Crew Blog by Nāʻālehu Anthony

Aloha nui kākou,

Today was a very productive day, which started with lots on the plate. The morning started with family members calling home to wish their loved ones a Happy Mother’s Day. Some moms on our trip got to video chat with their kids and other family members, and I think for some of us it made us all realize how far away from Hawaiʻi we really are, which can be a strange feeling.

The process of getting ready to go can be a little unnerving too. Our crew is going through the final checklists as we enter the departure window that starts tomorrow. 2500 miles and the better part of a month of travel on the ocean is a long stretch to go, so we have to make sure that our floating island has everything that we need to make it across the Pacific Ocean.

Clean, fresh water is one of the most important things that we can bring with us. Without it we only have access to rainwater that we might catch, and salt water that takes large amounts of energy to convert into fresh water. Tautira is the perfect place to acquire fresh drinking water, from the spring that is fed from the waterfall behind the village. This has long been the place where we provision for the journey home, as it was today when we finished the process to load almost 400 gallons of water and food for more than 30 days. The process took almost the whole day – we used the opportunity to go into the hulls to do one last cleaning before loading, and being moored offshore instead of tied to a pier also added time to the task as we require another smaller boat to transfer all of the crew, food, and water to the canoes.

While a team of crewmembers loaded food and water, a whole other set of crew went to check all of the structural lashings and tackle some of the small repairs that are easier to do in port than while under way. The quartermaster checked and rechecked the manifest to make sure it matched what is actually in the hulls. By the end of the day we had taken on more than a ton and a half of food and water, and our teams wrapped up pretty much everything that was pending on the various lists of things to do.

Although it seems like the checklists are never completely done, we are now at the point of readiness that we wait and watch the weather. The wind is beginning to fill in, for tomorrow we are looking at getting winds out of the east or east-southeast, with favorable trades later in the week. Leadership will meet tomorrow to discuss leaving in the afternoon or sometime time soon after that. We’ll keep you all posted as to our progress and departure plans.

SB 72,
Nāʻālehu

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