from s/v Circadia

Morning: We are at 37 degrees, 49 minutes north and 151 degrees 53 minutes west at 11 a.m. The wind has come around to westerly but is as yet only 7 knots so we continue to motor sail. Within the next 100 miles we should come into sailable wind. I got a reassuring email from Kevin (*our navigator friend, who is expert at Pacific weather) that they may not have to bury our desiccated bones after we expire floating gently around in the North Pacific High. The sea temperature is now 21 degrees and it is fairly cold at night so a person wears long underwear, trousers and rainpants just to stay warm on watch. Last fresh food is disappearing - it was Pork Chops, mashed potatoes and caramelized carrots last night.

Afternoon: Now broad reaching at 7 knots with engine off in 12 to 14 knots of wind. Wind will likely come ahead of the beam within the next 24 hours. The hydrovane doesn't keep up with this situation like it did upwind so we are using the electric pilot. Neither crew is interested in steering and there is no sun. I think the fridge is going to have to go. It is 1400 miles to Victoria.

Kim

from s/v Circadia

Today we're at 32 degrees 52 minutes north and 155 degrees 7 minutes west at 2 p.m. What a difference a day makes. We had a beautiful sail gradually becoming a broad reach until the wind expired at 2:30 a.m. and we began to motor sail. We still have 2 to 6 knots of wind aft of the beam. We have run into a lobe of the high that looks like it may be several hundred miles wide. The sky is blue - it is hot - the water is rippled with some swell- we have seen one sooty shearwater tody - I have seen some flotsam including what looked like a soggy loaf of bread. I have chosen to cross this patch mainly to the north at a heading of 005 magnetic rather than head to Flattery at magnetic 044 because it looks like there is no wind for most of the way in that direction which still is over 1600 miles away. The passage looked fast up until now.

I just now have finished Lolita a dynamite novel. Beautiful writing leaps out intertwined with plot, and other references, so that it is hard to make a simple quote to illustrate.

You would recognize the dietary things that are going on. We've got leftovers of the previously frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts but otherwise they are gone. We are looking forward to the lean rib eye steaks and the potential of tuna in the next few days. Various items do not seem to be present in the stores; I am sure I didn't purchase some of them but others may be lurking under something at the bottom of a locker that I haven't quite emptied.

Usual boat maintenance issues: had to replace the furling line again, solar panel electric connections are intermittent, a sail slide needs replacing. I'm really enjoying my weekend and hope you are too.

Really miss you

Love Kim

Further Travels of Circadia

I am in Vancouver now and Kim is sailing the boat back from Hilo. He and his crew, Michael and Line left Hawaii five days ago. Here's what Kim wrote today:

Today we passed 31 degrees. We are going more than 150 miles a day, approaching the high--the pressure was up to 1023 this morning. The winds have lessened and the seas are quite pleasant now. We took out the last reef and are beam reaching slightly east of north in 12 to 14 knots, predicted to lessen in strength gradually over the next few days on the grib files. We'll see. It is still hot in the cabin during the day and we can't yet open any windows.

I have managed to snare the evening to 2 a.m. watch for myself so far. I usually make dinner and then Line washes the dishes in an attempt to allow my hands to heal up. She has this product called NuSkin which is kind of a liquid crazy glue that forms a membrane over the wound. Then I send the emails and get the gribs. As it gets dusky, (last night at 8 p.m.) I put on my cute red suit with rainboots and collapse into the supine position on the downhill side of the cockpit with a glass of whiskey. Last night I had chocolate too. I put the AIS and Sea Me on and frankly often drowse intermittently through the whole watch. Some nights I am alerted by squalls or horrors, the need to reduce sail, but last night the wind was steady all night, the moon was just past full and it was very enjoyable. Scorpio is the prominent constellation to the south; Sagittarius right behind. I haven't seen the Southern Cross since Hawaii but then last night was the first night I might have seen it. Cassiopeia is high in the sky at sunset. I haven't seen Orion's Girdle yet. We charge at about 6 when I wake up from my real sleep and then the whole cycle of coffee, granola, grazing, reading, little boat jobs begins again.

