Day 28 Panama to Hawaii

I’m typing this exactly one week after we arrived in Honolulu. More on that in a later post. First, the last week at sea. And we can keep that fairly short: more of the same.

Contrary to the forecast, we kept good wind right up to the harbour entrance. The whole time it was between 16 and 22 knots.

You’d think that during the last day and a half, when we were near the first and also biggest island of Hawaii, called Hawai’i (you couldn’t make it up!), there would be ships around and the AIS and the VHF would spring back to life. We didn’t see a single boat on the AIS until the second island, and heard nothing on the VHF until we were inside the harbour. Very odd. It was, by the way, finally a real test for a bit of new software I’d written at sea, where my own system warns you that there is (finally!) a boat in sight again, and how close it will get. It works, but it badly needs fine-tuning, because one time there are too many alerts and the next time too few.

The last few days, it must be said, were hard on all three of us. In our debrief we concluded that Honolulu may not be quite as far as Omsk, but it comes close. For the foreign readers: every Dutch person is now chuckling and thinking of a famous song by the Dutch singer Drs. P., see https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodenrit and for the lyrics https://lyricstranslate.com/en/drs-p-dodenrit-lyrics.html. Exactly why is unclear, because things went brilliantly on the broken Hoyt boom. Even without the boom we made good speed, and for 9 days in a row we sailed more than 200 miles a day. Near the islands that dropped off a bit, but after going hard for so long that was fine.

We actually ate very well. OK, Rudolf is no longer allowed to cook rice, and Kees is no longer allowed to put sambal in the food, but that was about it. We still have enough meat and chicken for 19 meals, many kilos of rice and pasta and whatnot left for the next leg. The fresh vegetables had run out by the end, but there was enough beer (one a day, sometimes two if it was “light” beer and the weather was nice) and, above all, plenty of coffee. Really the only thing almost gone was the crisps. The bread worked every time except one day. It turned out the wholemeal flour from Panama refused to knead, so luckily there was still enough left from Tenerife. Sealed in plastic, so no weevils or anything either.

The boobies stayed with us until 3-4 days before arrival. There were six of them that hitched a ride for about three weeks. Now they have to fly that whole way back. My own estimate is that they will come to a sad end.

The Starlink was the big hero of the story; unfortunately/fortunately we used a lot of data. We could (video) call our loved ones and (unfortunately) keep up with what’s going on in the world. You really shouldn’t do that, it keeps you from getting into that lovely ocean flow. There was still plenty of hassle, though; halfway through, Starlink suddenly started threatening to cancel the contract four days before we were due to arrive. This was because I first had to identify myself with my passport. Sent a copy: rejected – this is not you. Well, true, Kees Verruijt is not 100% Cornelis Arnold Verruijt. Then a “conversation” with Starlink’s AI – “Grok”. Well, a fat lot of good that did. Doesn’t work at all. Only after 3 weeks of emailing and complaining did a human answer the e-mail, and then of course it was sorted in 5 minutes.

In short, it was a lovely passage, we were hardly ever bored, and we were looking forward to Hawaii/Honolulu.

And there is plenty to tell about that. For Japan we’ve already hired an agent who arranges all sorts of things for us. A berth, for example. In Hawaii no such person exists, even though I reckon they could make a fortune. Here’s the story. There aren’t many marinas in Hawaii, and most of them, including the biggest, are owned by the “State of Hawaii”, specifically DOBOR: the Department of Boating and Ocean Recreation. Sounds good, right? The websites look as if they haven’t been updated since 1999, and there’s no separate site for the marina we had picked on the advice of https://noonsite.com, but fine, there’s an e-mail address and a phone number. Ala Wai Harbor lies right next to Waikiki beach, so an ultra prime location, and it’s the biggest (600+ berths). Emailed them right after leaving Panama. No answer. Emailed again two weeks later. No answer. Emailed the two yacht clubs in the same basin. No answer. Bought a VOIP number, because you can’t just make normal calls over Starlink, and called – no answer. It later turned out I had the wrong number, but the VOIP software tells you that by saying “$7 per minute” (when you were supposed to be calling at $0.0037 per minute). So, another message to support, which worked reasonably well, but the software turns out to be rather user-unfriendly. Oh well. Luckily I happened to talk to Liselotte and Machiel from the Pitou, who had also been here: yes, that’s well known, they don’t respond to anything. Just motor in, turn right straight away and then confront the harbour office with the fact that you’re already there.

Good to know. On the last night I sailed an extra 4 hours of detour to avoid arriving in the dark. A very good idea, because the surf breaks within ten metres of the channel. Not something to do at night! We motor in, and the whole pontoon that’s supposed to have space for visitors (or “transients”, as they call them here) is full of boats in various states of repair. Ranging from mediocre to why-hasn’t-this-sunk-yet. In the end we picked the least bad spot and were finally still.

In the end it took us exactly 28 days and we covered 4796.7 nm, still at an average of 7.2 kn. Once we did 218.1 miles in 24 hours and once 224.4 miles.

To be continued in part 2… the first week in Hawaii…