We are now officially (trumpet fanfare, harrumph!) circumnavigators! We finished our round-the-world voyage by sailing into our home port of Poulsbo on June 4th, 2008 and we are very proud of ourselves for having done so. In  general, we feel the last two legs of our trip around the world were a bit difficult. It seems that leaving the Northwest coast of the United States almost eight years ago was pretty easy, getting back up there to home was somewhat challenging.
Back in March, about two weeks after we had transittted the Panama Canal, we set out on the passage from Balboa, Panama to Hilo, Hawaii. We were delayed in our departure from Panama waiting for the stitches  to come out of Neil's abdomen, the result of an emergency gall bladder removal. Once again, we were so very lucky  to happen to be in a place where there was a good, modern hospital and well-trained physicians when we needed them, and believe us, we have been inside some pretty scary medical facilities during the past eight years. Nancy's Aunt Barbara jokes about Neil leaving body parts in various remote parts of the world. Our friend Larry Stine refers to our trip as "The Sirman's Tour of World Medical Facilities"! Nancy deserves considerable recognition for her steadiness, competency, and bravery in coping with everything from boat security to cab drivers and medical forms alone in a foreign environment when Neil was recovering. She is an amazing woman!
Jimmy Cornell's advice on making the passage from Panama to the Pacific Northwest is wrong. In his otherwise excellent book, World Cruising Routes, after alluding to the difficulty of getting away from this coast, he advises dropping down to 5°N to pick up winds which will carry you into the NE trades. We watched the GRIB files (GRIdded Binary wind reports) on the US National Weather Service sites for two months prior to our departure. These indicate no dependable winds down there for over a thousand miles off the Panamanian coast. The objective is to get to the vicinity of Clipperton Island, where the NE trade winds fill in nicely. We decided to try the direct route to Hilo. This was a big mistake.
We slipped our mooring at the Balboa Yacht Club at 0945 on the morning of March 13th, 2008, motoring slowly southwest out of the Canal entrance. As always for a long passage, our diesel and water tanks were topped off, the fresh rinse-water bags for bathing on deck were full. Nancy had spent weeks carefully provisioning the ship for a long passage. She has become really professional at this during our cruising years. It is an especially challenging task in that Active Light has no refrigeration nor watermaker. Special forethought must be given to keeping a crew well fed, healthy, and content for a long voyage with no replenishment stops for butter, milk, meat, and other perishables. Nancy does this most efficiently and we always eat well on passage!

Pacific entrance to the Canal, Balboa Yacht Club moorings to the right.

Do you remember the song, "I left my gall bladder, in Panama City".

Anchored vessels waiting their turn to transit the canal.

And a last view of Panama City.

We put up sails, the main and roller furling genoa, but didn't get far that first day. In fact, we made it only ten miles away from Balboa to the small island of Taboga. We took a mooring in a snug little cove on the southeast corner and lay there for two nights, enjoying the clear weather, the clean water, and the peace and quiet of this anchorage. We did not go ashore, but spent out time resting, putting the boat in order, and reading. We hired a young fellow named Alfredo for US$10 to scrape the barnacles from our hull, . . . there weren't many. We paid him a little extra and gave him a swim mask. He was quite happy. He could not understand how to change the prop zinc, so we thanked him and his granddad came alongside in a launch and picked him up. Neil went over the side and quickly changed the zinc even though his stomach wounds were still healing, so heroic!. We left next morning around 1000 on the 15th and by early afternoon we were on a port tack, beam reach sailing SW to clear Punta Mala (Bad Point). Our friend and advisor on Panama affairs, Susan Richter, had told us this was an area of frequent bad weather, but we slipped past in the night without problem. Poor little Active Light was so loaded with provisions, her sailing performance was a bit sluggish.

The beautiful little town on the northwest corner of Taboga.

We spent two days here resting, . . .

. . . and watching the beach umbrellas go up and down.

Our refueling stop in Puerto Quepos, Costa Rica.

