Friendly Hilo

Our time in Hilo was terrific. Not only were we reveling in the accomplishment of sailing the 2900 miles to get there, but the warmth, hospitality and friendliness of everyone we met there was amazing.  Hilo is a lovely town, not overrun with tourists, and the local people were exceedingly friendly. From friendly people on the bus, to generous people at the paddle club where we pulled our dinghy up offering us breakfast. When the boys and I got caught in a rain squall on our way to the bus one day, and a man even pulled over in his car and insisted I take his umbrella, when I declined and told him we were from Seattle so knew that rain wouldn't make us melt, he insisted that Hilo rain was nothing like Seattle rain. Thank you to that kind man, the umbrella has come in handy!

We also ended up having a most delightful meeting of the boating kind. One night we were cooking dinner and a shadow passed the port lights. Tor popped his head out to investigate and low and behold there was a traditional Hawaiian sailing catamaran right next to us. The man at the helm (actually steering oar), Kiko, recognized our boat from where we tie it up in Seattle, so he stopped by on his evening sail to visit. He owns a boat in Seattle and had seen our boat tied up in Lake Union, and had been curious about it because as a boat builder himself, he had the plans for the same boat and had wondered about building it. The last time he was in Seattle he'd noticed our boat was gone, and low and behold we turned up in his back yard! He quickly invited us for an evening sail with himself and his friend visiting from Germany and Tor and Kiko talked boats the whole time, I think both enjoyed it. I loved sailing on his sailing canoe, it was so different than anything I'd ever sailed on, and the boys were in hog heaven too.

A couple of days later Kiko showed up in his paddling outrigger canoe with two friends from work because he wanted to go over the charts with us and give us good local knowledge about anchorages on the Big Island. Then he invited us to go paddling for the evening with them. We grabbed oars and the boys paddled with half kayak paddles and had a blast. His friends were a delight to spend time with and the evening couldn't have been better, though when we showed up at a restaurant later with our paddles and lifejackets, the restaurant staff was a little confused!

We tied up in Radio Bay which is behind the breakwater in the port of Hilo and also right next to the shipping terminal and cruise ship dock. There was zero swell, and we all really enjoyed being still again. It was a bit of a hassle to be tied up by the shipping terminal due to post 9/11 security rules that necessitated us walking all the way around the port instead of the shortcut through it, but it offered endless entertainment for the boys watching he loading and unloading of countless containers. Perfect place for our kids!

We rented a car for a few days and in addition to provisioning both food (Costco) and books (there is a terrific used book store in Kona) we did some sightseeing and made it back to Volcano national park. All in all, we had a wonderful time on the Big Island and it was hard to leave, but we did so we could rendezvous with our friends on Asunto on Maui!



Radio Bay. Breakwater and canoe club where we rowed our
dinghy ashore.

Med moored to a container terminal!

In Volcano National Park, we drove to the end of Chain
 of Craters road to walk to where the lava covered a park
road in a fairy recent flow. Lars remembered the "Road
Closed" sign from when we were there in 2014 and
wanted to see it again. Things had changed...a new road
 had been built and we think this is what remains of the sign.

This is what it looked like in the summer of 2014.

Wait, what is this road?! It turns out it was built over the lava
 flow in quite a hurry as an evacuation route for people
who live on the other side. In recent flow activity the only road
out was almost cut off by lava, so the residents needed an
evacuation road in case the main road did get cut off.

Thurston Lava tube didn't disappoint!

Neither did seeing the red glow of the lava in the evening from
 Jagger Museum.

Super cute kids super excited by geology!

Dramatic at night, no?

Lars is ready for snorkeling!

Going sailing with Captain Kiko!

Paddling with Kiko!

Hamming it up at the Banyan tree.

Last Month in Mexico

Trying to catch up a little on the blog, I realized I never posted anything about our last month in Mexico. So I'm now going back in time. The last month in Mexico was wonderful, filled with friends, social opportunities and continuing to enjoy Mexico. Frankly I miss it, Hawaii is great, but Mexico holds a very special place in my heart. We spent the last month in Banderas Bay, mostly in the town of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, but also a little time in Nuevo Vallarta and Puerto Vallarta with a short trip out of the bay to Punta de Mita and Chacala, as well a day trip to Tres Mariettas islands aboard our friends’ boat Asunto. However, it wasn’t all fun and games, we had a long to do list to complete before our big passage to Hawaii. Being in the Puerto Vallarta area made it much easier to get projects and provisioning done than it had been in the Sea of Cortez. So, between friends and projects, our time was filled!

