The Ultimate Passage/Rescue to Hawai’i

Leaving Tahiti was bittersweet and a little bit of an adventure. As is always the case, when it’s time to go, the wind picks up just to make things more difficult. In this specific anchorage, you cross an airport zone, where you need to ask for permission to cross the airfield. Of course when we called, they asked us to hold tight for a minute and we were trying to maintain our position in the sudden gust of wind. Once they said it was time to go again, we had by that time done a loop. As we were trying to head out through the markers, we were able to gently “high five“ the red marker on our way out. Oops! Leaving Tahiti wasn’t as difficult as leaving some of those other atolls, but waves tend to react strangely around land masses, so it’s always a little bumpy. But soon enough, we were on our way on a sunny yet splashy sort of day.

We knew that this passage would be an interesting one, mostly because of the wind and angle. It’s not directly on the nose, but it is on the beam and still technically up wind, which makes for less favourable conditions. No amount of prep truly got me ready for what was coming. 

Looking back at my notes, it doesn’t sound so bad, but I remember those first five or six days feeling really difficult. The boat is heeled over so sharply to port and every action you do on the boat you were trying to defy gravity. Also with waves coming on the beam of the boat, they are often splashing into the cockpit, which makes for a salty, soggy mess. On the bright side, there was a nice amount of wind to push us north and east towards Hawaii.

The lesson of the day for making tracks to Hawaii is to get as far east as possible before you hit the doldrums. That will make the second part of the journey, after the doldrums, more comfortable. So every chance we got, we would point east, though it wasn’t always possible with the wave direction. 

My stomach was pretty unsettled for that first week or so, so meals were easy as it was mostly snacks you could grab with one hand, and juice. For some reason, I was so thirsty for juice and not much else. When a passage is this splashy, we aren’t able to have any of the hatches open in the boat so it makes for a really hot and sweaty time below decks, especially as we were approaching the equator. Cooking on a hot stove can be really uncomfortable in those kinds of conditions so we didn’t do much cooking until about day five or six when I boot-strapped myself to make a big pot of KD for the crew. It was worth the effort, but man, what a marathon!

Everyone was feeling how difficult this first leg was, though the weather wasn’t too bad. We had the occasional squall during the night and sometimes during the day, but it was usually sunny. Oh, and did I mention hot? We were still able to maintain some afternoon family time in the cockpit with an audiobook and some chips and then getting ready for our first night watches.

It has been so handy to give the kids some night watch time, as it gives Matt and I a really good break in the evening where we can possibly catch up on more than two or three hours of sleep. 

The way it works on a perfect night is Digory will have his watch from 6 to 9 PM, where he sits in the cockpit as the sun goes down, keeping an eye on the chart plotter and the ocean around him. Piper usually stays in the cockpit with him just to keep him company.

Then at 9pm, I’ll come up to relieve the kids and send them to bed, after I’ve had a bit of a sleep down below while they were on watch. I’ll be on watch from 9 PM until 1 AM, where I’ll usually watch a show or a movie or two, and then turn on an audiobook to try and get sleepy. 

At 1 AM Matt and I will swap places and then he’s on shift until 5 AM, where he’ll go and wake up Piper for a sunrise shift. It doesn’t always work out perfectly but often enough it means that one or both of the adults could possibly have gotten five hours straight sleep. And possibly more, which makes life quite doable. 

Before we knew it, we were crossing the equator again! There was much less fanfare this time than our first time, but also had to do with the fact we crossed at about 7 PM at night and the sea state was pretty rough so we weren’t really hanging out in the water. Personally, I was sleeping. But it was a marker that we were getting close to halfway there, and that the weather in the sea state would soon start to change.

I wish we could say that we were finding our groove and everyone was feeling good, but it was still a pretty exhausting passage. I still wasn’t able to eat much and everyone was pretty tired. We filled our days with books or shows or knitting or finding things to eat or podcast or cold drinks and sometimes doing laundry in a bucket. Everyone was so sweaty, that we weren’t wearing many clothes, but the clothes you were wearing were getting sweat through. Can you smell the teen spirit from over there? 

We had made a good amount of easting thankfully, as the wind had been in our favor, pushing us at a steady pace the whole time. In hindsight, I really shouldn’t be complaining, but that first leg was just really rough. 

We were lucky to have cast off at a similar time as our good friends on another Canadian boat called Flow, and they were just a day or two behind us. It was a daily check in with them and another boat nearby, where all the captains would confirm their positions and their track and make sure everyone is doing OK. Even with hundreds of miles between each vessel, it felt like a small community.

And then we woke up to a really unfortunate message from Flow: their rudder had fallen off at sea in the night. For a sailboat this is a really bad sign. The rudder will give you steerage, and so without it you’re a big bobbing, cork skidding along on top of the ocean. We were able to message back-and-forth with our starlink, thankfully, and it wasn’t long until we threw out the offer of turning around to come and help them. We were about 230 miles away, which is about a day and a half, but it didn’t feel right to carry on with him handicapped like that in the middle of the ocean. (They were literally as far away from land as you could get in every direction)

While they were hand steering with a hand tiller out the back of their boat, making tracks toward us north, we were making tracks south to meet up with them. We met in the middle about a full day later with a bit of a plan. We thought to try and tow them for a time, to give them a bit of rest, but to also see if with a bit of guidance they could test out their Hydrovane. It was a bit of an effort to get that going, but it did give the crew on Flow a bit of a break - but it didn’t really help with the problem. The winds had really calmed down, and we were properly in the doldrums, so their Hydrovane wasn’t much help. With a lot of back-and-forth chat with their land support, and us watching how their boat moved in the water, they came to the difficult decision to scuttle their boat at sea. For them, it would’ve been over 1000 miles in any direction to get to the next location, which didn’t even solve the problem of the rudder on the boat. It was a really tricky decision with a lot of details, but for their safety and the peace of mind of their family and loved ones, it was the best decision to abandon ship and climb aboard Oatmeal Savage. (I’m simplifying this a lot) 

