The Departure! 8 September 2008 and entry for 10 Sept 2008

Well today is the day.  Finally we can drop the lines and start the long passage to Hawaii.  We woke up in the shadow of doubt because we still required clearance from US homeland security for the boat to leave and we had already tried to get this last Friday but the dopey guy who ‘helped’ us couldn’t find our paper work and told us to come back Monday.  Thankfully a nice woman sorted us out this time quite easily which Erin gladly noted, “Of course, it took a woman!”  On top of getting us clearance she organised a US cruising permit, which is valid for one year!  On arrival back at the boat I checked the email to find a few from Roger ‘Clouds’ Badham, whom I had written to the day before asking for advice with regard to the weather.  He was writing from Europe but was still able to check the weather models and give us an indication on what we could expect for the first seven days, which looked to be pretty smooth. 

            The send off was pretty momentous, Brian (our newest and fittest crew member) took the boat out while Jack organised ‘Now is the Hour’ by Buddy Clark to play over the loud hailer and Roger and I worked the crowd ha ha not really.  Thanks again to Erin and Leon for all of your help in preparing us with everything we needed we certainly couldn’t have done it without you both.  Thank you also to Peter, Mary rose and Mike for coming out and saying goodbye we all look forward to seeing you again in Auzie.

            A quick stop at the fuel wharf where we took 1300 gallons/$6660 US worth of Diesel to top up the tanks and also met some Auzie boys who were crewing on a 200ft super yacht ‘Ulysses’, which they lived aboard and sailed wherever the New Zealand owner wanted her, on this occasion they were headed to Tahiti which was a shame as if they had have said Honolulu we might have negotiated a tow.

From here we cast off and made for Pt. Loma, skirting the massive beds of Kelp which is said to be the fastest growing plant in the world at 1ft per day and is a nightmare to get caught around the prop! I got some great footage of the Californian sea lions on the way out, they were laying all over the marker boys and barking at us as we steamed past.

10 SEPT 2008

Blog entry 4 - Wednesday 10 Sept 2008

A new day and an unexpected change for the mighty Speedbird and her crew.  We must bid a temporary farewell to Captain Jack until he re-joins us in Fiji.  The Speedbird sat phone has been running hot all night with calls from Australia, the long and short of it all being that Jack must return to Australia for business reasons.  We turned the boat around at about 1030AM Tuesday after steaming for 19 hours.  The return trip was much quicker as we bumped the speed up from 7 to 10 knots.  Swell still calm under 1M and rolling with the boat all the way back to the coast of California.  The general feel of the crew was disappointment, we are feeling for Jack as he will now miss a large part of the voyage but he had to do what he had to do and the show must go on. 

            We arrived back at the shelter point fuel wharf at approx. 0500 on Wednesday morning and in true Jack style there was no messing about.  Steve the legend broker was there to pick up the clean shaven and sharp looking Jack, no-one would have known he had just done a 300 mile round trip at sea.  We re-filled our tanks with approx. 600 Litres of diesel and shot straight back out to sea.  Second time lucky.

Current time is 1111 on Wednesday and the weather is beautiful, wind speed is about 10 knots on the nose and swell is less than 1M also coming straight on the bow.  We had a weather report of a tropical depression lower down at Lat. 110 degrees West but according to all reports we wont see it up where we are.  Brian and I are sitting here in the wheel house enjoying some Australian grown mandarins and watching a pod of over 200 dolphins play right in close to the boat.