La Cruz is the center of cruiser life in Banderas Bay. I heard a fellow boat parent say that La Cruz has its own gravity, and I can completely agree. It was so tough to leave. La Cruz is kid boat heaven. It attracts kid boats for many reasons; the community of other kid boats, and community events like a kids VHF radio net, crazy science Fridays, and fundraisers for local charities, all done by and for kids. Not to mention a pool, it’s not big, but it doesn’t seem to bother the kids! It’s a great place for adults too. We met so many great people there. Walking down the dock was difficult to do in a timely fashion since there were so many people to chat with, up and down the whole dock! The town itself is wonderful too, there are certainly tourists there, but mostly they are cruisers and as a tourist you don’t have to deal with the same sort of tourism madness found in Puerto Vallarta.

I will let pictures tell the rest of the story.

  

La Cruz cruising family potluck. All the kids getting
 ready for a scavenger hunt.   

Zippy dinghy ride with Asunto to check out Islas Tres
Mariettas in Banderas Bay. Beautiful! 

Islas Tres Mariettas

Lars and Fynn always working on something together!

Provisioning made easy, a lovely friend of the cruising fleet
 in La Cruz offered a ride to the Costco in Puerto
Vallarta in her giant Suburban. It made provisioning for
 the passage to Hawaii SO easy!  

Lars was my stowing partner for all the food. A great helper!

These pictures show just a portion of the food we crammed
on this boat. No going hungry here!

The La Cruz Kids club put on a fundraiser for the orphanage in the
nearby town of Bucerias. They made smoothies for people
 to buy at the cruisers swap meet. successful and delicious!

Odin and Neli made a great team! 

Michelada! Bucerias had the best ones by far, see
those prawns on top? That is probably only 1/3 of them left.
Amazing!

Marina La Cruz sunset.

Buddy Boating with Riki Tiki Tavi and Caramba to Chacala.
Some seriously good beach playing time!

Odin LOVED boogie boarding!

Lars always does things his own way :)

The Easter Bunny came!

For our last week in Mexico we left La Cruz for Puerto
Vallarta. Partly because we wanted to see a different
 place, but also because we found we were having so
much fun in La Cruz that we weren't getting much
done. Riki Tiki Tavi generously made the trip over
 for a couple of days to see us off. Poor Liam got really
 sick, but it didn't deter Neli, Lars and Odin from getting some
serious playmobil playing in!

Haleakala

Haleakala on the island of Maui is a spectacular place to visit. It is a 10,023 foot high volcano that has a deep, 2600 feet, crater like erosional valley at the summit that is about 7 miles by 2 miles in size. It is truly a spectacular place to behold. Tor and I last visited it on the marine science trip we met on in high school 22 years ago.  

On this trip we wanted to share it with Lars and Odin, so on their birthday we went up the mountain and they became Junior Rangers. But as we went to the summit, we ascended through clouds, and couldn't see a thing (and got really wet while outside!). I really wanted to go there for sunrise and a chance to actually see the erosional valley (thank you Junior Ranger curriculum, I now know it isn't technically a crater!) rather than clouds. We figured our intrepid Junior Rangers Lars and Odin would like the adventure of getting up in the dark and making the drive up the mountain again, to hopefully actually see the view at the summit. 

The drive to the summit takes about two hours from Lahaina, so we asked the harbormaster of the very small harbor at Lahaina if they had space for us at the dock to save us the row in from the boat at 3:00 am. Thankfully they found us space. We all piled into the rental car we shared with our friends aboard S/V Asunto, a fancy red Jeep Wrangler, and made the trek. We weren't the only people with the same idea and the line at the ticket booth to get into the park was very long. We got to the summit just in time for sunrise, got a parking spot, pulled on all our warm clothes (the thermometer on our car said 40 deg F) and it was all socked in, yet again. 

This is what we saw of the sunrise

Cold, but we are making the best of it!

Fortunately we waited around enough that the clouds burned off some and we would catch short glimpses of the valley. Stunning.

The V alley

Odin even runs uphill at 10,000 ft of elevation.
He did admit to being a little winded ;)

Self timer family portrait

Playing games to pass the time between cloud breaks

School for the day, Junior Ranger activity books!

The other Junior Ranger hard at work

Silver sword plant. These live only on the summit area of
Haleakala, no where else. A very rare plant indeed.

The sliverswords are descended from a sunflower relative
called tarweed whose seeds blew over from California. 
The resemblance is very clear in the flowers!

 It was a great day, despite the clouds and we were so glad we went.

Pete and Sara, another great use for a Puddle Jump Bag.
A pillow for car naps!

A Lost Tooth and a Very Rough Ride

Tooth Gone!

Odin lost his first tooth last night! He was so thrilled to wake up to find under his pillow a note from the tooth fairy complimenting him on how well he's taking care of his teeth, a small tube of toothpaste and a two dollar bill!