The next day, March 16th, was Neil's 65th birthday. There is no better way to spend it than at sea, living the dream of long distance voyaging one has held since childhood. Neil's birthday gift was a very natty looking Panama hat and a chocolate cake baked at sea! Yum! We stayed about 20 nm offshore, heading NW toward Hilo, Hawaii, well inboard of the frequent large ship traffic to and from the Canal Zone. As the wind became lighter and more on the nose, we resorted more often to motoring, using up too much of our precious diesel fuel too early in the trip. Our plan was to get to the vicinity of Clipperton Island, or the lat long of 10° N, 110° W, 1700 nm to the west. It is there that the northeast tradewinds fill in nicely all the way to Hawaii, but how to get there? We continued like this for two more days, until the 18th of March, mostly motoring in light headwinds and not making much progress towards Hilo. At one point, we got a little gust of wind, became excited thinking it was going to be steady, shut down the engine and raised all the sails. All this entails about fifteen minutes work. By the time everything was set, the wind had died, we were dead in the water, no forward motion at all. This was not the first time for this to happen, either. Then we looked at the GPS and noted that we were making 2.6 knots over the ground, in REVERSE, back toward Balboa! We not only had no wind, not only were the intermittent puffs of wind on the nose, but we were in the grips of strong current directly from the direction we wanted to go. On top of all this, adding insult to defeat, a really large grey and yellow seabird tried to sit on our masthead wind indicator and bent one of its parts downward 90°.  We decided King Neptune did not want us to go to Hawaii at this moment, so we headed back to the coast to regroup.
We motored overnight to the small harbor of Puerto Quepos on the coast of Costa Rica. We anchored between two other American yachts and met (on the VHF) the nicest lady, Cynthia, aboard the yacht Ten Ten. She offered to ferry us and our jerry cans in her high speed inflatable to the fuel dock about 1.5 nm away. With heart in throat, (remember the recent surgery), Neil made the terrifying, abdomen-wrenching, bottom pounding, truly frightening ride with this free-spirited woman to the fuel docks. We managed to get in to town, get some cash from an ATM, get back to port, pay the harbormaster a "take on fuel" fee, get the diesel and ferry it back to the boat, . . . all without injury or official Costa Rican customs and immigration check-in. What a nice lady! An angel! She really helped us. Neil went over to their boat later that evening and helped them with some software problem or other on their laptop and with their GPS/laptop interface. After a peaceful good night's sleep at anchor, next morning we were on our way again.
We had been talking on the SSB and via ham email to Don on s/v Summer Passage in California. Don is a well-known and respected weather advisor for cruising sailors. He comes up twice daily on 12C and 16C standard SSB channels. His advice was that the only way to break free from the "no wind" zone of the Central American coast was to somehow work your way up the coast to the Gulf of Papagayo, wait until one of the strong and periodic westerly blows burst over the isthmus. Then you should head out as fast as one can toward 10° N, 110° W while it lasts. We were already pretty near the Gulfo de Papagayo anyway (180 nm to the north), we decided to take his advice. We were able to sail most of the way, thus saving our precious replenished fuel. At sunset, as we neared the harbor we had selected to stay in, we were treated to the sight of hundreds of small rays leaping out of the water in schools, flapping their "wings" furiously. They were suspended above the water for a few seconds before making a loud splat as they hit the surface again. We could imagine them yelling "Yahoo" as they jumped. Dark was fast approaching and we were still several miles from the anchorage, but we made it to Bahia Culebra at the southern end of the Gulfo de Papagayo just after dark. Contrary to good cruising practice, we entered this new harbor in the dark, using radar, depthfinder, spotlight, and our electronic charts connected to the GPS. Soon the full moon arose to light our way directly ahead, almost as if Neptune, that hairy old bastard, was saying to us, "Yeah, this is the way I want you to go!". It was an easy entrance and we had no trouble at all.
