Honolulu - Christmas Day

Christmas in Australia has passed and today is Christmas Day in this part of the world. I hope that all of my friends and their families have had a good Christmas.

I am alone on the boat but surrounded by people. I was invited to dinner last night with the crew of the Chinese junk. I contributed four badly-needed onions to the meal and brought along a plastic bucket filled with ice and 5 beers. The venue was the covered area overlooking the jetty where Pachuca lies, with the cooking done on the barbecue. It was a very pleasant evening for me with plenty of food, beer, red wine, and the company of very interesting people.

Nelson the captain told me a bit more about the boat. They carry enough water for 128 days. They cannot capture rain water because the mildew-suppressing dyes in the sails are washed into the rain water. He said that his sails have too many battens that are too stiff so that they are always flat and he cannot get a good airfoil shape for going into the wind. Other junks have more flexible sails that allow them to point about 45 degrees into the wind.

Hugh told me about their great success in fishing on their passage to Hawaii. One crewman caught over 50 squid in a couple of hours. The cooked the squid but also used them to catch all of the fish that they could consume, including Mai Mai and Tuna. They use hand lines and catch the fish even in the deep ocean away from land.

My task for this morning is to investigate the problem with the HF radio. I turned it on last night and got perfect reception with all of the bars of signal strength showing. After about one minute it started to degenerate, went down to a few bars, then I heard a crackle and the signal was up again. My first suspect was the connection between the antenna and the back stay. Sure enough there was corrosion. I carefully cleaned everything up with solvent and sand paper and reestablished the connection. Sadly, that was not the answer. I'll now empty the starboard quarter berth and have a look at the connections to the tuner. Failing that I will open up the compartment to the back of the radio and jiggle some connections there. I now have a powerful tool: the signal comes and goes and I figure that if I jiggle the right spot I'll get some audible action.