Just got back from Hawaii

From: Judith Franklin Blumhorst (drjudyb@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Feb 07 2000 - 22:37:44 PST


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Hi webgang,

David and I just got back from Hawaii, where we tacked five days of vacation
onto the end of David's business trip. What a beautiful place!

There wasn't much wind and we got to spend just one day sailing off Maui.
We were on a 50 foot catamaran for a whale watching and snorkeling trip.
There wasn't any wind in the morning, so we motored the whole way. The
water was an incredible true blue, nothing like the brown-green water of the
pacific. You could see 40 feet to the bottom!

We were chatting with the captain and when he found out we were sailors, he
invited us back as his guests to sail in the afternoon, when he expected at
least a little wind.

There was only about 5 knots of wind that afternoon, but that catamaran made
8-10 knots with an enourmous 180% drifter up. The skipper kept apologizing
to us for sailing so slowly, but we were amazed at 8-10 knots. The mast was
about 65 feet tall, the drifter extended aft 40 feet from forestay -- I
figured out that the drifter had to be about 1200 square feet! It was so
huge that in order to tack, a crew member had to walk it through the
fore-trangle. the mainsail was outfitted with three sets of reef points,
with the deepest ones reducing sail to about 25% of normal. Talk about a
deep reef!!

We saw dozens of humpback whales, females with calves and "companion" males
who where trying to entice the females to breed. Often, a male would
breach, trying to knock another male away from the female. The females
didn't take too kindly to that kind of tom-foolery, since they had small
calves with them. One time a female with calf headed straight for our boat,
looking to put the boat between themselves and the males. I don't need to
tell you that we skee-daddled away from there as fast as we could when we
saw a female with calf heading towards us. We had no desire to meet a
breaching male up that close and personal!

We reserved a 20' catamaran rental for our last day (which was on Kwai), but
there was absolutely no wind, so we rented some sea kayaks instead. The
other days we played golf on the most spectacular sea-side course you can
imagine, visited the tropical rain forests and botanical gardens, or just
hung out on the beach. Oh, and we took a breath-taking helicopter ride
across to Malakai, one of the least inhabited islands. We flew through
valleys between cliff and mountains so steep they seemed to rise straight up
5,000 feet. We saw waterfalls spilling thousands of feet down mountains so
steep and craggy that they seemed to have been formed just yesterday.

Dave wore his potter shirt one night at the beachside bar, where the Louis
Vitton Cup was on TV, and a couple of people mentioned that they had heard
of Potter sailboats. Potter people have friends everywhere!!!

It was hard to come home from such a beautiful place...

Fair winds,
Judy B



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