Hawaii-Guam-Japan-Alaska-Seattle!

[Retriever]

We left Hawaii on MV Starr a couple days ago for the first leg of a 12,000+nm, 9 month North Pacific cruise. The plan is to get to Okinawa, Japan in early March, explore the west coast of Japan until June, then depart Hokkaido for Alaska when we get a weather window in June. We’ll spend the summer in Alaska and plan to arrive in Seattle sometime in September.

Starr is an early Northern Marine 75 that has cruised the Pacific extensively. She has a single 400hp Cummins 855 and carries just under 4000 gallons of diesel. We’re currently 470nm out of Honolulu on the rhumb line to Guam, enjoying nice following seas. Starr has twin rudders behind her single screw, and even with 12 foot following seas at 8 seconds, she tracks like she’s on rails with very little rudder input. Really remarkable.

We’re blogging about the trip here: https://mvstarr.com/

Happy to answer any questions people might have about this adventure!

 

[mvweebles]

Thanks. I latched on to your statement about dual rudders on a single engine. I couldn't imagine what that meant so I followed your URL. Interesting solution.

https://mvstarr.com/twin-rudders-an-update-after-18-years/

Fair seas. I'm jealous.

Peter

 

[Max1]

Wow. this sounds so exciting

 

[darkside]

That sounds an excellent adventure. Fair seas

 

[lwarden]

I wish you all a safe voyage and will be following the blog.

 

[ofer]

wow what a trip. please keep us updated.

hope to run into you around homer Alaska.

 

[ofer]

Thanks. I latched on to your statement about dual rudders on a single engine. I couldn't imagine what that meant so I followed your URL. Interesting solution.

https://mvstarr.com/twin-rudders-an-update-after-18-years/

Fair seas. I'm jealous.

Peter

great concept. I just love it

I will take twin rudders over twin engines any day

 

[Jeff F]

Wow. The CCA award is noteworthy. Looks like you have a capable vessel. Smooth sailing!

 

[tpbrady]

Sam,

We will look for you next summer in Alaska.

Tom

 

[Pete Meisinger]

Your fuel tanks full are worth about what my boat is.

Congratulations on a life well lived.

pete

 

[rgano]

What is your normal crew size? What is minimum crew you would go with on a trip like this?

 

[Retriever]

What is your normal crew size? What is minimum crew you would go with on a trip like this?

We have five onboard right now, which is very comfortable and allows for 3 hours on, 9 hours off. Lots of time for reading and sleeping.

The owners of the boat have run it themselves for most of the last 20 years, usually with a couple friends aboard for ocean crossing. Due to age and health, this is the first time with a captain (me) and one crew member. The fifth person is a friend who’s done two previous Pacific crossings on this boat, and several on his own boat.

I’d be fine running Starr with just one other capable person, but having a third makes a big difference in fatigue, particularly if/when things go wrong.

 

[Fletcher500]

What an amazing trip, safe travels. Guam was one of my favorites and Okinawa as well.

Are you using Starlink?

 

[Retriever]

What an amazing trip, safe travels. Guam was one of my favorites and Okinawa as well.

Are you using Starlink?

Thanks! Yes, we’re using Starlink. We have a flat HP dish and a rectangular dish with motors enabled. Both with RV service. HP dish is hugely better performing so far and absolutely worth the money. Weve been FaceTiming and wifi calling with very occasional glitches. We’re hoping it works all the way across…

 

[Fletcher500]

Thanks! Yes, we’re using Starlink. We have a flat HP dish and a rectangular dish with motors enabled. Both with RV service. HP dish is hugely better performing so far and absolutely worth the money. Weve been FaceTiming and wifi calling with very occasional glitches. We’re hoping it works all the way across…

Good to hear on the Starlink. It’s a mind blower that you can have full comms out there in the middle of the ocean. I have the HP Flat and have tested it at home. I am going to install it on the boat soon so the feedback on the performance is appreciated. Also, I checked out the Blog and the owners back story and travels - impressive.

 

[Hippocampus]

Great explanation of twin rudders and compared to the other choices follows the KISS principle which is great on an ocean boat. How are they linked? Is it a solid rod like you sometimes see on cats? That allows some tuning in a manner that stays tuned.
Have a wonderful passage.