We actually had quite a rough evening yesterday. After spending all day at Makena beach with our friends on SV Asunto we came back to our anchored boats to see that a big swell had kicked up and that the boats were bucking the seas pretty wildly. We didn't think that would be comfortable at all, and there was an anchorage we had already been to called McGregor Landing just 8 miles away that would have protection from that swell. So both boats quickly up anchored and got out of there. What we didn't bank on was the winds coming through the saddle between West and East Maui. We are on the Leeward side of the island, but through that low saddle the winds accelerate and we drove right into them. YUCK! We were making only about 2 knots average speed and the boat was regularly taking green water over the bow. We don't have an anemometer aboard, but Asunto saw 42 knots apparent wind speed as a high! What should have been a trip of about an hour and a half became four hours. The foredeck hatch leaked worse than it ever has and Odin's bedding got soaked. Tor was on deck, wet and miserable, and by the last 2 miles we were getting blown so hard from the starboard side of the boat that he had the tiller constantly over 15-20 degrees in order to keep us on our straight line course. Asunto is much bigger than us and was able to get to the anchorage before dark, we didn't get there until well after dark at 8:00, but Asunto helped point out a good place for us to anchor. Unfortunately once we set the anchor we were too close to Asunto, so I had to crank all the anchor all by hand with our manual windlass in winds well over 20 kts. But then we reanchored successfully. Sweet relief.

Meanwhile on our little trip, Odin was feeling seasick down below and fell asleep. Lars was awake for most of the long trip, and finally fell asleep close to the anchorage. Odin woke up after a nice long three hour nap and so once we were anchored, and while Tor and I decompressed a little bit, he was up with us while Lars slept. Finally around 10:00 we were getting ready for bed. Odin put the bottom edge of his shirt into his mouth so he could see his pants, accidentally caught his hand on his shirt and whoops! his tooth came flying out across the cabin and hit me in the leg! Odin was thrilled! He's patiently waited his turn to come as he's watched Lars lose five teeth. His permanent tooth is almost completely in, so it was just a matter of time, but he's so happy it finally happened!

It was a VERY good day at the beach!

Perfection, no?

I have a long tail cargo bike at home, this is my marine equivalent.
The three of us use the SUP for group transport all the time!
This is on the way back to the boat after our beach day.

A Very Special Birthday

Today Odin and Lars turned 6! How that happened so quickly, Tor and I can't figure out, but Lars and Odin are both thrilled.

We had a lovely day spent with our friends from S/V Asunto, they gave the boys a birthday geocaching adventure, complete with walkie talkies to keep. A huge hit for the boys to say the least. Then we all piled in the rental car we've had for the last couple of days and drove up to the summit of Haleakala. It was cloudy and wet while we were up there, so we couldn't see any of the crater, but Odin and Lars were able complete all requirements and are newly minted Junior Rangers for Haleakala National Park. They are so proud and excited.

Cruisers we've met along the way have been incredibly generous and thoughtful in remembering the boys' birthday. I love this community! The calls and emails from back home have been so great to receive all day. Basically I think the boys feel loved, and remembered on this special day. Thank you to all for spreading the love around!

From the summit of Haleakala. Our newly six year old Junior Rangers posing with a Silver Sword. (Still posting lousy phone pics...I don't have wifi access figured out for posting photos from my good camera.)

The Passage

Well, we did it. 2910 miles sailed from Puerto Vallarta to Hilo, Hawaii. It took 24 days plus a few hours (I haven't yet bothered to figure it out). We felt that was pretty fast for a boat our size. We tried to maximize comfort over speed, so it seems that much faster to us. We rarely saw full sails, we were mostly reefed and flew the stays'l instead of our full jib. Additionally, every night we reefed down, in order to try and ensure nights without drama or the need for sail changes, so we could maximize sleep, then we would shake reefs out in the morning. It seemed to work pretty well, there were just a couple of nights we needed to wake the off watch crew for help on deck. Pretty important since we are short handed with two junior crew who sleep through the night and need parenting during the day!

We settled into a pretty good watch schedule for us. The boys sleep about 11 hours at night, so Tor and I tried to split that evenly between us. I went to bed with the boys, all three of us in our double berth, around 7:00 or 8:00 and Tor stayed on watch until 2:00 am when he crawled into bed and I was on watch until the boys woke up at around 7:00 or 8:00. We then each took a nap during the day. We felt reasonably rested most of the time. Though it turns out Tor had a heck of a time actually napping, so he was quite short on sleep.

