We are sailing slowly into weakening winds and flattening seas. Our boat speed has fallen to about 5-1/2 knots, direction mostly north. We will have another day or two of this, and then we should be able to turn northwest as we begin heading for home. We will be starting the turn further south than […]

Since our last entry, we have continued to sail north, and we are now about 350 miles from Kaneohe Bay. We are also about 1830 miles from San Francisco, but unfortunately we can’t sail in a straight line to our destination, so we will have to sail many more miles than that. Our position as […]

We are making good progress as we sail north on our way back home. As of 4:45PM PDT, we are at latitude 24 deg 08 min N, longitude 157 deg 10 min W, about 167 nautical miles north of Kaneohe. We are sailing north, at a  speed of 7-8 kts (this varies, of course). The […]

VALIS departed Kaneohe Bay today (Thursday, Aug 7) just before Noon, Hawaii time. Neptune’s Daughter, Dart, and Bequia were on hand to help us cast off, and wave Bon Voyage. Our crew is Paul Carson, Oliver Petzold,  Aaron Guiterrez, and me (Paul Elliott). We are currently sailing in 15 knots of wind, with swells about […]

VALIS is preparing for the return passage to San Francisco, tomorrow (Weds, Aug 6) as our likely departure.  We have been cleaning, filling tanks, charging batteries, provisioning, and doing minor repairs, and the work-list is getting pretty small.  Our fourth crewmmember arrives today, and I will be shopping for perishables, so we should be ready to go. […]

(sorry about the sparse postings, we had email blogging problems) In an exciting photo-finish, VALIS raced Music to the Pacific Cup finish line, with Music beating us by a mere 30 seconds (of course she started a day after we did…)  Our finish time was Sunday, Jul 27, 2008 13:03:38 HST, for an elapsed time of […]

Hello from VALIS and her crew, as we approach Kaneohe and the finish line. As we get closer, the margin of uncertainty for our arrival time is getting narrower and narrower. Today John took estimates/guesses from each of us and put them on the whiteboard. They range from 11:47 AM PDT, to Midnight, all on […]

Aloha from the crew of VALIS! We are watching the sun set on another medium-adventure day here in the Pacific, and what a sunset it is. All day we have been seeing rainbows, because squalls are usually accompanied by rain. Twice today we have had mild deck-washers, which some of the crew used to their […]

Aloha from VALIS, at lat 26 deg 45 min N, lon 144 deg 31 min W. We are sailing in light air at a speed of around six kts, on a course of around 210 deg mag. This is a bit more south than we would prefer, but as the wind picks up we should […]

VALIS had another daily-record run at this morning’s 9:00AM roll call: 168 nautical miles made good towards Kaneohe. This was the best 24-hour run in our division, and in some others. The low numbers indicate the lighter winds we have all been seeing, often dropping below ten knots. This morning at 6:00 AM we crossed […]