Tahiti-Hawaii Summary

Hi Folks,

We have found an internet wireless facility at a bar just outside of the harbour gate. Unfortunately we have had to order a rum and coke each to avail ourselves of the facility. In fact, we've just ordered our second rum and cokes. We didn't want to but we've done it out of duty to the blog :-) Anyway, all is well. We've met several terrific sailors. One of them, Jeff, out of San Francisco on his Kelly-Petersen 46 has rented a car and took us into town with him for a visit to the laundromat. Tomorrow the three of us will do a circuit of the island with Arnold and myself footing the fuel, lunch, and other expenses.

Anyway, below is my summary of our sail from Tahiti to Hawaii (the "big island").

It was an unexpectedly fast passage:
- 2260 nautical miles
- 18.5 days
- Average speed of 5.1 knots
- The winds were generally outstanding from the second day out of Tahiti until the day before we arrived in Hawaii
- The first half of the trip, to just past the equator, was essentially a windward passage. We needed to go east to cross the equator at 147 W but the winds were generally from the NE or E – never from the SE as I would have expected. Consequently we were forced to sail close to the wind, even when it veered to the E because we had to follow it around to get as much “easting” as possible. (My advice to any ketches, catamarans, heavy displacement cruisers or any boats that may have problems beating into the wind is to wait in Tahiti until there is a favourable wind then sail as far east or ENE as you can – half way to the Marquesas if possible – and when the wind changes lay a course for 147 W at the equator.)
- Crossing “doldrums” of the equator posed no problem whatsoever. The winds were no different in the equatorial region than elsewhere.
- From the moment we lay a course directly for Hilo after crossing the equator the sailing conditions were outstanding. Generally we were on a beam reach with 12-18 kt NE winds. Sometimes the wind back to the N a bit putting us on a narrow reach. We were regularly getting noon-noon distances of more than 120 nm with several days over 150 nm and the top day of 171 nm
- The weather was cooler and damper than we expected, with low fast-moving clouds and light rain every day or two. With this weather activity we would get winds of up to 24 kt.
- We finally started to use the autopilot full-time and found that it does a much better job of steering and consumes less than half of the electrical power that the refrigerator does.
- Our supplies held out well
- Fresh pineapple and mangoes for the first few days
- Fresh carrots for the first week
- An onion a day until about the 16th day
- Potatoes lasted the throughout the entire passage
- Baked a loaf of bread every other day after we consumed our bread from Papeete
- Lots of rice, spaghetti, canned fish
- We didn't bring much alcohol so we ran out of cask wine on about the 12th day and beer on about the 16th day. (To my annoyance I was later to discover another cask of wine in the hold.)
- We did not have to switch gas cylinders. That little 3.4 kg cylinder supported us through endless meals, cups of coffee and soup, and gas-consuming bread baking.
- Our port tank ran dry on the 11th day. After a request for help from our sailing friends (see blog) that night we got the only decent rain on the entire passage and took on 55-60 liters of water. We arrived in Hilo with half of our reserve water intact and both tanks functioning.
- Casualties of the passage:
- One wrist watch overboard
- One ruined inner forestay
- The HF radio is getting to signal strength. Both the radio and the tuner seem to be working OK and all the connections seem intact but the radio is just not receiving. We will do a thorough check of every connection and if we cannot find the fault will seek help in Honolulu.
- One anchor trip line wrapped around the propeller shaft
- The electrical supply system worked brilliantly well. During the 444 hour passage we ran the engine a total of 13 hours to charge the batteries. The solar panels and wind charger were of great assistance in minimizing the nett power usage and the fast charging and large battery capacity took care of the shortfalls.