Day 28 Hawaii to Japan: Land Ho

Well, it’s Sunday again and we finally have land in sight. Tomorrow at exactly twelve o’clock we’re expected at Hiroshima Kanon Marina. They’ve even told us which berth we’ll have. Japan is different, and we’re going to find out just how different!

I’m very pleased with how things have gone (so far, you never know). Especially that I spotted a circular system developing in good time and predicted to the boys: this could well turn into a serious typhoon… Well, that certainly turned out to be true: Bavi is said to be the most powerful in decades. 40 dead so far, and that number could rise considerably. So we chose a much longer route via the north, which meant we weren’t just further away, but also that if the storm changed course we’d have plenty of time to get “out of the way”. That’s the advantage of being at sea. The Northern Marianas didn’t have that option and were hit very hard. Taiwan, the Philippines, Okinawa (southern Japan, also a long way from here) and soon China are feeling the storm too.

One of the things that suddenly makes sense now is that from about 4 days ago we started seeing the occasional ship on AIS. Almost always so far off that we couldn’t see them with the naked eye. But one of them was the Ever Something-or-other, a sister ship of the Ever Given, which got stuck sideways in the Suez Canal a few years back. At some point it stopped overtaking us and just sat there, dead in the water. As a joke I was going to call them on the VHF: is something broken, can we help? Need an Ethernet switch, perhaps? But now we get it: she’s bound for China, and the port of Shanghai is practically deserted/closed.

We ourselves mostly had to deal with little or no wind combined with an extreme swell coming from where the storm had been 1-2 days earlier.

In the picture above you can see the biggest wave heights I’ve ever seen: up to 12 metres. Luckily it was a very long swell, but at one point the waves got a bit steeper and I couldn’t help thinking of Interstellar. Brrrrr. I was rather worried about what it would be like closer to the coast, but we’re there now and it has only got better. The storm curved around behind Japan just in time.

Also, all the vegetables (peppers, onions, garlic, one forgotten cucumber) have now gone overboard, as they’re not allowed into Japan. Soon the remaining beer stock goes overboard too… Fortunately it’s only the not-so-great Panamanian beer left; Arnold and I have already polished off all the Brouwdok and the good stuff.

Tonight we have to be at the entrance to the Bungo Strait at 18:00. We’re allowed to be half an hour early or late. That’s how the coast guard likes it. Why, no idea. And if we can’t make it, we have to e-mail the agent, who will pass it on. But I just asked: is it OK if we arrive an hour early, and the answer was: can’t you slow down by half an hour? Hint taken.

Well, tomorrow we’ll be nicely busy, too busy to post anything. And we’ll all have plenty of first impressions to process. So that’s why I’m posting now. Hopefully summer in the Netherlands will be a bit less hot from here on – here it’s just getting going and apparently it’s 30-plus….