Aloha Hawaii, Hasta Luego!

Just a quick note to say that Dogbark cast off lines this morning at 0800 bound for the Southern Hemisphere. Our sailing plan is to go east over the top of Moloka’i, over Maui, and over the Big Island. We will not be making the stop we talked about to visit friends, as we have a nice weather window to get east.

We should have northerlies for the first part of the journey, which will allow us to get east before the prevailing NE winds force us to bend the course to the south. We will be watching the ITCZ for the best place to cross “the doldrums” but right now it looks like the convection is easing most to the east (not so squally) and so we are planning to angle for a spot around 7N, 140W. If the conditions continue to improve, we might go a more direct route, but for now, east it is.

Savai cooked breakfast for the crew, we had our first daily meeting, where we discussed our food plan for the daily, our work, our fun stuff, and our learning. Highlights include reading Eragon out loud, fishing, and stowing stuff that still needs a home. We will be eating soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch; fish, (salmon, from Bristol Bay, thanks Ralph!) or if we luck into a Mahi or an Ono we will do that instead, with garlic smashed potatoes and veggies.

We will be learning about the islands we pass, and starting research on the Big Island. Your homework is to get caught up yourselves, so please see Talia’s excellent post about the North Shore of Moloka’i and her later post about Evil Mountain. Cell phones in your pockets everyone.

We have stowing to do now, and dishes, so I had better sign off. Fair winds, track us on the tracker link if you want to know where we are!

Graeme and the Dogbarkers-Janna, Savai, Talia, Solomon and Eli