 

[Retriever]

We had our first major excitement last night, about 750nm west of Oahu. Just before 1am the main engine bogged down and we lost several knots of speed. When we shifted to reverse to try and clear the debris, the engine stalled. We’d picked up an abandoned fishing net and were dead in the water. We cleared it this morning and are on the way again. Not the most fun night I’ve ever had on a boat, but we figured it out, nobody got hurt, and we didn’t break anything.

https://mvstarr.com/day-4-5-dead-in-the-water-750nm-offshore/

 

[twistedtree]

We had our first major excitement last night, about 750nm west of Oahu. Just before 1am the main engine bogged down and we lost several knots of speed. When we shifted to reverse to try and clear the debris, the engine stalled. We’d picked up an abandoned fishing net and were dead in the water. We cleared it this morning and are on the way again. Not the most fun night I’ve ever had on a boat, but we figured it out, nobody got hurt, and we didn’t break anything.

https://mvstarr.com/day-4-5-dead-in-the-water-750nm-offshore/

Glad you worked through it. I'm amazed how frequently I hear about this. A few years ago I talked to the crew of a Feadship that had cross to Seattle from Hawaii and had become entangled twice. If I remember, it was not long after Starr made the same crossing and got tangled too.

 

[Bob Cofer]

Hi Sam,

Safe travels. Looking forward to following along with another of your adventures. Long ways from the Waggoners office in Anacortes!

Bob

 

[C lectric]

I have long admired vessels such as yours.


I wish your wife and crew a great trip.

 

[Fletcher500]

Good write up on freeing your prop on your Blog. Going under a boat with those large swells must have been interesting. I have been under ours in 3 to 4 ft tight period swells to free the prop from a large kelp stringer that I was unable to clear with neutral/reverse. I have found being under the swim step to be the most dangerous part of going under a boat, and getting upwelled head first in to it. A lot of situational awareness and past time in the water is key for stuff like this. Anyway, you guys look like you are quite capable. Please keep the updates coming.

 

[Taras]

Do you have line cutters on your prop shaft? Just curious

 

[Retriever]

Do you have line cutters on your prop shaft? Just curious

Yep, Spurs, in good condition.

 

[mackconsult]

Nice bud, safe travels and lets keep in touch.

Captain Ray McCormack

We left Hawaii on MV Starr a couple days ago for the first leg of a 12,000+nm, 9 month North Pacific cruise. The plan is to get to Okinawa, Japan in early March, explore the west coast of Japan until June, then depart Hokkaido for Alaska when we get a weather window in June. We’ll spend the summer in Alaska and plan to arrive in Seattle sometime in September.

Starr is an early Northern Marine 75 that has cruised the Pacific extensively. She has a single 400hp Cummins 855 and carries just under 4000 gallons of diesel. We’re currently 470nm out of Honolulu on the rhumb line to Guam, enjoying nice following seas. Starr has twin rudders behind her single screw, and even with 12 foot following seas at 8 seconds, she tracks like she’s on rails with very little rudder input. Really remarkable.

We’re blogging about the trip here: https://mvstarr.com/

Happy to answer any questions people might have about this adventure!

 

[proudsailor]

Exciting adventure! Thanks for sharing. Appreciated reading the blog post on your fouled prop. Always helps to learn the travails of others and their problem solving. Serrated knife on a lanyard. And carry more than one!

Stationed in Guam years ago- Hit the Cup & Saucer in Hagatna for the best sticky buns in the pacific! I look forward to reading your blog posts!

 

[Retriever]

What day is it? I’m only kind of kidding, time really does pass differently on passage. Things on Starr have been nice and uneventful for the last several days since the net entanglement. We’ve done 1700nm towards Guam and have 1600nm to go. We’ve been running about 1300rpm at about 5gph. Speed has ranged from 6.7-8.4 knots depending on current. Looks like we should arrive with 1000+ gallons still in the tanks.

Today is gorgeous…light winds, glassy seas, warm-but-not-hot! Tradewinds return in a few hours according to the forecast.

Starlink has been working great. Our traffic is now being routed through a Starlink ground station in Tokyo rather than the one in Honolulu.

We’ll get a blog posted in the next day or two.

