I came to Lahaina from the south. After 13 days on an unleashed reach out of French Polynesia, I clung to the mast top, my legs wrapped in a death grip. We swung west into Alenuihaha Channel, known to Hawaiians as the river of laughing waters. The sun blazed and the trades howled as 20-foot rollers raced up our stern and frothed over the rails. Flying our heaviest chute was risky, as the channel boiled with towering whitecaps, but the Beach Boys blared from the deck speakers, and Maui loomed ahead in all its verdant glory. Cobalt-blue waves cascaded on the approaching lava rocks of Kaupo. Hana stood lush to the east, with the Big Island’s Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea silhouetted to the south.

I hadn’t been back to America in years, and I now charged full-tilt—unvanquished from the south seas under a swollen spinnaker, drunk on Brian Wilson.

It was gnarly up the mast. The horizon was a sweep of white water wrapped along the Maui shore, with roller after roller that threatened to bury us in the troughs. We broached, like a dog shaking a rat on a rope, and I slammed hard onto the deck with the bosun’s chair tangled around my legs. Our keel broke the surface as we buried the spreaders and spun out of control. All of us hung white-knuckled until the boat shuddered violently and tried to stand. We were a seasoned crew, baked brown and stringy by the sun. We hadn’t dropped the chute in 2,000 miles since leaving Tahiti. The closer Maui inched, the more we felt invincible. Landfall does that. After days at sea, every south sea island is an intoxicating rebirth of the senses, a virginal stirring of the heart. Lahaina was all of that. We had the boat tidied by the time we slipped past Kaho’olawe, into the lee of west Maui and the tranquil, humpback-strewn waters between Lahaina and Lanai.

Among cruisers around beach fires back in the South Pacific, Lahaina’s reputation was as a dusty, one-horse whaling town. I was on the beach in Huahine, set to hitch a berth to New Zealand, when “Hurricane Annie” Musselman, a striking female sailor fresh ashore after a 20-day sail from Maui, convinced me of the fun awaiting me in Hawaii, where I could then catch a boat to New Zealand next season.

In Hawaii, an endless arrival of passagemakers and wannabe sailors from the mainland made Lahaina their first stop. Those flying over never felt the same passion for the place; landfall was the only way to fathom the prize of Lahaina. From the sailor’s eye after days on the open ocean, Lahaina offered seduction like no other, bathed in the late-afternoon sunset sweetened by the fragrance of tuberose and mango that wafted miles offshore.

It wasn’t the thought of endless lilikoi cocktails, or the fantasy of tropically toned women exuberant with song and dance, their hair pinned with red hibiscus flowers and with plumeria leis around their necks. Beyond the fertile earth, fresh fruits, waterfalls, perfect surf, and harbor life of ocean sailors was the stunning Hawaiian backdrop and a celebratory welcome for sailors fresh from the sea, dues paid. Welcome to the land of earthly delights.

Lahaina’s harbor, first seen as mast tops peering over a small breakwall, was packed with working and provisioning yachts. At the entrance lay a weary 19th-century whaling ship, long in the rigging, and over its shoulder was an old missionary plantation home and museum adorned with whaling artifacts and reminders of the invasion of the Hawaiian Kingdom centuries ago.

The waterfront public library next door was the best place to watch the sunset through the palms, and next to that loomed the colonial, columned veranda of the Pioneer Inn, with its red roof, green sides, creaking wainscoting, whirring ceiling fans, open-air everything, and swinging saloon doors with a carved figurehead standing guard. The sound of a honky-tonk piano player pounding the ivories and wailing rousing tunes drifted from the saloon and across the anchorage, serenading us. Just beyond reach of the saloon was the canopy of an enormous banyan tree spreading a hundred yards in every direction. A missionary gift, it had been planted in 1873 by the widow of King Kamehameha. Lahaina, the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, which Kamehameha violently united, became the whaling capital of the world and commanded respect.

Even with its tin-pan serenades drifting across the water and its promises of revelry ashore, Lahaina was a sacred destination for those crossing the Pacific. Its backdrop was a riotous splash of color—a transformative sight after weeks at sea. Lush green cane fields rose up the slopes behind town, waving in the trade winds like a frozen sea. Red earthen foothills, ascending steep slopes to the majestic cloud-shrouded tops of the West Maui Mountains. Lahaina’s low-slung waterfront foreground bustled with green, shanty-style houses and humble shops all the way to the sugar cane mill, where every so often the sweet bouquet of molasses would blanket the town. Most harbor regulars nursed dreams of sailing to the South Pacific and were stopping just long enough to find a berth on a yacht heading south. Bikini-clad gals hawked sailing charters while gruff, unshaven sport-fishermen pitched billfish hunts. Sunset-cocktail-excursion captains, in bright-white uniforms with golden epaulets, recruited passengers. Sport divers in wetsuits hauling scuba tanks joined in the shouts amid the beer-drinking revelries of black coral hunters, stewed in their constant highs from too many daily 300-foot dives.  

Lording over it all, doling out privileges and access like a pirate king, was the leather-skinned, gray-bearded harbormaster. The rest of the town was second fiddle to the workings of that tiny harbor, the heartbeat of the town. Inebriated or not, the harbormaster could make or break sailing futures in this part of the Pacific. Flippant declarations boomed from the breakwall as he stalked the docks, banishing boats from the harbor, relegating them to endless hobbyhorsing at anchor, scheduling impossible departure times, and controlling the pace of work and supplies to replenish desperate sailors amid bribes, favors, and hard-luck tales.

A steady stream of entrepreneurs, street hustlers, harbor alcoholics, and starry-eyed youthful adventurers were always coming and going, convinced that they were at a pitstop en route to the South Pacific. Seemingly every waiter and waitress had dreams of being discovered, landing a berth on a boat heading south.

For many other locals, content with their hospitality and construction jobs, Lahaina was just home. Several hundred one-story houses of all shapes and tropical colors led from the water’s edge to the hillsides by the mill, sprawling neighborly toward the Kaanapali beaches to the north and the Olowalu beaches to the south.

Kaanapali, with its stretch of high-rise beachfront resorts, kept a good distance, about 4 miles from the hum of Lahaina, so their pampered guests could join the tourist hordes swarming town and then return to the civilized world of luxury Hawaiian resorts.

By contrast, many of Lahaina’s simply constructed neighborhood homes had basic tin roofs and green plywood sides, and were smart with a humble pride of ownership. Most houses had flourishing window boxes, and were peppered with hibiscus and plumeria hedges under the shade of towering mango and avocado trees with sweet gardenias, all thriving with minimal care. There was no need for heat or air conditioning, or even screens, in these homes. The streets were alive with locals and young folk making ends meet in town. Dogs barked, kids played, barbecues were everywhere, and bicycles were fine for getting around.

Kids wearing flip-flops and swimsuits skateboarded by the park or pedaled banana-seat bikes through town to the harbor break with surfboards under their arms. Pickups were the vehicle of choice, practical work vehicles suited to racing though cane fields. They’d cruise through town, tunes blasting with surfboards piled high, heading to the beach. Older locals surrounded by their broods of kids and grandkids hosted hula dances and strummed ukuleles beneath the banyan tree, or at the beach or grassy town parks, picnicking to beat the heat.

Lahaina was a tropical mecca of American pizzazz, where mainlanders swapped tales of the South Pacific. With the romance of the south seas under my belt, I was in no hurry to go back to sea, so I ran sailboat charters from here on a handful of yachts from 40 to 65 feet long that swept tourists off the beach for a heart-stopping sprint out to the Pailolo Channel wind line. We got a charge exciting the passengers, shifting without warning from a gentle, drink-sipping 7-knot drift to a rollicking, heeled-over, mai-tai-be-damned 15-knot dash into the teeth of the trades. If the passengers did not seem like they could handle the wind line’s excitement, we sailed calmly to Lanai’s Manele Bay, stopping halfway for a swim with the whales.

The real charter yachts were too big and too busy to handle the daily traffic in and out of Lahaina Harbor, so we sat on moorings off the resort hotels. There was Johnny Weismueller’s 60-foot 1929 schooner, Allure; Barry Hilton’s Alden 57, Teragram; the 54-foot aluminum ketch Minset; the Hermaphrodite schooner Rendezvous; and a handful of performance catamarans, which had the best layouts to accommodate hordes of tourist passengers, complete with midship bars, and could be rammed right onto the sand for loading and offloading. And the charter fleet wasn’t the only thing humming with intensity and tourists: Lahaina’s Front Street, the town’s waterfront artery, was the place to be. You could grab a drink at the Blue Max—a tiny, second-deck bar overlooking the seawall—and discover Elton John playing a surprise session on the piano. Jim Messina might drop in to perform at Kula’s Silversword Inn; Taj Mahal could be seen playing the congas to an empty beach at sunset; and Stephen Stills and David Crosby were regularly jamming aboard their boats at anchor. I recall Peter Fonda’s 73-foot sloop, Tatoosh, returning from the Marquesas, where I had recently shared trails with its crew while hiking the Nuku Hiva jungle. There were celebrities everywhere on Maui, a place where they could enjoy themselves without facing fandom.

One weekend, we filed aboard the square-rigged Rendezvous with friends and sailed to Oahu to hear the Eagles play Diamond Head crater. Days later, we rounded up our festival-weary crew for a quiet sail back to Maui. Getting around the islands was as easy as going down to the harbor and sticking out your thumb. One friend stood at the harbor entrance and hitched a ride on a sport-fishing boat heading to Oahu. He planted himself in the fighting chair and opened his paperback, ready for a nice read. Next thing he knew, the crew had hooked into something. They grabbed his book, strapped him in, and handed over a live rod. He spent the next four hours landing a 750-pound marlin for the first-ever fish thrill of his life.

Most of the Maui charter boats dragged lines just in case. They often landed ono, mahi, ahi and billfish. Once ashore, they would sprint to the best seafood restaurant in town and pocket a few hundred extra dollars for the crew. I recall a wedding sailing charter aboard Minset around Molokai’s Mokuhooniki Rock that double-hooked two big ono. After the wedding party fought and landed both fish, they returned to the dock bloodied, drunk and still smiling, with rave reviews.

The break at the harbor entrance was sweet enough to lure sunrise surfers from upcountry, a 30-minute drive from the volcanic slopes of Haleakala. As thick as tourists were in town, Lahaina’s waterfront shops had to cater to them. Along with its bounty of missionary folklore and whaling nostalgia, open-air bars, dive shops and salad bars, Lahaina sold trinkets, T-shirts, ice cream, Hawaiian-style jewelry, and the sort of faster food that tourists craving the hotel pool could quickly sample.

Around it all were the locals, living a life in the seams of tourist traffic, enjoying a shady beachfront tuft of palms and greenery, sitting with relatives on the sand, eating fish packets and coconut rice on the seawall. The proprietary goods that they depended on were relegated to tired one-story shopping centers on the periphery of town. The tourists came and went; it wasn’t difficult for residents to still feel a sense of steadfastness to Lahaina town. They tolerated the young people who moved in to take their hotel and tourism jobs. Compared with the relentless tide of visitors who abandoned their sensibilities when they became tourists, sailors often arrived with purpose and were commonly the most welcome of outsiders.

The famed Lahaina Yacht Club, host of the Victoria to Maui race and open to all visiting yachtsmen, was as unpretentious as there ever was a yacht club. It hosted none of the functions that typical yacht clubs host; it had no docks, no sweeping nautical lobby. Accessed through an insignificant Front Street doorway, the private club was disguised so well along retail row that visitors rarely found it on their first attempt. Inside, the dark, narrow hallway was decorated with photographs of classic sailboats finishing the Transpac and Victoria-Maui races, and framed letters from appreciative yachtsmen. A basic waterfront bar hung over the water with an intimate collection of tables. Dangling from the ceiling were burgees from visiting yachts from all around the world; upstairs, the loft had a few tables and backgammon boards. I participated in a couple of the Victoria-Maui races, as well as the dockside parties afterward. The bright-eyed patrons greeted us at all hours like heroes returning from the sea, offering flowered leis for each sailor, champagne, and lots of fresh fruit and pupus.

It’s an ecstatic moment for racing sailors, but cruising sailors wear their hearts on their sleeves and their first landfall is like a first kiss that can never be repeated. It’s a taste of wonder and redemption, almost salvation from any miscues of the passage, and a gratitude for an ocean’s drop of grace. In racing, the motivation is victory, the mission is speed, and glory the reward. While that’s a thrill worth seeking, in cruising, the promise of landfall is all heart.

The aching loss for this breathtaking Pacific landfall is that it will never be the same in Lahaina. The sailors will still come, but the landscape and the romantic legacy of a town that was an authentic kingdom’s home, a whaling mecca, a missionary post, and a working blend of tourism and local ohana is gone. What now remains of this legendary alluring paradise is but a barren gray stretch of ashen slabs and ghosts.

The town will be rebuilt and redefined by developers, legal setbacks and the buying power of realtors, but the soul of this Pacific pit stop and the prevailing Hawaiian spirit is at risk. The magic of this mythical landfall will never be quite the same.

Neil Rabinowitz is a longtime and frequent contributor to Cruising World as both a photographer and a writer. His work has appeared in Men’s Journal, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Outside, and The New York Times to name a few, and just about every marine publication. He has completed numerous ocean passages on both racing and cruising yachts and often finds inspiration recalling the romance of his first south seas landfall. He lives on a sunny farm on Bainbridge Island in the Pacific Northwest. 

The post An Ode to Lahaina appeared first on Cruising World.

I could smell the forest before I even opened my eyes. It was a sweet, woodsy smell with a heavy fragrance of wet earth. If I kept my eyes closed, I could easily have placed myself on the forest floor, surrounded by the refuse of the trees that were making their way to becoming soil. 

When I did open my eyes, I remembered that I was lying under anchor on board Triteia, my 1965 Alberg 30 sloop, in Kaneohe Bay, on the windward side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. I climbed out of my berth and started my morning routine: filled the kettle, lit the fire, and loaded up my stainless-steel French press with ground coffee. Out on deck, I looked toward the sea, and then toward land. The boat gently swayed as I made my way forward and took in the scents until I heard the kettle boiling. I poured the hot water over the coffee grounds. This morning was an olfactory bonanza. 

At dawn, Oahu’s Ko’olau Range was bathed in golden light. We were anchored 400 yards from the He’eia loko i’a, a traditional Hawaiian fishpond estimated to be more than 800 years old. These fishponds are used for aquaculture of fish, taro and algae, and were an important part of supplying the Hawaiian people with food. In the late 18th century, they were producing 2 million pounds of fish per year.

That day, Triteia was bound for a new anchorage in a different part of the bay. Our destination was the Kaneohe Sandbar, a popular spot for locals and tourists alike. The sandbar is about a mile wide and 3 miles long, and spends most of its time submerged. The unique shape, with steep underwater faces, allows larger sailboats to anchor mere feet from the shallows. 

After I weighed anchor, I motored Triteia out through a calm mooring field. As far as I could see in the bay, the water was as still as a lake, but the charts showed the bay littered with large, coral bommies. They might as well be landmines sitting just below the surface. Private citizens had installed small, white pipes into the reefs’ outer edges that flank the dredged channel; I kept an eye on my navigation app and located a clear path that would take us to the spot on the sandbar where I planned to anchor for the next three nights. 

