Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Journey Home


after a few false starts in Oahu, the guys will be journeying home to Vancouver in the next day or so. upon leaving for home, 2 hours out from Honolulu a big wave crashed over the engine, flooding it and conking it out. so back to Honolulu to dry it out and fix it for the 30 days home. then, with engine dry, the weather reports dictated some ugly winds, so the guys decided to head to Kauai and wait it out for a few days. Kauai is known for being the least developed of the Hawaiian islands, and the most beautiful and lush--also one of the rainiest places in the world! SPOT won't be working until 200 miles out of Hawaii so i'll be updating positions here!

Sunday, July 20, 2008

HAWA'II PICTURES


hi! Lyndsay here. to view more pics of our days in Maui and Oahu, visit

HAWAII PICS by Lyndsay

Saturday, July 19, 2008

"By Moonlight, We Ride!"

Tonight we depart Hawaii. After making the most of the Island experience it's time to leave. All the fish and coral are starting to look the same and there is only so much "extreme snorkeling" that one can do. Our trip over here was a typical, uneventful trade wind passage (when we had wind). Let's hope that the trip home is as easy... We have opted to hire a weather router for the return trip as the weather patterns have been all over the place this summer (and we don't need any more big wind and seas right now). It does look like the fist week to 10 days of the trip is going to be a SLOG. Conditions are expected to be 20-25kts, at times gusty, from the ENE (we're going north, so it means upwind sailing, which is rougher, colder, but more exciting). BUT the big issue is the 6-9 foot seas with a period of 5-10 seconds. The waves aren't that big, but at 5 seconds apart, they're really close together, which also means they're STEEP (and uncomfortable). Good thing we have lots of Clif bars, because I don't think that we'll be doing much cooking. The other bit of bad news from the weather router is that he revamped our estimate time for the trip to take to the 30 day range. Hopefully the conditions allow us to go a little more quickly. Gotta go to the store to buy a few more items. Next post will be from VANCOUVER!!!!!
Rich

Friday, July 18, 2008

Maui is pretty good, pretteeeeeee good'

Yup, now that we are stuck in Waikiki harbor and have explored some of Oahu, Maui looks better and better as the days go on. I think Oahu, while quite beautiful in its own right, is just too busy for the anti-social sailor, or me for that matter.
The Angelina Jolie shades are EVERYWHERE. I can see why they're popular though. If you're pretty, ugly, or ARE Angelina Jolie, no one can tell because they cannot see your features behind the see-through sat dishes on your face.

Anyway, sorry, back to positivism.

Ok, not yet. There are also quite a few weirdo transient sailors on our dock that are also making me long for normal people and normal conversation. Even half-normal would be fine with me...some of these dudes are FREAKS!!!

I miss Maui:
"Rich, uhhhh i think this Oatmeal is the best breakfast. Gee i don't know Jeff, there is nothing quite like a protein bar to start my day, etc." Conversation topics were becoming redundant. Good thing Maui was right around the corner.
Like Cook, the locals welcomed us with open arms.
(actually my first conversation was some local punk kid making fun of me for being a Mormon and carrying a bible...i was wearing a white button down and carrying a book. Funny kid.)
He may look like a mild mannered ukulele player. However, the second he takes his shirt off and lights some knives on fire........WATCH OUT! He burnt the shit out of himself too. What a dedicated performer.
This soggy dog was in need of a clean-up. I wasn't going to do it. Who can you count on to make you shave?
Famdamily. Look at that trim. It was time to get busy snorkeling. Sometimes there was a lava field in the way.
And more lava...
And then Lindsay was there. Good thing. Now that we found the water, we needed help finding some turtle action.
They were not hard to find, but always looked annoyed. Some Hawaiian hospitality.
I went on a hike in the crater.
Looks like a nice day to jump right in for a 5 hr tour, right?This east van "bottle lady" that followed us up the volcano was smart enough to just be STOKED on the view. She could sense the weather was turning.
It was nice for a while.I visited Bo Bo Fet's final resting place.And then the trail went down into the crater floor where, you guessed it, i was able to hike through some more lava. It was the coolest thing i have ever done, figurative and literal. It began to rain before i hit the lava field, and being at 9000 feet it was freezing and i had no rain coat. And the hike out was SKETCHY!!!
Rich found his own adventure on the Hana coast.A little cliff jumping was in order, but first he had to talk to the two chickens in front of him that it was safe. That's Rich, 3rd from the left, offering some advice. "Hurry the f%$# up" i believe it was.Hana coast.Look what we found hiding in someone's driveway. I wonder if they need any snorkel experts in "Baywatch Hawaii"?

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Not so moderate an accounting...

