Departing for Hawaii

Out at sea, outgoing emails need to be kept pretty short, so much that could have been said went by the boards. It’s a rainy morning here in Papeete, so I thought I'd share a few memories with you.

One night, while still coasting in New Zealand, we saw the most amazing meteor that I have ever seen. It was so close and so bright that it almost looked like a distress flare. It came straight down quite near us, breaking up into fragments near the sea. I've seen many "shooting stars" before, but nothing like this.

Mintaka is a fairly tender boat, meaning that she heels (leans) way over in a breeze. Since our stove is not gimballed, the heel makes it difficult to cook sometimes at sea. We had to cook all of our meals in the pressure cooker, because that is the only pot we have that we can tie down to the stove.

We have a radar reflector hanging up in the rigging. Around the midpoint in the passage, it partially broke free, hanging from one cord and swinging all around. Well, this was a problem. It is difficult (and dangerous) to climb the mast at sea, so we waited, hoping it would break free entirely and drop overboard. It didn't. Instead, it wrapped itself around the jib halyard, jamming the halyard tight with the jib not quite lowered. So, picture this. The boat is bucking around as usual, and Dave is standing on top of the bow pulpit, holding on to the jibstay (wire) with one hand while reaching up to untie the halyard with the other. Wish I had a video of that. Of course, we didn't want to lose the end of the halyard, either, but that maneuver gets difficult to explain.

From time to time, if the wind gets up too much, someone has to go forward onto the bowsprit to drop and secure the jib. This tends to be the time that the bowsprit is going underwater with every other wave or so. Well, I was out there at one point when a wave lifted us a bit higher than usual before dropping the bowsprit into the next trough. This was quite a drop. The best analogy I can think of is jumping off the high dive while holding onto a boogie board. Besides getting the wind knocked out of me, I had to ride the bowsprit completely under water. Fun and games in the southern ocean. Wish I had a video of that, too.

Dave tried to teach an albatross to water ski one day. The six-foot-span bird hooked his bill on Dave's fishing lure, but rather than being pulled bill first, he stuck out his feet and essentially skied along behind us. One doesn't like to hurt these birds, so we reeled him in, and I held his wings pinned while Dave unhooked him. He kept following us, apparently none the worse for wear.

By the way, my crewman for the next leg (Bronson, an old friend from Salt Lake) will arrive Sunday, and we plan to be on our way to Hawaii on Monday. That pasage should be a piece of cake compared to the first leg, but one never knows. I don't expect it to take nearly as long as the first leg, either, but again ….