A fellow cruising sailor here in Hawaii, Cy Henry, had explained the process of anchoring in this peculiar location: “You will want to motor in very slowly, watching your depths on the depth sounder. When you see the depths dropping rapidly, just wait for the bump as your hull hits the bar. Run forward, let go your anchor, and pay out about 10 feet of chain. Then, back up the boat to slightly set the anchor. Next, pay out more chain, swim ashore, and carry your anchor into the shallows however far you like.”

This is a good time to mention the fact that I am doing all of this alone. Cy said that I might want to use a second anchor to hold the boat in place while moving the primary anchor. This would be necessary only if the trades were blowing. Normally, the windward side of Oahu, which faces east-northeast, ­experiences these winds.

I had planned my visit to coincide with a rare slackening of the trade winds, and I was pleased to see that the forecast was accurate, with only a light offshore breeze. If I were to attempt to anchor with the trade winds blowing, my boat could easily get away from me and blow out into the bay, bound for coral reefs and, eventually, the shore as I stood waving goodbye from the shallow sandbar. 

As I motored slowly, I thought how truly strange it was to be driving toward a submerged beach with the intention of running into the sand. A disconcerting clue to the depth, aside from instrumentation, was the rapid change in the water’s color. It shifted from cobalt blue to a brilliant turquoise as the sun reflected off the white sand below. 

Soon, I felt the bump of my hull on the soft sandbar. I hurried forward, let go my 45-pound anchor, and paid out some 10 feet of chain. I then reversed the boat to set it. I let out more chain and, for the first time in my life, jumped off the bow of my boat into 2 feet of water. I lifted up the anchor and carried it back some 20 feet to give it more scope. 

As I was pushing my anchor in the sand, a ­paddleboarder casually cruised past me. I stood near where the water depth dropped from 2 feet to 20 feet in less than the length of my boat, climbed back on board Triteia, and deployed a second anchor off the stern. The steep drop-off meant that there was no risk of going aground, but the offshore breeze and changing tides could cause the boat to bump in the night. 

As the day progressed, the sun heated the forests and the mountain range created its own clouds. With the absence of the trade winds, these clouds increased in size until they shrouded the mountaintops. I watched this happen day after day, realizing how rare it is to be able to slow down one’s life to the point of having the opportunity to watch clouds be built. 

As the sun marched on, boats of all shapes and sizes arrived at the sandbar: sailboats, motorboats, pontoons, kayaks, paddleboards. At one end of the sandbar, I could see a volleyball net near a tour boat. Where the sandbar meets the ocean, some 20-plus kayaks explored just inside gentle waves breaking on the reefs. To the south, fishing boats and pleasure craft spread out, with families swimming and walking in the warm water. Next to Triteia, a small powerboat arrived with a mother and her adult daughter as captain and crew. They blew up classic, colorful pool floaties, walked a few yards, sat in them and opened two beers. In all, I counted 50 boats, and everyone had as much space as they wanted.

As the afternoon ­progressed, the clouds obscured the sun. The islanders hauled up and made their way back to the shore. Triteia had the sandbar all to itself. I sat in the cockpit as gentle rains passed from north to south down the bay. The sunset broke through a few gaps, with beautiful ­golden rays shifting in remarkable contrast to the dark gray clouds and green mountainsides. The water’s surface was still and slick, with Hawaiian sea turtles popping their small, round heads up for air. 

As night arrived, I ate ­dinner in the cockpit and enjoyed the quiet. Looking in any direction, it would appear we were well offshore, but we were anchored in one of the calmest spots I’d ever had the pleasure of experiencing. 

Turning in for the night, I climbed into my bunk and opened my forward hatch. I looked up at the twinkling stars between gaps in the clouds. The anchorage was completely silent as a ­gentle onshore breeze blew in through the hatch and brought with it the familiar scent of the sea. 

Writer and filmmaker James Frederick has logged more than 10,000 nautical miles of passagemaking in his sailing career. Most recently, he completed solo ocean passages from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and Hawaii to French Polynesia. Follow Frederick’s journey on his YouTube channel.

The post Exploring Oahu’s Kaneohe Bay appeared first on Cruising World.

The sea will allow you to ­encounter yourself, if you let it. At age 16, James Frederick traveled to San Francisco, stood on the beach, and saw the ocean for the first time. “I just stared at it,” Frederick says, recalling the moment. “All I could think was: This water has never stopped moving.”

Frederick grew up in the California ­desert. At 15, he dropped out of high school and lived on the streets of Los Angeles. In the ’90s, he worked as an artist and musician, performing experimental soundscapes at galleries and museums across Europe. Today, at 47, with tattooed hands and gauged ears, Frederick looks more punk rock than Polo. But he’s an ocean sailor. And his recent 32-day solo voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii is about more than a dream realized; it’s about what happens when life goes to crap, plans are shattered, and the only thing left to do is to go to sea.

In 2014, Frederick was in Russia, on the island of Kronstadt, studying maritime history as an artist in residence with the National Centre for Contemporary Arts. He was interested in boats but believed that sailing was out of reach. However, after landing an art residency that teamed scientists, sailors and artists on an expedition boat in Scotland’s Orkney Isles, Frederick felt a call. 

“When I stepped off that sailboat, my future was forever changed,” he says. “But I had no idea what was to come.”

Frederick abandoned his pursuit of art and made sailing his life. Back in Los Angeles, he used meetup and crew-placement websites to get on any boat he could, racing and delivering yachts up and down the West Coast. In 2017, he found Triteia, a 1965 Alberg 30, rotting between an oil refinery and a recycling facility where old boats are cut up and carried to the dumpster. 

“It’s a heartbreaking place where boats go to die,” Frederick says. “But there were angels playing trumpets when I saw this boat.”

Frederick bought Triteia for $2,400 and began sailing Southern California. Months later, he met Camille, a fine artist, and the adventure began. Together, they circumnavigated Catalina Island, anchored in the Channel Islands, and married aboard Triteia.

“Waking up under anchor with the person I love gave me a glimpse of the life I had been dreaming of living,” Frederick says. 

But there was a bigger dream: He wanted to sail the world.

Working paycheck to paycheck, Frederick readied Triteia for cruising. He swapped the seized engine for a rebuilt Yanmar, built a custom compression post, and installed an integral freshwater tank and a custom mast. He upsized the rigging, and upgraded the ground ­tackle, hard dodger and windvane. Triteia’s ­four-year refit was extensive; the labor was hell. Nearing completion, Frederick was so beaten, he thought that finishing the boat might break him. You are doing this for the magic hours you will experience at sea, he told himself. 

“That first day was incredibly difficult … I was stunned and alone, sailing for Hawaii in hope that the solitude might help heal my shattered heart.”

In June 2021, Frederick embarked on a 2,300-nautical-mile solo voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii. If all went to plan, Camille would join him there and cruise the islands. 

But there was trouble. Thirty miles out, in heavy wind and pounding seas, the bolts that secure Triteia’s ­self-steering windvane began to back out. Later, 262 miles off the California coast, the bolts stripped and failed.

He turned the boat around, limped back to Los Angeles, and fixed the windvane. With Hawaii on pause, he and Camille made a new plan to cruise the West Coast. Then, only days from departure, things went sideways. Camille left James; their marriage came to an abrupt end. 

“I was on a mooring ball in Redondo Beach with no dog and no wife, completely shattered as to what happened to my life,” he says. “But I also thought: The boat’s ready. The boat’s provisioned. I’m sailing to Hawaii.”

At a guest dock in Marina Del Rey, a small group of friends streamed in and offered support, including Capt. David Stovall, a former bosun’s mate in the US Navy. “When you’re hurting, isolation at sea isn’t always helpful,” he says. “But James is a good guy with a strong value system, and he’s an expert sailor. So if anyone could handle a long solo passage amid this kind of loss, it’s James.”

On August 12, 2021, Frederick woke ­early, went to the market, and bought a few provisions. On the walk back to the dock, fear washed over him. “I did not want to go,” he says. “I don’t rattle easily, but I felt so scared and vulnerable. Still, my feet kept moving forward.”

Frederick put the food in Triteia’s fridge, started the engine, and did a final equipment check. “Almost every aspect of my life has turned upside down and changed,” he said in a video recorded that morning from inside Triteia. “The only thing that makes sense is to put to sea.”

A second push to Hawaii would begin better than the first. In mellow conditions, Frederick got his sea legs and motored offshore from Marina Del Rey. But as Triteia found course for Hawaii, Frederick was reeling. 

“That first day was incredibly difficult,” he says. “My wife had made it clear that there was nothing I could do to get her to stay. I was stunned and alone, sailing for Hawaii in hope that the solitude might help heal my shattered heart.”

Years earlier, when Frederick lost his mom, he hid from the grief. This time, he knew he would need to accept the pain. The first night of the passage, he slept in the cockpit under the stars and woke every 15 minutes to watch for ships. He wrote in Triteia’s log: 

Have you ever thought about what it means to be alone? I mean, truly alone and on your own? Sometimes we reach crossroads in our lives that make us just want to sit in silence for a bit.

Sometimes that silence is extremely loud. Other times, the silence is far too quiet.

On the morning of Day Two, Frederick unfurled the headsail and enjoyed 10 knots of warm air. If things went well, he’d reach Hawaii in 22 days. On his satellite phone, encouraging text messages streamed from his brother Colby and close friend Sarah. Meanwhile, Frederick’s brother David and Stovall monitored Triteia’s position on PredictWindand alerted Frederick of nearby ships.

Brooding clouds brought drizzle and dumped rain, and fluky wind combined with tall seas. Frederick trimmed the sails, wrote, read, and edited video as Triteia logged miles. “Ship’s business kept my mind distracted, but every time I laid down in the bunk, I’d remember I didn’t have a family,” Frederick says.

Late in the night, on Day Four, while sailing through cold and fog, Frederick awoke from his sleep. “Absolute terror,” he says. “The masthead light and sails were casting an ominous shadow that looked like the mainsail of another boat. I about sh-t myself.”

A few days later, Frederick had another scare. One mile off Triteia’s port bow, a tanker was lumbering past. Triteia’s AIS had been working at the start of the passage but had quit several days out. 

“I wasn’t on their radar, and they weren’t on mine,” Frederick says. “But sailors on small boats have long navigated oceans without electronics. Equipment is going to break. It’s just the reality of sailing.”

Frederick has a low tolerance for BS and a high threshold for stress. He also does a tremendous amount of reading. In the boat’s library, he brought Two Against Cape Horn by Hal Roth and Boundless Sea by David Abulafia, along with a cruising guide to the Hawaiian Islands. While reading, he highlighted details and jotted notes, imagining himself exploring Hawaii’s bays and coves, and snapping photos of Triteia in picturesque anchorages. 

On Day 10, a wave rounded down Triteia as a gust hit, blowing out the clew of the mainsail. Later, another gust came. “With full sails up, we were hit with 20 knots and completely laid over,” Frederick says. “The winch was totally awash. I had to reach into the sea to release the jib sheet and depower the sail.”

Offshore, the dolphins, terns and sea life vanished. Frederick was actually alone now. Then, the albatrosses appeared. Among the largest and most legendary birds, albatrosses are endangered and often employed metaphorically for a person bearing a burden or facing an obstacle. Frederick watched as they glided in circles overhead and followed Triteia. He wrote in his log:

According to sea lore, to spot an albatross is a good omen. It is said albatrosses are the souls of sailors who were lost at sea, watching over earthbound sailors as they cross the oceans. I will never forget this experience.

Heartbreak is real, but beauty is medicine. White clouds contrasted with shifting hues of blue sky over the Pacific, reminding Frederick of American sculptor James Turrell. A Quaker and a pilot, Turrell’s work explored light and the connection between humans and space—even empty space. Alone at sea, Frederick knew that he was inside that void. At the same time, there was compassion in the vast emptiness of the sea.

On Day 13, Frederick and Triteia passed the halfway point on the rhumb line ­between Marina del Rey and Hilo, Hawaii. Squinting at his chart, he ­celebrated by nodding and climbing back into his sleeping bag. Later, he wrote:

It was a day of endlessly adjusting course and lying in my bunk wondering at what point in life my passions had become so masochistic? Why couldn’t I be passionate about log cabins? Log cabins are lovely, are they not? But alas, here we are 1,100 nm from any other humans besides all the other sailors on ships plying this sea. Here’s to halfway!

After two weeks at sea, trouble ­arrived. Frederick was in the trade winds, hand-steering in 17 knots of wind and following seas, when the tiller went slack. One thousand miles from Hawaii, he’d lost the ability to steer. 

“I felt time come to a standstill,” he says. “I sat dumbfounded, just staring.”
Frederick clipped into his harness, went forward, and dropped the sails. In rolling waves, he put a GoPro in the water and performed an initial inspection. Good news: No water was coming into the boat. Bad news: The rudder was damaged.

Stovall was in Santa Monica when he got an emergency text message from Frederick over Iridium Go!: “I was immediately alarmed,” he says. “A lot of fine yachts have been abandoned at sea due to rudder failure.”

In Maine, Noah Peffer also received a message over satellite phone. Peffer worked with Frederick in the art world; he’s crossed the Pacific, and cruised the East Coast, Caribbean and Bahamas. “I know people who are complete Vikings,” he says. “They all said: ‘Holy sh-t! No rudder? A thousand miles from Hawaii?’ Nobody thought this would be easy.”

Stovall contacted the US Coast Guard in Hawaii, and provided Triteia’s position, Frederick’s overall condition, and the amount of food and water aboard the vessel. 

“At that point, there wasn’t much [the Coast Guard] could do,” Stovall says. “If they rescued James, he’d have to scuttle the boat.” 

To scuttle is to intentionally sink, and Frederick wasn’t having it. 

“My whole life and everything I owned was on board Triteia,”he says. “I knew I would exhaust all possibilities before it came to that.”

As Triteia drifted, Frederick put on diving gear and lowered himself into the water. From what he could see, the rudder post had separated from the rudder itself; there was a chip out of the rudder, and near the damage, Frederick noticed flecks of red paint. They were evidence, perhaps, that the boat had struck a submerged object.

Back aboard, Frederick tucked in a third reef and deployed his rigid Sea Squid drogue to limit Triteia’s progress off course. Then, he collapsed into his bunk and slept. Later, he wrote in the ship’s log:

My heart was already in tatters, and now my ship, my home, and all of my dreams were adrift in one of the most remote places on the planet. I sat in the cockpit staring at my beautiful boat, imagining her cabin filling with water.

After some sleep, Frederick tested potential steering solutions. Triteia’s windvane has an auxiliary rudder, but it would steer the boat only with the sails down and the motor off. Alternatively, a floorboard could be fashioned into an emergency rudder. But hand-steering for 1,000 miles wouldn’t fly.

“I know people who are complete Vikings. They all said: ‘Holy sh*t! No rudder? A thousand miles from Hawaii?’ Nobody thought this would be easy.”