 

[esheufelt]

Our experience

Thought I'd share a bit of our experience on that trip. We did that loop from Seattle to NZ then Marshall Islands and then on to your route. 48 ft aluminum sailboat.

We spent quite a bit of the in Japan and loved it. Went North around Kyushu and then into the inland sea. We had a similar planned schedule but it was a strange year for typhoons. 5 early typhoons hit Japan that year so we didn't get out of Hokkaido till July. The fog from Tokyo bay to Hokkaido was the worst I've ever seen and is combined with heavy shipping traffic. We made landfall it Kiska in the Aleutians and then on to Adak. Spent a week or so there. There's a WW2 bomber on the beach that's cool to see, it's between Adak and Dutch. spent the winter in King Cove on the Aleutians Peninsula and jumped from there to Astoria Oregon the next summer. That whole loop was the most interesting and beautiful trip we've ever done. There were only two boats doing the west to east north Pacific that year and I suspect you'll still have little company. I think you are in for a wonderful trip mixed in with a little potential for adventure.

 

[Retriever]

Honolulu to Guam is done! At a little more than 3300nm, this is the longest non-stop leg of the trip. We averaged a little better than 8.1 knots, burned about 2650 gallons of diesel (we have 1000+ gallons in reserve), and it took just over 17 days. Other than getting tangled in an abandoned fishing net one night, Starr performed nearly perfectly.

Failures during the passage were pretty minimal. The most significant was that a hatch dripped seawater on one of the watermaker low pressure pumps and the pump seized. Two watermakers made this a non-issue. We have a spare pump onboard and will install when convenient. Don’t get me started on the Freeman hatches…we’ve retrofitted two with aftermarket inflatable gaskets and they now seal beautifully, but the standard Freeman gasket just doesn’t work.

Starlink worked remarkably well. I’d say it was online 90-95% of the time. We were never disconnected for more than a few minutes. We did not use the backup Iridium or FleetBroadband systems. Facetime and voice calls were annoying during about half the passage because the short dropouts caused the call to drop.

We only saw a four or five other boats the entire time. One of them had no AIS and didn’t respond to radio calls, but it was several hundred feet long. A mystery.

Overall the passage was remarkably routine—a great tradewind run. Crossing oceans on a trawler can be very nice. We arrived rested, with full water tanks, clean laundry, a reasonably clean boat, and just enough produce to not worry about dinner tonight!

The next leg from here to Japan has more variable weather and a lot more traffic. It should be an interesting run and a good challenge.

 

[Stabi]

We only saw a four or five other boats the entire time. One of them had no AIS and didn’t respond to radio calls, but it was several hundred feet long.

Russian Oligarch maybe

 

[Retriever]

It's been a long time since I posted any update here.

We are now in the Aleutians after a wonderfully uneventful passage from Hokkaido, Japan to Attu. The weather was great and the boat ran perfectly.

Japan was wonderful. The people are warm, welcoming, generous, and helpful. We'd often arrive in a tiny fishing port and have locals come to the boat bearing gifts. Many people wanted pictures with us. They don't get many cruising boats!

Not having to worry about personal safety or locking the boat is amazing. Cities are clean. Public bathrooms are clean. Public transit works incredibly well.

Restaurants were generally excellent and shockingly affordable. Dinner for four, including a drink or two for each person, rarely exceeded $100usd.

Moorage rarely cost money, but also rarely had any amenities. We were often tied up on big concrete walls in fishing ports. No water, no power, no easy way on-and-off the boat. Arriving at any port is a bit uncertain since we'd never know if we'd find an acceptable place to tie up. Flexibility was key.

The authorities could be a bit overbearing at times. We had more visits from the Coast Guard, Customs, and local police than I've cumulatively had in my entire life. Occasionally they were annoying or slow, but generally they were pretty quick and efficient. They were always polite, took off their shoes, and asked permission before taking pictures of anything (including our documents).

Overall, it was an awesome experience...I will definitely return.

We've only been in the Aleutians for a few days, but they are incredible. Super remote, challenging (in a good way) weather, super beautiful natural scenery, great protected anchorages to wait out the weather that rolls through every few days. Arriving in Alaska at Attu gives me a whole new appreciation for the scale of Alaska. Attu to Juneau is twice the distance of Seattle to Juneau!

Lots more details about where we stopped and what we did on www.mvstarr.com.