Blog

  Sharry and I are humbled by being awarded the CCA Far Horizons Award for 2021/22 To celebrate this we’ve republished one of our favorite adventures and the changes it brought to the islands. We hope to visit this paradise again now COVID  finally appears to be coming to an end. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Starr arrived in the Marquesas at the end of March 2001. In early April we pulled into Ua Pou and dropped the hook in Hakahau. When we anchored,...

24 February, 2022 /

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Sharry and I are back in Hawaii with Starr and planning our next nine months of cruising. The plan has been to sail the Hawaiian islands until the weather in the North settles down and then head to Kodiak or Prince William Sound on the Alaska panhandle for the summer. But recently looking through old photos; reminiscing about the past, we came across images of our year cruising Japan (2010-11) which...

22 December, 2021 /

Molokai North Shore: Tuesday, August 30-2021 It’s been a long, long winter with inter-island cruising being virtually shut down due to covid. Coupled with that is the fact that it’s been a very windy winter, with trades out of the east, northeast, southeast, whatever, and mostly in the 20kn range. That makes for crummy passages between the islands. Typically, 20kn winds make for 6-12ft waves with a 5-6 second period. On Starr, if we are taking...

15 September, 2021 /

9/2 0800 position 22-13N 159-30W. At anchor in Hanalei Bay in 30 feet, sand bottom.As the mighty Starr entered Hanalei Bay yesterday morning we could see pal Mitch Haynie tow in surfing on his foiling board on the reef at the entrance to the bay. Lori told me by email that he’d be out there this morning, taking advantage of the season’s first big north swell. Fortunately, the swell wasn’t big enough to ruin the Hanalei...

02 September, 2019 /

9/1 0600 position 22-28N 159-12W. Wind NE@9 knots. Seas 3 feet. 21 miles from Hanalei.When I came on watch at 1AM this morning I could just see the loom of Honolulu’s lights off to the south. We never did see any lights on Kauai. Dawn broke this morning when we were still thirty miles from Hanalei, too far offshore to see lights on shore there. We get a bit stir crazy during the night watches...

01 September, 2019 /

This is Noodle’s 8/31 blog post:“0600 position 25-17N 156-31W. Wind E@4kts. Seas 2 feet. 245 miles to Hanalei.I’m sure Fred’s advice on the lures was correct, but when the ocean is full of mahi mahi, and not ahi, mahi is what you catch. We put an ahi lure out and caught three more mahi in quick succession, just keeping the last and largest one. We hooked up the second fish before the lure was even...

31 August, 2019 /

This has been an uneventful passage thus far. Uneventful is as good as it gets! The only glitch has been the leaking swimstep hatch which the manufacturer just adjusted the day before our departure. Obviously that didn’t work! They say they will come to Hawaii to make it right. Stay tuned. The weather was calm enough for me to open the lazarette hatch and wash the salt out of the things that got drowned in...

30 August, 2019 /

8/30 0600 position 27-55N 153-50W. Wind E@4kts. Seas flat. 457 miles from Hanalei.Yesterday morning we decided it was time to bust out the fishing gear again and snag something for dinner. Within an hour we had landed two mahi mahi. The first went into the freezer. We threw the second one back and put away the rod and reel. Not bad. We’ve fished for just over an hour total and landed three mahi mahi.The skipper...

30 August, 2019 /

One of the aspects of voyaging that I most enjoy is observing the subtle changes in environmental conditions as the vessel moves across the ocean. Upon assuming the watch on “Starr” we make logbook entries including date, time, position, total miles, speed, course, engine RPM, fuel burn rate, and alternator charging rate. We also record barometric pressure, air and sea temperatures, sea state, cloud cover, wind direction and speed, and anything else of note. Taken...

29 August, 2019 /

This is Noodle’s 8/29 blog post:“0600 position 30-26N 151-05W. Wind NW@3kts. Seas 2 feet and confused.The forecast showed that the southwesterly headwinds we experienced yesterday morning would be light and short lived. They were neither. The wind slowly increased as the day progressed, and after dark last night it was up near twenty knots with a good sized wind chop. It got a bit uncomfortable aboard the mighty Starr heading directly into it at nine...

29 August, 2019 /