The boys were amazing about keeping themselves occupied and happy when Tor and I were either occupied with boat related activities or when one parent was napping. In fact, they were an absolute pleasure. The worries we had about keeping them occupied, or them getting cabin fever were for the most part unfulfilled. It was grand.

The passage was pretty rough on Tor. He never entirely got over his sea sickness. When he was down below, he usually felt pretty lousy. He was definitely most comfortable up on deck, despite the fact that it was pretty wet with the rolls we regularly took that allowed gallons of water to come in our scuppers (it drained out immediately, from the scuppers on the other side and the cockpit drains, she's a great, seaworthy little ship). So Tor was mostly up on deck and in charge of running the boat. Since I was capable of being down below, and felt good, I took care of running the family. Ensuring we had food to eat and clean dishes to eat it on was challenging in our rocking and rolling boat. I did learn a lot about what worked and didn't, so I am feeling pretty empowered about that part of voyaging.

One of the most important strategies for making the passage work for our family was to develop a routine. We all benefitted from that. Things dos get a bit monotonous now and then, but the days actually went by pretty quickly when measured by the clock of meal times.

The toughest part of the passage for me is that things didn't meet my expectations. Before we started on the passage, I assumed the first few days would be tough when the three guys were all seasick, and Tor and I were figuring out how the watch schedules would work out. I figured that after we got our sea legs and routine established that we would be in for some magical times as a family sailing our little boat across the ocean. Reading books together, baking celebration treats for milestones reached, spending time reveling in the sunshine in the cockpit together, having dance parties when the need to get wiggles out arose, and many other ideas. It didn't pan out that way, and the reality was much less rosy. With Tor not functioning at full power, running family life fell on my shoulders and I just didn't have the energy to be super mom. We were simply surviving as a family, not thriving. Tough to do for 24 days. One day about three weeks into the passage, I saw Tor smile, a
nd it was striking, because I hadn't seen that smile in a long time.

We were so uncomfortable that we started discussing shipping the boat back to Seattle from Hawaii. It would mean skipping our Alaska plans unless we could actually ship it to SE Alaska, but we were mostly okay with that. So one of the first things we did when we made landfall was look into options for shipping Yare home. When we set out on this voyage, we didn't know how we would get the boat home, but we did decide on a policy of taking things as they come, and being completely honest with ourselves about how we as a family were doing. Taking stock of the situation and being honest, shipping the boat home and potentially cutting our trip short felt like the right thing to do much of the time while we were out there.

One thing I've determined is that my emotions when I'm out sailing go up and down, back and forth as much as the waves do. One night watch I'm ready to call it quits, the next one I'm ready to keep going forever. My feelings are so intense, and directly related to the conditions at that moment. Conditions got better as we got closer to Hilo, and I started to question shipping the boat back by the time we got to Hilo, and individually, so had Tor. It's a good thing, because it turns out that shipping our boat from Hawaii is not only prohibitively expensive, but the hassles involved would also be prohibitive for us and our boat. So, shifting gears, we think we've learned enough tricks, enough about ourselves, and our boat, to make the next passage better. We certainly know now much better what to expect. Maybe that alone will make it better. Best of all, it means there won't be any changes to our Alaska plans. And after we make that passage, we never have to make another one a
gain ;).

We've been loving our experiences in Hilo. It's a beautiful town with such friendly and welcoming residents. We've spent a crazy amount of money on groceries and eating out, but that's a motto aboard our little ship...never go hungry! When I get the wifi situation figured out, I will sort through pictures and share our Big Island adventures. For now I'm posting on our satellite phone again, and the good photos are just too big for that small bandwidth.

For now our plans are to spend the next 6 weeks or so in the Hawaiian Islands. We will work our way north to Hanalei bay on Kauai for departure for Sitka, Alaska mid June. After arrival in Sitka we will spend the summer heading back south (after a brief jaunt northward to Glacier Bay) through the Inside Passage. We are really looking forward to experiencing SE Alaska by boat again, now that Lars and Odin are old enough to remember the trip and we aren't washing diapers anymore ;). Besides that, we discovered that there is a Lars island in Glacier Bay and an Odin cove in Seaforth channel. We didn't get to visit either of them when we were there in 2011, and we determined that we needed to come back. Just one more big passage to go. Here we come!

The photos included are of the off watch crew sleeping on passage while Odin and I were on the dawn watch, Lars passing the time drawing, and Odin goofing around on deck.

Anchor Down!

We've arrived! We are anchored in Radio Bay (we did hear your advice Scott and Donna, just the lure of showers was WAY too strong :).

We are in a rush to get to customs to get cleared in, they are staying late for us, so I wanted to post that we are here, but details will be forthcoming.

Thanks to you all for following along and all your cheers, we heard them over the ocean thanks to my Mom!