Northern Pacific 20 May 2012 02:19 42N06 171W45

We finally got about 24 hours of 20-25 knot winds, but we’re back down to 5-10 knots of wind, more expected with a low passing by tomorrow. Not much to report. Our days of spending watch in the cockpit are over. It’s wet and cold out there. We used an infrared thermometer to measure the hull temp in the bilge: 50F brrrr. I used the same thermometer to measure the temperature of my finger tips after coiling lines outide…same 50 degrees brrrr. Tea and soup consumption is on the rise. The light cotton Tahitian tifefes have been replaced with REI sleeping bags, and long-johns are now a 24 hour garment. It’s official, we’re going to Alaska.

Crescent City is about 2100 miles to starboard. Hokkaido (northernmost island in Japan) 2100 miles to port, Adak 600 miles ahead. The Aleutian’s come down farther than I realized; when we make landfall, we’ll be about the same latitude as the northern tip of Vancouver Island.

Someone dumped a big bucket of indigo and forest green into That Blue. It’s now a deeper, darker, cooler blue. I don’t think it’s just the lighting (misty gray). And it smells different – strange, but it smells more and more like the sea. Our already erratic sleep patterns are being further interrupted by 16 hours of daylight with more expected each day. Luckily I am getting better at sleeping during the day.

Wind shift, must be our wind on it’s way, I’m off to adjust the sails. A bird is laughing at me in the dark, maybe he’s never seen a peeps.

xoxomo

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Northern Pacific 18 May 2012 00:32 38N07 170W05

Our hopes for stable winds from that steady pacific high have been dashed. The high has been stable, but the winds are light and fluky, from behind then on the nose, from the port, then from starboard. We stop the engine and the winds die down, we tack and the winds push around to that side. It’s amazing that man can control the wind, all we have to do is make a maneuver, and the winds will turn to counter that maneuver. So we zig and we zag and we putt and we coast. The weather charts tempt us daily with wind 100 miles north of our current position, tantalizingly close, just out of reach. But it’s an easy life aboard, I can make bread without bracing myself at all times. And the growing chill in the air marks our steady progress northward. We’ve added socks to our wardrobe, and I’m considering breaking out the long-johns. We’ve put 1000 miles behind us, 850 in front as the crow flies. There are probably a lot more of both miles behind and miles ahead in actual track. Now starting on our 11th day, we are past the halfway mark in miles (still 2/3rds of our fuel left). This will not be a 15 day passage.

We saw a freighter today so we’re officially past the invisible wall of the Papahanaumokuakea sensitive sea area, past the musician’s sea mounts. There is a lot more floating debris than south of Hawaii, but no island of trash yet. We spotted 3 whales very close today Minke we thinke, and the daily Albatross count seems to be on the increase.

Hugs straight across to our Northern California friends, who are probably starting to peel layers off as we add them.

All’s well on board. xoxomo

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Northern Pacific 15 May 2012 04:01 34N06 167W37

We had a classical day today. We’re passing the Musician’s Seamounts, a mass of mounts with musician’s names. Verdi, Bellini, Rossini, Puccini, Scarletti, Donizetti, Strauss, Schubert, Brahms, Dvorek, Stravinsky, Ravel, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Mozart, Handel Maaaaaahler and even Hammerstein and a frenchy Bizet (pour les francaises ou plutot la famille de Frank: “Dorefore ton cul n’ést pas en or, ni en argent ni en fer blanc…”) So we played all we had and sang along when we could (oui on a eu de la pluie apres). I will have to ask my trusty correspondents to research who came up with that naming scheme and when. Elvis and the Clash were not represented. I find it fitting to be passing these as we sailed past San Diego, since Barbara’s radio is locked to the classical channel, our perpendicular greetings from parallel planes included audio.

