March 30, 2009

Return to MajuroWe left Ailuk village a bit before noon on Saturday, to be sure we were back in time to meet Angela at the airport. She should arrive from Hawaii tomorrow, so we got here in plenty of time. The weather was generally fairly good, apart from a few hours when we opted to help the sails with a little push from a motor. Wind started light enough to keep from making the sea very rough, but was a little too far south to allow us to make our course. We didn't mind running a motor in exchange for nobody being seasick. By nightfall we were able to sail the course, and with three watch keepers it wasn't too hard on the sleep schedule, though boat speed increased until the noise of bashing through waves did keep us awake some. At dawn we were about halfway back, and optimistic about a pretty fast passage. Then we ran into an area of wind shear, where wind systems of slightly different directions converged. The accompanying clouds never did really rain on us, but for a couple of hours the winds were shifty and strong, gusting to 30 knots. Rather than go through the work of reefing the mainsail for what we expected to be a brief time we just rolled up the jib and went back to motorsailing to maintain direction. From the time we left the shear line we had all good conditions, right through our 8:00 PM entrance to the Majuro lagoon, and an easy motorsail up the lagoon to the mooring field. By 10:30 we were having a celebratory evening snack. Karen and I went back to Sequester for the night, then returned to Holokai for breakfast before helping MJ and Bill move ashore to the hotel. They had a fabulous time visiting their son and his host family, and got a view of atoll life that very few people on the planet could share. We all consider it the best of luck that they were not prone to seasickness, and that the ocean didn't choose to test their limits of endurance. We'll write more about the trip soon, but this is to let everyone know we're back in Majuro, and have access to the hotmail address again for now. Ted