Update | November 8, 2014

 Written by Nāʻālehu Anthony.

Aloha nui kākou,

This will serve as your Saturday, November 8th voyage update.  We are currently sailing Manu Kona, at 6 kts in 15-20 kts of wind.  The wind is out of the ESE and has been somewhat stable since sunrise.  We stopped to change the rig around 2pm today to put the triangles and take advantage of being able to point higher into the wind.  Last night was a great night of sailing. We had really good winds and great seas. We made some pretty decent speeds as the moon lit the way for us as we went. A pod of dolphins came up and stayed with us for about 15 minutes.  Sunrise happened while the moon was still setting, and Hikianalia came up along side us.

We think we are currently 483 miles along our course line and 65 miles North of it.  The course we are taking is slowly walking us back down to the south against the course line that was originally plotted. That course has land at 560 along it so were looking at seeing land sometime tomorrow depending on the wind and the canoes speeds.

This morning was a great fishing day.  Sometime after sunrise, we landed three albacore in the span of about 7 minutes.  Add that to the two Aku yesterday and we had way too much fish on board.  Captain bruce was kind enough to share the fish with the Hikianalia crew and buoyed back two albacore on a bumper.  Iʻm sure it was enough for all the meals of the day. We had aku bone for breakfast and albacore curry for dinner.  Uncle Mel hit it out of the park tonight.

The excitement for the day came when both Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia participated in our first virtual field trip using Google Hangouts. Kaʻiulani Murphy spent several minutes walking through the canoe on camera with three classes worth of kids watching.  At the end some of the questions  that were submitted were asked and Kaʻiulani answered them.  We stopped our connection at that point and then Hikianalia went and toured that canoe.  Kids got a taste of how similar and different both vessels are.  This was the first one and is a work in progress.  Well keep you all updated as it progresses and refines.

Well check in when we sight land, or around this time tomorro.

Me ka mahalo nui
Standing by 72
Nā’ālehu