Crew Blog

Land Ahoy!

16 March 2008

An hour ago I popped up on deck to check how my bread was “staling” in the sun (we’re making bread and butter pudding for dessert except we don’t have any butter.) and I noticed a wedding cake on the horizon, Andrew thought it was an iceberg and Rob opted for the more traditional choice of a ship. Well I’ve just been to collect my stale bread and could not believe what I saw before me…land, the Gardner Pinnacles (25N 168W) to be precise. We haven’t seen land since early morning of Feb 28th, when we sailed by the coast of Japan, so we all stared bug-eyed for a moment or two and a few cameras were clicked. There are no bars, restaurants or shops on Gardner, not even a tree. In fact it’s just an over-sized rookery for seabirds so we’ve now
re-named it the guano-dome. But it’s land nonetheless.

Proper land is now only 507 miles away, we’ll sail by Kauai (the Garden Island) where South Pacific and Jurassic Park were filmed (factoid for the day). Honolulu is only 80 miles further on from Kauai so we’ll be on the home straight by then. We’re hoping to get to the marina by mid-afternoon of the 18th so we can clear Customs before they leave for the day.  Otherwise we’ll have to stay out at sea for the night and wait for the officialados to clock in on the 19th.

The winds have really died down so we started to use our iron genny (the engine) today and we’re now cruising at 8 kph. On deck everyone is busy servicing the winches, replacing spinnaker strops and sunbathing.  Below deck we’re busy over-heating.

Despite the fact that we’re not racing and we’ve been at sea for 3 weeks, it is still glorious out here. Even if the Gardner Pinnacles had been Utopia and we had the option to go ashore for the day, I would have said in the wise words of Lionel Richie and the Commodores “Sail on honey good times never felt so good”.

Nina & Andrew