Frederick remembered his heroes. Tami Oldham Ashcraft survived 41 days adrift after dismasting in a hurricane while crossing from Tahiti to San Diego. Miles and Beryl Smeeton twice pitchpoled their ketch on attempts to round Cape Horn. Beryl was thrown overboard and broke her collarbone, and the boat nearly sank. Still, the Smeetons built a new mast inside the cabin, and sailed on to Chile. 

“These stories had me feeling grateful that my ship was stout,” Frederick says. “I also knew I had the necessary equipment on board and the good fortune of a great shore team.”

Peffer and Stovall believed that the best way forward was to steer Triteia by drogue, a device that can towed behind a boat to slow forward progress and make the boat easier to steer in heavy weather. Receiving instructions via text on Iridium Go!, Frederick lashed a spinnaker pole to Triteia’s stern. He fed two lines through blocks amidships, ran them back aft through the ends of the pole, and tied them to the drogue. 

“At first, I couldn’t get it to work,” Frederick says. “With wind on the beam, the boat would run off and ignore the drogue.” 

At Stovall’s suggestion, Frederick added a 4-pound dive weight to submerge the drogue. Meanwhile, Peffer advised Frederick to drop the main and run on headsail alone. Test, fail, adjust, repeat. “Sometimes I’d pay out too much headsail and overpower the drogue,” Frederick says. “The other key was to maintain enough resistance to control the drogue while not killing the forward momentum needed to steer.”

It took three days to dial in the system. By the fourth day, Frederick was running on full headsail. 

“I was relieved and amazed,” Frederick says. “For the first time since leaving California, I felt happiness.”

Still, Frederick’s shore team had concerns. “One of my worries was that he’d fatigue from having to constantly manage the setup,” Peffer says. “But one of the best surprises was that he could lock down the system and not touch it for hours.”

Drogue in tow, Triteia inched along at 1 to 3 knots. By Day 20, nearly six days after rudder failure, with Hawaii still 800 miles away, it was clear that there would be no shortcut in this journey. The experience of being rudderless, both in life and at sea, was here for Frederick to deeply ­experience. He wrote in Triteia’s log:

Sometimes we need to see the brilliant blue skies fall into the night—a night that holds an impossible number of stars—and to feel the sea humble you while never even taking notice as she continues to move. You might not believe this, but you would be amazed at what you could do when you are forced to. Sometimes the only path forward requires a certain amount of resistance.

For 18 days, Frederick steered by drogue. Sometimes the jury-rig would fail, and Frederick would be forced to hang off the back of the boat and hand-turn the windvane rudder to maintain course. Wet, cold and pounded by seas, he often screamed at the waves. But intense moments of beauty emerged. Schools of yellow dorado and albacores offered transcendence. Pacific bluefin tuna brought magic. Golden sunsets with albatrosses invited wonder. 

“The colors were as vivid as a Flemish still-life painting,” Frederick says, “where the darkness plays as much of a role as the color.”

 On Day 31, after hours of squinting at the horizon, Frederick spotted the island of Molokai, 41 nautical miles off his port bow. “Yes!” he screamed. 

The channels between the Hawaiian Islands can be treacherous. Nearing Oahu, James radioed ahead to arrange for a towboat, but none were available. 

“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “Even this close to Honolulu, I was on my own.”

Frederick started the engine and motored Triteia slowly, so as not to overpower the drogue. For the final six hours of the passage, he hung off the stern and steered with a foot to manage the increasingly ineffective windvane. 

At Diamond Head, the prominent ­volcanic crater visible on approach to Oahu, the wind was blowing at 20 knots. Large waves were breaking on the reef. Entering the harbor rudderless would be risky, if not crazy, so Frederick dropped anchor at Waikiki Beach. 

Capt. Mike La Rose, who runs tour boats in Hawaii, had been following Frederick’s passage via Instagram updates from the shore team. La Rose reached out to help, and soon arrived aboard his Sunnfjord 38 trawler. 

“It’s so crazy,” Frederick said as La Rose towed Triteia into Ala Wai Harbor. “I can’t believe it’s done.”

After 32 days and 2,300 miles alone at sea—1,000 miles without a rudder— Frederick made landfall at Oahu. He stepped off the boat and collapsed on the dock, the dream of sailing to Hawaii now living within him. Later he wrote:

I’ve stared silently at some of the most beautiful sunsets, screamed into the air until my throat felt broken, cried for lost love, and laughed with joy at the sight of the albatrosses. I have learned a great many things in the past 30 days, but may have more questions now than ever before. 

The sea is full of contradictions: welcoming and hostile, violent and serene—inviting us into a meditation on power and powerlessness, fear and awe, holding on and letting go. As for Frederick, it’s clear that his experience at sea has forever changed him. At the same time, he’s still very much that kid he was at 16, standing on the beach, staring speechless at an open expanse that never stops moving.

James Frederick’s harrowing sail to Hawaii, told by David Blake Fischer, appeared in the June/July issue. Check out James’ thoughts on the article, below.

James Frederick is currently cruising the Hawaiian Islands aboard Triteia. A video of his 2021 passage from Los Angeles to Hawaii is available on YouTube. Additional details can be found in his book, The Logs of the Good Ship Triteia. Follow him on Instagram @james.the.sailor.man.

David Blake Fischer lives in Southern California. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Buzzfeed, the Moth, Good Old Boat and other publications. Follow him on Instagram @sailingdelilah.

The post Finding a Way Forward appeared first on Cruising World.

From the first time that I ever laid eyes on the Peterson 34 on the Honolulu Craigslist, I liked what I saw. She had sexy lines, a huge double-spreader rig, a tiller and a spacious, functional interior. Very clearly, the late-1970s racer/cruiser deserved a closer look. A quick trip over to SailboatData.com outlined some compelling basic details, namely the fact that the boat had a 50 percent ballast ratio and an underbody that belied her stellar upwind performance and all-around seaworthiness. A few more online searches revealed that the Peterson 34 was born from an impressive and storied pedigree. Essentially a production racer/cruiser version of a very successful mid-’70s racing yacht named Ganbare, she was one of designer Doug Peterson’s breakthrough designs; a model that would stand the test of time and help cement his reputation as one of the best yacht designers of all time.

Honolulu, and Hawaii in general, has a pretty hit-or-miss sailboat market. Situated a long and generally easy passage downwind of California, Hawaiian harbors tend to collect a lot of the West Coast’s discards, for better or worse. With a steady supply of new boats showing up and a relatively stagnant level of demand, good boats can oftentimes be had for cheap. Quiver (then named Seabiscuit) had sailed in from California via Tahiti 15 years earlier. Lovingly owned by a couple from Kaneohe, she had been on the market for a couple months when I came knocking. After offering the owners ten grand and the promise that the boat would get well used, I was genuinely stoked on the proposition of smashing around Hawaii on a solid, powerful racer/cruiser that I could afford to purchase.

Less than two years prior, I had been out there doing it on a small boat, cruising across the Pacific on my engineless Cal 2-27 Mongo. Like Quiver, I had also purchased that boat somewhat impulsively on Craigslist, though in Tacoma, Washington. I bought Mongo for $4,000 in September of 2012 and eventually sold her in Opua, New Zealand about 2 1/2 years later. Each time that I looked at my new boat, Quiver, my heart stirred. I didn’t know what, I didn’t know why, and I didn’t even yet know where, but I firmly held onto one undeniable truth: We would be going places.

Living in the surf mecca that is Hawaii and having a very capable cruiser, the boat represented to me a vessel that could be filled with surfboards and taken on amazing surf-focused adventures. When one talks about “living the dream,” that’s mine. Grab a couple mates, load the boat with boards and sail somewhere incredible. Rock up, drop the hook and paddle out into perfect surf. Rinse, rest, repeat. By the time that I had the boat berthed in Haleiwa during the peak of the winter season on Oahu’s famed North Shore, Quiver was born. Not only was the boat filled with an extensive “quiver” of surfboards and stand-up paddle boards, but the name represented so much more. She was my shelter and my sanctuary, she was my hobby, my cruising boat, my occasional racing yacht, and a loyal friend. Through some of my darkest hours of love and loss, the boat was everything to me; she truly represented the whole quiver, hence the name.

With stiff trade winds pumping around 300 days per year and high, volcanic peaks that tend to funnel both the breeze and the seas, sailing across the channels in Hawaii is difficult for most boats, and downright treacherous for some. One of the criteria that I looked for when deciding on a new boat was that I wanted one that excelled upwind and could make progress into gale-force headwinds. With her deep, lead fin keel and solid ballast ratio, Quiver absolutely crushes uphill and has lived up to the Peterson 34’s reputation as an upwind “freight train.” Many of my friends sail tubby double enders and their predicament was oftentimes the same: Since they couldn’t sail good upwind angles, they instead waited for lighter air or an atypical wind direction so that they could motor, reach or run across the channel. With a reef or two in the main and the no. 4 jib, Quiver could seemingly go anywhere in the islands at almost any time. And has. Frequently.

Right off the bat, however, I had a major scare with the boat when a rigging component on the headstay failed as a result of living inside a roller furling drum that was not draining water properly and was instead promoting corrosion. Extremely lucky to not lose the rig, I measured all of the shrouds and ordered all-new standing rigging from my buddy Logan at Rigworks in San Diego. Those guys have helped me remotely rig a few boats now, and I was stoked to get her up and going again in short order. Along with the rigging, I added two solar panels, an autopilot, LED lighting, an inverter and some other basics to bring Quiver up to a good, livable, basic cruising standard.

As far as I was concerned, it was the roller furler that had nearly brought the rig down. I am generally not a fan of roller furling on boats this size (for far more reasons than I have room to explain here) and wanted a hank-on boat from day one. When more funds became available, I stripped off the furler in favor of a bare headstay and then called up some of my favorite sailmakers to help me trick out my sail inventory. First, I enlisted the Ullman Sails loft in Honolulu to convert the two good jibs that came with the boat into hank-on sails. This effectively gave me a good light-air genoa and a fairly tired but serviceable 110 percent headsail (not an overlapping sail but one that filled out the foretriangle nicely). With two good headsails, I then called up my pals at Ullman Sails in Newport Beach and Quantum Sails in Point Richmond, California, and purchased a new, small “blade” jib (about 90 percent) and a new storm jib. Counting that sail, I then had what I refer to as jib no. 1, 3 and 4: the full quiver of jibs.

A lot of good jibs and a good mainsail are wonderful to have, but when the breeze goes aft, or in light air, I like to put up a spinnaker. Quiver came with a good (if slightly undersize), thick asymmetrical cruising kite that I am a big fan of. Lashing the whisker pole down to the toe rail at the bow using small-diameter Spectra, I jury-rigged a pretty effective little cruising bowsprit that worked perfectly. Based on the success of the prototype, I scored an old boom section off a small boat and made a more permanent cruising bowsprit. Completing our sail inventory up forward, my boys at the Ullman loft in Newport Beach again came through in a big way, this time with a nice used J/105 racing spinnaker that really maxes the boat out on downwind sail area and should be our secret weapon when cruising in light winds.

With my inventory of headsails sorted, I had to deal with the mainsail, which had been a problem since day one. The main that came with the boat — despite the fact that it’s in perfectly usable shape — was a sail that I never fell in love with. It’s a bit blown out and ugly, and I wanted a third reef, among other upgrades. Once again spreading the love around to various sailmakers, I contacted my pals up at Ballard Sails in Seattle and ordered a new, super beefy, triple-reefed mainsail. With reef lines that are led to the cockpit and a Tides Marine Strong Track mainsail track that makes getting the main up and down exponentially easier, changing gears on Quiver is now a very manageable task, even for just one person and off the breeze. A nice mainsail, a versatile hank-on headsail inventory, a good mainsail luff system, and two easy-to-use A-kites have completely transformed the boat.

At some stage during this whole process, I realized Quiver would be capable of far more than trips through the Hawaiian islands and even across the Pacific. And I began to plan for a voyage around the world.

Any bluewater cruiser, delivery captain or shorthanded sailor knows the importance of good self-steering. Early on, when I was first intending to sail to Tahiti and back, I lined up a cheap, used Navik windvane. Once I began preparing for a circumnavigation, I decided I really wanted a brand-new Monitor windvane. I called up the good people at Scanmar International, and they took great care of me and helped me get a new Monitor, which I have named “Tanguy” in honor of Vendée Globe sailor Tanguy de Lamotte, who now lives in the Bay Area. For my electric autopilot, I hooked up with renowned San Francisco-based solo sailor Brian Boschma and scored one of his Pelagic brand of autopilots, which has been named “Loick” in honor of the legendary French sailor Loick Peyron.

With three solar panels and a wind generator on a boat that sails well and has minimal power requirements, the goal is to access remote surf sustainably while using an absolute minimum of fossil fuels. With a westabout route that should be mostly reaching and off the breeze, including a lot of trade wind sailing, I hope to make most passages with no motoring whatsoever, just like in the days of little, engineless Mongo. Unlike Mongo, however, Quiver is a bit more grown up in her systems and energy requirements. First and foremost, there is a very high-efficiency Engel DC refrigerator that is always on. As well, I have just installed a Katadyn PowerSurvivor 40E watermaker. Like the fridge, she’s on the smaller side of units on the market, but ideally suited for the almost fully renewable-powered 34-foot sailboat.

I set off last January bound for the Marshall Islands, which took 17 days. Heading to the Marshalls was the quickest, most direct route around the world from Hawaii. From the Marshalls, it will be on to Micronesia, and Guam before flying back to the West Coast for some work to restock the cruising kitty. During this first season of cruising — and most of my journey — Quiver should be in position to score world-class surf at a variety of remote locations that are very much off the beaten path.

In addition to surfing, I hope to use the extensive quiver of media kit on board, as well as my new degree in multimedia to create compelling video content to help fund the journey. In the end, I hope to complete a three-year surf-focused westabout circumnavigation via Cape Horn, some of it solo, and some with friends and crew.

To me, both offshore sailing and traveling have always produced an indescribable feeling where I feel as if I’m living and operating on a higher plane of consciousness. Combining the two and going cruising just makes too much sense for me not to. Voyaging creates the days that are etched deeply into my memory in this world of 15-minute news cycles and information overload. Unplugging from what we call reality and chasing that higher level of living is what constantly draws me back. My journey through life is (mostly) the culmination of conscious decision making and the resultant experiences. Every crossroads is followed by a choice, and at this current juncture, I have chosen to go sailing. Again. Aloha.

At press time, Ronnie Simpson had departed the Marshall Islands bound for Micronesia and Guam. For more on his travels and to check out his underway blogs and videos, visit his website.

Surf’s Up

Quiver has been optimized for offshore work and is ready for my planned three-year westabout circumnavigation via Cape Horn, visiting distant surf locations along the way.

The post Classic Plastic Refit for Offshore Voyaging appeared first on Cruising World.

