After a windless night we started our 2nd day in Honolulu. During sunrise we were greeted by a brown band lying over the city against the hills.  Smog in Honolulu, unexpected; it really does not go together with an image of pineapples and hula hula girls. But there was no wind during the night and…   read more of “29 November 2012;…”

 In the morning the wind finally veered all the way to the East and became a following wind. The velocity reduced to 10 knots but only for a short while. Shortly after we entered Kaiwa channel between Molokai and Oahu and the funnel wind effect caused the wind to breeze up again to nearly 20…   read more of “28 November 2012;…”

The wind did not veer as fast to the East as the weather forecast indicated and thus we had the wind blowing on our sb side instead of from behind. That also meant that the swells kept being sustained by this wind and did not abate as fast as I hoped for. That meant that…   read more of “27 November 2012;…”

The bad weather up north intensified and created winds of up to 75 knots under the Aleutians and that meant that the “ripple effect” came further down than was hoped for. So we caught the tail of that whole weather system. It started in the morning with 25 knots of wind from the South West…   read more of “26 November 2012;…”

We are now entering our 2nd full day at sea and thus far the weather has been very cooperative. It remains overcast courtesy of the bad weather up in Alaska, but the cloud cover also indicates that there is little wind; otherwise it would break the cloud cover open. And little wind is exactly what…   read more of “25 November 2012;…”

Note: you will see on the left that there are two entries on the same calender date and also one day with  an entry missing. Due to satellite location, (right behind our funnel) we have been out of connection with the whole world for a day (nice and quiet to a certain extent) until we…   read more of “24 November 2012;…”

During the night the ships motion got less and less and as a result I was able to make it timely to the pilot station. When I arrived on the bridge at 04.30 I was confronted with an unusual sight. Haze; reducing visibility to about 5 miles…………and getting less. The combination of warm days before…   read more of “23 November 2012;…”

Today we spent the last of our day of the cruise at sea and it was a wobbly day. It has been horrible weather in the Gulf of Alaska and under Vancouver Island and the wave fields generated by this weather are rolling down the American coast as far down as Cabo San Lucas. The…   read more of “22 November 2012;…”