Post SHTP stories - July 16. Delivering Elise to Nawiliwili Small Board Harbor

Today, Bandicoot (leaving early to avoid wind as it broke its wishbone during the race), Archimedes and Elise will be heading out to Nawiliwili in the first step of getting ready for their shipping back to the West Coast of the US. Joe preferred to sail alone on Archimedes but I have invited people to join me on Elise. Not that I need people but I figured it would be a nice sail, and I really enjoy sharing great sailing experiences too!

Am ready for the trip - taped up shoulder and swim suit gear...

George is taping up Joe's shoulder as not only are we the Express 27 headquarters, we are also the Shoulder Club

Elise is waiting for us: photo courtesy of Latitude 38. Peter from Scaramouche has kindly agreed to row us to the boats in his dinghy. Bandicoot left a while ago. We meet at the Tree on the beach at 830am.

JD, Elise's crew for the day is checking the rig

While we wait for Joe to get ready to sail, I enjoy a swim in Hanalei Bay, jumping out from the boat

The water is 80 degrees..soooooooooooooo warm and pleasant, particularly when it starts raining

Joe takes a little video

Off we go - Archimedes in the distance. Joe didn't rig a jib for the longest time.

Ben and JD did most of the driving. I only drove when we got to the harbor to take Elise into a slip, under sail of course. When there is wind, Elise does not use an engine. It's an unspoken rule of the boat.

I am impressed at how fast Ben is able to drive the boat - even though he has no experience of the Express.

JD is also a good sailor -

Joe works in an organic farm in Hawaii and is not a sailor but a great passenger and his local knowledge was great as we had a tour guide on our way around the island. He explained everything we could see.

My getting wet and sunburnt

JD admiring the landscape - we saw one dolphin but it was too brief for any of us to take a camera for pictures! Ben was the first one to see the dolphin.

Ben happy as a clam.

You see the 'woman on his back' rock in the background, the same one as the one I showed on the day of my arrival

It feels so great to be on the water again - upwind most of the way, about 8 miles from shore, we had to do two tacks to clear the point, then tight reach along the East shore, and then broad reaching into the harbor.

it took us about 8 hours to get around. There was definitely a lot of wind as we got to Nawiliwili. It isn't too difficult at all to get in as the dredged channel is very well marked but we dropped the jib early to have full visibility and to be able to manage our speed easily as we got in. JD was looking at depth to make sure we wouldn't hit anything. There are rocks right off the Nawiliwili light.

Our assigned slip wasn't available so we took the one next door. Here is Elise after her trip. Happy to have met the ocean again!

We clean her up and put most everything away - the following day, we will prep her to be pulled out of the water the day after. So everything will be rinsed, whatever needs to come off the boat will come off the boat, the rig will be loosened and everything that can be detached, such as the boom will be removed. But that's the topic of the next post...