Land was only four or five miles in front of me. It had to be. That I couldn’t see anything out there didn’t alter that fact. It had to be there.
Of course I couldn’t tell the other four people on board I didn’t know where we were. They were counting on me. I was the captain, and if I let them know I was uncertain, they would probably get nervous. Like I was. We’d left Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, 18 days earlier. The crossing had been great. Everything I had ever hoped for. The farther we got away from land, the better the winds, the warmer the weather and the more I liked it. My crew consisted of my 18-year-old girlfriend (hey, I was single back then, so it’s okay!) and her girlfriend from Minnesota, my friend Bruce, who was a body-builder that worked at a gym I owned, and a young man who’d just graduated from the law school at the University of Colorado.
We were using a sextant to find our way, shooting noon-sights daily. About halfway across, we spotted a supertanker named Bass Pike, and they were kind enough to inform me that I was about 800 miles from where I thought we were.
Oops.
After an hour of checking, I found my mistake. I had been adding the declination instead of subtracting. Each day my error compounded on itself. This was before GPS and I couldn’t afford a Sat-Nav back then, as they were about $2,000.
Once our new position was assured and I corrected my mistake, I was sure we were fine. After all, the sailing directions to get to Hawaii were simple. Sail south until the butter melts, then go west until you hear the ukuleles. About 150 miles out of Hawaii we were hit on the nose with a Kona storm. 45-55 knots of wind out of the south-west. We were blown 100 miles back in two days and blew out our toe-rail. What fun!
Anyway, after the storm was over, we made good time and sailed toward the big island.
So here we were. As I figured it, about three-four miles from the Big Island. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa raise over 12,000 feet from the ocean. They’d be as easy to see as Liz Taylor’s butt in bright red Spandex.
To this point I had been trying to sail the old-fashioned way. I had a radio direction-finder (RDF) on board, but didn’t want to use it. I wanted to get there like my ancestors had. Just the stars and the sun to guide me. After looking at the chart and seeing just how big the ocean is, and how small the islands, I decided discretion was the better part of valor and broke out the RDF.
I found a station in Waikiki on Oahu, and then I found one in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. I put an “X” where the position indicated. It coincided with where I had figured I was.
So where was the 12,000 foot peak? With much trepidation, I decided I should let my crew in on the fact that I was a dunderhead and had gotten us about as lost as I could. The aptness of my vessel’s name was all too apparent at the time. The Lost Soul. Yup, that’d be us!
I walked up on deck feeling about as low as a snake’s ass in a wagon track.
I called the crew together on the aft deck. They all looked at me as trusting as puppies looking at their mother. As I formed in my mind how I would tell them the news that I had really let them down, I heard a motor in the distance.
I looked up and saw a most incongruous sight for a boat lost at sea. It was an old Chris-Craft speed boat pulling a most attractive lady on water skis behind.
I waved them over, and they made a pass by the boat.
“Hey, where’s Hilo?” I screamed.
They made a long and slow turn, and made another pass. As they did, the skipper of the boat pointed right in front of us.
“ Bout two miles that way, Brah!” I heard him holler.
The crew started to cheer. I just stood there, stunned. Two miles? How could that be? It was a clear day and we couldn’t see any land or anything.
I sent the girls up to the bow and had Bruce climb up to the first spreaders. As he was turning to look, we all saw it at once. Breakers on a white sand beach. We were less than a mile offshore.
Then it all started to come together. The depth sounder showed 500 feet. We could hear the surf and we had completed our first ever ocean crossing.
After we landed we found out that the Kilauea Volcano had erupted (that was 1983) and caused a weird atmospheric condition. Visibility was down to less than half a mile on a clear day.
What has all this got to do with the price of eggs?? Nothing, actually.
But it does go to prove a very valuable lesson. As my old friend Glenn Stewart used to say, “No matter where you go, there you are.”