I did see one masked booby yesterday. Today the big sighting was a large whale, heading north, repeatedly surfacing to blow and then moving underwater as if it were travelling. It had a fairly blunt head and a small dorsal fin. I didn't see any of those granulations one sees on the head of a humpback and I like to think it was a solo male Sperm Whale heading back up to the Bering sea to feed after performing his mating duties in the tropics. However it was too windy to see the direction of the spume and I really couldn't call it for sure.

Back in the Flow

Since we left San Diego in December we have been leading more or less a news free life. In Mexico the news just didn't seem to matter. And in French Polynesia, the void was widened by the language barrier. When we found an internet connection I would sometimes remember to check in on a Canadian or world news site--sometimes. I usually find that you think a lot is happening while you are away, and in fact nothing much changes.

But the first thing we heard on arriving in Hawaii was that Michael Jackson had died. And so we were ushered back not only into the news but the celebrity obsession of our culture.
Hawaii does it's best though, to put things in geological perspective. Unlike the islands we have been sailing through, heavily eroded (the Marquesas and Society Islands) and completely ground down (Tuamotus) volcanic islands, the Hawaiian chain is still being created and the big Island is the newest. In the last two years Kilauea peak has been especially active, a new crater appearing in the larger crater. As you approach it there are signs warning of unusually high sulphur dioxide emissions and stating that part of the circle road and all of the trails inside the caldera are closed. At night the visitor centre is crowded with people, shivering in the misty rain that always seems to be falling on this wet side of the island. They strain to see the red glow of the lava which rises and falls on its own mysterious tides within this new caldera. (In the day all you can see is an industrial plume of sulphuric steam). Meanwhile fresh lava pours into the sea to the east, enough every day to pave a double lane highway all the way around the island.

the new caldera

Yesterday we walked along one of the trails which goes through the high wet forest, under giant ferns and strange flowering trees, trying to find some of the surviving endemic birds. They tend to be brightly coloured, red or yellow, with curved beaks, adapted to feed on the tubular flowers of some of the plants which evolved here. Many birds once here are extinct and many are hard to find. But we did see some beautiful red male Apapanes.

Apapane (from www.stanford.edu)

When people here get tired of the rain they drive to the other side, the dry, Kona coast. Which is what we did last week, for a few days to get off the boat and check into a hotel (clean linen, stacks of towels, a king-sized bed, those white bathrobes...!). And a few last days of tropical sun and water.

Koi pond, Kona hotel

young Black-crowned Night Heron, fishing in the koi pond

The resorts of Kona are startling, almost unbelievable feats of overly-green grass and fluorescent gardens, surrounded by miles and miles of barren black lava fields, the heat rising off them in oppressive waves. And yet, even here there is a kind of cultivation. People throw chunks of white coral collected from the beach into the trunks of their cars and drive them to the lava fields, carefully line up the wave smoothed coral on the ancient re-forged stone in brief devotions of the human heart: "I love you Matt" or "Happy Birthday Grandpa Dave".

Other than these excursions our time in Hawaii has been busy with catching up on emails and taking care of the details of the lives at home, which we'll be resuming soon. My computer crashed. Apparently it didn't enjoy it's year of sailing. So I have been pre-occupied with restoring files. And of course, there are the boat jobs. In general Circadia has proved to be a tough little boat. We had a sail tear, but no other major repairs, just the usual maintenance. And at the moment she is almost ready to set sail again, for the last leg of this journey. And now it's time to fess up. I will not be onboard for the sail home. I am flying to Vancouver tomorrow, to attend a writing course at UBC. Two new crew members are flying in to help Kim on the passage, one of whom is Michael, who kindly posted my offshore blog entries. I plan to continue postings on the progress of Circadia across the North Pacific, via sailmails from Kim.

