Now that we’ve arrived in Hawaii, here’s a summary of our passage:
Total time: 14 days, 22 hours – this includes about 6 hours spent bobbing around outside Hilo Bay waiting for daylight before we entered. Mike likes to sail fast if possible, so he was a bit chagrined at what seemed like our very slow pace. But once we arrived and talked to a folks from three other boats that made similar passages, it turns out that we made decent time. We were faster than two other boats that are similar in speed to Madrone, and only a little bit slower than a much larger (and theoretically faster) boat that left from SF the same day that we did.
Mike tidying up the galley
Total distance: 2175 nautical miles – a disclaimer here – we don’t actually know exactly how far we sailed. Our instruments calculate distance based on how fast our paddlewheel speed sensor is turning. But that doesn’t take into account current, and we had a fairly decent current in our favor for most of the trip. It seems that our true speed over ground was about 10% faster than our speed through the water, so we’ve added 10% to the total distance that showed on our instruments. A straight line distance between SF and Hilo is 2049 miles, so our calculated distance seems like it could be plausible.
Sunrise on the Pacific
Average speed: 6.1 knots – Our 4-5 day stretch of light air was balanced out by screaming along for the first and last couple of days.
Angie enjoying the passage
Total fish caught: 1 – Angie ended up fishing less than she thought she would. Part of catching a fish is cleaning it, and no one feels like doing that before they’ve found their sea legs. And since Angie fishes for food instead of sport, there has to be room in our fridge and/or freezer for what she catches. These two things combined means that the lure was only out for a total of a day. So one fish is actually pretty good!
Ships passing in the night. Madrone is the blue boat and the freighter is the yellow boat
Major equipment failures: 0 – Sailing on the ocean is incredibly punishing for a boat. The cyclical motion means constant loading and unloading of the rigging, and those forces get transferred to the hull and to everything attached to the hull. That’s a recipe for things breaking. Luckily enough, we didn’t have any major problems with the boat. We needed to lubricate a couple spots in our steering system that began to develop some wear, and we had to address some squeaking woodwork in the cabin. The biggest problem by far is that our forward navigation lights failed about a week into the trip. That was the part of the passage where we only saw one boat in 6 days, so it wasn’t as big of a safety risk as it sounds. But it did figure into our decision to not enter Hilo at night….
Entering Hilo Bay after sunrise
Sail adjustments: who knows? – The vision of a passage to Hawaii is days and days of running downwind in the trade winds. The reality that we encountered was different. We needed to reef when the wind picked up, and shake the reefs out as the wind subsided. We deployed the spinnaker when the wind got light, and then pulled it in and went back to main and jib as the wind built. Some of the sail changes were quick and easy, but jibing the boat when we have the whisker pole deployed and the waves are up can take 30-45 minutes. So it seems like we spent plenty of time actually sailing the boat.
