November 15, 2023
Cyclone Mal passed Fiji overnight bringing damaging winds (90 knots) to Somosomo (where we visited at the beginning of this sailing adventure). We came into the Nawi marina just in case the cyclone shifted more east but thankfully all we had was some rain at 2:22am, some wind around 3:30am (maximum 20 knots, maybe gust to 25 knots) Throughout the…
November 7, 2023
The sun rose as we slowly clicked off the miles to enter the pass of the next atoll, Vanua Balavu. After what seemed like an eternity, around 8:45am, we reached the calm interior of the atoll and with that I headed down to make my breakfast. Eating breakfast I noticed I had cell signal so with Carl’s help I spent…
November 6, 2023
A lazy-ish morning while we waited for high tide gave me a chance to soak into my brain the colors from the green vegetation to the explosion of shades of blue. I tried my best to lock it into my memory banks. Around 11:30am it was go time, so off we went. Getting through the pass was smooth sailing due…
October 4, 2022
The seasons are changing and with it weather to deal with when flying. I was able to skirt storms on the front and back side of my trip and keep it all VFR.
September 16, 2022
Time for Mike to head home to Rapid City, blerg. It rained hard early in the morning and there was talk of skipping the ride over Buffalo pass in favor of taking the highway. But after breakfast it seemed manageable so we geared up and hit the trail. The conditions were better than expected and soon we were over the…
February 14, 2022
You know how some of those things you see on the internet look like amazing experiences and you jump on board before thinking it through? Yeah, this was one of those. On paper an Snow/Ice village sounds really fun. In reality it is fucking cold. I know, that is pretty obvious. We arrived at the SnowVillage around 2:00pm and were…
August 1, 2021
I’ve attended Airventure a bunch of times. Always camping but sometimes driving and sometimes flying. I’ve experienced the mass arrival at KOSH, I’ve spent hours waiting to depart after the show, and experienced the nearly every year big storm. Well this year checked most of those boxes but the most important new one, flying a plane I built. Big shout…
March 2, 2020
Back aboard I wasted no time getting Strikhedonia ready for the passage to Banderas bay. I had Jean and our friends coming in about a week and finding a good weather window meant getting to Perula as quickly as possible. After checking out of the marina, getting a good night’s sleep, at the crack of dawn it was time to…
December 1, 2019
Pretty good winds (15-25 knots) were forecast for Sunday and Monday with a possible crossing window Tuesday. Wanting to get a good spot to hop off to the Mainland the plan was to head for Punta Bonanza where Jean and I crossed from last year. We wanted as early a start as possible since the winds would be on our…
November 27, 2019
Well it was an interesting day. A strong late season storm was coming our way with winds forecast to be 40+ knots and heavy rain. The sole reason we took a mooring ball in Puerto Escondido was this event. In the morning we had some light rain but not much wind and around 11:30am there was a break in the…
November 20, 2019
Crazy, crazy weather. Overnight at 3:00am we had more rain. Light to moderate. It sounded nice tapping the boat and by morning it had passed on and left us with a spectacular sunrise. I jumped in a kayak and paddled to shore for my daily hike to the hill overlooking the bay. Today I added the smaller hill in front…
November 19, 2019
Technically Tuesday, at 1:00am the wind piped up from the west. Of course this was un-forecast and meant we were on a lee shore. I was up for about an hour before the wind mellowed enough for me to be comfortable to fall asleep. Of course the residual waves lasted much longer but Strikhedonia and the other three boats stay…