It was almost sunset late last July on the docks in Kaneohe, Hawaii — the finish line for the biennial Pacific Cup yacht race, and a long way from the start in San Francisco — when the Hanse 505 Anaïs glided alongside and came to a halt. Moments later, a full-on dock party was raging as the last rays of sun spilled over the Pali mountain range. Skipper Matt Solhjem looked back at his Hanse in disbelief before reviewing the list of carnage. From blown-out spinnakers to broken electronics, the passage had taken its toll. The look on Matt’s face told a story: humbled, gracious and fully content, but also mischievous, like a teenager who’d just pulled one over on his parents. Winding down from a 12-day-long adrenaline rush, the first-time ocean racer said, “That was definitely a race. Right off the bat, the other boats were pushing hard. Even though we were sailing in the cruising class, that was a race, for sure.”

For the crew of Anaïs, it was also a successful one; they were the winners of the 14-boat cruising division, the largest in the race.

Bluewater cruising rallies and offshore yacht races have been the catalyst for an untold number of sailors to set sail and turn their dreams to reality. With a dedicated support and preparation network, as well as the perceived safety of traveling in a group, many sailors who might otherwise be hesitant to head offshore have found the proposition far less daunting when presented with the option of doing their first major crossing as part of an organized event. Nicknamed the “fun race to Hawaii,” the Pacific Cup has traditionally been a semi-laid-back affair that includes everything from Maxi racers full of pro crews to doublehanded Moore 24s sailed by intrepid amateur sailors, with everything in between.

The Pacific Cup has an interesting history. On June 15, 1980, 40 yachts sailed out under the Golden Gate Bridge in what was then called the Kauai Race, from San Francisco to the “garden island” of Kauai. Almost immediately, they were pasted by rough conditions. Attrition ensued, but 10 days later, Bill Lee’s legendary Merlin (the predecessor to the venerable Santa Cruz 70) was the first boat to come surfing into the islands. Easily the fastest yacht in the race, Merlin arrived in Kauai close to four days ahead of the next boat; the celebrated 68-footer also won a commanding victory on corrected time, establishing a long ­tradition between 70-foot sleds and success in the Pacific Cup. The Division II winner back in 1980 was Dean Treadway and his legendary Farr 36, Sweet Okole. Nearly 40 years later, in 2018, the same skipper and boat came power-reaching into Hawaii to earn a very close second place in their division, only narrowly missing out on victory due to an unfortunate wind shift in the final miles.

Since that inaugural race in 1980, the event outgrew its humble beginnings, was renamed the Pacific Cup and relocated its finish to Kaneohe, on the island of Oahu, to accommodate more boats. Yes, there are still plenty of glitzy raceboats and famous sailors, but the event has also always attracted local sailors who get their hands on a modest ultralight racer and dream big. While no small ultralight boats sailed in that first race, they have since become a fixture. From Moore 24s and Express 27s to Santa Cruz 27s, Olson 30s and Hobie 33s, the Pacific Cup attracts a great number of those early surfing boats from the heyday of the Santa Cruz boatbuilding era. In 2018, the race enjoyed a once-in-a-lifetime battle between seven Express 27s (six sailed doublehanded in their own one-design fleet, while one sailed in a PHRF handicap division with three crew on board). The little 27-foot speedsters and their crews put on a performance that will be talked about for many years to come.

After a gnarly super El-Niño impacted the race in 2016, when major tropical weather systems moved across the racecourse in quick succession, the vibe on the docks at the hosting Richmond Yacht Club in Point Richmond, California, was decidedly more relaxed in 2018. All of the weather models pointed to a much more traditional, if not benign, race. With an incredible two-thirds of the 60-boat fleet being first-time race entrants, no one was complaining about the mellow forecast. With light winds, warm temperatures and sunny skies at the race village, one could have been forgiven for confusing Richmond with the race finish. The 60 entries were spread across eight divisions over four different starting days in mid-­July, with the goal being to get everyone into Kaneohe around the same time. It was the third time a dedicated cruising class was included, with the first coming in 2014.

“A lot of goals came together to get the cruising fleet added to the Pacific Cup,” said Pacific Cup Yacht Club commodore and eight-time race participant Michael Moradzadeh. “First, we wanted to make the race more accessible to some folks who might feel intimidated by racing all the way to Hawaii. We relaxed the rules a bit — but not in terms of safety — to allow boats to motor a bit if needed, or to call a coach or weather router for advice, things you normally can’t do in a yacht race. We thought that the sailors wouldn’t be too competitive, but as it turns out, any time that you get two or more boats on the water it’s most definitely a race! For 2020, we’re probably going to configure the fleet a bit more like a race with actual handicap ratings and scoring, though still allowing the cruisers to use their engines if necessary. Competitive cruising, if you want.”

Competitive cruising is a polite way to put it. In the 2018 Pacific Cup, two 50-foot sisterships were duking it out near the head of the fleet, with top-tier sailing talent on board both boats. On Emmanuel Sauquet’s Hanse 505, Outremer, a crew of six Frenchman, including Vendée Globe superstar Tanguy de Lamotte, found themselves locked in an intense match race with the aforementioned Anaïs, which was stacked full of seasoned racers from San Diego, including the local Ullman Sails pro, Chuck Skewes. While Outremer tended to have a slight speed advantage at times, the two boats took wildly divergent routes to Hawaii, which ended up being the deciding factor.

In solidarity with the Frenchmen on board A Fond le Girafor, a revolutionary new foiling Beneteau Figaro 3 in the doublehanded class, who were just ahead of them, Outremer played the north side of the racecourse while rival Anaïs played the south. Up north, the route would be much shorter, and in theory, there would be a narrow corridor of increased pressure for any navigator who was skilled and daring enough to try to thread the needle and find it. Down south, the conditions looked a bit softer, though considerably more consistent with fewer wind holes to deal with. The boats up north looked good in the short term, but as is usually the case when racing to Hawaii, those northerly boats faded hard in the middle stages of the race. When the wind finally went light for the northerly boats, Anaïs gained a big advantage and held on to the finish to arrive into Kaneohe some 12 hours ahead of her French competition.

The arrival of Anaïs signaled the start of a marathon push for me, the race’s media guy, that would last for much of the ­following week. After that first cruiser came in, the floodgates opened and boats were finishing around the clock. With so many interesting storylines to follow and friends spread throughout the fleet, seemingly every few hours I would attempt to greet and cover a boat, no matter what time of day. From high-energy arrival parties to heartwarming reunions among loved ones, each arrival was different from the last, but equally special.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the French and their passion for sailing, and because this year’s fleet had such an incredible number of French sailors, it was fun and exciting to greet them in Hawaii. Perhaps the most touching of all finishes in the 2018 Pacific Cup was when Nicolas Thiebaud’s all-French crew on his Jeanneau SunFast 3200 Dare Dare arrived in the middle of the night to a raucous welcoming committee that included a huge French contingent singing an old Breton song in honor of their fellow countrymen. When you engage in an organized sport like ocean racing, you do it as much for the community as you do for the voyage itself. To see the love and camaraderie among competitors is perhaps the most beautiful part of the whole event; it’s one big celebration of the sport, among friends both new and old.

RELATED: Molokai High

Aside from the two modern 50-foot Hanses with wicked-up crews that found themselves in an improbable match race for the lead, the rest of the 14-boat cruising fleet spanned the full spectrum of cruising yachts — a Mason 44, Island Packet 380, Nordic 44 and Swan 441 were among the entrants — with a wide array of proper cruisers and comfy racer-cruisers also sprinkled throughout the racing fleets.

As well as the diversity of boats entered, the ambitions and vibes of the various different crews is hard to miss. Obviously, a lot of the fleet is composed of hardcore racing sailors who thrive on the intense competition and the thrills that only ­high-speed open-ocean surfing runs in the trade winds can deliver. For others, it’s their own personal Everest, the ­culmination of a major life undertaking amid years of dreaming. While for many still, it’s merely a summer tradition, a break from work or an ambitious summer cruise. For all, however, it’s a long bluewater passage with day after day of off-the-breeze sailing in ideal conditions before arriving to a warm welcome in paradise. Whether racing or cruising, the sail from California to Hawaii is about as good as it gets.

For many, the race itself is just a part of the motivation for entering the Pacific Cup. Russ Johnson, skipper of the Jeanneau 52.2 Blue Moon, said, “Probably the biggest part of the Pac Cup, for me, was to be able to do the return trip and go through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I learned about the gyre 15 years ago and was surprised at how many people had still never heard of it. I wanted to see what was out there for myself, and make my findings available to raise awareness and educate people about what it is.”

Before returning to California, and visiting the garbage patch along the way, Johnson found himself on island time, and his return delivery was delayed a couple of months by impromptu local adventures. “The sailing was absolutely beautiful. From almost any port, you can be out in the ocean in minutes and have reliably great breeze and open-ocean sailing. Within hours, you can find another port or ­another island entirely to pull into and meet new people. We visited the remote north side of Molokai. It was amazing and completely unexpected. With the tallest sea cliffs on earth, beautiful waterfalls and hidden coves, it was the real Hawaiian paradise that I had hoped to find.”

Not all boats that sail in on a Pac Cup make the return, however. Some skippers sail their boat into Hawaii, effectively on a one-way journey, before selling the boat in the islands and flying home. For so many others, however, the Pac Cup is just the beginning of the journey. Warren Holybee and crew sailed his Morgan 382 Eliana into Kaneohe in 14 days to grab third place in the Coral Reef Sailing Apparel A division. The next time we saw Warren, he was in Honolulu installing a Monitor windvane and dodger that he had shipped out with the delivery gear. From Hawaii, he cruised on to Fiji and will be heading on to New Zealand.

For Thiebaud, a young French sailor who lives in San Francisco, the Pac Cup was part of his spiritual journey to sail to the islands of French Polynesia. As soon as the Pac Cup was over, he was seen loading big ground tackle, a dinghy and other cruising gear onto his 32-footer Dare Dare and heading south. Overall winner Prospector, a flashy, modern 68-foot racing yacht, sailed onward to Sydney with its professional crew for a run at the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race. The Pacific Cup was just one leg of a racing circumnavigation that includes many iconic ocean races. Just like the ­diversity of the fleet itself, when the awards party ends, an equal if opposite number of adventures ensue.

Back in 1980, the first year of the Pacific Cup, Lester Robertson raced a Moore 24 named Legs to the island of Kauai in the 1980 singlehanded Transpac. Nearly 40 years later, he was back, this time doublehanded, to race another Moore 24 called Foamy to Hawaii. “I decided to do the race, and then two and a half months into the rebuild I was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. They told me I had a 15 percent chance to survive the first five years, but I always figure we can be in the top 15 out of 100,” he told me with a forced chuckle. “There’s so much else in life, but it was one of the things that I really, really wanted to do — another transpacific voyage in a small boat — and I’m just so grateful and privileged to be here. I appreciate it so much. There’s just so many other ways it could have worked out.” Lester and his crew, Randy Parker, pushed the venerable Moore 24 hard, fighting for the victory for much of the race, ultimately finishing in third place in the division and only narrowly missing out on second.

You talk to a guy like Robertson, or a first-timer, or a 15-time race vet, or even a race volunteer, and you realize how much the Pacific Cup means to this crowd. From the opening race village at the Richmond Yacht Club to the finish-line festivities at the Kaneohe Yacht Club, there is an overwhelming sense of pride and gratitude in being part of it: gratitude for the incredible and oftentimes humbling experience, and pride to be a part of something so undeniably special and uniquely homegrown. With a dedicated group of volunteers and many of the usual suspects among the competitors, the fleet has a family feel to it and takes great pride in ownership of their little race that has left such an indelible mark on the sailing world. With this tightknit group that warmly welcomes outsiders and newcomers, including cruisers, the time has never been better to cast off the dock lines and discover the Pacific Cup for yourself. The next Pac Cup is scheduled for 2020. How about joining the fun?

Ronnie Simpson is a sailor, surfer and sailing media professional who is in the early stages of a surf-focused sailing circumnavigation on his Peterson 34, Quiver. Having recently completed a degree in integrated multimedia from Hawaii Pacific University, Ronnie continues to pursue his goals as a sailing journalist alongside — and to help fund — his own sailing ambitions. He was the media director for the 2018 Pacific Cup.

The post The Fun Race to Hawaii appeared first on Cruising World.

Do you see him?” I asked. “Nope. Only birds and rocks,” Tyler replied, his eyes still glued to the backside of the binoculars. “Blast the horn again,” he said. Inhaling deeply, I blew on the orange safety horn as loudly as possible, as if I could will the missing sailor to appear from the nearly vertical guano-covered rocks before us. Despite my best efforts, Guo Chuan did not appear; the horn blast only further excited the brown boobies and storm petrels who looked down on our 46-foot racing sailboat with curiosity. Scouring the remote Northwest Hawaiian Islands in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, our search was the final effort to find the missing Chinese racing sailor Guo Chuan, who had fallen overboard from his maxi-trimaran, Qingdao China, while attempting to establish a world sailing record between San Francisco and Shanghai. We had known since leaving Honolulu that the chances of finding him at all, let alone alive, were somewhere between slim and none. Against the odds, our crew clung to the hope that we would achieve the impossible and miraculously find him. Some 500 miles northwest of Kauai, we found ourselves in one of the most remote and thoroughly unlivable spots on earth: the Gardner Pinnacles. It was here that our search would come to its conclusion and we would begin our trip back home with a late-December weather window that looked anything but certain. Almost as far as you can possibly get from a continental landmass, we were completely exposed to the elements, with no safe harbor nearby. Winter storm systems brewed above while multiple swells impacted the sea state. If we were lucky, we’d be back in port by Christmas morning. If we were unlucky, we’d sail in light air before bashing upwind into the winter trades.

When Chuan sailed underneath San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge on October 18, 2016, he began a roughly 7,000-nautical-mile journey to Shanghai. Qingdao China was a 97-foot-long French racing trimaran, and Chuan hoped to make the solo crossing in about 18 days. The record was held by Italian sailor Giovanni Soldini and a full crew aboard a souped-up version of a 70-foot monohull from the Volvo Ocean Race; their voyage had lasted 21 days. As a Chinese “peace champion,” Chuan sailed to promote peace and sport while carrying a message of Sino-American friendship. The first great pioneer in Chinese offshore yacht racing, Chuan had already established multiple world records, but this would be arguably his most challenging endeavor yet. This was Chuan’s first solo record attempt since acquiring Qingdao China, formerly known as IDEC — at the time, the fastest sailboat to ever circumnavigate the globe with just one sailor aboard. The big red trimaran was designed by Nigel Irens and Benoit Cabaret, and built in France for famed French racing sailor Francis Joyon. Conceived for the specific purpose of breaking solo sailing records, Qingdao China was capable of eating up ocean miles at a rate of more than 30 per hour. Monstrous in size and no less significant in terms of technicality, the boat was a marvel of modern sailing technology that could reward her skipper with record-breaking daily runs when sailed properly, or capsize catastrophically when not.

After departing San Francisco on a beautiful fall day in mid-October, Chuan endured a long and grueling day full of sail changes before reaching more consistent northerly pressure and sailing off in the direction of the Hawaiian Islands. Beginning to pour on the miles, Chuan was making good speed while learning his boat in solo configuration. Less than a week out, he was passing north of the Hawaiian Islands with nothing but open ocean and consistent, manageable trade winds in his immediate future. Chuan was sailing across the Pacific toward his home country in his brilliant red maxi-trimaran at high speed, the first-ever Chinese sailor to enter the very French world of chasing solo-sailing records. Life was good.

