Pacific Odyssey - Leg 1

Except for the noise of Jordan taking on the three girls, Elske, Bec and Kira, in a massive tickling fight, the boat is quiet. Jose has left for two days to the North Shore to visit his cousin. They came to see the boat several days ago and invited him to take his rest at their place. Skipper also will have two days off, where he is theoretically not responsible for the ship and Antony, Jordan and Karen will stay on the ship. We will spend some time at the beach with the kids, but spend our nights and meals on the boat. Gillian has a room with a kitchen rented for two nights close to Waikiki and is looking forward to some time alone. Katie also has two days of rest. She spent an amazing day with her sister Karen yesterday visiting Pearl Harbour, sunbathing on Waikiki beach and then dinner together and a film. The cooks don´t have to cook until lunch on the day the new trainees board, 2 days from now. We are all in charge of our own stomaches till then. We had a good day with the trainees. It started out with a delicious breakfast of croissants, bagels, cream cheese and different fruit, including chocolate dipped strawberries, and real, cold orange juice. Jacob made the chocolate mix and dipped the strawberries. We spent the morning leisurely hanging out together, taking our time to say good bye. Some of the trainees stayed on till close to suppertime. A comprehensive email list was put
together by Arwen on the computer and everyone has a copy. Many last minute photos were taken and groups of us took a last visit with friends to the Starbucks to enjoy a ´mango citrus.´ Last night after Mug-Up, everyone had a chance to edify each other, to speak out about what they liked about each other. It´s a great activity, and binds everyone together one last time before separating. This dialogue turned into a general discussion about a real variety of aspects of the trip, all kinds of memories, impressions, initial thoughts that had changed through the process of sailing and living together etc. It went on till past 0200hrs; a great way to spend the last night together. Breakfast was bumped later in the morning because of it.
Once most of the trainees had left, the crew plus a few trainee volunteers, started to clean the ship below decks. It looks pretty empty, the life is gone. I´m looking forward to filling the Grace with trainees again and getting to know them, starting the process of creating a community all over again. I´m pretty sure we will see or at least hear from many of our trainees, it was an amazing leg. The rest of the day was spent getting personal and boat jobs done. Antony, Skipper and Jordan still had quite a bit of bosun-related shoppng to do and were able to get most of it done. I walked with 3 of my kids to the laundromat, a 25 minute walk. It was a pretty hot walk, but we found some juice and ice cream and some fun things to do while we waited between the washes and the drying. It was a relief to
get back to the boat and rinse under the hose. You have no idea what a
luxury the hose is. Yesterday we got our waterbill for the first week, $24ish dollars. We figured that the use of the water, the pleasure it provided each of us several times a day, was probably the cheapest activity all 37 of us enjoyed.  When we arrived in Honolulu, Loren, our executive director, sent a summary of some of the many things that are happening and evolving within the SALTS organization.  For the crew on the Grace, it was wonderful to read about all the work that is taking place, all the projects and decisions being worked on.  We want to thank Loren, Pam, Andrew, Deborah, Charissa and David for leadership in the office and for the incredible amount of work they do. We couldn´t be out here running the program, if it wasn´t for them.  We´d also like to thank Patrick for the beautiful dovetailed, teak binocular box he built for the stern of the Grace.  It fits and looks wonderful.  At our final breakfast, Corbin created a new melody for our grace Johnny Appleseed. He sang and accompanied himself on the banjo. It sounds great.  Jordan recorded the newest version on the video so we could
learn it after Corbin leaves.  As Skipper is taking tomorrow off to wander the beach with his kids, I will not be writing a log in the evening.  I will continue as soon as the crew returns the following day.  We have bumped into 2 of the new trainees already and it makes me excited about taking off again.  They provide the material for this log.  Pray for safe arrivals for the new trainees and a smooth start. Welcome Home some of you Leg one trainees.  Good night, Bonice.