The sail from Tahiti to Hawaii took 15 days for roughly 2,500nm. We traveled from about 17S to 23N across the equator so it was mostly a very, very warm trip. Lots of wind and lots of squalls for the first 5-6 days, then flat while we crossed the ITCZ. Much flatter than we expected as the ITCZ developed a large bulge right in front of us so we finally just turned to the NW to escape the bulge and reach the wind.

From Hawaii to San Francisco we again had lots of squalls and wind for the first week, then the wind died entirely as we turned east. The Pacific high was very far north and then a small low off the coast of Oregon created 5kts from the west which forced us to keep motoring. Meanwhile we saw it was blowing 30+ with 20′ seas in our position of just 3 days earlier. We got a bit lulled by the flat water and motoring and almost ran over a 20’+ skiff that we assumed was debris from the tsunami in Japan. Right on cue we had 30-40kts of bitter cold wind the last night before San Francisco, then the wind again died as we reached the SF approach buoy. We motored down the ship channel and picked up a light south westerly just in time to have the space shuttle (mounted to a 747) fly through the Golden Gate bridge to greet us! In all we had to motor for almost 7 days and completed the passage in 16 days.