Maxi 95 and Our Adventures
Where Caro Babbo sails
Hanalei Bay, Kuaui, HI, 25-JUN-2020 — If you’re asking why are we still in a Hawaii, it is the proper question.
We were to have left Tuesday, but will leave tomorrow instead.
I’ve wriiten that in a cruising boat, you, the skipper/owner/crew are the weak point: the boat will protect you. I am the weak link. I have been injured and then suffered from Vertigo. We waited while I healed.
Continue reading “Why are we still in Hawaii? We leave in the morning.”Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 5-MAY-2020 – The Clash song, should I stay or should I go, always echoes in my head at times like this. We’re vacillating between leaving the boat here and sailing to Alaska. Dutch Harbor by the edge of the Aleutians to be exact. It’s potentially a bunch of weeks at sea in a weather window.*
The major question is, would we be welcome and could we sail from place to place? The answers are all over the place, changing from day to day. The kicker is how might answers change while we’re at sea for three or four weeks?
Continue reading “Sit or Sail?”Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 31-MAR-2019 — The marina is where all the tourists come for whale watching trips and swimming with dolphins, for deep sea fishing charters and to spot turtles swimming among the docks. All of that is closed. The marina has settled down to a quiet neighborhood.
Continue reading “Staying put for the duration”Ko Olina Marina, Ko Olina Hawaii, 15-MAR-2020 – This is the first time I’ve been alone for more than a few minutes since my dad died.
I’ve traveled on the bus to Honolulu a few times to the visit the Apple store and work on my TWIC card, but this is the first time I have been alone on board with time to think.
Tomorrow, we’ll fly to San Francisco to visit the French Consulate there. We’re not making the trip home we’d planned. Instead, we’re headed to French Polynesia, if they’ll let us in.
19-DEC-2019 – This was written last month. It is more depth on what broke than the most recent post.
Manele Bay, Lana’i Island 11-Nov-2019 – We’ve been in Hawaii a month now. It is a stretch to remember what broke on the passage. Things continue to break as others are repaired.
The major items that broke, and as a consequence changed Jennifer’s view of offshore sailing, were the two self-steering devices.
Fifty miles off Cape Flattery, about eight hours after leaving the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the wind vane self-steering broke, literally broke. When the boat went off course, I looked over the transom: the steering oar had broken off and was trailing by its leash.
Stony Brook Medical Center, Stony Brook, Long Island, NY, 15-DEC-2019 – I’m sitting in my Dad’s hospital room.
We’re in the belly of his recovery. The immediate recoveries have slowed. He is able to move is his right thumb and right index finger. If his right arm is supported, he can flex and extend that arm. He can inconsistently move both his legs a bit. Nothing in left arm. He is beginning to swallow a bit, but can still not move his tongue, nor move his eyes right to left.
More devastatingly, he has dropped into depression becoming difficult to engage. When asked if he thinks he will improve, he says No. He can show his emotions in his face and he cries. This morning during rounds when he started to cry his nurse started to cry, as did his doctor. When his doctor recovered she said to me quietly, he can show emotion, that is a good sign.
Continue reading “What broke when, 2019”Hilo, Hawaii, 10-NOV-2019 – After the preparation and finally leaving, there is being in the place that we’d read about: offshore, no land in sight, and, by some lights, nothing but danger.
As we were repeatedly told by our offshore sailor friends, who have been our biggest fans and supporters, we were now members of the family of Bluewater Sailors. Continue reading “Bravery, Preparation and Sailing, pt2”
Hilo, HI, 9-Nov-2019 — One evening, while we rigged a spinnaker aboard a T-Bird sailing out of Dorchester Harbor in Boston, I confessed to the skipper of the vessel that I was not very physically brave. I could see his face, and he looked at me dumbfounded and said “you sail a T-bird from New York to Boston? If that’s not brave I don’t know what is.”
Continue reading “Bravery, Preparation and Sailing”Hilo, HI 7-nov-2019 — I think I may have redeveloped a caffeine addiction. By 2009, I was up to twelve espresso a day, and then quit, cold turkey. It took two years before I no longer got that heavy dentist’s x-Ray blanket feeling from no caffeine.
Continue reading “Life on a Caro Babbo passage, but first…”We’ve been in radio Bay, Hilo, for a week now. The amount of time it takes to get repairs done and recover from sailing surprises us. Posts, as important as they are to me, and define being productive, cannot be considered critical path, and so they wait.
I also find that I am still, somehow, on Seattle time, so by 7:30 or 8 pm, I am completely beat.
The posts about our journey from Seattle to Hilo will probably not be in chronological order, but instead will be about various topics and jump around in the timeline.
As always, thank you for sticking with us.
Hilo, Hawaii, 25-Oct-2019 – As we dropped the anchor in the middle of Radio Bay, a voice from the shore shouted, ‘‘Caro Babbo, Caro Babbo! ’’
Continue reading “Landfall Hilo, Hi”
