Honolulu to Seattle: First Ocean Passage

Honolulu to Seattle: My first long voyage, 1993

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Written by Kaci Cronkhite  March 2012  All rights reserved.

"So you serious about doing an ocean passage," asked my buddy Bruce as he walked up to C Dock in Ala Wai where the boat I was varnishing was moored.

"You bet," I said. "But I know how to cook, Bruce. Sort of. You wouldn't want me for a cook. Would you teach me how to navigate, use the weather fax, sail in the ocean?"

"Sure," he said with the impish grin I'd come to love in this Kamaina guy who'd been one of my first friends in Hawaii. "I need crew that will work!"

A few weeks later, we were headed out of the channel and west into the cooling sun in a 40 foot Gulf Star whose almost unpronouncable name meant sweetheart. In an hour the sun would set and we'd still be in the lee of Oahu. This part of the journey I'd sailed a couple of times already. Twice at night the year before and a half dozen times as crew for the man who owned one of the boats in my care. I knew this part was a pretty easy cruise in the lee of the island. No big waves. No big wind. As we passed close to Ko Olina, wisely tucked in the last of our shelter, the two guys who'd signed on as crew drunk their last beers for awhile (or so I thought) making grand claims about the surf, the women or the fish they'd caught along these shores. 

"Hang on boys (I'll call them #1 and #2)," I whispered. The channel in the islands could be rough and we were just entering the zone. That beer was likely going to reappear if the channel was anything like my other trips. Bruce just smiled at them and listened.

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