Onward to Alaska

We’re writing from the beautiful Hanalei Bay, on the north shore of Kauai, Hawaii. We arrived here after an easy overnight sail from Oahu and were joined this morning by our friends on Dogbark, who are are anchored nearby under the rainbow that has formed in the mist. Our friend Maddy will be arriving on the beach soon to join the crew for our passage in a few days to Alaska. From where Debonair is anchored, we can count five waterfalls.

It’s been a a long time getting here. There’s been the planning. We’ve studied pilot charts and read cruising guides, made timelines, crossed them out, decided to pull the kids from school a few days early. We’ve written project spreadsheets and provisioning spreadsheets and ordered spare parts. A lot of spare parts. We hauled the boat out of the water not once, but twice this spring. The first haulout saw Jason and Caitlin completing a week of annual maintenance, mostly lots and lots of painting. The second time Jason was on his own, repairing a problem with the external ballast we discovered following the first haulout. He spent most of the week on his back under the boat drilling up into it or in the bilge with 4’ drill bits drilling out of it. All is well.

In addition, we’ve bent on a new working jib and added new jib sheet tracks, bent on a new mizzen sail, installed a heater in the cabin, replaced the shore power charger, made the decks seams more watertight, installed a new prism in the fore peak hatch, bought lots of warm clothes and swapped our South Pacific books for tales from Alaska. We’ve loaded hundreds of pounds of food into the boat and recorded the storage location of each can and jar.Work projects and provisions come together.

I’d say we’re ready, but we’re never ready. Huge thanks to Becky and Serge, friends in Honolulu, for their aloha and for accepting piles of boxes we shipped to their house and especially to Jason’s brother, Chris, who joined Jason in Oahu for a week of work projects.

The new heater Jason & Chris installed. Thanks, S/V Dogbark for such a cute heater!

The weather this year is unsettled. What the wind and seas are doing will determine just about everything in our small world over the next few weeks, so we’re thinking about it a lot. But if you aren’t so interested in this unsettled weather, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Here’s the short version: in order to get out of Hawaii before the hurricane season here, but after most of the big North Pacific gales, most boats bound to Alaska tend to leave Hawaii mid-May through mid-June. The rhum line to Kodiak is almost due north. Most summers, boats would sail slightly west of north out of Hawaii on the northeast trade winds, then bend slightly east again when entering the Westerly winds that dominate the North Pacific summer. But this summer the high pressure that usually establishes itself in the eastern part of the North Pacific has so far failed to do so, probably, we’re told, because of El Nino conditions. This means that all the regular weather patterns dictated by that high aren’t present. Most notably for us, the Westerlies haven’t established themselves, gales are still crossing toward Kodiak, and there’s a lot of light and variable winds between here and there. The high may yet establish itself. Until then, we spring for the more expensive weather forecasting subscription.

We’re sad to be leaving the tropics for a lot of obvious reasons, but of course we’re excited about what lies ahead. We’re looking to taking our departure from Hanelei Bay by early next week and expect the passage to Kodiak Island to take about three weeks, if all goes as planned. Thanks so much for reading and keeping up with our northward progress. We’ll keep you posted!