And it's.........wide right

Every rope and fender we own is deployed; now we wait and  hope

The only people who understand that reference are readers from Western New York who live and (mostly) die with the fortunes of their beloved Buffalo Bills (see 1991 Super Bowl's last play). Anyway, I'll explain why it's apt.

Hawaii is the most remote population center in the world. 1.5 million people live thousands of miles from the nearest land. In short, a small and remote target for a hurricane. Only two hurricanes have made a Hawaiian landfall in the past 50 years. But this being the year 2020, Hurricane Douglas came across the Pacific like a heat seeking missile, tracking directly towards Oahu. In fact, one weather model had the eye of the hurricane passing right over our marina! Gulp.

At the time this came to our attention we were in Kaua'i, roughly 90 miles to the northwest of Oahu. Hanalei Bay is completely exposed and winter swells produce 40 ft. waves just outside the bay. We didn't think it wise to explore what size waves a hurricane would produce so quickly pulled up anchor and headed back to our marina in Oahu.

Douglas remained on track to annihilate L'ORIENT and her 200 or so fellow yachts at Ko Olina Marina for a week before finally veering slightly right (north) of us in the final 24 hours before impact. Wide right.....and we live to sail another day. That said, it was the closest pass to Oahu in modern history. One good thing- for 3 or 4 days we forgot about dying in the global pandemic and focused on the possibility of being smashed and sunk at the dock in 120 knot winds.

Canvas off, dinghy up, personalized steering wheel cover on. Even in peril, style is everything

The entire marina was engaged in "the hurricane drill". Taking down sails, canvas......adding lines, fenders, and most importantly getting rid of anything near the boat that could become a projectile in hurricane force winds..........a table, a chair, tools, pets, small children, etc.

While sailors prepare in this way, Kirstin and I have a unique perspective as we visited St. Maarten shortly after their 2017 visit from Hurricane Irma. We witnessed total devastation of hotels, boats, everything..........300 boats sunk, huge catamarans flipped over like children's toys...........half submerged mega-yachts.

Hurricane Douglas missed Oahu by 50 miles; this is St. Maarten after a direct hit from Hurricane Irma in 2017

At a certain wind speed, no amount of preparation helps. It's just game over. Three years later, St. Maarten is still a wreck. So, we prepared but kept our perspective. There's very little you control in this situation.

13 lines on the boat in total - maybe we should have gone with 14.

Our little community of sailors continues to be fun though. It's a lot like a retirement community with happy hours, frequent unplanned visits (just to waste enough time to discontinue boat work) and lots of random socializing. Hawaii continues to mandate a 14 day quarantine for visitors, so there are no visitors..........and our resort remains empty except for us and a few locals who visit the lagoons. We'll be entering our 4th month soon in Hawaii and we've never been in bad traffic, stood in line, or waited for anything - it's unrealistic to expect this to go on, but it does. Hawaii's very limited opening of businesses has resulted in their Covid cases rising quite alarmingly.........there's even talk of shutting down inter-island travel (which would hurt us) and some businesses as well. Honolulu has lost (as in shuttered for good) over 900 businesses since January. We continue to try to live in the moment and not focus on that.

This was as bad as it got. 18 knots of wind, a passing shower and some scary clouds

In better news, we found our lost German sister (at least we think of her that way). "G" left the Virgin Islands to sail back to Europe and kind of disappeared for a month on a trip that should have taken 3 weeks. We got so nervous that we began stalking Facebook and various boat tracking sites. Just when we were going to shift into panic mode she reappeared out of the ether in the Azores......after being becalmed for a week. Whew. Unfortunately, not every sailing story has a happy ending like this one did. We had an extra glass of wine that night. She had 4 gin and tonics.

One oddity we've noted while marooned in Hawaii and unwelcome in almost every other place in the Pacific. The market for yachts (if you can believe it) is red hot. People who are sick of the pandemic and quarantines on the mainland and in Europe are buying yachts.......even paying the asking price (which is unheard of in normal times). We can't figure out why. Even a casual googling of yachting during the past 6 months is sure to turn up hundreds if not thousands of stories of sailing families refused entry into countries (even when in a damaged yacht or low on provisions). It may be a "grass is greener" myopia that land based folks have. Can our admittedly snappy life-style blog be contributing ? We've resolved to be more balanced in our reporting from the sea. For example, the other day we almost ran out of our favorite sauvignon blanc............almost.

With the danger gone, it's back to the (empty) beach