Hawaii

0600 position 35-24N 145-00W. Wind NE@6. Seas almost flat.Yesterday it felt like we were in the tropics. The wind was from the Northeast, directly behind us, and blowing at the same speed Starr was powering, about nine knots. That made the apparent wind close to calm, and it was glorious on deck.Don dug out the flying bridge cushions from the lockers, and all of the crew spent time up there during the day. Sharry read...

28 August, 2019 /

8/26 0600 position 37-44N 141-42W. Wind NE@8kts. Seas 2 feet.Shortly after posting yesterday's blog we got a radar contact. The "Ever Lyric", an 1,100 foot container ship heading from Taiwan to Los Angeles at 21 knots, was on a near collision course with the mighty Starr. Don called them on the radio, "Do you see us?", he asked."Yes, we see you," the female on the other end of the radio call answered in Chinese accented...

28 August, 2019 /

8/25 0800 position 39-59N 138-12W. Seas flat. Wind NE@3kts.We are definitely in The High now. The barometer has steadily climbing up from 1014mb a few days ago to 1023mb today. Water temperature is up to 76 degrees, seas are almost Kaneohe Bay smooth, and last night the skies were perfectly clear. The Milky Way was directly overhead during my midnight to 3AM watch pointing the way to Kauai.After seeing no garbage all day long, we...

28 August, 2019 /

Don’s post, Sunday, August 25 We have been underway for 5 days with 7 more to go to Hanalei and are 650 NM off the coast of California having run 1000NM since leaving Seattle. As I am writing this, a school of dolphin came to play with us. We have only seen two ships since leaving the coast, both of them today. We are running two radars, one a Furuno FAR 1518, set at 12NM...

25 August, 2019 /

This is Noodle’s 24 August blog post:“8/24 0900 position 42-06N 134-29W. Wind N@4kts. Seas 2 ft.Yesterday morning at 11AM we passed our first bit of floating debris. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked like plastic. Sharry and I saw another, a piece of styrofoam, this morning as I was typing this. Nothing else sighted. We also haven’t seen any ships in a couple of days. At some point we will be crossing...

24 August, 2019 /

This is Noodle’s personal blog post on 8/22. You can follow his blog at noodlesnotes.com.“0900 position 46-03N 126-22W. Wind N at 12, seas confused.Starr’s short stay in Neah Bay worked to perfection. We got the last of our engine maintenance done, the entire crew had a nap, and we had a pre-ocean lunch of vegi pizza prepared by Donna. All this occurred while a front was passing overhead heading east, and by 130PM when we...

24 August, 2019 /

  We departed Seattle yesterday afternoon (August 20) and now are ready to head out past Tatoosh Island at the west end of the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Hawaii is our next stop. Starr on hard and deck rot: Starr has been on the hard for the last two months at Delta Marine having 60sf of Fly Bridge deck balsa core replaced by Diamond Painting plus some paint touch up.  The builder failed to properly bed twenty...

21 August, 2019 /

Honolulu to Prince William Sound to SitkaJune 27, 2018We left Honolulu on Starr heading for Dutch Harbor on May 28. I didn’t know it at the time, but there was a ghost on our ship. As we departed Honolulu, there were five of us on board: Don and I, and our guests/crew, Bill Leary (Noodle) and Clay Huchinson (both from Kaneohe), and Kyle Kim (from Honolulu). The “Ghost” was just a dim shadow at departure,...

28 June, 2018 /

This is Noodle’s daily blog.This morning’s dawn brought the best weather we’ve seen since leaving Hawaii. The wind is calm and the skies are clear. It looks like a beach day from inside Starr’s wheelhouse until you glance at the thermometer. 43 degrees is a bit cold for a beach day.We are seeing lots of bird life now. Flocks of puffins take flight as Starr’s passage disturbs them. These stumpy parrot like birds work their...

07 June, 2018 /

We are 291nm and 36 hours from Dutch. The wind has backed down to around 15kn from the WNW. I am an optimist so I’d like to think that the worst is behind us. Let’s do a brief review of what has broken or gone wrong.1st. There was this itsy bitsy 24vdc hot water heating fan that quit running and put out a lot of smoke. There were no visible signs of any burnt parts....

06 June, 2018 /