Sometime around 0300 Hawaii time on October 25, Chuan’s team in China lost contact with the intrepid racer, with his boat’s position northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. After a half day of radio silence, the U.S. Coast Guard in Kalaeloa, Oahu, launched an HC-130 airplane to conduct a search. With a GPS tracker on board the boat, the Coast Guard was able to fly right to Qingdao China’s position, where they found the large red trimaran sailing under a single-­reefed mainsail. A large gennaker was dragging in the water off the starboard side of the boat, and there was no sailor on deck.

Despite the Coast Guard’s best efforts, nobody emerged from the boat’s cabin. Two days later, crew from the 844-foot Navy assault ship USS Makin Island arrived on the scene and boarded Qingdao China to conduct a search, which confirmed that Chuan was missing. Lowering the mainsail and gathering Chuan’s personal effects, the crew issued a notice to mariners of the navigational hazard and departed the scene, while a larger search-and-rescue operation was conducted over the surrounding waters.

While it’s impossible to know exactly what happened that night, I think it’s safe to say that a struggle took place. Any sailor who’s ever had a large flying sail such as a spinnaker or gennaker go overboard knows of the incredible loads created by such a large sail dragging in the water. For one man by himself, the challenge of retrieving it would have been nearly insurmountable. It’s not my place to speculate as to exactly what went down that night, but the result was that Chuan went missing from his racing boat while trying to establish a solo-sailing record that would end in China. The brilliant engineer, professional sailor, world-record setter, champion of peace and sport, husband, father, true pioneer and adventurer was gone.

For the development of sailing in China — the world’s largest market — the tragedy of Chuan’s disappearance was tantamount to that of American Mike Plant going missing from his 60-foot Coyote while sailing to the start of his second Vendée Globe race. No American has achieved true corporate sponsorship for a similar effort in the 20 years since, despite the explosion of the sport in Europe and around the world. A testament to how much Chuan’s disappearance was a shock to the Chinese sailing community, multiple private search-and-rescue operations were launched, in addition to a major search conducted by U.S. Navy and Coast Guard assets.

I was one of five crew on the final mission. In an effort to bring closure to all involved and to settle a pending legal matter back in China, our plan was to set off from Honolulu, Oahu, to perform a visual search of three different islands in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands chain to confirm that Chuan had not washed up on shore and was living somewhere, waiting for rescue. We would pick up and drop off a Fish and Wildlife Service representative on Kauai. With a total length of about 1,200 nautical miles, the expedition was to take place in late December and visit coral atolls and midocean rocks that volatile weather and swells render practically off-limits to scientists in winter. Our skipper, a local Hawaiian sailor named Roscoe Fowler, inspired confidence from the outset. This voyage and the boat were both a bit slapped together; had Roscoe had second thoughts, I would have likely bailed out as well. He’s the kind of guy you want in your group when the world ends — ultraresourceful and with a knack for harvesting food wherever he goes. When he said, “She’s a good boat, we’ll be all right,” that was all the convincing I needed; I was in. Rounding out our crew was a well-known Maui sailor and fisherman known only as Killer, Roscoe’s friend Tyler, and Mike from the Fish and Wildlife Service.

When Tom Wylie designed the 46-foot racing yacht Stardust, our boat for the expedition, search-and-rescue operations likely weren’t high on the design brief. With a 10-foot dinghy tied down on the bow, fuel cans lashed to the rail, soft water bladders on the cabin sole, and two large coolers full of dry ice and provisions, this was truly a “run what ya brung” effort at expedition yachting. The solid and storied yacht had sailed in both the Sydney-to-Hobart and Fastnet races, and we had a good crew with a can-do spirit. We had a mission in front of us and were up to the challenge.

After a picture-perfect light-air sail from Oahu’s Ala Wai Harbor to Nawiliwili Bay on Kauai, we were delayed for two days to let a winter weather system pass. As the westerly headwinds in the southern quadrants of the low began to back off from their peak, we set off toward the northwest on the afternoon of December 17. We had timed our departure perfectly. After several hours of motorsailing upwind, we found ourselves in a building northerly, which would strengthen and back to the northeast, setting us up for a quick broad reach down the islands.

Less than two days out of Kauai, the sacred Hawaiian island of Mokumanamana, also known as Necker Island, lay before us. Rising out of a deep blue sea whipped with white streaks, the island revealed its steep rocky cliffs and rugged shoreline formed by thousands of years of constant wave action. To make landfall here on any craft, let alone drift in the water with a life preserver on, would have been treacherous, to say the least. We were able to scan the entire shoreline with binoculars from a safe distance — a couple hundred meters out to sea — as we circumnavigated the small island. There was no sighting of Chuan, but we were able to clearly see many of the stacks of rocks that had been carefully placed along the spine of the island by native Hawaiians.

Allegedly used both in religious ceremonies and as a navigational aid dating back to the first-ever transpacific canoe voyages made by the Polynesians, the island surely holds many secrets; unfortunately, Chuan was not one of them. Located at about 23.5 degrees north, the island lies almost perfectly on the Tropic of Cancer, the northernmost boundary of the tropic regions on planet Earth. The importance given to the island’s location is a true testament of the navigational prowess and deep understanding of science and astrology of the native Hawaiians. According to local lore, it marked the border between the world of the living and the afterlife. It is also the line of demarcation between the oldest, sinking islands of Hawaii — to the northwest — and the eight main islands that succeeded the ancient islands and lie to the southeast.

Our Fish and Wildlife rep, Mike, recited an ancient Hawaiian prayer, E ho mai, while Tyler blew on a conch shell. In the prayer, we pledged our respect for the islands and prayed to the gods to bless us with wisdom and a safe passage within their islands as we crossed over to the dark side in the dead of winter. A couple hundred miles from civilization, we had reached our first waypoint with no sighting of Chuan. We carried on northwest to continue our search, feeling both a bit older and a bit wiser.

The crew posed for a picture before setting off from Kauai — from left to right: Tyler, Mike, Killer, Roscoe and Ronnie

The breeze stayed up, allowing us to quickly put Mokumanamana astern as we began closing in on French Frigate Shoals, a fringing coral-reef system with several islets that can be approached only from the southwest. We spotted our first land marker — La Perouse Pinnacle — at day break. We were immediately impressed by the vastness of the shoals, which stretch roughly 16 miles from northwest to southeast. French Frigate Shoals is home to the majority of the world’s monk seals (and accompanying Galapagos sharks), and is one of the most isolated and highly diverse marine ecosystems in the world. The shoals are full of nesting seabirds, while below the surface, French Frigate’s many still-pristine reefs are chock-full of fish.

Our original plan was to launch the dinghy and search a few of the islands without going ashore unless we found a body. That plan was quickly scrapped once we realized the enormity of the task at hand, the potential dangers in doing so and the uncertainty of our weather window. Had the search party in the dinghy had any problems whatsoever, they would be stranded at sea or, more likely, on a reef with a very long swim through some of the world’s sharkiest waters to get back to Stardust. In addition, the more time we spent at French Frigate Shoals, the higher the likelihood grew that we’d see 30 knots of breeze on the nose during the return trip. With crew safety and mission completion being the top priorities, we decided to motor along the leeward shores of the islands, as close as we could safely get with a 10-foot draft, while scanning the shore through binoculars.

Identifying seals, nesting albatross and massive bags of rubbish that were awaiting removal, we managed to thoroughly scan most of the low-lying landmasses through binoculars. Finally, we put eyes on the most promising location: Tern Island’s now-defunct airport runway and military base, complete with a small city’s worth of buildings. Several loud blasts on the air horn and a visual scan revealed nothing, so we made plans to continue the journey to our third and final waypoint, the Gardner Pinnacles.

By the time we rounded the Gardner Pinnacles, the wind had died to a whisper, and we turned Stardust around for the trip back toward Kauai. Having already done a fair amount of motoring, and with a lot of light air between our current position and the reinforced trade winds that we anticipated closer to Kauai, it began to look like we might run short on fuel. We would need to take advantage of any favorable wind that allowed us to make decent progress. As we entered the new breeze and began sailing upwind for the first time of the voyage, the new heel angle greatly exacerbated an issue we had been dealing with since shortly after leaving Kauai: a leaking diesel fuel tank. With a relatively small amount of fuel making its way into every individual bilge, nook and crevice of the boat, life on board became significantly less pleasant. The relatively flat days of downwind sailing in moderate trades were replaced by the type of wet, smelly environment that breeds constant frustration and erodes any semblance of patience. We were ready to be home. Just as the crew began to reach a breaking point from being wet, tired and covered in a thin sheen of diesel fuel, we received one of the best Christmas gifts that a sailor can hope for. The forecast for 30 knots of breeze, dead on the nose for 300 miles, simply vanished. The constantly changing and volatile weather patterns of the North Pacific in winter had worked in our favor. Instead of 30 from the east, the breeze built to just 15 knots from the north. We had a nice reach that climaxed with a maximum of 20 to 25 knots on the final afternoon, and Stardust knocked out the distance back to Kauai at a steady speed of 9 knots. Once out of the waters of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument — where fishing is prohibited for anyone but native Hawaiians — our hooks went back out and were met with immediate success. On our approach to Kauai, we caught a large wahoo and a healthy tuna.

Roscoe slowly guided the boat back up to the loading dock in Nawiliwili Bay, while two of us hopped off to secure the dock lines. He shut off the engine, presumably running on fumes by this point, while we all simultaneously cheered and shook hands. We hadn’t found Chuan, but we had survived a trip to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands in the dead of winter. We had sailed smart and fast, caught a few lucky breaks and also a couple of fish. It was 0300 on Christmas morning, and we were standing on dry land on the island of Kauai. Wasting no time, we broke out the last of our clean clothes and reveled in the fact that our world would no longer be covered in diesel fuel. While we began pulling gear off the boat, Roscoe went to work making poke bowls on the dock from the tuna we’d caught the previous afternoon. To be on the dock in Kauai on Christmas morning, eating fresh poke, was nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

Cold, wet, tired and away from our loved ones, a group that shoved off the dock as acquaintances just over a week earlier had arrived back to the same dock as family on Christmas morning. We had journeyed under sail to some of the most remote islands on Earth to look for a missing sailor. While we were unsuccessful in finding Chuan, we had found a part of ourselves in the process. Since losing his life in our island chain, while striving to promote peace and sport, Guo Chuan had become a son of Hawaii as well as his native land. His disappearance, the multiple rescue efforts launched from Hawaii, and his big red trimaran returning to Honolulu have now become a part of our history here in the islands; a history that began, somewhat ironically, when adventurous pioneers on multihulled sailing craft first sighted these islands. Goodbye, Guo; you may be gone, but you will never be forgotten. Aloha.

Ronnie Simpson is a sailor, surfer, and writer who lives in Honolulu and is currently pursuing a degree in integrated multimedia at Hawaii Pacific University. He cruises the Hawaiian Islands aboard his Peterson 34, Quiver. Ronnie is the co-founder of a wounded­ veterans sailing nonprofit coreveterans.org.

The post Searching for a Lost Sailor appeared first on Cruising World.

With a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his mouth, in his thick French accent, Laurent Guiraudies explained to me the many merits of his custom-designed, home-built 55-foot catamaran, Azuline: “I say you, it is a really crazy boat, man! When you is on Azuline, it is always a good moment!” I looked up at the big rotating wing mast, and then aft at our twin wakes, which illustrated the story of a boat moving rapidly across a deep blue sea that had been whipped into a fury by 25 to 30 knots of reinforced trade-wind breeze.

Azuline’s stern was lifted slightly by a wave from behind, her bows angling down into the trough ahead. I pulled firmly with both hands on the tiller extension, in anticipation, to come down a few degrees in conjunction with the timing of the wave. Azuline launched forward on another long surfing run: 16 knots, then 18, then 20. We were hurtling toward the Hawaiian island of Oahu, propelled by the near-nuclear trades and the massive following sea state they’d constructed.

As Laurent screamed at me, the volume and excitement in his voice built in accordance with our boat speed: “21.9 knots! Yeah, man, you is the new champion, my friend!” At close to 22 knots, it was the fastest I’d ever gone on a cruising sailboat. Yes, a crazy boat indeed. God, I love the French.

We were on our way back from an epic five-day trip from Honolulu to Molokai during Hawaii Pacific University’s spring break. Crazy Frenchman Laurent was the skipper, and I was the experienced sailing hand. Along for the ride were two of my accomplices from school, Jerre and Kama, and two adventurous girls who’d rather play in the water than work for the week. We had a good crew.

And those rough and windy conditions that we experienced on the return trip were the antithesis of what we’d seen on the light-air journey from Oahu to Molokai at the outset.

With four surfers in our six-person crew, we knew we were in for good things when we departed Honolulu’s Ala Wai Harbor early on a Sunday to find glassy conditions and a reinforced groundswell lighting up Hawaii’s south-facing shores and reefs with clean, peeling waves. Just outside the channel, we hoisted Azuline’s big, roachy mainsail and small working jib and motorsailed slowly upwind in very light air. Savoring coffee, a light breakfast and our surroundings, we considered it a “good moment” to kick off the week.

Cruising parallel to Waikiki’s famed surfing and tourist beaches, each of us watched with interest as scores of surfers rode waves on what is quite possibly the single most popular surfing beach on the planet. Farther along, we passed Diamond Head, one of Hawaii’s most iconic physical features. After the famed volcanic cone, the coastline became considerably less developed as it fell away toward Koko Head and gradually was left astern. In what seemed like an instant, the chaos of Honolulu and Waikiki had become the serenity of the Kaiwi Channel (more commonly referred to as the Molokai Channel). Kristen, a marine biologist, and Erika, a scuba instructor, both wanted to swim, so we dropped the jib and eased the main.

That’s when we saw the whales.

Like many creatures that live in less pleasant climates, humpback whales and other big marine mammals migrate to Hawaii en masse to escape the clutches of winter. Our early-March trip was primed for their company, as they reside in the warm and hospitable island group from roughly December to April. “Have you ever heard them sing before?” Kristen asked me. I hadn’t.

Azuline sat motionless in the channel, floating on a glassy sea with a pod of humpback whales cruising by just a hundred meters away. “Come,” she said, as she grabbed my hand and jumped off the port side. Free-diving gracefully below the surface, she motioned for me to follow. Clearing my nose, I dived down a few feet and was shocked to hear the many high-pitched whines and songs of the majestic creatures filling the sea around me. An experienced offshore sailor, I’d seen whales in the ocean countless times and had admired them for years. Heck, I’d even crash-tacked my Cal 2-27 to avoid one, but I had never before heard them sing. Eight miles from land and three hours into the trip, and my mind had already been blown. It was going to be a good week.

Long, skinny and east/west-­oriented, like the state of Tennessee, the island of Molokai lies just 25 nautical miles east of Oahu yet seems a world apart. Known in Hawaii as the “Friendly Island” — and arguably most famous for being the site of an abandoned leper colony — the expansive isle is home to just 7,000 residents.

