fetchinketch

Normally I try to put things up here that will entertain a broad audience.  I know that most people reading it aren’t going to be very interested by “inside sailing” kinds of stories. Sometimes, I have to make an exception…

“And on the eighth day God created roller furling, and He saw that it was good.” So begins the Book of Jib, a little known book in the Bible, in which God cast His gaze down from the heavens and beheld the labors of the many sailors as they raised and lowered and, with great difficulty, flaked their headsails, always in a grassy area which was supposed to be free of the droppings left by the dogs of Hell but never was found to be so.

God then took pity on the humble workers of the foredeck and inspired His prophets Harken, Schaefer, Hood, and Profurl. To these He gave insight so that they might develop a device that would lessen the burden.

For many years did the men of the sea rejoice at their newfound innovation. But soon they forgot that the miracle of roller furling was a gift from God and instead began to believe it of their own making. They added automatic motors, and applied it to the mainsail as well, which constituted a breech of ancient law, the manual hoisting and lowering of the mainsail being a holy and sacred sacrament.

They furled sails hither and yon, inside the mast or the boom, trying without success to hide the shameful practice from the eyes of God. God, being then displeased with the arrogance of man, jammed the furling units, leaving the sails exposed to the gales, which tore at them and made the sailors cry and gnash their teeth. The sailors brought down their tattered rags from aloft, and with heads hung low did take them to the sail maker, whose prices soared higher than the stars in the firmament. And God laid their checking accounts to waste.

The sailors did then beseech redemption. “From this day forward we shall flake our mainsails and mizzens about their booms like good men!” And God saw that it was good.

Two  weeks ago ( it seems like forever!) I reported our landing of a big mahi-mahi.  At the time I posted I couldn’t post a photo over the satellite link, but now I can:

This fish is everywhere in the tropical oceans, hence it has collected a huge number of names in different languages. The traditional English name is “dolphin”.  When it started showing up on restaurant menus the marketing guys pretty quickly figured out that people might think they were being served Flipper steaks, so they nixed the “dolphin” name and picked up the Hawaiian name, “mahi-mahi”.  In Spainish it’s known as the “dorado”, and “coriphehe” in French.

These fish grow REALLY fast.  One this size is only about a year old.  In the picture it certainly looks a pretty fish, but while still alive, and in the water, the colors are beyond belief.  I could go on trying to describe it, but it’s not possible.  Green, blue and gold that are brighter than they can possibly be with the sun shining on them. Not just bright, but also dynamic, changing and flashing as you watch.

This one met his end biting on that plain cedar plug that has been our “go-to” lure so far.

If you want to go to that spot and catch more, it was at 26 deg 47 min North, 135 deg 34 min West, a little past half way to Hawaii.

[Pictures at the end of the post…]

The Ala Wai Boat Harbor is an interesting place.  It has been here for a long time.  If you have ever seen a Hawaii Marina on a TV show, it was this one.  It featured in Hawaii 5-0 and the S.S. Minnow left from here for her three hour tour.  Like almost all marinas here is is run by the state. The good part is that it is here, and they do welcome transient boats, but you can only stay for 120 days in a calendar year.

The not so good, transient boats are banished to a remote corner of the marina, in what the locals call “Tahitian Docks”, or what the rest of the world would call a Med Moor.  Good part is that they have moorings for your bow so you don’t have to drop an anchor.  The bad part is that the moorings are in such bad shape that in the last few weeks three of them have broken loose.  Also, the mooring buoys do not have permanently installed lines.  You have to use your own, or trust the one that the last boat left behind.  Imagine backing into your slip while your crew has to tie a line to the mooring ball as it goes by…  Ouch… They tell you when you come in that you are in slip 858.  What they don’t tell you is that you can’t see the slip numbers from the water! Really?

The staff is friendly, and helpful in their own way. Being a government operation, they follow the rule book rather than think. We just sailed 2200 miles to get here, and to prove our boat is seaworthy the rules say we have to take it out and round the entrance buoy while they watch. The “new kid” has worked here for three years, and couldn’t tell us where the holding tank pumpout was.  There are 4 people working in the office.  For some reason they ALL have to take lunch from 12 to 1, so the office closes.  Customer service at its finest.

Now for the ugly:  The Ala Wai Canal drains into the back of the marina.  It receives all the stormwater runnoff from Downtown and Waikiki.  There must not be any kind of catchbasins because the amount of trash that drains down is truly awful, and it accumulates in great floating rafts in some of the stagnant corners of the harbor.  I would guess only about half the boats in the slips are seaworthy.  Some of they are truly floating junk piles.

But you know what?  A little of the proper attitude and the good is better than the bad and the ugly.

We are getting adjusted to Island Life.  We are settled into the marina.  Here is the evening view from our deck…

It’s rough but SOMEBODY has to do it!

We have had the price shocks at the grocery store. $7.99 for a gallon of milk (Ouch!), $2.25 for a crappy little head of lettuce and so on.

The marina is nice, mostly.  It has a few “issues” but we have nice neighbors so all seems good.

So far our exploring has been limited to the urban environment around Waikiki as we try to find necessities within walking distance.

There are some boat projects we want to get done. It’s so different from San Diego where there were boat suppliers around every corner.  Here we have to plan ahead and any trip to the store is a project in and of itself.  Fortunately, Amazon delivers, and one of our first projects was to set up a local mailbox so we can get deliveries.

We are in our slip at the Ali Wai Boat Harbor just off the bustle of Waikiki. We had a good dinner, and are going to dive into bed for an UNINTERRUPTED night’s sleep.

It is just shy of sunrise, and the flashing of Moloka’i Light has be visible for many hours. O’ahu is off our starboard bow, and Moloka’i to port as we are getting lined up on the Kaiwi Channel on the final approach to Honolulu. I can’ t yet see the shore in the dark, but the eastern coast of Moloka’i is bright on the radar screen just 12 miles away.

