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Big Island Challenge SA reader Olson Kahuna took a good challenge and a great cause to do something very interesting: set a record sailing around the "Big" Island of Hawaii, and raise money for Big Island charities in the process. He did it, along with his motley crew, and here is his story. Go to http://www.bigislandchallenge.com for more info. I will admit that a lot of the trouble I get into is because I don't know any better. The Big Island Challenge is a glowing example of this. First, just getting the project off the ground was a major hassle. Lot's of paper work and running around and that doesn't even count getting the boat ready.
Starting in June we went on standby waiting for a go signal from Commanders Weather Corp. This of course meant for the next 6 weeks I could not plan anything more than a week out. There were several "it's looking good.....never mind" reports but nothing solid until the second week of July. We planned extensively, set up waypoints, had our course and strategy laid out and even had the timing planned. And it worked perfectly right up until the start. On July 12th we launched the boat had the WSSRC commissioner (actually it was his agent Mike Souther as he was busy with Transpac) inspect the boat ensure that my 2hp outboard with NOS would not be used. And off we went. Nice breeze at the start and we were sent off with several boats from the club. The official boat was there complete with our local paper photographer. We looked good as we pulled away from everyone. They turned back and an hour later we were becalmed with a huge North swell. Not a good thing as we were heading North. This was a good example of the challenges of weather forecasting around the Island. There was absolutely no reason for the swell and no wind it was just happening. A few hours later we were approaching the north end of the island, two hours behind schedule. I called for the #3 to be made ready, a strange call as there was only a few knots of wind, but sunset was approaching and I had sailed the Kohala coast for several years. "Wind line." 30 sec later 25 knots. The Alenuihaha channel is considered one of the ten worst in the world. I have crossed it on several occasions and went through it (East to West) once. I had heard stories of boats fighting it and then turning around and waiting for a lighter day. Well I now know why. 25 knots, 8-10 foot swells, very short frequency and we took a pounding. Tom (or as Ed calls him Fish) was at the helm. Squalls kept the visibility down to nothing and the rest of us were on the rail. I know you don't think of sailing in Hawaii as needing foulies but half the trip was spent in them. It took us 4 hours of getting hammered to make it a few miles past Upolu point. We finally were far enough through that the current slackened and we started making better headway. Needless to say this put us way behind schedule and later we discovered that we had cracked the keel joint and were taking on about 10 gal an hour. I think that if it had been just a little worse in the channel we could not have made it through.
Dawn found us searching for the trades which as the Transpacers could tell you were not there. We went way off shore and no luck. In fact the direction was so bad we slowly found ourselves coming into shore, where we didn't want to be. Approaching sunset we finally passed Hilo and the wind backed around rather rapidly and out popped the chute. This is what the brochures advertised. As we went further South the swells increased to the 8-10 feet range and the wind picked up to about 20 knots. Boat speed in the teens, life was good. No major crashes, mast stayed in the upright position despite how deep we had to sail. We did have a few sphincter tightening moments but nothing that caused premature aging. We kept this up for about 12 hours and rounded Southpoint just before dawn. A highlight of this run was seeing the volcano at night. All the lava skylights make the hill look like a small town. Once in the lee of the largest mountain in the world we were fighting for every inch all the way up the coast. It was summed up as it took us an hour to make the final mile to the finish. At 8:08 p.m. we crossed the line with an unofficial time of 55 hours 11 minutes. We sailed a total of 306.2 miles with an average speed of 5.54 knots. Everyone on the boat was great. The crew, David, Tom, Cort and Drew gave a 100% and I don't think we could have pushed the boat harder. I personally think that the wind Gods cost us between 6-8 hours. On the other hand a little more wind and we might not have been able to complete the course at all. Tom summed it up after we finished by saying that "the Big Island is not very friendly." Now I know that several of you will post that I just made up a record and you could do the same around your grandma's house and I welcome you to it. The WSSRC has some firm parameters and our course met them. We got some great publicity for our club and our sport out of this, and if we get only one person to buy a sailboat instead of a PWC then it was worth it. In addition we have raised over $2,000 for a local charity. And best of all I now have something in common with Steve Fosset (I was personally hoping it was our bank balances). As DanW put it, "a line has been drawn in the sand, let's see who tries to cross it." So I welcome anyone to come down and take on the Big Island. Olson Kahuna |