We discovered this fact about the sparse population upon making our approach to our first anchorage on Molokai. Located on the southwest side of the island, the tiny man-made harbor of Hale O Lono (“House of the Gods”) is a rustic place on an island full of them. There are no buildings along the shore, no other boats in the harbor, and our phones didn’t even work. No docks, no mooring balls, no harbor office — just a broken-up old concrete wharf, a bunch of Porta-Johns, and a few friendly local families, whose kids greeted us with shouts of “aloha.”

Unleashed on our own private-island paradise on the first day of vacation, none of us wasted any time in making ourselves scarce. Kama, Kristen, Laurent and I were all keen to surf, while Erika and Jerre wanted to paddle, shoot photos and dive in to go snorkel.

With no travel guide, local knowledge, or idea of what to expect, the four of us paddled out of Hale O Lono to observe our surroundings. The harbor’s western breakwall picked up the south-southwest swell and made a right-hand point break that looked good but proved unridable, so we paddled east. The waves weren’t great, but they were big, they were there, and we were on spring break, so we made do. Ingrained into my mind is an image of Kama, his stance wide and weight well aft to compensate for the steep wave face, dropping into a head-high wave with a massive green sea turtle right next to his head, getting tumbled in the surf.

Later that evening, we went ashore on our stand-up paddleboards to take a hike. After making our way to the vantage point that overlooked Hale O Lono Harbor and offered the best view of Azuline resting gently at anchor, we then dispersed to explore on our own accord. Kristen and I went searching for a better spot to surf the following morning. Walking down a makeshift road, we came upon two men barbecuing by the beach. “Did you see those four people surfing right out front here earlier this afternoon?” one asked. Kristen shot me a sheepish grin before admitting that it was us. “No one ever surfs out there,” the man said.

Having left the crowded surf breaks of Waikiki just that morning, I was completely in awe of how different the scenery and surroundings could be just a couple of dozen miles to the east. I looked again at the sea and the coast in a state of amazement; it didn’t quite make sense. Back in Honolulu, the real estate is so valuable that developers have resorted to simply building taller buildings, as purchasing more land isn’t feasible. A proverbial stone’s throw away, and there was nothing. The contrast to nearby Oahu was almost too much to believe, but in that contrast I found beauty.

Later that night, it was back to Azuline to celebrate a successful first day on our journey. We had departed on time, swum close to whales in the channel, surfed rugged and challenging head-high waves, and explored a tiny portion of this ­heretofore-mysterious island. Our easily excitable French skipper was beyond stoked and wanted to “make a party,” so make a party we did. The vibe on board Azuline was decidedly good. And no one has truly lived until they’ve dined on a veggie burger fried in duck fat by a jovial Frenchman and served with a side of foie gras at anchor. “Superbe!”

The next day we were back on the beach, and so were the guys with the grill, set up in the back of their pickup. “There’s always waves here,” said our newfound friend as he offered us burgers, as well as some local knowledge.

“Molo means ‘to twist,’ and kai means ‘sea,'” he said, spreading ketchup and mayonnaise on the bun with his finger. “When the swells are from the northwest in the winter, they wrap around to the south side. When they’re from the south in the summer, they break right onshore.”

Once again, Kristen, Kama, Laurent and I paddled out to our own private surf break, which was seeing that trace northwest swell wrap combined with the still-holding south swell to create a free-for-all of waves for our own personal enjoyment. Kristen figured it out first and lined up a nice right-hander. Several shouts of “Chee-hoo!” emanated from our group as she showed us the way, her blond ponytail flying as she accelerated across the wave face. Once we all had it wired, we named the break “Azuline’s” in honor of our host, Laurent, and his incredible catamaran. The four of us then traded waves to our heart’s content, gorging ourselves on the abundance of nature that our private paradise had again provided us.

Laurent Guiraudies and his ­custom-built catamaran, Azuline, were a truly unique and entertaining combination, both at sea and in harbor. The big 55-foot cat was custom-designed and built on a beach in Tahiti in the mid-1990s by her original owner, another Frenchman, out of plywood and epoxy.

With lifting rudders and daggerboards, twin tillers, a big rotating wing mast, and a Spartan interior, Azuline had intentions as clear as the sky above. She was built to be light, fast and simple, with sailing performance clearly a much higher priority than the luxuries found on most production cruising cats. There was no radar, indoor helm station, deep freezer or air conditioning. Hell, there wasn’t even a real head on board, just a big hole with a toilet seat mounted on top.

This design philosophy of creating a simple, lightweight vessel with 55 feet of waterline produced a boat that can eat up ocean miles quickly. With her original owner, five years after her launching, Azuline cruised from Tahiti to Patagonia and back. Two owners later, some 20 years after her launch, the distinctive white cat with its blue trim fell into Laurent’s hands in June 2014. After selling his Jeanneau sloop, The Shelter, Laurent secured a bank loan and purchased Azuline to both live aboard and operate as a day-charter vessel. Sailing the boat nearly daily out of Raiatea, Tahiti’s second-largest island, he enjoys nothing more than exposing his guests to the beauties of French Polynesia and the joy of sailing a unique high-performance vessel in paradise.

“This life, it is for the living, you know?” he said, his signature grin and ever-present sparkling eyes the very essence of joie de vivre. Raised in the southwest of France and with a degree in engineering, from day one, Laurent fought what he felt was his predetermined fate as a desk-ridden engineer.

In university, rather than study for exams, he spent his free time securing a license as a lifeguard and surf instructor. After graduation, when tasked with satisfying his 12 months of compulsory service in the French military, he failed his psych evaluation, convincing the doctors that he was mentally challenged with permanent brain damage from hard drug use. He wears his “psychologique Class 4″ designation as a badge of honor.

“I believe Class 4 is the maximum of crazy,” Laurent said, pridefully. “I didn’t want to go! I want my life to be about surf and love, not about war.” As a ­combat-wounded veteran of the Iraq War who has traded his machine gun for a big-wave gun and moved to the tropics on a sailboat, I see eye to eye with Laurent on most aspects of life. I suppose you could call us both kindred spirits.

The swells continued pumping, but we were growing anxious to see more of Molokai. Once back from our obligatory morning surf session, we decided to weigh anchor for the port of Kaunakakai, about 13 miles away. The channel to Hale O Lono had begun to close out periodically with breaking waves, making our departure all the more exciting. Once the anchor was up and there appeared to be a lull in the surf, we quickly made the decision to motor full throttle for the narrow opening. Escaping without drama, we watched in amazement as, just 30 seconds after our departure, a four-wave set exploded into the channel. “On Azuline, it is always a good moment!” reiterated Laurent, ever the jokester. I heartily concurred.

As a large low-pressure system passed just north of the state, the Hawaiian Islands were blanketed in fresh westerlies, creating a rare downwind run from Hale O Lono to Kaunakakai. Immediately out of the harbor, we set just the working jib and cruised downwind at a lazy 5 or 6 knots. The sea had been churned into a frothy cauldron, but with Molokai to our north and the island of Lanai now to our south, the ride remained smooth as we savored the day.

And then we saw more whales.

Not one, not two, but whales in almost every direction. Some breached in the distance — some closer, one right in front of us. I quickly disengaged Azuline’s autopilot, Michel (named in honor of double Vendée Globe winner Michel Desjoyeaux), and took the helm while the rest of the crew enjoyed the show from the forward trampoline. One breached right to starboard, while another almost fully cleared the water to port. We were surrounded, and the massive creatures were too close for comfort. Laurent and I — the only two skippers and boat owners aboard — exchanged a glance that said all that needed to be said (if put into words, it wouldn’t be suitable for this publication). But once it became clear we were safe from impact, Laurent cleared his throat and struggled to make light of the situation: “Ahem, when you is on Azuline, man, it is always a good moment!” Yeah, I got that part.

Once we were anchored in Kaunakakai, the front came through as a whiteout squall with driving rain and gusty westerly winds. Despite a rather precarious lee shore with a wharf behind us, Azuline was a perfectly comfortable shelter to weather the storm, which lasted the rest of the day. After a few days of land and sea adventures, close calls, and many “good moments” together, our crew of six had bonded and acclimated to life aboard the good ship Azuline. While stuck on board, meals, drinks, games, conversation and impromptu parties passed the time. Then we had two days of blue skies to explore more of the island.

Kaunakakai is Molokai’s most populous city, housing approximately half of the island’s residents. With this in mind, despite the close proximity to Oahu, it’s easy to comprehend just how remote and sparsely populated the so-called Friendly Island really is. A traffic jam in Kaunakakai happens when two cars stop and wave at each other before motioning who goes first (there’s not a single stoplight on the entire island). With a downtown spanning just three blocks and a bakery as one of its biggest attractions, Kaunakakai is as different from most big cities as one can get. Everyone has plenty of time to “talk story” with you. The pace and vibe are notably relaxed.

Hiking high above the city, we reveled in the views of Kaunakakai and the fringing reef to both the east and west before renting a Ford F-150 and touring the rest of the island. Visiting an outlook above Kalaupapa’s infamous leper colony and then riding around in the back of a pickup on Molokai’s beautiful windward shores afforded a rare opportunity to discover more of this majestic, secluded island. Like the rest of the Hawaiian Islands, it is completely unique unto itself and constantly evolving. With dramatic mountains, valleys and sea cliffs forged by some 2 million years of fresh trade winds, and frequent rainfall and harsh weather, Molokai is as rugged as it is beautiful. On this day alone, we witnessed 20-foot northwest swells pounding the north and west coast while 30-knot north-northeast winds churned up boisterous seas. It was perfect to psych us up for our spirited return voyage to Oahu the following morning.

One month later, Laurent made his final preparations to set sail for Tahiti. From the local yacht club he had picked up two crew, and the weather looked right for a quick and breeze-on departure from the islands. As is the constant plight of the bluewater sailor, it was time to say goodbye to a dear friend. Three months earlier, we had both sailed into Honolulu within three days of each other, Laurent on vacation from French Polynesia and I from California to attend college. Since that time, we had shared many special moments together. When Azuline and crew set sail from Waikiki’s Ala Wai Harbor on a Sunday in April, I took solace in the fact that I knew I would see my friend again one day. For now, I just wanted him to have a safe and enjoyable passage home. As we parted ways this time, I told him: “I say you, man, when you is on Azuline, it is always a good moment. Bon voyage, mon ami.”

Ronnie Simpson is a sailor, surfer and writer who lives in Honolulu and is currently pursuing a degree in integrated multimedia and journalism at Hawaii Pacific University. Soon after their trip on Azuline, Kristen and he became engaged. Ronnie is also the co-founder of a wounded-­veterans sailing nonprofit (coreveterans.org).

The post Molokai High appeared first on Cruising World.

Two years ago, when I set out to cross the Pacific aboard my Cal 2-27, Mongo, my plan was straightforward: go cruising for a year, sell the boat wherever I ended up, and fly home to California to resume my life. I’d purchase another boat using my savings and the proceeds from ­selling Mongo. But after my year of voyaging, with a ­pricey dismasting along the way, there wasn’t much left over. In addition, engineless 27-footers like Mongo don’t ­exactly fetch a premium on the open market in New Zealand, which is where I sold her.

Bottom line? I had about $10,000 to spend on my next boat, not counting refit costs.

So my budget (and my next boat) would be ­smaller than I had originally planned. When I flew from Auckland to San Francisco on St. Patrick’s Day of 2015 with two large duffel bags, a quiver of surfboards and a fat stack of Kiwi currency, I was on a mission to buy a boat.

Fortunately, I’d come home to California, where good, cheap sailboats are readily available. During my final weeks abroad, I’d closely monitored Bay Area Craigslist postings and had already made a few appointments to look at boats, many of which were Cal yachts designed by Bill Lapworth. This wasn’t coincidental, as I’ve always been drawn to Lapworth designs. I’d already owned two Cals, including Mongo, which had taken me all the way to New Zealand. By producing good boats cost-effectively, Jensen Marine, the builder of the Cal brand, had sold thousands upon thousands of boats during the fiberglass boatbuilding boom of the 1960s and 1970s. Cals have stood the test of time, are still in huge supply, and generally represent good value; they’re the proverbial dime-a-dozen classic plastic production cruisers.

Once I was back at my old marina, some dockside friends pointed me toward a nice little 29-foot sloop. Of course, it was a Cal. Within a week of arriving home, I was the proud owner of a Cal 2-29 called Sleepy II, hull number 774, hailing port Alameda. For $6,500, I’d acquired a sweet little cruising boat with a solid hull, a Bristol interior, a new Universal diesel and a hard-bottom RIB. I was stoked.

After rolling a mountain bike and two dock carts of gear down to the boat, I felt like I’d never left town. The transition from one fine Lapworth-designed yacht on New Zealand’s North Island to another in Northern California had been seamless. In a region of the country that’s experiencing a severe housing crisis, for just a few grand up front and a low monthly overhead, I was again a homeowner. As my friend Jeremy said, “You found your loophole.” The Bay Area slipped back on like a glove. I was home.

I knew from the moment I laid eyes on the boat that the steering wheel would go, replaced by a new rudder with a tiller. Cal masts are simple, rather agriculturally built aluminum tree trunks — nothing fancy, but with new standing rigging and an overhaul, I reckoned mine would be quite solid. The keels are glassed-in lead (no 40-year-old keel bolts to worry about), and the hull-to-deck joints were all glassed over from the factory — simple, burly stuff, and very much why I like these boats. So from Day One, I had a solid plan for preventing the keel and/or rudder from falling off and the rig from coming down. Once those basics were covered, the rest would be mere details. Slap on a self-steering windvane, a couple of solar panels, some ground tackle and a few sails, and she’d be ready to go places. Grandpa’s weekend condo would be transformed into an offshore passagemaker. All she needed was a new name. Loophole was perfect.

One of my very first goals was to unplug Loophole from the dock, as dependence on shore power defies my every notion of a cruising sailboat. With two large solar panels (90-watt and 85-watt, respectively) wired into my boat’s bank of two Group 24 batteries, I’d have plenty of power, provided I played it smart and used a windvane for self-steering. Also, by installing a 600-watt Xantrex inverter, I’d have enough juice to run power tools and conduct virtually the entire ­refit while wholly energy-independent, aside from the work I’d tackle at the boatyard.

Whenever you’re using solar power and living off the house batteries, proper monitoring is key, so I added a Victron battery monitor, which I’d had good luck with in the past. All of this, combined with the diesel engine’s charging system and all-new LED lights, would make Loophole fully self-sufficient, at sea or at the dock.

Years ago, on my first boat (a Palmer Johnson Bounty II), rudder failure doomed my inaugural offshore journey. Since then, I’ve installed new rudders on all three of my boats before tackling blue water. On both my Cals, including my previous Mongo, I purchased new rudders from the original builder, Foss Foam, of Newport Beach. These weren’t stock rudders, but scaled-down blades that naval architect Carl Schumacher retrofitted and updated for a Lapworth-designed Cal 40 in the 1990s. Even after a coral reef grounding in Fiji on Mongo, the rudder shaft remained straight, and there was only minor fiberglass damage at the bottom of the foil, which was easily repaired.

