A Sailing Voyage - from Maui to Vancouver

A Sailing Voyagefrom Maui to Vancouver

August 1-17th, 2016

2500 nautical miles

by Suze Cumming

Our daily progress from Lahaina Maui to Vancouver BC.

We left from Lahaina Maui at 3:15 pm August 1st with Sunny skies.

Provisions: Food for 10 people for up to 20 days.

Feeling excited and optimistic.

A Happy Hour Beer before severe sea sickness hit most of the crew

As we rounded the point at Kaanapali, the wind picked up to about 20 knots, the seas got rough and we were beating to windward. Ideal conditions for sea sickness and much of the crew suffered. This continued for several days.

Misery!

The Cliffs of Moloka’i. Our last sight of land until 16 days later when we entered the Juan de Fuca Strait.

Grey days and 360 degree horizons. This view was repeated over and over again.

The crew of 10 was divided into 2 watches. This is my gang. There are five shifts per day. 6am – noonNoon – 6pm6pm - 10pm10pm - 2am2am - 6amThis means you have different shifts every other day. The oncoming watch prepares the meals and the off going watch cleans up.

It’s a whole new perspective on living!

We all get together for happy hour and dinner around 6pm weather permitting. Ration is one drink per day except when we find an excuse for double rations.

Another meal together.

The light was incredible. Always changing and offering new perspectives.

The sea is humbling and subtle. It earns a place in your heart slowly amid the discomforts of living on a small boat with 9 other people - damp with sea water, humidity and sweat.

We had a mix of heavy wind, moderate and of course, the doldrums in the high pressure.

I wasn’t able to take many pictures of the heavy wind as the sea spray would ruin the camera.

Several times we had 25-30 knots and the sailing was exhilarating.

Our Beneteau First 47.7, String Theory, performed brilliantly.

The weather was mixed. As you can see from the weather charts included, we sailed through several lows and in and around the big high.

The southern stretches were hot with water temperatures at 82degrees F but as we got further north the nights got cold and damp.

We had a couple of calm sunny days to dry out sleeping bags and clothes and we were glad to have the engine on those days to continue our progress towards Vancouver.

The discomfort came from the dampness. We often had 100% humidity and between that and the salt water splashes, we were wet much of the 17 days.

My watch, very early morning

Life below decks was crowded but we did a great job of keeping things organized. We lived much of the time on a 22 degree heel.

Home sweet home

This is my bunk, shared with Eric – on the opposite watch. Like ships passing in the night.

It was most comfortable on Starboard tack which luckily, was most of the trip.

We plotted our progress daily.

As did the tracker for friends and family at home

Christof at the Navigation Station. We had weather information coming in every day and a cool program called Expedition to help chart our path home around the huge high pressure system (aka no wind).

In the end, the program helped but good decisions by Christof, Dave and the rest of the crew kept us in wind most of the time with very few engine hours and an arrival in Vancouver on the short end of our estimated range.

We used AIS and radar to keep track of other boats. We had several encounters with fishing boats and Ocean freighters but always from a safe distance.

It’s nice to see other boats when you are 1100 miles from land in all directions.

Dave, watch captain on my shift, had always wanted a coveted Japanese glass fishing float so we were pretty pleased to find this on one of our few days in the calms of the high pressure system.

Happy man!

Tracking the high pressure system was a daily thing.

Traditionally, sailboats go above the high and sail east but the high was big and far north and we considered sailing under it.

In the end, we went through a narrow bit of it, got above it and had amazing wind all the way to Vitoria.

String Theory

Eric celebrating his birthday at Sea.

Doing what he loves.

We fished for the first 12 day and not a bite. Very disappointing but the other boats we communicated with had the same results.

Our fearless leader.

Christof Marti, of Simply Sailing is an excellent leader, teacher and all around sailing guru.

If you are thinking of learning to sail, Christof is definitely your answer.

Contact him at Simply Sailing in Vancouver http://www.simplysailing.ca/

Health Food

Egg McMuffin

Eric has scooped up a bucket of Velella Velella. A small hydrozoan that lives on the surface of the open ocean.

They each have a small stiff sail that catches the wind and propels them over the surface of the sea.

Here are the Velella Velella by the thousands.

For other wildlife, we saw Orcas, a Humpback Whale, a pod of what we believe were Pilot Whales, and several Dolphin encounters. Unfortunately no pictures as sightings were short and often at night.

We were kept company on a regular basis by Albatross and other sea birds – 1000 miles from shore.

Velella Velella

Happy Hour

Half way – double rations!

String Theory

Super Calm

Albatross and the wind is picking up. Celebration.

It’s a big treat to see a ship at sea when you are over 1000 miles from shore in every direction.

Finally, some downwind sailing. As the wind veered on the top of the high we were able to set our asymmetrical spinnaker. The wind built slowly over many hours to 25-30 knots. We were flying.

In the end, we kept the spinnaker up too long and blew it apart. Back to the white sails.

Randy in the Galley. We ate very well. We had a fridge and freezer on the boat so we even had ice cubes for happy hour.

String Theory

Repairing the rip in the mainsail. Nice catch Dave!

Me on the helm!

Fresh cucumbers day 15

We ate a bag of chocolate bars every night.

Really!

That’s more like it. Wind is back.

We took shifts on the helm. Sometimes a half hour sometimes an hour – depending on conditions. At night with no light, it was extremely challenging and exhausting to stay focused while steering by instruments.

Arriving in Vancouver

Picture from the dock at Coal Harbour Marina in Vancouver. We were met by friends, family and the String Theory race team.

Brenda and Marguerite threw us an amazing welcome home party. It was a special finale to a very cool experience.

Christof backing the boat in with a huge audience. Well done!

After a couple of happy’s at Happy Hour back in Vancouver with my daughter Ali.