Well, it's good to back on dry land after a fast, 18 day, passage from Bora Bora - or as Jim and Rob remind me, 17 days, 10 hours. Going uphill is hard work! We are currently guests at the Hawaii Yacht Club in Honolulu, and cleared customs today, so we can start cleaning and drying the boat and our stuff. Laundromat here we come! Also lots of minor fix-it projects on the boat, but no major breakages. The last 24 hours were very interesting - the rudder on the wind vane fell off (the attaching pin sheared off) just as we got in the Lee of Hawaii Island. Luckily we had a retaining tether on it, but try as we might, we couldn't get the rudder reattached. Hanging on to the swim ladder with no hands in the rolling Pacific swells was challenging, and wet! Therefore we spent the last day hand steering, although the first 9 hours we were motoring, so could use the auto pilot, but the wind funnels between the Islands are intense, so the autopilot couldn't cope. But it was fun trying to surf the waves!
We have reconnected with our buddy boat, Capaz, after waving to them on the high seas. They have already scoped out the facilities here.

The funny story of the day - on the theme of Canadians being too polite, was the naval exercise being conducted off Oahu. Having a bunch of warships bear down on you when you are surfing in 30 knots is interesting, plus a proliferation of tugs and tows, had us scurrying for the AIS screen. As the AIS told us, one of the warships was Canadian (the HMCS Algonquin) who broadcasts an AIS signal - guess the Canadian navy doesn't want to scare anyone by showing up unannounced!