So for just over a grand, I had a beautiful new rudder. Converting the boat from wheel steering to tiller steering (and revamping the engine controls) was a long, expensive project, but the effort and money invested were well worth it. The new tiller and foil transformed the entire boat, both at the dock and under sail. I also managed to swap rudders in the slip, without hauling out — a huge savings. As an added bonus, I found an appropriate home for the boat’s original wheel and binnacle, which are now the focal point of a 5-year-old’s backyard playground in Berkeley.

Once the tiller and engine controls went in, out came the rig. Some friends and I pulled the mast using the dry storage yard’s boat hoist before carting the spar over to a nearby metal shop. (Owning small boats offers many advantages, ­including cost-effective options for pulling rudders and rigs.) Originally equipped with external main and jib halyards, wooden spreaders and no spinnaker gear, Loophole’s rig was in dire need of a refit.

First I gave the rigging shop at Svendsen’s Boat Works my old standing rigging and had them replicate new rigging that was a size larger than the stock wire, using high-quality Hayn components. Since a failed Alexander Roberts-brand fitting resulted in Mongo’s dismasting on a lee shore, I scrutinize every single piece of hardware that goes into any of my new rig projects, and have become sold on Hayn products.

At Svendsen’s metal shop, Chris Evanoff built custom metal spreaders for Loophole using a set of spreader sections from a newer production boat that he custom-modified to fit my rig. Next my old boss, professional rigger Ryan Nelson of Rogue Rigging, came out and chopped off my masthead with a circular saw. Once that was done and we’d opened up a hole in the top of the spar, Chris and his guys in the metal shop welded the masthead back in place. After I reassembled the masthead with four new sheaves at the top, then opened up halyard exits at the bottom, the stock rig had been converted from two external halyards to four internal ones with a simple, elegant solution. I also added an internal spinnaker halyard and spinnaker-pole topping lift.

With the halyards now running internally, I installed a conduit inside the mast using lightweight PVC from a gardening store and ran all of the 12-volt and coaxial wires up the rig. Once everything was laced up and some last-minute welding jobs were performed, the rig was stepped with a new stainless-steel plate at the base, from which halyard blocks would be hung. It was a true pleasure to work with Chris and the entire Svendsen’s team, including yard manager Hartwell Jordan, a veteran America’s Cup sailor. They were conscious of my budget, did great work, and made me feel like family.

With the rig and rudder ready to rock, I was ready to go sailing. That required some new rags. I ditched the old furler and two furling jibs on Craigslist in favor of assembling an inventory of secondhand hank-on sails. I found a like-new North Sails racing No. 3 jib at a local loft, bought three used Dacron headsails from Minney’s Yacht Surplus in Newport Beach, and got a couple of used spinnakers from friends on the dock. After a third reef point was added to the mainsail, which was still in good condition, Loophole had an entire set of serviceable sails for about the price of a brand-new main. No, they weren’t the flashiest sails on the ­water, but my cruising inventory was good enough to at least take me somewhere far away.

I am a huge fan of windvanes for crossing oceans solo or shorthanded on a simple cruising boat. A good windvane is extremely reliable and uses no electricity whatsoever — both compelling features. As with Mongo, I found a secondhand Navik windvane, had some simple stainless-steel brackets constructed, and installed it on the transom in a single afternoon. (This is yet another reason I love Cals; most of them have vertical transoms that make windvane installation extremely straightforward.) Once the new Navik vane — which I dubbed Jean Le Cam after the French solo sailor — was fully installed, I also added a simple tillerpilot. The Navik vane would be the primary helmsman while at sea; the tillerpilot would serve as the backup and assist the helmsman in light air and on daysails.

Part of my motivation for getting the boat quickly overhauled was that I knew I was going somewhere. I wasn’t sure exactly where, or when, but I knew I was going. I was contemplating several options in life, and it seemed that utilizing my GI Bill at the age of 30 to return to school for journalism would be a solid play. In late July, I flew to Hawaii to skipper a 46-foot racing yacht back to the mainland following the Transpac Race. My crewmate Walter and I were in the water surfing early the next morning. Watching the sunrise over Diamond Head before a full day of delivery prep, I caught a wave, paddled back out and then sat in the lineup, in awe of the scenery before me. GI Bill. Hawaii. Bingo.

By October, I was accepted and registered at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for the start of the January 2016 semester. By the time the El Niño-induced cyclones stopped and the boat was ready to go, it was already November and time to get moving. The days were short, the nights cold, and foul weather was on the horizon. One after another, big, low-pressure winter systems were marching across the Pacific and slamming into the West Coast. San Francisco was no longer a good departure point; I needed to head south before sailing west.

The day after Thanksgiving, Loophole departed on an overnight passage to Monterey, a stretch that uncovered self-steering issues that needed resolving. After two days of provisioning, final preparations, and Navik windvane surgery on the dock of the Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club, Loophole and I jumped on another brief window between fronts and made the light-air passage to Morro Bay.

Once we’d arrived there, the next front came through as I was motoring away from the Morro Bay fuel dock in the late afternoon. I quickly tied up Loophole at the Morro Bay Yacht Club, shut the companionway and made a cup of tea. After a brief but intense squall, the air fell calm and silent. I checked my phone and saw that the buoy reports were beginning to record northerly winds. It was time to set sail for Hawaii.

I deposited my yacht club key, fired up the diesel engine and shoved off the dock. Motoring out of Morro Bay in the cloak of darkness, Loophole passed the last channel marker, where I hoisted the genoa. There was enough breeze to begin moving under sail, so I killed the engine to conserve our 10 gallons of diesel fuel. Slowly but surely, the 29-foot sloop crept out of Estero Bay before hooking into the northerly pressure.

On a deep broad reach, Loophole raced past Point Conception in a building northwesterly. Running due south, I gradually passed my two potential bailout ports, Santa Barbara and San Diego. Loophole was en route to Hawaii.

Six days out, we’d reached our first waypoint and could begin pointing almost directly for the islands. As we did, a series of hurricane-force winter gales raged across the Pacific before pummeling the West Coast with harsh weather. In the process, the storms compressed and elongated the Pacific High, creating reinforced trade winds for most of the passage. Dousing the main and running almost all the way to Hawaii under headsail alone, despite the lack of sail area, Loophole’s easily driven hull registered consistent 120- to 130-nautical-mile daily runs.

With the trades blowing 30 knots and gusting higher for several days, accompanied by big northerly swells rolling down from the winter storms raging above us, Loophole was tested with arguably the worst sea state I’ve seen in 11 crossings between Hawaii and the West Coast. But the little Lapworth sloop kept trucking along, no matter what the weather and sail plan. At one point I ran under bare poles for 18 hours and still managed to knock off a 101-nautical-mile day in winds that topped out in the low 40s.

Jean Le Cam faithfully steered Loophole for the entire duration of the crossing, and in doing so allowed my batteries to charge fully every single day. Though I was wracked with anxiety for the entire trip — it was breezy and I had a lot riding on it — Loophole performed brilliantly and burned just a single gallon of diesel fuel the whole way.

After 20 days at sea, the 10,025-foot peak of Mount Haleakala on the island of Maui emerged on the horizon just as the sun slowly dipped below it. The nuking trades had mellowed to 18 knots. As a new life in the islands lay before me, a nearly full moon rose behind me. We’d made it.

At 0500 on Christmas Eve, Loophole was tied up in a slip in the tiny, bustling harbor of Lahaina. The captain of a nearby scuba diving boat was prepping for the morning’s first charter.

“Where’d you sail in from?” he asked.

“California,” I replied.

He looked at me with a bit of astonishment and said, “I envy you, man. I really do.”

I stepped off the dock, my legs a bit wobbly after almost three weeks at sea. I looked back at my now battle-proven bluewater cruiser with pride and admiration. I envied me, too. Loophole was a good-looking little yacht. In Maui. On Christmas. My pal was right. I’d found my Loophole indeed.

Studying, surfing, paddling, and helping manage and sail racing yachts in California and Hawaii in his spare time, Ronnie Simpson reports that settling in Hawaii was “a really good move. I’m firing on all cylinders.” He’s also the co-founder of a new nonprofit organization called CORE (Coastal and Offshore Rehabilitation Experience) that introduces combat-wounded military veterans to sailing. To learn more about this important organization, please visit its website (coreveterans.org).

The post A Marine Vet Launches a New Pacific Sailing Adventure appeared first on Cruising World.

It was just off Cape Flattery, with steep, cold seas sweeping us stem to stern, that the thought crossed my mind that perhaps we’d left a touch early. But however humble, our 36-foot steel cutter, Roger Henry, is a robust little vessel and took the beating in its stride.

I did not. After a winter spent dockside with more sailing stories than sailing followed by a cruise in the placid waters of the San Juan Islands that was topped off with the café scene in the lovely city of Victoria, my stomach took a while to adapt to life offshore. As usual my wife, Diana, was chirpy and disciplined while on watch — deck tours, regular logbook entries, safety inspections and 15-minute horizon sweeps.

As we clawed our way south along the Oregon coast, I reread Jimmy Cornell’s World Cruising Routes. In theory, if we didn’t succumb to the temptation to head off on a direct rhumb line for Hawaii, but hugged the North American coast until the latitude of San Francisco, we would ride the clockwise wind patterns of the establishing North Pacific High. I felt better just visualizing all those glorious aft winds and following seas. But Jimmy does not give guarantees. He only advises as to averages, and alas, this was not an average year.

Against incessant headwinds we took nearly two weeks to reach an imaginary rounding point, 200 miles off San Francisco. But by then we were warm, together, and in that lovely cruising space where nothing exists except our little floating home adrift on a big blue sea. The global recession? What global recession? We have rice, water and wind. What more could a sailor ask for?

Our halfway-to-Hawaii party was a grand affair. Absolutely everyone came. We altered our watches so that we might share a few hours together. Ironically, at sea, in spite of being cooped up together in a small vessel, we each have our duties, among them sleeping when off watch, so we don’t enjoy much overlap. On our previous voyages we’d enjoyed lavish mid-route feasts, and once again we had just one celebratory drink and an unusually sumptuous meal together.

We saw but two ships in 2,500 nautical miles, but we never felt alone. On a late-night watch, two whales surfaced on either side of the boat, so close I could smell their fetid breath. They pressed in toward the hull and seemed to be cradling us up as if we were a fatigued calf. I was quite moved by that encounter, for their majestic mass can only be truly appreciated when up close and personal.

As the days passed, we sailed silently, scanning the horizon for signs of fish, porpoise, and perhaps a new species of bird — some lonely wanderers like ourselves, frightfully far from land. Sadly, however, we did not see the flocks of seabirds we have been used to in years past. Instead of being laden with life, the sea surface was littered with garish flotsam, marring the sense of pristine wilderness. In spite of its almost unimaginable 64 million square miles, the Pacific Ocean is showing significant signs of stress, and can no longer be used as an infinite dumping ground.

There’s a mental gravity that pulls one’s mind forward toward any large landmass. Though we were still many days out from Hawaii, our isolation bubble was burst. Diana began a tally of provisions required while I started yet another long list of maintenance chores.

The Big Island, Hawaii, loomed large in the morning sky. After 24 days of only blue, black and gray, the greenery was an assault on our senses, as were the pungent smells of a lush land laced with the sweet scent of frangipani.

All arriving yachts must check in at the small commercial basin called Radio Bay just to the south of the main city of Hilo. This is a closed industrial port, and since the Sept. 11 attacks any visiting sailors without a MARSEC Level 2 security clearance must be escorted to and from the front gate, no matter the time of day or number of entries and exits. When I heard that we were not even allowed to have visitors onboard, I found myself humming the tune “Don’t Fence Me In.”

Nevertheless, our stay was pleasant. We tied up and called the front gate from a dockside phone. Ten minutes later a uniformed woman rode up on a bicycle.

With a big smile she said, “Hello, I’m pretty.”

She wouldn’t get an argument from me on that score. But she meant Pretty with a capital P, her real name. She escorted us to Customs and Immigration, and then to the Port Office for registration. Everyone we encountered was welcoming and efficient. The Polynesians seem to have an innate sense of well being, expressed with open and humorous warmth. The office attendants were very helpful as they patiently explained how to catch the free buses to town, where to do laundry and how to find the main markets.

The next morning old sailing friends Mark and Dorothy Schneider of the yacht Dirty Dotty (we were told never to ask whence came that name) met us at the front gate. Over the next week they treated us to a guided tour of the spectacular Big Island.

It is said that there is no accounting for taste, but few would dispute that the Hawaiian Islands rank among the world’s most beautiful. Their latitude is tropical but temperatures are moderate. The surrounding seas are rich, and the high mountains and coastal plains create microclimates suitable to most types of agriculture. The prolific volcanic activity has resulted in fecund soil, no doubt lending to the success of the first human habitation, thought to have begun between A.D. 300 and 800. Theories abound as to a single arrival event, with Polynesians carrying pigs, dogs, coconuts, bananas and the now ubiquitous taro. Others state that migrations came in waves, mostly from the Marquesas. In any event, by the time of the first European arrival, perhaps as early as the mid-1500s, a large population with a sophisticated agrarian culture had developed.

Because any earlier European sightings or landings produced no surviving documentation, it wasn’t until 1778 that the intrepid explorer Capt. James Cook definitively and accurately placed the Hawaiian Islands, or as he named them, the Sandwich Islands, on the nautical charts.

Although now implacably within the American system of statehood, for nearly two centuries Hawaii was a colonial football kicked among England, France, Japan and even Russia for a period. Whaling and sandalwood logging were the linchpins of the early extraction economy. With their depletion, crops such as coffee, sugar, bananas and pineapples attracted foreign interest, leading to overwhelming immigration and eventual integration.

Today a mere 10 percent of Hawaii’s 1.4 million people are native or Pacific Islanders. But their influence is felt far beyond their numbers, for their sultry culture remains irresistibly seductive. With the welcoming floral leis, the soft strum of the ukulele and the swaying hips of the scantily clad hula dancers, as many as 10 million tourists per year see why Hawaii is dubbed “the Aloha State.”

We think of Hawaii as the eight main islands, the best known being Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, Molokai and Lanai, but outlying atolls and rocky outcrops extend the territory a full 1,500 miles into the mid-Pacific. This was of extreme strategic importance, as attested to by Admiral Yamamoto’s attack on Pearl Harbor on that “date which will live in infamy,” Dec. 7, 1941. That strategic significance has not waned due to the now internationally recognized 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

For cash-strapped sailors like me, the famed Hawaiian golf courses are officially exclusive economic zones, but not so the many beautiful national parks, the most dramatic being the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Looking down into the glowing crater of Kilauea, I thought it rather ironic that while we are worried about a surface temperature rise of 2 degrees, nothing but a thin, brittle and shifting crust separates us from 10,800 degrees F of molten magma.

We ventured up nearly 14,000 feet above sea level to visit the Mauna Kea Observatories. As night fell, so did the temperatures, and we were soon huddled beneath every scrap of clothing and cloth we could find. The thrill was worth the chill, for this is one of the world’s premier stargazing sites, attracting scientists and astronomers from many countries and numerous universities and research foundations. Sailing and the stars are inexorably linked, especially for an old salt like me who relied on celestial bodies to guide my way across trackless seas. I was transfixed with the clarity of the powerful telescopes and captivated by the informative lectures and documentary films.