On the Same Ocean

I want to share a comment Maureen Gordon left after one of my recent posts. Maureen and her husband Kevin own Maple Leaf Adventures, an ecotour company which runs trips in BC and Alaska, under sail, on the historic schooner Maple Leaf. I have worked as a resource person onboard each summer for many years and as a result have had the chance to see some of the most beautiful spots on the Pacific Northwest Coast.

My recent travels have been spectacular but I can say (with authority now) that our own coast and islands are equally dazzling.  

Alison,



Around about the time you were writing this, heading north on Circadia, Kevin, Paul, Lila and I were heading north on Maple Leaf.

And at some point, I thought of you two briefly, about where you were and whether you would come home at all!



    It was 5 a.m. Alaska time when you wrote this post, and I was trying to ignore our alarm clock. Unlike you and Kim in your ocean-going boat, free of land in the blue, blue sea, we were creatures of the coast, dropping anchor at night, travelling by daylight.

We were on a crew-only transit from Sandspit to Sitka.

     While you were bucking those tremendous squalls in the south Pacific and thinking of the Queen Charlotte Islands, we were in the North Pacific, moving away from the Charlottes, bucking waves and a building wind in Hecate Strait. Sunshine, though, no clouds. 

At one point, the day we headed northeast toward the mainland, you could have shot a straight line from your boat to ours and not hit a single island in between.

 

 Since you know the area, I'll tell you what we were doing. 
We'd dropped anchor 7 hours before you wrote. We'd tucked into a bay filled with rocks, just out of the huge copper mirror that Clarence Strait had become in the Alaskan sunset. That sunset seemed to fade not to black but ever pinker, while we stood and watched a humpback whale, no doubt incoming from Hawaii, slowly breathe and sound, swimming the path up the channel we'd abandoned for the night. The whale was more like you than us, travelling on without the need to put out a chain and rest. 

The sunset stayed through hanging the anchor light, opening a bottle of shiraz and sharing 2/3 of it. It was hard to stop looking at the sea. I realized that since we'd rounded Cape St. James on June 2, we'd been heading northwest into a brilliant sunset every night. I noted this because we were always out on deck taking pictures of the bow in the sunset.

We slept and had to wake early.

 

Within three-quarters of an hour of you writing, the anchor light was away, the coffee, tea and GreensPlus Energy drink were brewed (three people, three different stimulants!). We were following that humpback north for another long, long June day, crawling ever farther up the chart of southeast Alaska, still two days away from our own turning point (Sitka).

  

It's frightening and comforting to think about us both on the same ocean, so very far from one another but doing a similar thing ... so far away that if this technology didn't exist we'd never have an inkling of the others' existence right now.

  

That day was epic, a calm run and chores in the morning. Then a brief opening to the Pacific, that allowed some sea otters and us to share a brief inspection of each other. Then into Rocky Pass between Kupreanof and Kuiu Islands, where Kevin and Paul turned Maple Leaf about 120 times in 90 minutes. We traversed The Devil's Elbow at exactly high slack. The pass was so shallow it felt like we should be kayaking. 

(A moose and her calf on shore, another sea otter in the water and a great big black bear ... and no ability to stop and watch.) 

Then onward, out past Kake into Frederick Sound. I was at the helm and looking for humpback whales as the wind increased to 15 or 20 knots over an ebbing tide. 

After five minutes of constantly having to re-find a whale's splash in the growing whitecaps, punctuated by closing hatches and staring into the sun for logs and debris, I decided I was trying way too hard to whale watch. 

    We spent 90 minutes in the exciting sea hanging out in the wheelhouse as waves hit the hull from the port side and sprayed over a deck ... foredeck, well deck, aft deck, wherever the wave happened to hit. 

Great mats of rockweed, the size of a livingroom floor, were sloshing around Frederick Sound and once when a wave sprayed against the bow it broke not only into water drops but also flying bits of rockweed.