We were thrilled last night when snap, snap, snap, three in a row, the sun set on our long fishing dryspell. We caught 2 small dorado and one fat 40# bigeye tuna. Frank says the bigeye was a baby (hard to imagine), and the dorado had eggs, so were fully mature despite their petite stature. They were a quarter the size of the Mahimahi we caught south of the equator. Maybe dorado and mahimahi are actually different breeds – same beautiful color and same delicious taste though – yum. Even small there’s still enough for a couple of meals at least. We have to stop fishing for awhile now, our freezer and bellies are full.

Yes I goofed the last post. We were due WEST of Ensenada, not East of SD. We’re now about due west of LA, currently Zuma beach to be more exact. I’m thinking of all our friends there and sending smiles your way. And extra special birthday greetings to Madeleine (double digits! I can’t believe it! Congrats! All grown up and going to the opera to boot, we played Wagner for you today, Die Valkyrie)

I may think it’s cold here, but Gart says it’s snowing in Homer (what are we thinking?? We could turn right any time now and be feasting with friends in days)

xoxomo

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Northern Pacific 13 May 2012 03:57 30N13 168W48

I spotted my first fishing boat tonight, and we had our first fish on (then fish off, sigh) today – the two must be related. The wind picked up this afternoon, but on the nose, so we headed north. We now have a lot of west in the bank – looks like we’ll be able to deposit some more with calm weather predicted ahead. Our position is roughly due south of Dutch Harbor and due east of San Diego. We’re not beating too badly now since it’s calm west of us, making for small seas. As Frank predicted we are able to point upwind about 15-20 degrees better with our new square fisherman (well, not really square its a trapezoid, the old one is a triangle). That makes the captain happy. Turning the engine off makes me happy even if we’re going upwind. The rest of the crew are happy they’re not in school.

It’s decidedly chillier, I’m not sure exactly how much chillier, our electronic weather station just died (just out of warrantee)…did I mention electronics don’t do well on a boat…I think maybe they don’t do well period and warrantee really means death warrant. Our old fashioned barometer works fine, but I have to dig in the kid’s drawer to find a mercury thermometer in their science kit.

All sailing talk tonight, no great epiphanies. That’s what I get for reading trash on watch, when I should be daydreaming.

xoxomo

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Northern Pacific,Outside US Economic Zone 11 May 2012 01:43 27N44 166W47

Chug, chug, chug, chug. The iron genoa, our little blue engine that can, carries us ever closer to Alaska. The anemometer is doubling as a knotlog. We’re doing a fuel efficient, brisk walking pace of 3-5 knots. The Pacific is just that – for once. It’s glassy enough that we could break out the deck chairs and serve Maitais on the bow, if we had either deck chairs or Maitai ingredients (and if our bow were a little wider, and if it were not 2 in the morning). The cabin boys have not started folding white washcloths into little animals for us, nor have they started the ice-sculptures to decorate the captain’s table. But we eat at least as well as the Cunnard passengers, with our freezerfull of everything but the fish we hope to catch…hope…

Inside is as calm as outside, except that young minds(and old) are riding dragons, casting spells and hopefully saving a few maidens in distress. At their current rate of reading, they’re devouring more than a book a day. I only bought 10 new ebooks for them before we left. If the passage is 15 days, we should make it before they run out, but our current arrival calculation hovers around 25-30 days. If they finish all the books, they’ll just have to start writing their own.

It’s actually calm enough to do school, but we’d have a mutiny on our hands. Passage has become their summer/spring/winter break.

We did make good progress our first 2 days, so we have put 500 miles between us and Hanalei Bay.

xoxomo

P.S. I goofed the location in the header of the last post. We were not in Hilo, but we were still in Hawaiian waters – We’re now hovering on the edge of the US economic zone, enjoying a tanker-free couple of days thanks to Bush jr’s Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. It acts like a long wall to any tankers carrying certain amounts of hazardous materials (I think oil and fuel count?) Anyway, not a boat in sight.