For an unstaged and authentic cultural experience, simply visit any one of the many morning markets, as we did in the old town of Hilo. These are colorful, vibrant affairs, where locals sort through mounds of meat, fish, baked goods and fresh produce to select their daily fare. Few leave without a basket or bouquet of tropical flowers.

With all this fresh produce so readily at hand, one is hard pressed to explain why Hawaiians lead the nation in per-capita consumption of a product that might seem to have an indefinite shelf life. Yet annually they enthusiastically devour 6 million cans of that succulent delicacy known as Spam.

Fascinated with maritime history, I have visited the site of Magellan’s great mutiny in Patagonia, the beach in the Philippines where he was murdered, the grave of Christopher Columbus, but most moving for me was the site in Kealakekua Bay, on the west coast of the Big Island, where the greatest seaman and explorer of his age, Capt. James Cook, was murdered. With the cyclone season approaching, we were forced to press on. After clearing Customs we departed the shelter of Radio Bay, and in the growing darkness sailed south along the east coast of the Big Island. On the coastline to our starboard the molten, blood-red entrails of the Earth flowed across the bleak volcanic plain and fell headlong into the steaming sea. We were witnessing nature at its primordial roots, engaged in a cataclysmic state of raw renewal.

Our disappointment with leaving such a beautiful necklace of islands was offset by the anticipation of an adventurous voyage 1,000 miles south to the remote atoll of Palmyra. My cruising motto could well be summed up as “anything atoll” because, although they are somewhat stark, I love their geographic structure and unique environment. Often atolls hang precariously perched on steep seamounts, making their outer coral walls steep, deep and dangerous. For free diving, there’s no more thrilling a challenge. Being so low, they are battered by the tempests of the sea, and I’ve literally felt them shake beneath the pounding forces of a wild surf. Occasionally swept abreast with storm surges, atolls offer little topsoil, and less potable water. Few people have mastered this harsh environment, thus many of the world’s atolls are deserted. This makes them prime locations for sensitive seabird hatcheries.

After seven brisk days at sea, we located Palmyra at dawn by the cloud of frigatebirds, boobies and terns swarming above the blue lagoon.

Palmyra is the last official “unorganized incorporated U.S. territory” — unorganized being the key word until recently. After a complicated series of political claims, Palmyra ended up privately owned but mostly abandoned since World War II. This lack of governance attracted developers, sailors, hermits and a few on the lam from the law, seeking profit, protection or privacy. Being exactly halfway between Hawaii and Samoa, its lagoon historically has offered welcome shelter for the few intrepid sailors passing though these remote waters, and with its coral tentacles extending well out to sea, it has hosted its share of shipwrecked castaways.

In the past, sailors heading north to Hawaii and not willing to comply with the strict animal quarantine regulations there abandoned pets to their fate on the atoll. We met one such dog whose heroic tale of survival was written upon his scarred body. Apparently, Dadu lived on rainwater and sharks he wrestled from the surf. The resident U.S. Fish and Wildlife staff feed Dadu now, but he still can’t help himself when he sees a blacktip shark swim by.

Abandoned cats had an easier time of it due to an infestation of nonnative rats. Ironically, it was the rats that posed the greatest threat to both the avian population and one of the largest remaining stands of Pisonia grandis trees in the Pacific, as they feasted on eggs, chicks and the seeds of the rare trees. In 2000, The Nature Conservancy purchased Cooper Island, the largest on the atoll. It has established a small but significant research facility there. Fish and Wildlife administers the remaining land areas and surrounding waters. In partnership they have refurbished the old World War II infrastructure, reopened the airstrip, cleared some trails and successfully eradicated the invasive rats.

Permits to visit are now required but easily obtained. Normally a yacht’s stay is limited to one week, and to protect the coral we were allowed to anchor in only one small, designated area. We were met at the entrance pass by U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer Amy, who informed us that we must radio ahead when we wanted to land on the island, and had to be accompanied if we wanted to venture into areas where ground-nesting birds were present. None of this detracted from a fascinating stay, and in fact, once Amy and the research station manager, Charlie, felt confident that we understood and respected the fragile nature of the environment, we were given nearly free rein.

We hiked through the green forests, occasionally rewarded with an ephemeral glance at the snow-white fairy terns. Tanklike coconut crabs scuttled through the dense underbrush as we poked out into the dazzling bright coastline, discovering deserted beach after deserted beach.

In peak season the year-round staff of four is joined by as many as 20 scientists. There is much to do, so they tend to pitch in and help each other with their projects. They wanted to do a spot count of four different bird species, which meant they needed every possible person with binoculars and bird books at the ready. Diana and I were asked to stay on an extra day and survey the outlying islands on the south edge of the reef. Walking and wading slowly and silently, we spent a serene day immersed in our own private wilderness.

Perhaps it’s the curse of the curious, for once again the open sea beckoned. With all sail set, Roger Henry slipped silently through the narrow coral pass and stood out on a course of south-southwest in a freshening breeze. A thousand miles over that watery horizon lay Samoa, the land made legendary by Robert Louis Stevenson. But wind and wave permitting, that would come in its own good time. For now we were just where we were, at home at sea, with time to reflect on yet another collage of indelible cruising memories.

Alvah and Diana Simon are presently cruising the North Island of New Zealand, their home waters.

The post Pacific Pleasures appeared first on Cruising World.

Without question the most popular destination for long-distance sailors is Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. Most vessels under 80 feet put in to the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor, located right next to the world-famous tourist destination of Waikiki Beach. Within this harbor is a state-run marina with nearly 700 slips and two yacht clubs, the most notable of which is the Hawaii Yacht Club, where we kept our boat. Founded in 1901, the HYC maintains a dock they refer to as the “Aloha Dock.” Aloha in its simplest translation means “welcome,” and this long face pier designated for transient sailors is often filled with as many as a dozen vessels from all over the world. Yet, when we’ve spoken to these cruisers, few say they’ve stopped at any other Hawaiian port. To learn why, we set out from Honolulu in late September 2013 to explore. Before we did, we asked a few of the more experienced local sailors for their best picks for anchorages and tactics for crossing the sometimes boisterous channels between islands. We were generally surprised at the unfavorable comments we got concerning cruising conditions. We heard lots of advice, which mostly centered around ways to avoid getting beaten up too badly between the islands and ways to avoid anchorages with too much surge.

The most useful advice, it turns out, was to wait for a lull in the sometimes strong trades that affect these islands. We were advised to wait for light to moderate trade-wind conditions before setting out, and to make our upwind channel crossings at night when the winds tend to lie down a bit.

Despite optimistic forecasts on NOAA weather radio and PassageWeather.com, we found that the local conditions between the islands can be startlingly different from the forecast or the buoy reports from far offshore. Wind acceleration between the high mountains is the main reason for this, and the heating up and cooling off of the large landmasses of these mammoth islands also markedly impacts weather in the channels.

Coming from the Caribbean, we may at first have taken the local warnings with a grain of salt. We thought, “How much worse than the Anegada Passage or the Mona Passage or Kick’em Jenny can it possibly be?” Turns out, a lot.

Our first passage to windward across the Kaiwi channel between Oahu and Lanai (see map on page 40) proved to be 15 hours of hard bashing in 30 knots. Solid waves often washed the foredeck. Our 50-foot Flying Dutchman, Small World II, struggled valiantly through this and shook off each onslaught with barely a shudder, but we imagined what it might be like on a smaller vessel: Not fun! With swells and wave trains coming from three directions and piling up from deep water onto the relatively shallow Penguin Banks halfway across the passage, it was surprisingly rough, but in the lee of Lanai, things smoothed out.

Lanai is a strange-looking dome-shaped island that’s cultivated mostly as a pineapple plantation, though in general it’s fairly arid. Stark, craggy cliffs 500 feet high in places abut the sea on the leeward coast, with only a few small indentations that might offer a limited bit of protection as anchorages in calm conditions. When we were there, the southerly swell made these places untenable. Carrying on to the island of Maui was more attractive, and we found a spot right off the old whaling port of Lahaina by early afternoon on day two.

Once a small fishing village, Lahaina ultimately became the Hawaiian capitol from 1820 to 1845 under the rule of King Kamehameha. Because of its location on a somewhat protected part of the leeward coast in the wind shadow of a substantial range of 5,000-foot mountains, abundant fresh water nearby and a benign climate, it became a favorite port of call in the days of working sail. Although the anchorage is an open roadstead, there’s a long shelf with decent depths and good holding. Its location on a gentle bulge in the coast offered cumbersome square-riggers the ability to sail in or out, no matter what the wind direction. By the mid 1800s Lahaina had become the roughest and most infamous port of call in the Pacific. At any one time, 50 or more whaling ships might be at anchor, and the fights and carousing of sailors ashore were legendary.

Today, although the town is a touristy shadow of its glory days, with knickknack shops and eateries crammed along the waterfront, it still maintains an enjoyable laid-back atmosphere.

The Lahaina Yacht Club is a welcoming haven for sailors. Overlooking the anchorage, the club is entered through a swinging saloon-style doorway. This historic landmark became a favorite hangout for our crew while ashore, offering solace and cool beverages amid walls crammed with old photos, trophies from early and current sailing events and historical references dating back almost two centuries.

Friends who were living ashore took us on an island tour that included horseback riding and a pre-dawn expedition to the volcano summit of Haleakala, which at over 10,000 feet had us shivering in the below-freezing temperatures but gave us a breathtaking view of the sunrise over the island of Hawaii, 50 miles away.

After a few more days of sightseeing and land exploring, we were ready to move on. We canned the idea of heading farther upwind to the Big Island of Hawaii because of the persistent south swell, which would have made all the leeward anchorages very uncomfortable, and also because the winds were refusing to lessen. The Alenuihaha Channel between Maui’s 10,000-foot peak and Hawaii’s 13,000-foot peaks is the worst stretch of water in the whole island group, and crossing farther to the east would have meant beating into 35 to 40-plus knots and short, confused seas. If there had been a great anchorage on the other side of the channel, we would’ve been tempted to go for it, but with the promise of days on end of rolling heavily while at anchor off a sparsely inhabited coast and with no ground transport readily available, we decided instead to head for the south coast of Molokai, 25 miles to leeward.

We had heard that Molokai is the least touristy of any of the main Hawaiian islands. From what we had learned, there was a very good anchorage in the lee of a small commercial wharf about halfway down the south coast, within a pocket in the reef that offered room for several boats. If we were to arrive to find the anchorage full, we’d be forced to beat upwind back to Maui or head farther down the coast to a less desirable anchorage we had seen on the charts. As luck was to have it, we found a perfect spot to anchor in 10 feet of thick mud a short dinghy ride from the main commercial wharf.

The sail over was an incredibly beautiful fast reach out of the lee of Maui. I had put only a single reef in the main, anticipating no more than 20 or so knots of wind because the NOAA forecast had predicted only 15 knots in the channels. Within a quarter of a mile we sailed from 10 knots of wind into 28 knots and then 33 knots, which slammed us over and cranked us up for one of the best sails we’d had in a while. Although a bit overpowered, we decided not to reef further because the passage is only about 15 miles across. Small World II consistently sailed at nearly 10 knots along the crests of waves. Within a short time we were off the sea buoy to the anchorage at Kaunakakai, and by noon we were motoring ashore in our dinghy.

While most of the other Hawaiian Islands are now predominantly inhabited by non-Hawaiians, Molokai is still largely populated with native Hawaiians, many of whom are descendants of the original settlers who came in the first millennium. It was refreshing to be in a place not geared to tourists and that had not changed significantly in decades.

The most beautiful beaches on Molokai are along the western coast, and for the most part they were deserted. Several hiking trails offered a chance to see a bit of the Hawaiian lifestyle of yesteryear, and we managed to find a guide who took part of our crew up to a waterfall and through farmlands that had been cultivated for nearly 1,400 years. At the head of the Halawa Valley, Hawaii’s tallest waterfall feeds a beautiful, clean river that helped make this valley an ideal place for human settlement. Archaeologists have carbon-dated the earliest evidence of humans here to approximately AD 650. Our guide agreed to take us to the valley only if we showed an earnest desire to learn about the culture and respected the residents’ way of life. A visit to this sacred place meant we were there as guests on their terms; they were not there as servants to ours. It was awe inspiring and a highlight of our voyage.

Just beyond this valley lies the northern coast of Molokai. It has the tallest sea cliffs in the entire island chain, plunging nearly 4,000 feet from cloud-enshrouded, verdant peaks to the pounding, rugged, boulder-strewn surf line.

Winding back along the one-lane road toward the more populated middle section of the island brought us eventually to the only road that leads close to, but doesn’t reach the large Kalaupapa Peninsula, which juts out from the north coast. A leper colony was established there in 1866, and descendants of the banished remain today. Their only access to the outside world is either by a daily in-and-out charter flight or by mule down a hair-raising set of switchbacks.

If the weather is settled, you can anchor off the peninsula, which is now a national historical park. One day we hope to sail back and visit this place of sorrow, suffering and triumph of the human spirit.

Finally sated with the local culture, we made a pre-dawn departure for the 50-mile broad reach back to Oahu. Winds were forecast to be 20 to 25 knots, and this time, with a double reef and a bright blue sky, we screamed across the Kaiwi channel at 8.5 knots and under control the whole way. Just as we were nearing the southeast coast, Gayle caught a small yellowfin tuna, which felt like a nice gift to top off a wonderful 10 days of sailing and exploring in one of the most awe-inspiring island groups on our small world.

Bringing our boat back to her berth at the Hawaii Yacht Club, we knew that as soon as we could get away again, we would continue to explore this very special island group. Big challenges, bold landscapes and grand adventure await anyone who is willing to spend the effort to sail through the islands where Capt. Cook, George Vancouver and countless small-boat voyagers have visited. The real Hawaii is still out here awaiting discovery.

Resources
If you’re planning to include the Hawaiian Islands while cruising the Pacific, here are the guides and charts that the author found useful:
• Charlie’s Charts of the Hawaiian Islands, 4th edition, by Charles and Margo Wood. $22.50; www.charliescharts.com
• Cruising Guide to the Hawaiian Islands by Carolyn and Bob Mehaffy. $30; 2006; Paradise Cay Publications; www.paracay.com
• Landfalls of Paradise: Cruising Guide to the Pacific Islands, 5th edition, by Earl R. Hinz and Jim Howard. $47; 2006; University of Hawaii Press; www.uhpress.com

This article first appeared in the May 2014 issue of Cruising World. Todd Duff and Gayle Suhich have been cruising and living aboard since the 1980s and have sailed to 22 countries. They are currently cruising in the Pacific aboard their Flying Dutchman 50, Small World II.

Lahaina, Maui

coast of Lanai

Small World II sails out of Honolulu

Hawaiian Islands cruise

Hawaii’s tallest waterfall

Molokai

banyan trees

Molokai Family

Maui landfall at Lahaina

Paddlers at sunset

Landfall on Molokai

Sarah Suhich at the Sacred Waterfall on Molokai

Maui and Lanai

The post Searching for the Real Hawaii appeared first on Cruising World.