We kept hearing strange animal calls from shore as we fell asleep, learning the next day that the area was home to several troupes of howler monkeys. We thought we were doing really well when we went ashore the next morning, after launching the dinghy, to find a little park right there with restrooms(!) and a fresh water tap(!!) a short distance away. This was built for the convenience of the hiking guests of a nearby luxury resort hotel. While filling our jerrycans with water, Neil was stung on the forehead by a bee. This went unnoticed for most of the day, but quickly developed into quite a red lump on his left forehead. It kept  getting bigger and a lymph gland in front of his left ear started swelling visibly. Ever the medical liability, we decided it would be imprudent to set off on a long ocean voyage with a medical uncertainty aboard, so we rowed in to the resort and asked for help from a group of amazed hotel "beach staff". They, of course, all had cell phones, and offered to arrange for a taxi to carry us to town to consult a doctor. "Oh, wait! I will call for you a taxi that will be much less expensive than the thieves and extortionists who lie in wait outside the resort office!". Sounds good to us. Again, remember, we were not "checked in" to Costa Rica and we were not supposed to be going ashore. This taxi driver turned out to be the father of this same staff member. So we meet this fellow down the road, outside the resort gates, . . . after a considerable wait because he went first to the wrong hotel. The first thing he says to us, after we are on our way and have agreed on a price, is that if we get stopped by the police, just tell them that we are friends of his son, not tourists in a taxi for hire. Okay, so we drive into the town of Liberia, Costa Rica, about the size of Silverdale, Washington. We go first to one private clinic where there is no doctor, and then another, where there is a very young doctor. "Why don't we just go to the emergency room of the hospital?", Neil asked in Spanish. "Senor, you do not want to go to the hospital. Many people die there. And it takes a very long time. It is a bad place!", so advised our driver. At the second clinic, we were ushered in to see the doctor right away, even though there were many other patients waiting, one young woman coughing terribly. We suppose we looked like we could pay our bill in cash. Well, again we were lucky, this young fellow, though recently out of medical school and speaking only Spanish, was competent. He let us know that Neil was having an allergic reaction to the bee sting. He picked the stinger out of Neil's big red forehead lump, wrote a series of four prescriptions for an antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory drug, and two anti-allergens and we were on our way. The bill for the consultation was, we think, US$29. Then we began the flail of trying to fill the prescriptions. This took over two hours because each drugstore we went to had either none or only one of the four medicines, but we finally got everything, including a few extra last minute veggies from street vendors. We were soon on our way back to the resort and our boat. We kept our friend, the driver, happy by bumping the agreed upon taxi fare up to US$40 for the round trip, so all was well. On the way back we noticed that it was blowing like stink! The wind had kicked in over the Gulf of Papagayo. It was time to go.
Back at the resort, we left two six packs of beer for the guys on the beach who had helped us, rowed out to Active Light, lifted the dinghy aboard, hauled up the anchor and on a Wednesday, the 25th of March at 1400 local time we were off at last to Hawaii. True to prediction, the wind held steady for several days. We were able to run downwind long enough to get several hundred miles away from Central America before it began to fail.

