Tuesday, May 19, 2009

we made it part 2






we have been in hawaii for one day now and we are really enjoying ourselves.

we met another sailor who has a car here and showed us around the island we are on (kauai). the highlight was the farmers market and we got some nice fruit and veggies.

leaf got a new boogie board and spent an enjoyable afternoon playing with it in the surf on a brown sugar beach on the bay we are anchored. he loved it.

our passage from mexico was what one sailor told us it would be, a little of everything, storms, doldrums and perfect sailing weather. fortunately the weather was mostly very kind and it was a classic downwind run with warm steady tradewinds on our back. we got lots of rolling swells and we got seasick a bit. however, once we got our sea legs we were cooking great meals and making the most of the challenge.

we caught at least five dorado (mahi mahi) these are delicious white fleshed fish and we made great meals out of them, two i soaked in soy sauce and dried on the hand lines, they turned out great, sort of like fish jerky. we caught some barracudas but we didn’t know if they would taste good so we threw them back. we also threw back many tuna as they are not our favourite and we can only eat so much seafood.

we all read lots of books, leaf read over thirty all by himself, yvonne and i probably read a couple of dozen between us. many of the books were sailing stories so we got to share the lives and stories of other sailors who went before us like robin lee graham on the dove, bernard moitessier, triston jones, tania aebi, magellan, herman melville, joshua slocum and others. with these sailors on board, we were we in very good company.

we also played lots of board games and cards.

in one big storm, our largest headsail ripped in two along a seam. it will be repairable. we have a large inventory of other headsails so it did not slow us down too much and that was about our only problem equipment wise. not bad for 33 days of non-stop sailing.

our wind vane autopilot (lucky the monkey) worked perfectly. all the upgrades in the last while all worked out well too. the electronic addition (her boyfriend, rob the robot) on our autopilot made her steer perfectly in even the gentles of breezes or when we motored.

we had very few squalls and in the whole time out, we only changed our sails four times. we never reefed our sails. the time our big head sail ripped, i should have dropped it earlier. we sailed for weeks sometimes with no need to adjust our sails.

cooking was big highlight on board and once we got our sea legs, we ate very well. best meals included fresh hummus with homemade pita bread, mahi mahi coconut curry on rice, curried fish soup with fresh limes, mahi mahi in camelized onions, salad rolls with peanut sauce, fresh tortias with chilli and rice. we often had california wine with our meals that we had bought in san fran. every day we had at least one big glass of fresh orange juice (we brought 100 kgs of oranges with us). our fresh food lasted until the end. we brought 8 dozen eggs with us and they lasted all the way. for breakfast, we often had pancakes or apple oat porridge with soya milk. yvonne made lots of bread along the way too. someday cooking was not too easy but those days we often did not want to eat too much anyway. leaf made yvonne orange almond cookies for her birthday, they were great!

our biggest challenge over all was probably boredom but mostly we handled that well. we missed radio a lot. we had a ssb for listening for weather but it offered but little in entertainment or news.

we had lots of dreams of family and friends, they seemed very real. we really felt the prayers and blessings from them.

we are going to rest awhile here and figure out what comes next.

blessings to all.
wishingstar crew

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