

the boat is getting lighter, and the wind should become more reliable (trade winds).

Back to overcast skies and cool weather today.

The wind is increasing, and misty rain comes and goes.

Rougher water has delayed my emailing today;

it’s a handful just to hang on.

On the up-side, I’m not using any motion-sickness medication (and it’s pretty rough right now).

Notable events:

saw a (boat) light last night.  Slow moving (probably another sailboat; too dark to tell)

saw a bird today – first creature seen all week.

I’m running out of books to read, but I know one of them is for identifying birds,

so I may get to that soon.

Back to overcast and cool conditions, including less wind.

A good time to try a lighter sail.  It looked great (being the only thing blue in the sky)

 

 

and it worked great for about 8 hours.

Then I noticed a long, blue sail dragging in the water beside me.

-fished the sail onboard and I’m letting it dry out.  Unfortunately, the line used to lift it up had chaffed through and fallen down,

so I’ll be unable to raise that sail again (unless I climb to the top of the mast to route a new line – not likely!)

 

On another topic:  there’s nothing out here!  No boats, no fish, no birds, no garbage – nothing but water.

And I notice the water is completely clear (around Vancouver Island, the water has lots of little ‘things’ in it).

 

Sunshine!

Bright blue sky & puffy white clouds for the whole day – nice!

And the wind is more from the north, so I’m not fighting it; it’s helping me along.

 

Another rough-ride day; with good wind comes big waves.

The sun came out for a few hours today, and for the first time it actually felt warm.

 

The weather map doesn’t correspond to the wind I’m seeing;

winds are from the SW (where I’m trying to go. of course)

while the weather map says I should be getting wind from the north (I wish).

Anyway, the sun came out for several hours this afternoon,

so I scrubbed some of the decks. “Yo Ho Ho Ho, a pirate’s life for me”.

Until today, it’s been to cold to do anything outside.

And now the grey clouds are returning...

Skies have been overcast for past several days.

Only a few hours of sun here and there.  Not encouraging or uplifting...

And now the wind has picked up, and it’s a rough ride again.

I’m going to try downloading a weather map to see what’s going on.

I’ve had to put my motion-sickness patch back on.