Category Archives: Laysan: Crossing

Laysan sits idle at the dock in Olympia, after we packed and flew away to Hawaii for the winter. Journey interrupted. Reflecting now on the events of the last few months I am glad we could accomplish so much in … Continue reading →

The Ballard Locks are a one hundred year old marvel of urban marine engineering connecting Puget Sound with Lake Union in Seattle in one gurgling leap of twenty vertical feet. Free for the asking, each year thousands of boats large … Continue reading →

Hi Kathleen, John and Sarah, Looks like you are heading south again. Hope you’ve been having an amazing time. On the ferry from Port Angeles, I wrote the following notes, with the intention of developing a fuller blog post. However, … Continue reading →

Hello there fellow gearheads and those various tech-curious types, Laysan now lies quietly at anchor in flat calm Reid Harbor on Stuart Island, slowly resolving her aches and pains after the three week crossing of the Pacific Ocean. I too, … Continue reading →

Laysan and crew arrived safe and well in Port Angeles, Washington at 5:00 pm on August 16, 2015. 20 days at sea! We are now “cruising” Port A for burgers and beer and looking forward to a quiet and complete … Continue reading →

All passages are intense learning experiences with many long periods of inactivity interspersed with sudden opportunities to interpret, formulate, and react. First the bad news: yesterday afternoon the second autopilot quit with an overload that threw the breaker and blew … Continue reading →

A captain’s concerns are many indeed, and crew satisfaction is a well honed fine art of diplomacy that stays at the top of the list. But I may have neglected one very important member lately, Commander, our faithful autopilot. Last … Continue reading →

As the nautical miles tick down, the numbers’ analysis is flying fast and furious. As I said earlier, our two primary conversation topics are food and math. In the early days, the focus was on calculating the fuel we had, … Continue reading →

Each morning before sunrise I see Orion reclining comfortably along the horizon to the east, seemingly bemused at our progress over the ocean. Then as the sliver of moon rises before the sun, Orion gradually gets up and goes off … Continue reading →

The morning after the mysterious slowdown was spent wallowing in 8-10 foot beam seas, courtesy of the cold front passing through from the west. After a few 30 degree rolls, the unanimous decision was to launch the paravanes. The fish, … Continue reading →

The sea gave us a gift yesterday, a crystal blue sky with glassy flat azure water that reflected the suns rays into the depths. We gathered on the front deck and gazed down expecting to catch a glimpse of some … Continue reading →

Hello everyone; John here, at 0400 on the night watch. It’s not all hot chocolate, star gazing, and meaningful contemplation you know. Laysan has been gliding gracefully the last couple of days through the middle of the great Pacific high … Continue reading →

On the midnight shift, moving through the blending dark of the sky and the ocean, I feel like I am in a spaceship. Voyaging through a space, far from land, far from people, far from light. The reality is that … Continue reading →

As our rolly, bumpy days flow past, our conversations focus predominately on two topics; food and math. Even though everyone still dons their daily scopolamine patch, our appetites have survived. I stocked our larders premised on a single idea; we … Continue reading →

Ladies and Gentlemen, today’s lesson concerns ocean pollution. A group called Ocean Cleanup headed up by a young Dutch inventor, Boyan Slat, is attempting the first of its kind cleanup of the world’s oceans. Apparently, Mr. Slat presented a Ted … Continue reading →

We spoke to our weather router today and he used phrases like “favorable conditions” and “near ideal”; I take this with a grain of salt but hope for the best. He said that a rhumb line from Makapuu Lighthouse to … Continue reading →

At the risk of actually committing to a hard date, we believe that Tuesday July 28th looks like a departure.  One of the local cruisers opined that one can never be truly ready for a passage and one need only … Continue reading →