Rangiroa to Oahu - Week 3 and arrival !

Monday, Dec 30
21 17.2N / 157 50.4

Week 3 of our passage from Rangiroa, French Polynesia to Oahu, Hawaii was not a 'fun' week and we were very relieved, after 23 days at sea, to have this iconic view of Diamond Head and Waikiki Beach in front of us. Another passage complete, we had sailed 2465 miles to make 2252 good.

In our last post I mentioned that we had 'left' the doldrums. I now take it back, we hadn't left the doldrums at all, they do move and were just a bit further north. Once we hit 6N we got the full treatment. It started with a lot of yellow blobs (squalls) showing up all over the radar screen. We continued on, dodging where possible and dealing with the gusts when not possible to dodge. The blobs started to reform and eventually merged into one huge blob completely surrounding us. We reduced sail as it was gusting into the 30's. It got quite rough and we eventually hove-to in order to clean up the mess in the galley. At some point, a dish had wedged itself against the usually very sturdy latch on the inside of our china cupboard and opened it, sending most of our china flying across the galley to hit the opposite wall and shatter into pieces. We lost about 1/2 of it. We sat there for about four hours to let the worst of it cross over us. We got underway and it actually got worse the next night (it always happens at night), Christmas Eve, with gusts now into the 40's and steady F8 winds. We have dealt many times with gale-force winds and with squalls, but, we've never really had the combination of the two which was a different animal. It was hard to know what to expect, we'd see a squall coming and maybe there were going to be big gusts and maybe there weren't, the anticipation became very wearing.

We got to about 11N on Christmas Day and got a present as the squalls abated and blue skies returned. The next few days were excellent with great speed and long daily runs. Then, the wind died to nothing after a few hours of going between 13-30 knots every ten minutes. We motored for a while until the wind picked up again. We were on the final stretch into Honolulu and counting down the hours. The wind was supposed to drop away at midnight and we were anticipating a motor in for the final leg and an early morning arrival. Then, when we were about 50 miles out an isolated squall popped up with no notice, lots of rain and winds 35 again, we hove-to and thought we might have to spend a further night at sea, what a disappointment, but, after a few hours, winds dropped into the mid-20's and on we went arriving at 1500 into the Ali Wai Yacht Harbour, just in time for New Year's Eve celebrations the next day. We'll be here until mid-May when we'll head off for Alaska. We'll, of course, be doing boat jobs, but, hope to fit in a few tourist activities as well.