Active Light at anchor in Bahia Culebra, Costa Rica.

The small park ashore where we took on fresh water and got stung!

The resort hotel where we rowed ashore to find medical help.

From our anchorage in Bahia Culebra looking west toward Hawaii.

The next 34 days consisted of "less-than-wonderful" passage-making. We sailed often in light winds, sometimes in very lumpy beam seas and strong winds, and we motored a lot. We motored so much, always trying to get to the NE tradewinds, we soon had only eight gallons of diesel left. (We left Bahia Culebra with 78 gallons.) The words "overcast, bumpy, and gloomy" occur often in our logbook for this passage. The water in this part of the Pacific is cold, so our usually enjoyable saltwater deck baths were not fun. On the other hand, we always ate well, thanks to Nancy's meticulous provisioning and yet, as always, we lost weight (a good thing) during passage. We take very little or no junk food with us when we leave port. We spent long, long hours talking about how we were going to arrange such and so with our new home back in Poulsbo, how we were going to finish the new barn our friend and contractor, Dan Fischer, was building for us, and where the garden was to be, etc. We read many, many books and worked countless sudoku puzzles. (Neil is an addict.) It was a long voyage and seemed longer because, in all honesty, we were anxious to be back home. We had been feeling, since finishing the trip across the South Atlantic from Cape Town, that our voyage was over. There was nothing we saw in the Caribbean, in Colombia nor in Panama, as nice as they were, that matched our experiences in the Indian Ocean. We are sorry if that sounds a bit effete, but that is our impression. We did consider the irony of the fact, as we wrote daily complaining "trip report" emails to our family and close friends back home, that here we were, retired and sailing across the Pacific Ocean, while our friends were back home at work, having a miserably cold and wet Spring.
We had a couple of serious problems during this passage. The first of these was that on April 10th, during a spell of pretty nasty weather, Nancy was standing balanced in the galley, trying to eat with one hand and hanging on in the rolling broadside seas with the other. There was a big wave which rolled the boat hard to port just as Nancy let go her balance hand to take another bite. She was thrown across the galley and smashed her left temple against the binocular case mounted on the port cabin sides. Neil was in the cockpit on watch and heard the crash and a scream from Nancy. By the time he got down the companionway ladder, she was sitting on the cabin floor, holding her left temple, with tears streaming down her face! She hurt so badly we were both frightened that she had gotten a concussion. She climbed into the portside passage bunk and stayed there for 24 hours. We applied a chemical cold pack which was a bit old and not 100% effective. Neil immediately wrote ham email to his sister, Virginia, who is an active registered nurse working in Alaska. Fortunately, she was on duty at her hospital in Bethel, Alaska at the time. She queried all the MD's in the hospital about concussion symptoms and treatment and wrote back immediately with a description, none of which Nancy had. We are so lucky she was there to help us when we needed it.

Hi, Neil and Nancy,

Our friend, Carol Haskins, also a professional nurse, most kindly sent us a long and well-researched description of concussion analysis and treatment. Next morning Nancy was much better, but oh my, what a scare!

Later on the same day that Nancy was injured, we crossed our outbound track we had set six years earlier on our way to the Marquesas from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, thus technically speaking, completing our eight-year circumnavigation. Details from Active Light's logbook record our being at 15° 00.1' N, 119° 14.27' W during the early morning hours of 17 April, 2002. The event passed without much ceremony in that we were so worried about Nancy's condition. The poor quality image on the right is a "screen copy" from our laptop's navigation software. The three + marks show our southbound track six years earlier, the little red icon indicates our position at the moment, proceeding at 6 knots on a course of 267° True, and the dashed line shows our projected course from Clipperton Island to Hilo, Hawaii had we been following it. Navigation is so easy today!

The next problem was that a few days later our Monitor wind vane, that very important and dependable "third crew member" aboard Active Light, suffered two breakdowns. First, the spring that holds the water blade lock mechanism broke and the paddle floated to the surface during a night watch. We used the Raymarine electric autopilot to get through the night and next morning we replaced the broken spring with one scavenged from our old water blade. (The spring that broke was from our new water paddle recently purchased in South Africa from Scanmar Marine for US$500!)  Then, on the 25th of April, we discovered that the welds holding the pulley blocks at the bottom of the two struts guiding the steering lines to the waterpaddle had broken. We solved this problem by jury-rigging spare external blocks with bits of short line to bypass the broken pulleys. (Left photo.) This worked surprisingly well. A Monitor vane easily could be re-engineered to use sturdier and more easily serviced external blocks to lead the steering lines. (And that would mean less dependence on OEM purchased replacement parts.) The sad truth is that our poor Monitor is so old, (32 years!) that the 304 grade stainless steel is suffering from what we suppose is metal fatigue. We had an excellent welder in Richards Bay, South Africa grind out and re-weld many of these stress cracks, but he (Gideon) did not get around to everything. Neil is considering the tradeoffs between buying a wire-feed welder, learning to weld with 316 stainless, and buying a new wind vane for about $5,000 from Scanmar Marine. Then, mid-morning on the 26th of April, the scariest failure of all, the port upper shroud, holding the top section of our mast upright parted with a loud bang!