Day 1- Apparently Friday the 13th starts 4 hrs early. We weren’t even out of Monterey bay when we were stuck in fog with a visibility of 200 meters. When night came it was really quite frightening, having just entered the shipping lanes and San Fran, only 100 miles north, is sorrrrrt of a busy port.

So what do you do in situations like that? Hey, “no problem” I thought, I’ll just switch on our trusty radar. Hmmmmm, where is it? I must have put it somewhere? Ohhhh yeah, they cost 2000 buck, so we don’t have one. That’s ok, I’ll just grab the ol’ “Collision Avoidance Radar Detector” and that will tell us if any ships using radar are in the area. Now I know I placed it somewhere near the stack of gentleman's magazines…wait a second, no, those cost 500 dollars, so we don’t have one of those either. We do, however, have a phenomenal 50$ radar deflector, so assuming it’s “deflecting” well, and that Vlad the Russian captain isn’t into the Vodka yet, is awake, and WANTS to avoid hitting us, well then they will HAVE to avoid us. After all, we might scratch their paint. Oh YEAH, I can always blow our fog horn or, errrrr no, that’s not a fog horn, it’s a conch shell. Shit.

No that’s not good enough. There must be another option. What’s that I hear? Someone else’s fog horn? Protocol states they are supposed to blow it every minute. I’ll just bring them up on the radio and let them know we’re here:

“Yes, hello, this is Mr Perfect (thrice)…Yes, you there, ahoy… huh, no, I am not kidding, our boat is named Mr Perfect. What’s that? Yes, I know he was a WWF wrestler. Yes, I know that he had a sweet gerry curled mullet, that he spat and swatted his gum from the turnbuckle, that his rival was Ricky the Dragon Steamboat AND that his signature move was the perfect plex. NO, we DID NOT name the boat after him. Why do I know so much about wrestling then? I spent my childhood in 80’s rural Canada pal, guilt by association. We’re trying to be ironic, actually, you know? A 27 ft boat named Mr Perfect, it’s IRONIC. Get it? Good.

Now, back to you blowing your horn like some bombastic fool. What’s your heading? This is ours. Where’s our horn blow? I am blowing on it right now, hear it? No? How about a Fox 40 whistle? No? Well that’s ok, this our heading and position, and you see that big blip on your radar? Yeah? Well that’s us, now stay out of our way, MAN, we’re heading to Hawaii! Yes, in a 27ft boat. No we’re not crazy, I already told you, we’re PERFECT!!!”

This is why Rich handles all radio communications.

The wind also died in this fog so we motored till we were free of it. The wind picked up and was fairly consistent until we were almost there….

Day 2- Scarrios, Alfagetti, Zoodles. It’s all I want to eat. The nostalgia is so thick I feel like I should be catching an episode of the Dukes of Hazard. They’re already dwindling in supply, what am I going to eat for the next 2 weeks?

Day 6- Chunky soup, primed rib and beef, it’s all I want to eat. Supplies are dwindling, whatever will I get addicted to for 2-4 days next? Anything that falls into the pot in the shape of the can is, apparently, alright with me.

Day 7- My Barometer is rising- By day 7 I wrote this in my college ruled notebook: Do you have any idea what it’s like to cook when every damn thing you put down, unsecured, falls on the ground? When you boil water and then hit a wave and the water splashes on your leg? When just when you think you’ve planted your feet properly to balance well enough to go “hands free” and try and slice or stir something you hit a wave and smash your head on, well, anything in the vicinity of the sink? Do you? Do you really? You’re rocking side to side for 20 days, every 5 seconds getting tossed; you know, it strains the patience, that’s all I’m trying to say. Dr Phil might claim I have some anger management issues when he sees what it does to me, and to Rich for that matter. I would take that arrogant fat bastard and shove him inside our boat so fast….well anyway, it’s tough to keep your cool, but you actually do learn to control your anger and to live with it, and even grow as a person with each mishap. The learning became so valuable that I’d might even go so far as to say I learnt to look forward to things going wrong. Sailing is just such an esoteric experience mannn.

Day 8- WHAT THE F^%$ is that damn noise- There is one other thing that keeps the pressure welled inside you, and that’s the odd noise that permeates the boat JUST when you’re falling asleep. The DREADED can of food that comes loose and rolls around just enough to keep you awake, but not often enough to justify getting out of bed and unpacking the storage until you find the culprit. Or that fork, that damn fork that just won’t stay away from the other metallic objects and makes that little “clink, 10 seconds, clink, 20 seconds, clink, 5 seconds, clink, wake up Jeff, clink”. My favorite, however, was the can of food that DIDN’T actually exist. It took me 4 days to find it, the SOB! One 2am sleepless night, jumping to my feet like a cat I sat poised over the main storage area with headlamp and all, ready to kill. You needed patience for this one though. It only happened when there was a decent roll of the boat. Could be 20 second intervals, could be 2-3 minutes. I didn’t care, I was going to win. It turned out that it was the door of the cockpit sliding in its grooves, which was close enough to the storage that it sounded like it was coming from all over the place. I shoved duct tape in there so hard that that piece of wood never knew what hit it. Victory.

