CLOSE-HAULED TO HAWAII
One of my favorite aphorisms about ocean sailing is: “Nothing goes to windward like a 747.” I’ve been a passenger aboard a Boeing 747 flying upwind; the flight path retraced my downwind sailing route across the Pacific. Since then I’ve done an awful lot of upwind ocean sailing. The 747 was a lot more comfortable but comfort is not the reason we sail, is it? So more often than not, my husband Seth and I find ourselves sailing upwind. Most recently, we sailed over 2,400 miles upwind, from French Polynesia to Hawaii.
Like most upwind passages, this one was fun in retrospect, but not so much at the time. It was a rough three weeks, pounding into confused head seas with never much less than 20 knots of wind. Looking back on it, however, it was one of the richest passages we’ve ever made, thanks to the abundance of rare and beautiful marine life we were lucky enough to see.
In November 2020, our cold-moulded wooden cutter had been in French Polynesia for almost two and a half years. We had kept up with her most needed maintenance but had deferred larger projects for our eventual return to the USA where parts and supplies would be cheaper and easier to obtain. Due to work obligations to Hawaii.