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Visiting the Alaska National Marine Sanctuary website, I saw a link about being good stewards of our oceans. Always wanting to practice good stewardhip, I clicked on the link and came to a page with basic advice on what that entails. The page was broken down in sections for visitors, mariners, and commercial fisherman, each section listed the issues relevant to those categories, with a cute “Peter T. Puffin says:” note for that audience making a salient point. After listing for commercial fisherman points like: be kind to seabirds, release them carefully, keep your oil onboard til you get to port, etc. their marketing team added “Peter T. Puffin says remember not to throw live rats overboard, they are good swimmers and may make it to a nearby island.” I’m not sure what puzzled me most:

1. that the powers that be felt that fishermen would respond well to Peter T. Puffin;

2. that a rat could swim to shore up there, I mean how long does it take for a rat to get hypothermia? A human would have to be pretty close to swim to shore within the 5 minute window frigid waters offer before hypothermia sets in.

or 3. that someone added the word “remember” in Peter’s message, can you picture the fisherman thinking, just as he releases the tail of a squirming biting rodent, “oops, I forgot…I’m not supposed to throw the live ones over.” My own experience with fishermen and rats has been that they prefer their rats dead, instantly, as fast as possible. Then they deal with disposal.

This of course brings to mind a Frank fishing story. When he was on one campaign, they acquired a stowaway at the dock in Saamoa. After many unsuccessful attempts to trap the rodent on their way to the roaring 40s, his captain pinned a hundred dollar bill next to the fridge for whoever caught the rat. The crew went wild, they hunted, and stalked, and chased, and schemed, all to no avail. Then the fishing distracted them from the hunt, and they didn’t see the rat anymore. After weeks at sea on the return trip, Frank was sent up the crows nest when they got near land, usually a place they only used while seeking fish. He was greeted by a faint unpleasant smell, and discovered the leathered body of the dead rat up there, the only safe place from the crew, poor guy. Frank did not get the 100 bucks, the captain said you had to kill the rat, the crew probably all went for a night on the town since their collective effort chased him up there. That was back when 100 bucks could buy a night on the town for 6 crew in a seedy San Diego fisherman’s bar

xoxomo

Remember: Al B. Tross says “Gimme da fishguts!”

Stella C. Lion says “Oaurk oaurk oaurk” which I think means “Have a nice day,” or “Get off my rock,” depending on which dialect she’s speaking.

and

Scurvy says “Lies all lies, Rats are people’s friends.”

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Hilo, Hawaii 8 May 2012 00:43 23N26 160W57

We left beautiful Hanalei Bay late this morning, and pointed Silver Lining’s bow north. Only 2200 miles between us and the Island of Adak in the Aleutian chain. We expect a 15-20 day passage, then a month or more exploring those remote wilderness islands, working our way up to Homer Alaska for a reunion with my brother, sister-in-love and their two kids. Powerful pull family! You too would cross oceans if your nearest and dearest were so spread apart. Since much of the ocean’s navigable paths are closed to us due to piracy, if we want to visit family in Europe, maybe we’ll take the northwest passage next (now open thanks to Global warming). But we have not gotten to next yet. We barely made it out the door, or through the window, a fine weather window in fact. Hanalei was not an easy place to leave, but a big stable high floats above, 15-20 knots on our aft quarter pushing us along at 8 knots on the water, and all’s well below.

Should stay like this for a week at least, that’ll do for now.

xoxomo

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Keehi Lagoon, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii
15 April 2012
21N19 157W53

Yet another writing hiatus was brought on by the many distractions land (and internet) offer.  After our Hilo arrival, we spent a couple weeks waiting for parts, installing those parts (injection pump and injectors from the water in our fuel ugh). We did play tourist a little to see lava, and stand on the earth’s highest mountain (if you count what’s below water). Views from Mauna Kea gave all our other summits a serious run for their money.  We sailed to Maui, and waited for more parts (the windlass motor choked), not much touring that time. We di

d have nightly Humpback whale visits in Lahaina, Maui. Some nights they sounded like they were singing in my pillow (LOUD). An advantage to a steel hull, is the incredible resonance we enjoy. Anytime dolphins and whales are near (and the engine is off),  we’re treated with a musical concert of chirps, whistles, and sometimes long bellowing croaks. Not great for sleeping, but worth the lost ZZZs for the thrill of it. We stopped briefly in in Molakai, before we crossed to Oahu, and pulled in to Honolulu’s Keehi Marine Center for a haul-out. We were “on the hard” for a week, then back in the water anchored nearby for what’s turned out to be another 3 weeks of repairs and waiting for more parts (a motor for the water jet bow thrusters we’re installing).