We where cheated out of seeing the peak of Haleakala on Maui yesterday by haze and fog. Right now it is clear, and the wind is only 15 knots, but a rather nasty looking line of showers is bearing down on us from the east. If they carry much wind, they might make or passage through the channel exciting.

In half an hour, the coast will be visible in daylight, in 8 hours we’ll be at the dock.

Yesterday we had the traditional sailor’s end of passage conversation about what you will do first on land:

Bill: A beer
Karen: An ice cream
Bill: Just enjoy standing up without holding on
Karen: A walk that is longer than 40 feet

So it is settled then. We are going to standup, then walk until I find beer and Karen finds ice cream.

Last night the wind gods had their fun with us.

We were sailing on a fast comfortable deep reach on a course just north of west. I was expecting the wind to clock a bit more to the south to set up our final approach to the channel between O’ahu and Moloka’i. At about 10pm it happened! The wind went from 60 degrees to 90 degrees, setting us up for a fast and comfortable reach straight in. All we needed to do was gybe and set off on port tack.

Now gybing a boat like the Fetchin’ Ketch with a shorthand crew, a poled-out jib, at night, in 30 knots of wind, in 8 to 12 foot seas is not something you do on a whim. Quite a bit needs to happen right and in the right order to do it safely. So after the wind shifted, I held off, following the shift, taking us farther from our destination, holding off to be sure it wasn’t a short term fluke.

After about twenty minutes I decided to go for it. A quarter hour later I had the boat settled in on port tack on a shallow broad reach aimed right where we wanted to go. I was so pleased with my weather forecasting skills. Everything happened just like it was supposed to… Yeah, right.

Within 15 minutes the wind backed to its original angle, leaving us sailing on a course further east than we had hoped, with two more gybes in our future. Arrrrgh! Never get too pleased with yourself!

Over the course of today, the wind did ultimately shift around, although not as far as I hoped. We are now on a dead run, on a good course. The wind is blowing fast enough that we are making hull speed, so we’d gain no time by heading up a bit. To get there faster we’ll take the straight on downwind course and suffer the rolling that comes with that.

Even with the dog leg in our course last night, our straight line 24 hour distance was 147 miles, with 282 left to go. By this time tomorrow we should have the highest peaks on Maui above the horizon. Our first sight of land in 17 days.

The Cushmaker paid us multiple visits last night.

The waves had laid down a good bit, and the wind was still pushing along at good speed, consistently at 7 knots or more. The smaller seas had the boat more stable than it has been in many days.

Apparently the Cushmaker hides in the smaller waves. As we are racing along, suddenly there is a loud THUMP, and 13 tons of boat jumps 3 inches sideways. Now wait for it…. 3… 2… 1… CUSH! As 1000 pounds of water that were thrown in the air by the collision do what they have to do and come crashing down on deck like a ton of bricks. (Can a half ton of water crash like a ton of bricks? That’s one for the philosophers.). If you are in the cockpit you are going to get very wet. If there is a hatch open, the cabin is going to get very wet. This process repeats about once an hour.

Waves in the open ocean aren’t a regular row of symmetrical bumps on the water. Here we have local wind waves coming from the northeast, waves coming from huge gales in the Gulf of Alaska from the northwest, and waves from a distant typhoon from the southeast. Add them all together and you get lumpy chaos. In such a random system every once in a while a bigger fast wave appears and disappears almost as quickly. If the boat happens to be at the right spot at the right time, CUSH!

We are now west of 150 degrees of longitude, so I am now working on a much larger scale chart, #19007, Hawai’i to French Frigate Shoals.

Tomorrow morning we change our clocks for the second time on this trip, this time to Hawaii’i Standard time. Except for one lucky crew member getting an extra hour on their watch, the time zones slip by without the pains of jet travel.

From the perspective of the Navigator things are about to change. Navigation for most of this voyage has consisted of plotting a position once a day on the chart, deciding on a course for the next 24 hours, and that’s about it.

Tomorrow’s position plot will be the first on the first of the local scale Hawai’i charts. As we approach land, being “about here” is no longer good enough. More frequent fixes, more frequent decisions, just plain more busy.

We confirmed with the Ali Wai Marina by Satphone that we have a slip available, and now have our slip assignment. Between 4 and 5 days will have us on land again.

Today’s run was 132 nautical miles, with 587 as the crow flies to Honolulu. We have a little maneuvering to do to deal with the wind, so our distance to sail will be a bit longer than that.

The offshore forecast out of Honolulu is consistent for the large patch of ocean surrounding us:

NORTHEAST TO EAST WINDS 20 TO 30 KNOTS. SEAS 8 TO 12 FEET. SCATTERED SHOWERS. CONTINUING FOR THE FORECAST PERIOD.

Same thing every day. We have gotten used to the conditions, which would have been a bit intimidating 2 weeks ago. The “scattered showers” are mostly small. Some barely sprinkles, others dump buckets for 15 minutes. Mostly from sunset to midnight. Sometime accompanied by more “interesting” wind of up to 38 knots.

We average about 6 knots with a reefed, poled-out jib as our only sail. It makes for fast, easy passage. Our 24 hour run today was 142 miles. 714 miles to go.

Today’s excitement came when I went to start the engine to top up the batteries. When I turn the key I get nothing. No crank, no click, no nothing. Getting access requires emptying the cockpit locker, crawling down and tracing wires while folded up into a shape the would do a Chinese gymnast proud. Before too long I find the broken wire and have things running again.

The plan is to continue for another day on a deep port broad reach, which will run us a little south of our target, then gybe and head for Oahu.