Day 9-15 - Read A LOT. Showered A LOT. Nights became more tolerable with the increasing heat. I had now gone over 25 days without eating Island Farms ‘Moose Tracks’ Ice Cream. Withdrawal symptoms are getting worse. And people think heroin is tough. Bah.

Day 16-19- I think I’ll leave it to Rich to speak to the lack of wind because I’m still recovering from the frustration. In Moby Dick, H Melville has a quote though that I feel captured the feeling that washes over you when the wind, when it has been non existent for hrs on end, picks up again: “The crew cheered that so promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it.” He was referring to the abatement of a typhoon, but hey, no wind sucks as well folks.

I will however mention one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me, and has shaken my insolent atheism.

On day 18, after sitting and sweating for 8hrs with no wind we finally decided to try the motor for a while, if only to get some breeze (we were 250 miles out with only 50 miles of fuel left) and cool off. Somehow Rich was able to get a radio station from the Big Island (then about 140 miles S of us), a classic rock station no less! I heard him yell from the front of the boat “Hey Weaver, guess what song is on?” Now, the absolute second that I heard the chorus of “oooooooo Dreeeeeeamm Weaver, I need you to get me through the niiiiiiiight” i heard a breath taken in behind me. It was a giant Dolphin, almost as large as a killer whale (it was the bull). He swam around our boat to the chorus of “dreeeeeam Weaver”, then turned on his back and slowly crossed undeneath the boat, looking up at us. Was he smiling? If he had hands I’d swear he would have waved. Off in the distance we could see his “charge”, about 5-8 dolphins breaching and playing around. Pretty memorable.

And that’s just it. Even at my worst, whether it be no wind, overheating, underslept, lurching like crazy, and banging my head on things, some bird would chirp around the boat and chill me out. Although birds are all we saw until we hit the dolphins, there is something so comical and chilling about seeing a small bird flying around your boat while you are 1000 miles from any land at all. Sucks to be you bird, so what am I worked up about?

Most of the crossing, outside of the above mentioned funny’s, was just trying to pass the time however you could. Reading reading reading, audiobooks, and sleeping. We talked a lot as well, but could go for a full day or two with little to say, then lots of chatting. You have a lot of time to think, almost too much time, but are often too tired or out of it to come up with any really introspective first discovery’s. Still, it was some very valuable alone time.

Oh yes, to answer a popular question (you read all this probably just to find this out…sorry). This was my 6th time on a sailboat, and I was never once seasick, and neither was Rich. He has also sailed more than 6 times.

If i have offended anyone of Russian origin, i do apologize most profusely. Not all Russian sea captains are drunk at night, only half off them are...ha! Pity me, I am but a simple 7th gen Canadian mongrel, i don't know any better.

Weaver's Index

Number of books read: 7

Number of audiobooks processed: 8

Number of pancakes eaten: 53

Number of Zoodles animals murdered: 876

Number of bbq lighters Rich broke whilst angry: 1

Number of ships we saw between Monterey and BEFORE we spotted land: 2

Number of airplanes: the last 5 days, 30 each night.

Chance I will stub my toe or cut my foot while walking to the front of the boat: ¼

Number of times iadimate objects became the focus of scornful cursing: 100<

Number of times for the wind: 100000000000000000<

Amount by which a visualized steak outdid ice cream: 1/1

Amount steak outdid our popular Kraft dinner: every single time I ate KD

Amount of underwear brought compared with underwear required: 4, 20

Number of buckets of water dumped over my head: easily 30

Number of times pooping in a (different) bucket: too many…rocking boat…you don’t want to know....well, maybe you do, i don't know, some people are weird. Email me.

Weavers Index is, unfortunately, still an unregistered trademark

Monday, July 7, 2008

20 days, shoulda' been 18, 2000 miles later...