Why so much repairing? Well, there’s a fine line between maintenance and repair. Once you’re in up to your elbows, in maintenance, it’s inevitable you discover a few things to repair “while you’re there.*” Since we are headed for colder waters (frigid?), we wanted to check all the plumbing, and make sure everything was ready for any thermal expansion/contraction that goes along with that climate. In checking all the SS clamps on our hoses we discovered that too many had rusted through, so we decided to replace them all. Reseating the hoses under those clamps, we discovered that much of the white sanitation pipe was fragile and cracking, so we replaced them all. While we were making new holes in the boat for the bow thrusters we closed off some old holes, and combined plumbing outlets to a minimum number. Fewer holes, means fewer places to look if the bilge ever floods. We got rid of five thru-hulls, and added four so it was nearly a wash, but the four new ones

are all adjacent, so only one place to look for those four. We’ve now replumbed the boat. We of course, really means Frank, I just drove around Honolulu enjoying the sights (and picking up parts).

We’ve also added acrylic storm covers to those hatches that were spraying me in the face like a firehose. We installed our new sails and are fixing a problem with the rollerfurler. The full list is much longer, but the details put me to sleep (early every night these days). We now see the light at the end of the tunnel, and my trips to town are more provisioning related. I’m motivated, and eager to put some miles between the nearest cash register and my credit cards.

This shore time has been good for tackling school, and seeing some local sights. We signed on as members at the nearby Bishop’s Museum to take full advantage of all they have to offer. Their polynesian artifacts are beautiful and inspiring, and we’ve been comparing and contrasting the Hawaiian myths and archaeology with the other polynesian equivalents we’ve seen along the way. The kids have grown an appreciation for the detailed carvings we’ve seen across the pacific, shell, wood, stone and bone. We took a stone carving class in NZ, which gave them a taste for how to approach a piece of rock or wood. But stone carving tools are expensive,  not easy to find and require a lot of electricity. To remedy that, museum shop had “Bone Carving: A Skillbase of Techniques and Concepts” by Stephen Myhre (a Kiwi). It has beautiful images of Maori fishhooks and tips on how to carve them. In my many wanderings through Honolulu’s industrial district, I’d seen a woodworking shop that had all kinds of woodcarving tools; so book, memories, and beginner’s blades in hand, they’re now well equipped. I also gave them a writing assignment to  take notes from the exhibits and artifacts, and write a short essay on a topic of their choice. It’s been an excellent excuse to get off the boat for school and gaze at the museum’s treasures some more. I should probably be taking notes and writing with them, instead I wander and stop at my favorite items (especially a paddle from Raivavae, and  Nāhienaena’s Paū).  I’ll share any resulting masterworks from the kid’s writing and carving (if they’ll let me).

Pearl Harbor provided some quality field-trip material too, I took them to the Pacific Aviation Museum and the Bowfin Submarine Museum. We all loved the Bowfin, but it really should have been a Captain’s fieldtrip. I loved all the shiny brass, the old gauges, and getting a sense of what life on a submarine really must have been like (their bunks and quarters are even smaller than ours!). But I didn’t know any of the functions of those valves, dials and gauges, and the audio walking tours drive me nuts; I prefer to walk around at my own pace and have my own thoughts – even if I don’t learn as much. So I made Frank take a day off and take them back, he loves that stuff, and knows more than I (and he can balance any American bias in the museum exhibit panels with a European perspective – his grandpa was a naval engineer for the French Navy, who helped smuggled german submarine plans out of France for the allies during WWII**, so he has a deep interest in the topic). They also visited the Battleship Missouri – while they were there. Dinner conversations since have added even more History credits to their collection. There really is no better way to engage the kids, than walking back in time, with a history crazed dad as guide. And I managed to clean the boat – which stayed clean a whole hour after they returned.

