"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