Arriving

When we arrive in Honolulu we will have so much to do that we will immediately lose interest in writing this blog. Mindful of this, I put fingers to keyboard and record some thoughts now.

The only calm of this trip has just appeared. Two days of uncharacteristically light winds have settled to the east of the Big Island (Hawaii) and, to prevent abysmally slow progress, we are motoring across the rippled swell. Interestingly, we have known about this for some days from computer projections but the calms only appeared in the official forecasts as we started to experience them. For some days now we have allowed our course to drift a bit north to allow the sails to better harness the remaining winds (while they were there) and thus maintain a good speed under sail while we could.

Yesterday (Friday) was the day I was supposed to tell US Customs our exact arrival time on Monday. While customs service is, of course, available weekends, that particular office is not open on weekends to schedule it. Since the bulk of our passage-making is under sail, it is extremely difficult to predict an arrival time even one day in advance. I will call Monday morning to give a Monday afternoon arrival time with some certainty in it. I expect immediately after I call, the wind will start moving us in such a way to give lie as to whatever time I predict.

Added to this is an uncertain interval - perhaps an hour or more - between when we enter the harbor and when we are secured enough to entertain officials. Marinas vary wildly in their physical infrastructure. Our favorite is a well sheltered floating dock (moves up and down with the tide) that you simply approach and tie alongside. Our least favorite is what we fear we will encounter at Ala Wai in Honolulu: a floating buoy or two for one end of the boat and a fixed concrete pier for the other. This is sort of like parallel parking but with a bobbing-around vehicle - there's nothing secure to give you a firm grip on the parking spot like a car has with its tires. To add to that, the constant (except today) trade winds, so convenient for moving a boat across an ocean, have a propensity to moving you sideways as you approach your parking spot. No car does that! We would have preferred today's calm on arrival day rather than now!

An additional issue is that we HATE entering strange harbors at night. Thus for the last few days we have calculated and re-calculated speed, distance, wind forecasts and engine use to juggle our arrival time to fit into the hours when it's light. It is fairly clear that any voyage of uncertain length headed for the tropics has a fifty-fifty chance of arriving in the hours of darkness if you don't play with your speed in the latter stages of the voyage. In this, the current interval of motoring-in-the-calm is convenient as it is much easier to increase and reduce speed under power than when sailing. Under sail the speed mostly varies as it wishes between excessively placid and excessively exhilarating. We are now fairly certain of an afternoon arrival on Monday the 19th.

As I write, we have 285 miles to sail to Honolulu. The nearest land is, as it has been for over a week, Cape Kumukahi - the easternmost point on the island of Hawaii. For those who confuse the island of Hawaii with the state of Hawaii, Honolulu, the capital and biggest city, is on the much smaller island of Oahu.


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At 2018-03-17 21:23 (utc) our position was 20°42.81'N 152°51.27'W