xoxomo

For our sailing friends, I found a new favorite blog “Attainable Adventure Cruising.” For us, they could not have better titled or timed their article, “The Three Most Dangerous Words in Boat Maintenance”

*Paul Reveil alias “Jaz” (Jaz is a french watch brand, and Reveil, means alarm clock in french, he’s mentioned on the french wikipedia page about Alphonse Tanguy. According to Frank his grandfather memorized the submarine plans during the day, and copied what he saw each night. After successfully sending the plans to the allies, Paul Reveil was captured and sent to a German prisoner of war camp. He had both legs broken with a mallet in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to share names of his conspirators.  So that stubborn streak of Frank’s – he comes by it honestly.

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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

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Northern Pacific 15 Feb 2012 16:40 17N46 151W42

We had an amazing Sei whale sighting earlier this afternoon. I was in the cockpit staring at the sea frustrated with this interminable wind. When it’s not windy, it’s windier. The days of constant muscle movement every sleeping and waking hour were taking their toll, when “BLOW” I called. There was a moment between getting the crew on deck with my call and the next sighting, when I almost had myself fooled, that I’d just seen some extra spray coming off a darker than usual wave peak, yet seconds before I’d been 100% sure. Then Frank spotted her also, she was underwater about 100 feet off, surfing down the face of the next swell over. As the face of swell came up at a nice steep angle to our vision, you could clearly see her lighter green outline against the deep bluegreen sea background. She was about our size, going a lot faster than we, and headed to cross our path. As the next swell period approached, she surfaced and dove. The swell now is running at about an 8 second period, and it’s roughly 3 meters, or 8-9 feet high. We’re headed NW, the swell is coming from the East/NE. That leviathan in the lane next to us did not bother to signal before passing in front.

My mom gave me a book just before we left the Marquisas, by Tony Hiss “In Motion: The Experience of Travel.” He presents a notion of deep travel, describing the moments when traveling where time takes on a new dimension, (not just when traveling, but it seems to happen more frequently when we’re confronted by newness or moments of wonder).

He talks about the illusion of time (even scientists, aren’t so sure about it), and how our perception of time varies so widely whether the years race by because we haven’t done much, or the minutes fly by, because we’ve been absorbed in a task, and a single 60 second period can seem deep and long, or tedious and painstaking.

There I was, after 3 hours of biscuit making (probably another essay as to why it took 3 hours to whip up a quick batch of cheese biscuits), I was tired and I’d slipped into watching-the-clock mode. 233 miles to go, yet the TTG kept flashing from 1.5 days to 3.8 days depending on if we were surfing down the face of a wave, or climbing up the next one. It had been saying we’d be there in 3 days, on and off, for at least 3 days. It was feeling like groundhog day. And before my watch ended it said 276 miles to go – I’d slept for a long time (at least 3 hours), and it had only gone down 21 miles (7 knot average is really not bad, and 1527 miles behind us is great…but 21 miles shifting from the in-front-of-us to the behind-us column didn’t seem so great when mentally I wanted to BE there).

Then BOOM, one short 8-second moment, and time onboard warped. That moment felt like a glorious long time – one moment of whale silhouette, now permanently etched in my brain. And for a couple hours after that moment, time slowed to almost still – every whitecap (and there are lots) seemed unique, and I anticipated each eagerly not wanting to miss the glimpses of the myriad shades of blue between the white cap and its blue body. This sea, that blue, this wind, these squalls, these flying fish, these tropic and boobie birds, were enough to fill this time. Hawaii? 2 days away? Already?

All it takes is a moment of wonder to chase the drudgery of the day away.

I was talking to Logan about the book the other day, and using the analogy of how it seems in some ways like we’ve been doing this cruising thing for a long time, and yet 17 years working in L.A., prior to these two years, seemed like a short chapter in our lives. His response, “Were not really doing now, we’re being.”

Yep ..well ideally anyway…is it time to go to bed yet?

xoxomo

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