We were running with the big asymmetrical spinnaker up, the mainsail was down, and we were making good time in light airs on a port tack for a change.. The wind had clocked around to the ESE. It sounded like a rifle shot going off. Neil was on deck and Nancy was below. At first we could not figure out what the source of the problem was, but then Neil looked up and saw the spinnaker pulling the top third of the mast sickeningly off to starboard. We were able to snuff the spinnaker using the pull-down sock and that relieved most of the strain on the mast. Neil went to work frantically removing the broken lower T-bolt and shackle from the broken shroud. We quickly decided the best thing to do was to scavenge the staysail turnbuckle (inner forestay) as a replacement and sail without the staysail. This took a bit of time (15 minutes) because Neil could not get the bronze cotter pin to release from the stainless steel clevis pin on the staysail. After one ripped-up thumb and leaking some blood on our decks, we soon had the replacement installed. We used our Loos tension gauge to tension the shroud and all was well. It took several hours for the adrenalin to work its way out of our bodies.
By this time we were less than 250 nm from Hilo and fortunately we had no more equipment failures. At 0737 on the morning of April 28th, Nancy first spotted the Big Island when we were 19 nm out. Neil was able to reactivate our cell phone. This is the first time we had done this. We are cell phone idiots, having missed this technology craze for the last eight years. So we were pretty proud of ourselves to be able to phone in to Hawaiian customs, immigration, and agriculture authorities. In Hilo, those three offices rested upon the amiable shoulders of just one man. He informed us of the check-in procedure and warned us that we needed to place a VHF radio call to the Coast Guard for permission to enter the harbor and proceed to Radio Bay.

Land ho, Hawaii. The Big Island really is out there somewhere in the gloom.

Neil activated our cell phone and called Customs and Immigration agents.

With an active cell phone in our hands, we enjoyed calling several of our friends, reporting on the appearance of the smoke coming out of Kilauea's volcanic crater as seen from 15 miles out.  We rounded the jetty in Hilo's harbor. The path across Hilo Bay to Radio Bay passed near the stern of a large cruise ship moored at the dock. We hailed the Coast Guard on VHF channel 16, as instructed. Their concern was that we might be a terrorist torpedo vessel intent on sinking the Love Boat, no laughing matter these days and a grim reminder that we were back in the U.S.A. In the quiet and snug Radio Bay, under gray skies with little wind, Nancy backed us up neatly to the concrete commercial pier while Neil set two anchors off the bow in a "Y" configuration. A nice Hawaiian fellow ashore took our stern lines and we were soon settled in.

Rounding the jetty at Hilo, Radio Bay off to port behind the Love Boat.

Active Light moored stern to in Hilo's Radio Bay.

View of the US Coast Guard and a large cruise ship from Active Light.

