Hilo, Hawaii 18 Feb 2012 20:00 19N43 155W03
A very quick Hilo hello. We arrived yesterday . We’re officially stateside. The entry was extremely friendly and easy. It’s cold here (relatively), and all these waterfalls stay full for a very good reason, a couple of 13,000 ft plus reasons in fact. Suffice to say we should have no problem keeping our water tanks full catching rain. We’re anchored here in Radio bay, surrounded by shipping containers and barbed wire fences. We get escorted in and out by guards. There are few pedestrian sidewalks or crossings between here and the two miles into town, and absolutely nothing is close or easy from a cruiser’s perspective. We’re definitely not in French Polynesia anymore. That said, there’s only one other cruising boat here in the small anchorage with us, and from all the literature, it sounds like there are some amazing things to see…if we rent a car or stowaway on a tourbus. Yes we’re stateside…the car culture is as strong here in funky Hilo as it is in L.A.. The bus does come by, once an hour, but it doesn’t take you much of anywhere.
Radio bay is not the best place for radio email, too much noise. And there is no wireless here so it’ll take us some exploring to find a connection worthy of posting some pictures. But we’re safe and sound, and it’s incredibly calm and rainy.
xoxomo
Welcome back to the USA! What’s the plan?
PJ
Not much of our plan has evolved since this post in September. Alaska is next, then we’ll see, likely your neck of the woods before heading south again. We’ve been a little weak on the formal planning, I think because we’d really like to keep exploring the Pacific. There’s so much we have not seen – Fiji, Wallace, Fotuna, Vanuatu, all of South America – Chile, Patagonia. The list is long! But the cruising kitty is feeling light, and this old steel boat wants her cut in maintenance. So we’re still tossing the next step hot potatoes back and forth.
But we’ll look you up in Seattle in the fall.
Why on earth does a sailboat need bow thrusters?!