Chapter two

An update: we made it to Hawaii, handed Pensive off to the crew we'd hired to bring her home, and flew back to Seattle. Jason got daily updates from the captain until about nine days after they left Honolulu, when all communication ceased. The weather router Jason had hired didn't hear from him, and neither did the captain's wife. A couple of days later, Jason got a call from the Coast Guard, asking about his boat. Because the captain had lost communication with everyone, the Honolulu sector of the Coast Guard decided to send a plane out to search for him. When they located the boat, it was 800 miles north of Hawaii, headed south, back towards Honolulu! They made it safely back, and the captain and crew all flew home. We've visited Pensive since then, and taken her sailing, and we're still not really sure why the hired crew didn't get her back home. We can only assume that we weren't the only ones who wanted to sail to Hawaii on our boat. But, hey, we decided to make the most of things, so for the last year, she's been moored at a lovely marina on Oahu, we've had a second home in Hawaii, and we're leaving in June to sail on to Tahiti.

We've been told that the SCUBA diving in Tahiti is some of the best in the world, so as part of our preparation for this journey, we decided to all get certified as divers. I don't really know why, but I found the whole idea extremely frightening. Whatever. I said I'd do it anyway. I promised Jason I'd make it through the certification process, because our girls wanted to do it. We did all of our classwork online, but we decided not to try to do any of the water training in Seattle, because I'm a wimp about cold, so we made plans to do that part in Hawaii. It turns out that was a good idea, because I got cold on the pool dive, even wearing a wetsuit, and got hypothermia the first time we went out in the ocean. That was a fun day. The second time we went out, I wore a full, heavy wetsuit and a diving hood. I looked like a complete freak -- we're in HAWAII -- but I was warm enough. I was, however, also absolutely terrified. The girls were like beautiful, graceful little fish, naturals at everything, and Jason was cool, calm, and comfortable. I, on the other hand, had to remind myself to breathe, I had to remind myself not to hyperventilate, I had to convince myself just to stick it out for a few more minutes about a million times, I got the hiccups underwater, and I threw up. That was ONE DIVE. After all that, we finally got out of the water, took apart and re-assembled our gear, and then...we went back in. I still had to remind myself to breathe and tell myself that it wouldn't last forever, but I didn't get the hiccups or vomit, so that was an improvement. On our last dive, I actually managed to relax enough to see some fish. I'm told there were some in the water for all of the dives, but I definitely didn't see them. Anyway, we all passed, and I might dive again. Someday. Maybe. 

This was before hypothermia and vomiting. I'm trying hard to hide my panic.

And now that that particular trial is over, we're heading to Pensive to get her ready for her next voyage. We'll have some different challenges with provisioning, because of course, we don't live near the boat, so it would be hard to prep our meals in advance. Other than that, it should be an easier trip than the last one (famous last words!), or at least one with warmer weather, which will be nice. There are a variety of smaller islands between Oahu and Tahiti, so we might even get to go ashore some along the way. We're expecting the trip to take somewhere between three and four weeks, and we're tentatively planning to push off around June 15.