The first thing we did in Hilo, as in every new port, was find a nice long hot shower, . . . and here we were not disappointed. The Port of Hilo is a commercial port, but some accommodations have been made for the cruising sailor. For only $8 per day, you get to tie up to the huge cement quay or anchor out in the smallish, but quiet waters of Radio Bay. There is potable fresh water at each spot on the quay to attach a garden hose and even coin-operated 110V electrical hookup if you want it. There are clean shower and toilet facilities very near the quay with endless strong hot water, and even a book swap. After a good night's sleep and long hot showers, we made our way to the US Customs and Immigration office just outside the port compound. We were able to jump through all three check-in hoops, customs, immigration, and agriculture at the same time, with the same officer. He was a very helpful and competent individual who was a little bit miffed at us when we asked if we needed to go through these same check-in procedures again when we arrived in the US. "You're in the US now. Hawaii is part of the United States, you know!", he declared. "Oh, I meant, the US mainland, of course.", Neil backtracked.  "No, you are all checked-in to the USA now.", he answered.
In the port office, we were told we could queue up and pretend to be tourists from one of the enormous cruise ships and get free shuttle bus transport to the shopping mall. We did this and found we had no trouble blending in with the 1,100 other grey-haired American tourists. Someone asked us if we were with the boat and we replied, "Yeah, we're on the boat." Someone even asked us what our cabin number was. "Number 1707", we said. "Oh, you are just down the hall from us!", they retorted. "Funny we haven't seen you." "Oh, it's a big ship." we countered. Everyone was happy. No one really cared. A new cruise ship came in every other day or so, in and out in a single day. At the mall, we found Wal-Mart, Sears, Home Depot, . . . shops we hadn't seen for years. Oh, we had a shopping good time, but the prices were awfully high! The shuttle buses would stop by every fifteen minutes, but you had to be back by 4:30, which was the last bus, or pay $10 to $15 for a taxi back to the port.

Our self steering windvane removed and off to the welder.

That healthy crop of gooseneck barnacles looking a little droopy.

Repairs became the second order of business. We were able to use our cell phone and call to the US mainland just as if we were at home, and that greatly helped us find a replacement T-bolt for our broken shroud. We ordered one from West Marine via DHL at an exorbitant price. We did not argue. Our friends Jim and Paul helped us running down the dimensions and sources on this item. Next, we made inquiries and found the best 316 stainless steel welder in Hawaii. His name is Wayne Rabang. We unbolted the windvane and set out to get the item to his shop. This was a "No-Cruise-Ship-in-Port" day, so the huge terminal was deserted, not a taxi in sight. Neil hauled the heavy weldment out to the nearest crossroads and began looking for a taxi. Half an hour later, still no taxi. He left the vane sitting by the corner and stuck his head into the local convenience store located there. He asked how one could get a taxi here, and one of the clerks replied, "Oh, where do you want to go? I am going off-duty now and my husband is in our truck outside." Wow, what nice folks! They took Neil and the windvane directly to the welder's shop. Neil had to insist to get them to accept some gas money for their help. Neil cannot remember their names, but they were typical, we were to learn, of the wonderful people on this island. About a week later, the vane was repaired and stronger than ever. Mr. Rabang even gave us a lift back to the boat with the windvane and all our groceries in his big 3/4 ton pickup. If you are ever in Hilo and need a good welder, Wayne Rabang  is really an artist in stainless and he has the heart of a benevolent prince!

Neil polishing the windvane gear and cleaning the transom.

Our neighbor, a traditional ocean-crossing Hawaiian catamaran.

As we became more familiar with things during our two weeks in Hilo, we found a good laundry nearby and even a bar with free wifi service. We bought beer and Coke and Neil uploaded our previous webpage chronicling our travels from Curacao to Panama. Our nearest neighbor in the marina was a traditional Hawaiian ocean voyaging catamaran, a replica of the type that carried those ancient Hawaiian seafarers to populate New Zealand. Funny, isn't it, that the Dutchman Abel Tasman (in 1642) and the English Captain Cook (in 1769) were credited for "discovering" and mapping New Zealand. What they "discovered" was a land already discovered and populated by a highly developed, sophisticated, and rather capable warrior society who had crossed the same ocean in smaller vessels centuries earlier from, . . . Hawaii. But, I digress! The people aboard the catamaran came to work on it every day. They were a bit stand-offish, and that bothered Neil who wanted to be asked aboard to examine the craft more completely. The hulls were of fiberglass, but everything else was made of wood and held together with rope lashings. Neil was told the "crab claw" sail worked well to windward and could be reefed in a blow, but that the ride was very "wet".

For our friend Paul, who loves machines, a container lift in the Port of Hilo.

The empty parking lot at Port of Hilo, Active Light mast in the background.