Then we were across and surfing downwind, up Chatham Strait, into Warm Springs Bay for the night.

Love, Maureen 

The Emerald City

Dorado

We arrived in Hilo a couple of nights ago, after 18 days of sailing, from Papeete, Tahiti.  The wind and rough seas we had so much of on this crossing continued for those last 500 miles. We were very excited to glimpse the Big Island and scanned the sea all our last day. We figured we couldn't miss it, since it is topped by a 4200 m. peak. It is an amazing feeling to sight an oceanic island, after days and days of seeing nothing but sea and sky. It seems like a miracle that it's there at all and equally unlikely that we could find it. I can't imagine how the Marquesans, who are believed to have first colonized Hawaii (only about 13oo years ago) did it.  It seemed sufficiently epic in a strong sailboat, with high tech sails, electronic navigation, a tank of fuel, holds full of water and food. 

Anyway, we never did see the island, there was so much cloud, but as night fell we could see the bright white light off the east cape and eventually the orange glitter of the lights of Hilo.  As we turned into the harbour a land wind blew into our faces. Suddenly I had a dog's sense of smell. There were cloves and compost and gardenias and the inside of cigar boxes. We finally dropped our anchor after midnight. Since then we have been in that enhanced state of enjoyment you only get after tough expeditions, when simple things are exquisite: a hot shower, clean clothes and bedding, a meal that is cooked, delivered, and cleaned up by pleasant strangers.  It has rained mostly since our arrival (not surprising, since Hilo is on the rainy side of the island) but we don't care.  The city is lush and feels more real than many Hawaiian towns; there are lots of bookstores and indie film theatres, and dim shops full of second hand Hawaiian shirts and retro knick knacks. Now, off to find a Kona latte, no maybe a chocolate macadamia nut ice cream cone, or a pair of new flip flops...

Our most excellent crew:

Max

Farlyn 

from s/v Circadia

Thursday June 18, 2009
12 degrees, 51 minutes N, 148 degrees, 16 minutes W

Three days of sailing to windward in 17-20 knots. Waves come up over the bow, rush back over the side decks, or appear like invisible critics on the sidelines tossing buckets of water at you, drenching you while you are innocently standing at the wheel. It's as if the utopia of our little boat has been taken over gradually by a tyrant. At first you object strongly but gradually you come to accept the situation and try to eke what joy you can out of life, a little reading, a little star gazing, the odd piece of chocolate.
But meanwhile it takes a lot of energy to do simple things, having to hold on to avoid being thrown across the boat. Fortunately the galley is downwind so things don't come flying off the counters and out of the cupboards when you're cooking, but the head is upwind, which requires agility.
It is not easy to accept that nature is above all indifferent to the beauty and the obstacles it throws at us. It just doesn't care that there are earnest environmentalists here, trying hard not to lose any plastic overboard, or burn too much fuel, simply wanting to make their way, without bothering anyone, to safe port.
The good thing is that we have been sailing steadily at an average of about 150 miles a day and at the moment are just over 500 miles from Hawaii, a few more days of sailing away. We are already noticing the change in ocean regime; the water temperature is 2 degrees colder than Tahiti. Last night we wore sweaters for the first time since leaving Mexico. Soon we will see the first signs of land: contrails, fishing floats, maybe a big 'ol American warship.
Meanwhile, today the winds are lighter and coming from behind the beam. The boat flattens out and we can finally clean up and cook a good meal. Our thoughts turn to the end of the journey, the restaurants, the laundromats, the hot shower and internet again. There are always a lot of unanswered questions on these trips. This time I will be curious to see what I can find out when I get in about the dorado, who always seem to travel in pairs, each taking a lure, port and starboard, as if in some mutual suicide pact; also, the meteor shower which seems to be falling from the northern sky the last few nights.
I hope you are all able to find a find a dark field to walk through in your bare feet, to watch a few falling stars on the solstice.