08/04/2012, Honolulu, Hawaii

Hate to bore you with house pictures but this shows our new hardwood floors and stairs, new railing, new placement of our Malaysian fan, and new stove and hearth. Tons of work and now we're ready to play again.

We were gone for 10 weeks so the grass is flowing on the hull. I need to clean it off today. We had friends take care of our tortoise while we were gone but Victoria is back in the cockpit, pretty as you please.

Kewalo Basin has been a great stop. Close to the buses and we can bike to Sam's Club, West Marine and other places pretty easily without being caught in the Waikiki traffic.

Scott is looking into maybe doing a haul out here and we will be asking for a permit to sail to Palmyra soon. We were last there in 1989 then friends were there in 2008 and saw the drawing we had done on the 'Yacht Club' wall. It's about 900 miles SW of Hawaii and we're considering going back to Fanning Island and maybe a few more of the Line Islands.

Comments [0]

Scott / It's pretty calm today, not like a few days ago with 30 knot winds
04/02/2012, 20.53N 150.28W

We left from Cabo on 03/15/12. The best part was having our son, Nathan join us for the crossing. It was an unusually overcast day and my mind was heavy with the thought of what was ahead. Is it harder because I am older or because I know what to expect?

For the first 4 days we had heavy head winds and overcast sky, it was wet and lumpy, but Celestial was going hard and fast making over 180 miles a day, hard on the weather. The next 6 days saw the wind open up to a fast beam reach and we smoked across the ocean for 1200 miles in 6 days, making our 200 miles a day goal. It is pure sailing joy to feel the power and speed of this race boat. Our wake was an ocean path of bubbles with a constant small cresting tube wave coming off the stern. We were looking to beat Blue Jays time (Our J-36 that we used for our crossing in 1989) by over 3 days and get to Maui in less than 2 weeks. ((Our first crossing was in a Buccaneer 295 in 1983.)) It all looked great for us to do just that when we blew the 3rd starboard diagonal mast stay and needed to reef, but the main snagged on the broken rigging and left us no choice but to sail till dawn with a partial and slack main sail.

After a slow night Nate went aloft at dawn to free the main and jury rig the stay. It is very difficult to affect repairs aloft and at sea, but he did it. From then on it was a struggle to keep boat speed in light winds and bad sailing angles. At times we even ran dead downwind; which is not only slow but the constant collapsing of the Jib ended in lots of wear and we did get a rip in its foot. By now our GRIB files for weather were long obsolete and as we have no SSB or RADAR it was back to the old days of reading the sea the wind and the clouds for what to expect. I have been crossing oceans for almost 30 years now but I never seem to be able to remember how crazy big the ocean is. We celebrated our 1000 mile mark and our halfway mark. One Mexican beer and one American beer seemed appropriate for the latter.

It was hard to see our record run slowly slip out of our fingers but God is good and we made landfall on the morning of the 14th day and were at anchor in Kahului harbor on Maui, just 8hrs past our 2 week target. Praise the Lord all of us are well and safe.

Nate caught yellow fin tuna and dorado for fresh food as well as taking several celestial noon sights; one was .3 Nmi from the GPS noon latitude. Having a big strong 26 year old son to share the watches and sailing duties was an absolute blessing.

We actually ate a squid that ended up on our deck and with butter, it wasn't bad! We let the other squids, the pike fish, the flying fish and small shrimp return to the sea.

Donna was as always my incredible first mate, she is always ready to be on watch and to verify the safety of her men and the boat. I still watch in amazement as she cooks in a tossing seaway and comes out with fresh baked cinnamon rolls. She recorded 12 books she read, almost one a day.

Landing in a north shore port rarely visited by sailing yachts has its advantages. We sailed into an empty anchorage except for commercial vessels and had our pick of spots. In the morning I called Customs and Immigration to see about checking in. Our officer, after hearing where we were and being told that we have no shore transportation, was a truly laid back Hawaiian as he said, "I will meet you on the beach by the canoes". I motored the dinghy ashore in just my bare feet, shorts, and boat papers. After filling out a few forms, showing passports and documentation, we were good to go. I did not expect to be reminded of our relaxed custom days in the South Pacific as we sailed to post 9-11 Hawaii. Immigration at our airports is an invasive and aggravating experience so this was a breath of fresh air blowing in from a more innocent past.

One mishap was having our O-ring on our water tank leak in salt water. We still had plenty of water in jerry cans for drinking and it was an easy fix once we were anchored.

