Well, it’s the longest day of the year, so might as well go sailing. Guess that means it’s about the shortest night too. We hoisted the anchor at the sand bar and got underway around 1220 today and now we’re well out in the channel. We deployed fishing lines but today they weren’t catching lines, and I brought them in after sunset. The Kauai channel isn’t a busy place and only a single catamaran ship about 190’ long has passed nearby. The moon is around 87% and waxing, setting around 0330. Isabel made a lovely dinner then crashed, and I’m catching up on our record of where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to.
As usual, the destinations have been really great, whether because of interesting history, spectacular terrain or observable wildlife. We love snorkeling with turtles, whales, sharks, dolphins, tropical fish - all those creatures are very special to us. Turtles have been the highlight here in Hawaii, and we have a Wyland half sheet water color painting of a turtle that I purchased many years ago after encountering a turtle while snorkeling here. I likes me a turtle.
What really makes cruising memorable are the people we meet. Folks from all walks of life, all kinds of background and personal stories. Folks that help one another, share knowledge and resources, and are absolutely genuine. Hawaii has been good to us.
Tomorrow we’ll drop the hook in Hanalei Bay and dinghy around the bay, saying hi to several boats we know there. We’ll deliver the fruit cake Isabel baked for Michael, and if we can find a bit of rum to soak the fruit in she might even make another one for us. It might be a long passage.
We’ll spend a few days exploring ashore and snorkeling with turtles, all the while looking carefully at the weather forecast and discussing passage strategy with other cruisers. There are several boats waiting to launch out for either Alaska or the Puget Sound. Just today we read fresh news that Canada will not be opening up to American tourists anytime soon, so our own hopes to sail as far North as Ketchikan then wander down the inside passage have faded. We’re content to sail for the Straights of Juan de Fuca and enjoy a season in the Puget Sound this year, then hopefully get going early to Canada next April and have a good season in Alaska.
We’ve been fortunate to secure a slip at Shilshole Marina by Ballard, a great Seattle neighborhood and home to the Ballard Locks, where folks come from all over to watch the boats move between the sea and the inland freshwater lakes. Winter in Seattle isn’t on our radar, but we’ll at least have somewhere to be if it comes to that. We’ll be looking to haul out sometime in October as our bottom paint is really done (if we can make it last that long).
We’ve got a challenging passage ahead of us - probably the most difficult we’ll have undertaken so far, so we’ll be putting a lot of thought into routing, weather exploitation and avoidance, and how we’ll get across the North end of the Pacific High if it stretches too far North, The center of the high is home to the Pacific garbage patch and motoring through that mess isn’t wise - it’s good odds of damaging the propulsion system, so we’ll do our best to sail up the West side of the high and around the North side on top, but in the next week or so that could be almost as far North as Ketchikan so we’ll be keeping a close eye on that. It does look like the gales that have been thundering across the Pacific are pretty much being pushed up towards the Aleutian Island chain where our pal Tripp on SV J. Henry departed for just today. Tripp’s tough and seeking adventure. We’re soft and seeking fun.
It takes all kinds.
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