And they're OFFFFFFF!!!!! Crash, roll, oww, spill, bang, creekk, THIS IS AWESOME!!!
The art of cooking pancakes is not to be taken lightly, and requires the utmost patience, understanding and experience. The water and powder mix must be stirred and your aim with the pam spray must be exact, and, ummmm...that's it.
Pseudo-Intellectual Urban Revolutionary, or PIUR, enjoys his leatherbound copy of the literary classic "Two Years Before the Mast". The question is, how long will, or even can, this look last at sea?
Whew, man o man, not long. However, in his defense, there was a very engaging article in there on "Race in America", as well as a very in-depth interview with Steve Carrell, and an amazing photo essay about "who was at Hef's house last month". So, I'd say he just has to answer for the Smurf theme.
Ohh deeaary me, now this is a simply refulgent setting....
Tie down the main sail when we had too much wind and were only running the jib.
I said, we TIE DOWN THE MAIN! Rich can do it without looking, what gives?
Paaaaaatience young Jedi.
Clouds are cooooooool.
The start of our doldrums 300 miles out. Just a head dunk for now, thank you, will dunk the whole bucket later.
Ahhhh the aroma of moldy water. Water bags got mold in them from all the hot weather, so had to boil water. No wind AND a boil water advisory, and NO Ontario PC politicians to blame for it. ARRRRRGHH.
Nothing else to do but read and sing: "He's a tanning, tanning, tannnnnning, he's tannin' machiiiiiiine, watchem' get down, watchem' get down...bom chicka bom bom chicka chicka...skin cancer might commme to take his lllllliiiiiife, but at least he'll be fullll, full of that viiiitamin DDDDDDDDD...
"Alright god, now listen up. I don't like you, and you sure as hell...ahh damn, sorry...don't like me, but have i got a deal for you. If you could make the wind blowww, well now i am not promising anything, but i just miiiight think about making an appearance in one of your worship buildings etc.. Cross myself, sing, throw holy water, Hail Marys, back flips (they did it in Blue Bros?), you name it, i'll do it. Whaddaya say?" BUT, the wind STILL didn't blow.

"Hey stereotypical image of god. Jeff says you are just some mythological creature, like Neptune and Poseidon, but i am not like him. I'm a nice guy. I need to get his crazy ass to land, he's losing it man. And me, well i am normally patient and collected, but this lack of wind is making me a little pissed off myself from time to time...so how about, ol buddy, how about some wind?"

"HA HA, he listened to me. The wind picked up last night and brought us in to Maui. God exists, at least for today!" I maintain it was because it was the night of Canada day.
Isn't wind beautiful? Yes, i know you can't see it, but i can.
Lahaina is a nice site on the best of days, buttttt ohhhhh baby, does it look good on July 2nd.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Lahaina nights

We arrived at 4, or 5, or maybe it was 6 pm yesterday, it was definitely in the afternoon. I'm not sure what day of the week it was, i had to ask someone, but the date was July 2nd. i knew this because of Lindsay's flight arriving that night.

We've had some complications re our inflatable dingy being somewhat inadequate for our needs, namely that it it has a weight capacity of our combined weight, which would be fine if there wasn't surf and waves everywhere. And we planned so well. So getting to land was mental.

Long and short of it was, is, that i had drop Rich off at the dock, then take the boat back out and re-moor it, then paddle the dingy for 500 metres across the front of Lahaina harbour to avoid the surf, then down the middle of the boat channel in past the breakwater. It was a lot of fun, doing it with my hands as well because one of my oars broke in the first 5 minutes. It was getting dark too, which meant sharks would be coming in for dinner. It was also in front of the boardwalk and 10 patio restaurants, as well as many tour boats etc.., so i made a lot of peoples vacation photo sessions, and also gained the respect of a lot of surfers who gave me a thumbs up. Radical.

Anyway, we are going to Molokini island to get away from independence day tomorrow and will be back on the 5th, and will update the blog then.

Glad to be on land. Might end up in the drunk tank with the way i'm walking.

jeff

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

LAND HO!



"LAND HO! CAN SEE MAUI WAY IN DISTANCE BUT F@*CKING WIND STILL FROM WEST! ONLY DCENT PROGRESS WHEN HIT BY SQUALL. VERY FRUSTRATING! HOPE WE CAN GET TOMORROW AM. POSITION 21 DEG N 154. 43 W." --Yes, the latest text from my usually ever-patient honey Rich Trawick! I leave tomorrow for Maui, YAY! Hopefully my scruffy bearded husband will be there too, and his trusty, likely scruffy and bearded first mate/groomsman Jeff! Stay tuned for pics of Hawaii adventures! I have this book of vintage Maui postcards that belonged to Mom Trawick's dad, I'm going to bring it along and find some of the spots in the postcards! Other goals in Hawaii-- to seek out the perfect Haupia cake (coconut pudding/vanilla sponge cake) so I can replicate it at home (and turn them into cupcakes!) , and to eat lots of shaved ice!

**** July 2: UPDATE: text messages on Jeff's US cell phone number now works!! Wind has picked up and if all goes well, RT will greet me at the airport tonight when I arrive!!!