Ocean Watch

I'm home from my sailing adventure to Hanalei. My boat made it back, too, intact, mostly, and clean even, thanks to my industrious friends. Left to me, cracker crumbs would still litter the cockpit, and the windows would have stayed speckled with salt.

Leaving the boat a mess isn't like me. But by the time I sailed it to Kauai, rolled in it at anchor for a week, tended its electrical and mechanical systems a zillion times and then sailed it back to the Ala Wai, all I wanted to do was go home and take a nap.

Forget that romantic image of lying in a hammock on the aft deck while sipping cold drinks and listening to Jimmy Buffet. Sailing in Hawaii is exhausting.

First, there's preparing the boat for the channels, which often serve up gale-force winds and fearsome seas. To be safe and functional, an offshore boat requires tons of equipment and endless maintenance, not to mention a potful of money.

BOAT, sailors joke, stands for Break Out Another Thousand.

Then there's the actual crossing, which means staying up all night looking for killer container ships and tweaking leaky stuffing boxes while getting sick, salty and soaking wet.

Besides that, sailboats are rascally things requiring constant supervision. Runaway booms can hurl people overboard, rebellious through-hulls can sink the boat and anchor chains throw god-awful tantrums.

And speaking of booms, propane, our cooking fuel, is prone to a worrisome behavior called spontaneous combustion. Auwe.

So why do I go sailing? That's where the animals are. I'm crazy about marine animals, and I want to see them in their element. A lot.

Happily for me, that's mostly what we did on our trip home across the Kauai Channel. After weeks of steeling ourselves for big seas and strong head winds, they didn't happen.

With sighs of relief, we shook out the reef in the mainsail and then sat back to watch juvenile red-footed booby birds circle the boat looking for a place to land.

None succeeded this time, but a red-tailed tropic bird thrilled us by flying past, and nearby, a flock of wedge-tailed shearwaters skimmed the water looking for fish.

They found some. A commotion of splashing revealed glimpses of big fins, tunas we thought, driving smaller fish to the surface. The wedgies had a feast.

During the dark moonless night, the ocean lulled us into dream states as we watched brief but brilliant twinkles in the boat's wake. It seemed like magic, but in fact, the boat's motion was causing tiny bioluminescent organisms to complete a chemical reaction and light the night.

The wind died as we neared Oahu, but purists we are not. We accepted the calm as a gift from the sea and cheerfully fired up the engine.

As we motored home to Honolulu, the ocean turned so glassy the reflection of the morning sun made the water look oily. Several bottlenose dolphins shattered that illusion when they bounded over to ride our bow waves. The clear-as-air water provided a perfect view of the big dolphins' distinct markings and multiple scars.

That visit from those lively marine mammals was the grand finale to an excellent offshore voyage, the first for my three crew members, and my first as captain. I'm proud of us all.

I'm also worn out. Molokai, my next challenge, can wait.