A Month in Hawai'i

"We just spent a month in Hawai'i," said Alisa. "I think we'll look back at that and be blown away."

And so it is with this nautical existence of ours.

I tend to cast a gimlet eye on sailors' easy talk about "freedom".

But having discretionary time in such quantities that we can spend a month in a place like Kona, meeting the locals and getting a taste of the life, while we're also working on making little contributions to our understanding of the North Pacific (me), or making very big contributions to the education of the next generation (Alisa)...well. That's the thing right there, isn't it?

But this time in Hawai'i has come to an end. Elias has raised the Blue Peter (below), that age-old signal of a ship about to put to sea.

And...I'm feeling the moment. Tomorrow when we wake, we will set sail for Alaska.

This picture and and the one at the top - our good friend Jamie, a long-time Kona connoisseur, turned us onto this great walk south from Honokohau Harbor. It was good fun to discover something like this just off the boat at the very end of our stay.