On Saturday, after walking to the Safeway for fresh supplies, we returned to our unlocked dinghy on the beach only to be invited to a memorial luau at the Hawaii canoe club. How great is it to really feel old time Polynesian hospitality in modern-day Kahului, Maui.

Now that the wind has calmed down and we've replenished our water supply with ONLY fresh water, we're ready to take care of our other repairs.

Comments [2]

03/15/2012, Cabo - not Hawaii

We hardly had any wind as we departed from La Paz so each day we stopped our 'motoring' to see if the next day would bring more wind. Even here in rocky/rolly Cabo roadstead, there isn't much wind but we WILL leave tomorrow. We have fresh gribs and the weather is still favorable so here we go. Now you can plan 14 days from 3/15 instead of 3/11!

The picture is of the Navy who stormed by us many times in La Paz but we didn't get stopped leaving - which was good.

Comments [0]

A good day to set sail
03/10/2012, La Paz to Oahu

Today is the day! La Paz has a huge current running through the channel, which is now ebbing. We picked up our laundry, made one more food and water run and are ready to depart. FYI-laundry at the La Paz Marina is just over $4.00 - 50 pesos to have the laundry lady wash, dry and fold a load of clothes. We plan to move to Los Lobos, a quiet nearby bay with NO current so we can finish cleaning the bottom, use my kayak one more time then set sail for Hawaii tomorrow morning. Celestial can easily make 200 miles a day so we're planning right around 14 days at sea. Now to remember to stow all the items that will fly once we begin to heel.

For a picture, I chose to 'show off' our huge pile of scallops and prawns and local olives. Scott bought the seafood from a vendor who walks through the marina maybe once a week. Can you tell I was excited to finally have seafood? In the background is handiwork we bought when we were up in Aqua Verde.

Aloha!

Comments [0]

Back to the windy city!
02/25/2012, La Paz

We were determined to NOT be here for a week of music every night until 4-5am! But we did come back for the last night of Carnival (2/21) and we're glad we did. Cruiser friends Nancy, Ethan and Zada let us tag along with them since they 'knew the score'. They bought eggs with confetti in them but you could NOT toss them at the lovely ladies and handsome men - only at the trucks or the little boys who were trying to catch them or smash them on your neighbor! I'm still picking up confetti that came back to 'Celestial'. I did get a feathered Carnival party mask to remember the event with. More pictures are on facebook.

We're into our last few weeks in Mexico. We need to seriously think about what we need to do before we head out again. Nathan, our son flies in on the 3rd and we'll start watching for a weather window to sail to HAWAII! Nathan was super excited to do the two week sail, not that excited to play tourist in Hawaii but his girlfriend will come over for her birthday so I expect his enthusiasm to change then!

We're changing zincs, working on the auto pilot so it'll hang in there until Hawaii when we'll replace it, replacing our protective edge to the rolled up jib that stands in the sun day after day. There's hardly any material left from when we had it done in 2009.

After all our calm days up north, we're back in the windy city where we've drug our anchor twice already! The tide streams in and out of the bay twice a day pulling you this way then that way. Luckily our anchor alarm is loud enough to wake us up at 3am!! We were onshore back in December when it happened the first time. We were enjoying a festival and we hear on a loud speaker, "It appears the boat 'Celestial' has gone on a walkabout!! Luckily we just rubbed against a sand bar and didn't hit anyone. This time again, it was low drama to get on deck and re-anchor the boat, thank the Lord!

We have our bikes and backpacks to get to the stores we need and bring items back to the boat. Today it was 5 miles to Home Depot and Walmart for misc. items. We're still enjoying our hermit crab down below and we've made a better 'home' for Victoria, our tortoise to live in our cockpit. I do have to mention, its been great to get cactus, a great food for her. I also give her broccoli, some fruit, cabbage, lettuce and 'tortoise supplements'. (Once a mom, always a mom!)

Comments [0]

not as windy as we expected
02/25/2012, Caleta San Juanico to La Paz

By Feb. 12th, we were in Caleta San Juanico. It is known for the cruisers tree, where people use whatever they want to post their boat name, crew names of what have you on a tree on shore. We used an old CD and put our boat card on it with the dates of our major trips. We saw it in our great cruiser's guide Sea of Cortez by 'Shawn and Heather'. Again there were great hikes across to another bay and looking for treasures on shore. This would be as far north as we would get this trip, 150 miles from La Paz. We did 375 miles for the month. We started back down south and the highlight was surfing on north winds. Our one day was 70 miles, hand steering due to auto pilot failure but fun to be out there. At one of our last stops, we were at low tide and could collect rock scallops by just walking around in 2 feet of water! That was a great meal!

Comments [0]