Days 1-2 - The Crew Speaks

Day 2 (Thursday, June 14) by Mike

Sailing with Dummies (Hawaii to Alaska Edition)

Sometime after I went to bed last night we anchored by a small island so we could scuba dive today. We went to Lehua, a small island that looks like half of a crater, and anchored inside the half perimeter. The island itself is a bird sanctuary and is very spectacular. The diving was interesting. I saw a big white tipped reef shark. It was scary looking but didn't seem to notice me. I went back to the boat after I saw it. Next we went to a shallow area between the islands of Lehua and Nihau to scuba dive there. It seemed like a pretty good idea. When we got in the water we found a pretty strong current. Our diving there consisted of swimming slowly into the current to go backward and swimming strongly against the current to go forward. It was also helpful to hold onto the bottom to rest. After we piled ourselves and our gear back on board, we took off. En route to our next stop we took time to shoot clay pigeons with our 12-guage shotgun. A gun is onboard the Minnow for the first time. We brought it to fend of f bears in Alaska. Joshua Slocum talked about shooting sharks when he went around the world. That sounds like it could be fun, too. Anyway, Bob hit almost everyone of them so we started throwing two at a time. He finally missed some then. Josh claimed to have "never shot a shotgun before" and then proceeded to hit the first 3 out of 4 targets. I missed some and hit some (ok, I hit about 2 out of 20, but I did it with gusto!). Melinda, being an animal lover, naturally abstained. Cathy didn't shoot due to apparent lack of interest.

We anchored in the afternoon near the south end of Nihau, in preparation for a morning dive at the tiny island Kaula. That will be our last stop before Midway (that's the plan at least). After anchoring Bob and I did some kayaking. It rained on Bob and he got soaked. I waited until the rain quit and went. Then in poured on me and I got soaked.

Daily Cuisine:
Today's menus were much the same as yesterday's menus . We'll probably be heavy on the fresh stuff while it's still edible.

Fishing Report:
No bites. Not a single nibble. Nothing even sniffed at our lures. (nobody fished since we were diving and anchoring)

Arts and Entertainment:
Bob did some bellowing on the baritone. He started out taking requests. After severe butchering of the Beatles, "I want to hold your hand,"Yesterday," "Hey Jude," and "Penny Lane," he declared the genre to be musicals. Then he proceeded with brutal attempts at some normally pleasant tunes. Luckily, his lip didn't last too long.

Day two - so far, so good. The rest of the crew is still talking to me. They just don't say very nice things.

Day 1 (Friday the 13th) by Mike

Sailing with Dummies (Hawaii to Alaska Edition)

In this edition of Sailing with Dummies we began a trek that will take us from Hawaii to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Along the way we have planned stops at some little islands for scuba diving and Midway island for a few days of diving and nature watching. The trek actually began last night (Thursday) at around 11:00p. But to keep it simple, I'll just call that single hour "day zero." Five of us set off -- Melinda, Josh, Cathy, Bob, and someone else. Melinda, Josh, and Cathy had just arrived in Honolulu on day zero and were tired. Day one began without much fanfare. The wind was light so we motored occasionally. There was much nap-taking and not much action. The main highlight was Josh reeling in a dolphin. It was a nine-pounder and Melinda cooked it and we ate it all for lunch.

Daily Cuisine:
Aside from the fish, we mainly grazed on fresh fruits and bread and stuff during the day. In the evening Cathy whipped up some mighty-fine jambalaya. I ate too much.

Fishing Report:
One bite, one successful landing. Josh is the leading fish-catcher. So far.

Arts and Entertainment:
I am very sad to say there is nothing to report.

Misc. Post by Melinda

We're off! Actually we were off around 23:45 on Thursday, June 12th, 2008. We have been "oh so" busy since.

We spent the majority of the first day cruising around the islands getting further and further away from civilization, mostly due to legal reasons involving Mike and Bob.

My mind's a bit hazy about the first day, as I was completely dazed by a blinding white light in the sky; it appeared to be some rare and strange phenomenon which doesn't occur too often in Seattle. Josh caught a Mahi Mahi, Mike gave me a fish-grilling lesson, and we ate and drank (tea) merrily.

The most important moral from the fish-grilling lesson is that it's quite difficult to screw up a freshly caught fish.

The rest of the day was spent adjusting to sunlight, playing uno (lots of it) and sleeping. Cathy and I cooked Jambalaya with Polish sausage, rice and beans for dinner.

Day #2 (6/14/08) by Melinda.

Day 2 began with us pulling up to Lehua on the island of Niihau. Lehua was pretty neat; a fancy volcanic cone with layers upon layers of elderly lava piled up this way and that with half of the cone sunken/eroded away. There's an opening on the northern end where people come in sometimes to scuba dive and hang out. We saw little martians crawling all over the layered slopes, carrying packs and binoculars. They may have been counting birds. And it's quite possible that they could've been human too.

Mike complained that he saw a large man-eater, turned out it was just a White Tip Reef Shark so Josh and I decided to go diving.

I didn't see too many coral heads underwater, but there were some bright yellow fishies. Then I noticed a lot of shrimp/copepod-like critters all over the water. It's hard to do the sign language to point those things out to a dive partner while you're underwater. The current was decent so we didn't get too far. The swell was also decent and we were catapulted back into the boat.

We saw Spinner dolphins as we left and they spun.

Next, Bob assembled a shot gun and Mike, Bob, and Josh shot skeet.

Last night we anchored at a different spot on Niihau. It was really, really nice. Short showers came through so we had never-ending rainbows. We ate bean burritos, ravioli and salad for snacks/dinner.

Today (6/15/08) we cruised around a big rock called Kaula Rock. It had a LOT of birds all over it: sooty terns, black and/or brown noddies, white terns, frigate birds, boobies and some missiles and missile launchers. We planned on diving but we chickened out from the swell.

So we motored a ways and thought it'd be better there. Not all of us are dummies so we had Mike and Bob go first. As soon as they jumped in the current had already carried them off. I've never seen a bubble line that long before!

After watching them, Josh and I decided kayaking would be more fun. The real challenge was getting in and out of the kayaks with such a large swell. We have some tough-looking cuts and bruises now. It took forever just to paddle in front of the boat but we could go REAL fast once we turned around. I tried to see how far I could go ahead of the boat but was a bit bummed that I only got 100 feet or so. Then Josh said he saw something surfacing in the water (this was after my dad told us about a Tiger Shark damaging a kayak) so I spun around and hauled with the current. The thing was following me!!!

It was a Monk Seal! It was really fun and curious and even hung out while we paddled around. It looked like a large version of a Harbor Seal. After we had our fun, we hopped back on the boat and now we're sailing off to Nihoa (ETA 24ish hours).

Most of us ate turkey sandwiches for lunch.

The end.

~Melinda