Tomorrow is the big day

Liquid Wind (our fuel bladders)

 L'ORIENTals everywhere are celebrating our departure (Monday Mar 22) from Ko Olina. Our weather router (the venerable and highly esteemed "Bruce") has given us the green light and so tomorrow about 10:00 AM we will cast off on our 21 day (or so) odyssey from Oahu to Tahiti. Sounds exotic...........even a bit relaxing, right? Visions of pink drinks with umbrellas? Dolphins engaged in a Broadway-quality synchronized jumping routine ?

The sail is actually quite challenging, complete with too much wind, not enough wind, wind from every direction, squalls, lightning, and of course multiple large wave trains........the initial problem being the Hawaiian Islands themselves reflecting and magnifying the trade winds. The first 3 days are bound to be rough- hopefully we haven't "gone soft" in our 48 weeks in Hawaii. Oh, and our departure corresponds with the whale migration season (they're going north), so we will be watching for spouts as well as shipping containers, Los Angeles-class attack submarines leaving Pearl Harbor, and any other flotsam and jetsam.

Crabby is secured on the bow

Long passages are strange- you completely lose your perspective of time once you acclimate. When you're "in the groove", you're never completely awake or asleep; if you're old enough you might remember dentist's office visits in the 1970s featuring the anesthetic known as "sweet air". That's the closest analog, at least for me. So don't fret for us that 21 days is a long time.........in our little sailing time machine, it's likely to seem like 10 days.

Even if the actual elapsed time is longer than 21 days, we're ready from a provisioning perspective. We have more food, fuel, spare parts, and even large water toys than we have ever carried before. Although if Kirstin suggests using her paddle board in the doldrums I'll be checking on what meds she's been taking.

So don't think of this as sailing. Imagine instead skateboarding at 6 mph 24/7 from New York to Denver Colorado.  You'd get there in 21 days, maybe changing your polyurethane wheels about 10 times. That's the task at hand. 

If you find your current pandemic a bit boring, our blog tracker is currently working so you can have fun seeing where we are and what wind we are facing. Just remember, purple (bad)- no wind. Yellow/orange- (bad) too much wind. Yellow by itself (really, really bad)......don't ask, because those anomalies have names. To find the blog tracker click on Where are We on the home page.

Given our dismal fishing experiences of the past, we've foregone checking with various regulatory bodies on the local maximum catch. 

Stay tuned !

Ko Olina Sunset