Luckily, at the time the sea state was decent, and Matt was able to lower our dinghy down and run it back-and-forth with loads of their belongings. It was still a wild scramble and a mad dash to get things ready before the sun went down. Our dear friends were so shaken and sad, but it was the right thing to do. Matt was able to run the dingy back 3 times with their fuel and their possessions. It took our whole family working together make this happen, loading bags from the swim grid, into the cockpit, then into the boat. It was quite an effort but I know it was a gift to be able to have the luxury of time to be able to grab some things.

It was heartbreaking over the next few days for Jeanne to say something like “oh, I must have left that on the boat” or “why didn’t grab that from the boat?” Oof, so tough. 

Now with two extra people on our boat, we set forth on the next leg of our journey. Those first 2 days, we just did our best to sort out spaces and places for everyone. 

Our boat isn’t huge (42’ long and 13’ wide) but it’s not too small either. The Pearson 424 has a unique layout that has really worked out for us, with a pullman-style berth right below the first companion way. This is usually Digory’s bed, but he knows that when we have guests, he gets bumped to the couch or the hammock. So we were able to freshen up his bed and give it to Stu and Jeanne, and it ended up being perfect. It’s the most stable position in the boat and has space for 2 and even a blackout curtain. We often found the two of them curled up in their whispering to each other and just being “alone” while amongst all of us. It was a tiny bit of personal space and we were so happy they could have it. 

Luckily, we had the hot water tank full of warm water, so Stu and Jeanne could take showers before heading to bed. We didn’t even worry about setting them up in our night watch schedule just yet - they needed to rest and just be together.

Over the next few days, we would work something out that made the watch schedule quite comfortable for everyone, and we all only had a 2 hour shift. No real complaints over here! It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. I think that was the theme of the next 10 days together - not perfect, but it really worked!

For the next few days, we found a pleasant rhythm with our new crew which consisted of getting the morning started with coffees for whoever was up first, maybe a group breakfast like pancakes or oatmeal, and then just plugging along with another day at sea. Stu and Jeanne were such great folks to have around and were often found helping out with daily boat tasks or mixing up some dough for fresh bread and in general being great company. I’m not just saying that - truly, these are lovely human beings to be around, especially in a small space. 

Through the cruisers community, we had heard of a rogue sea glider probe that was currently adrift in the Pacific, near Hawaii. The University of Washington was asking for any sailors out there to keep an eye out for it and to possibly rescue it if the conditions were safe enough. As we were looking at our track on the map, it seemed like a feasible thing for us to do. We had had this idea in mind before we rescued Flow, but it certainly took a backseat for the time being. As our track neared closer and closer to the sea glider, we decided it was worth a try to rescue it. 

With our boat pleasantly full of rescued items, we continued to make our way towards Hawaii with pretty steady winds and a fair amount of motoring as well. Our night watch schedule was so easy now as it was shared between four adults and the kids taking on the early evening and early morning watches. We were almost catching up on sleep!

Before we knew it, we could start to see the low lump of big island Hawaii on the horizon. I wasn’t nearly as emotional as I thought I’d be, and it’s always a bit anticlimactic to get to land as it takes the better part of the day, but we were all excited to finally see Hawaii on the horizon. We pulled into Hilo Harbor, just as the sun was going down and after our last big yummy meal at sea together. With the anchor laid down and the sun setting behind us, as adults popped open a celebratory bottle and had one last drink together.

This last passage took us a solid three weeks, 21 days on the open ocean. It might have been a little shorter had we not picked up our friends of course, but we were just so grateful to be able to get them out of a jam and keep them safe and sound. 

We were easily cleared into United States with their ROAM app, and the next morning Stu and Jeanne began unloading their gear from our boat back into the dinghy, and then back to land. They had a family gathering in Honolulu in a few days time, and they were eager to see family and catch up. Understandably so. It was another few dinghy rides to the dock and before we knew it, we were bidding our friends farewell. Again, it was bittersweet, but I know we were happy to see them well and onto their next adventure. 

We can honestly say that we missed having them around. It took a few days to settle back into boat life, but I still miss having our friends around. 

We decided to tie up the boat in the little river in Hilo, which has been the best choice ever. We are tied up to the concrete dock, right near town, which makes day-to-day life really easy. And it’s nearly the same price as being at anchor, which is strange to us. 

So far, Hawaii has been a funny place for a sailboat. Despite it being a land of islands, it’s not very boat friendly. There are lots of hoops to jump through, lots of fees to pay, and very few accommodations made for adventurers from sea. 

We were so happy to be tied up at the dock and sitting so dang still. That passage was pretty rough and really wet, so our first order of business was getting to shore to wash our scads and scads of laundry. It felt like a lifetime ago that we were still and calm in the boat, and this is not lost on these weary sailors.

Now that we’re in Hawaii, we wait for my brother to come for a visit so we can be full on tourists in Hilo and for some time to rest, relax and regroup before we set off again for our last big three week passage back home to Canada. I can’t quite wrap my head around doing this all over again, but the promise of Home at the end this time is really tempting. We know now that we can do this, and that the boat can handle this, it’s just an endurance race more than anything. So for now, we are enjoying city life and trying to use our jelly-legs as often as possible before, we’re trapped on the boat again for another three weeks.