SPECIAL EPISODE: SAM HOLMES HAWAII BOUND on a 23ft Sailboat (HE MADE IT TO HILO! JUNE 2 2019)

This is my buddy Sam Holmes. He's about to leave on a 24 foot right? A 23 foot. 23 foot ranger. Now it's called Swedish Fish. You guys saw him on our adventure at Santa Barbara Island. Ran into him at the anchorage out there and we're gonna look at his boat and what he's got set up and he leaves tonight or tomorrow for Hawaii which is complete madness. Yeah about three weeks long. Let's uh ask him some questions and see what he's up to. Okay so how long do you think it'll take you? Uh between about uh 20-25 days. I'm not really sure how like many miles I'll be able to cover a day a day because you know it's my biggest uh you know offshore trip. Yeah what's the like what's the maximum speed you've had this vessel? Um well we've been like it's it really it'll surf down the waves pretty quick and I've gotten like seven or eight knots. Right. Um and with the the third reef in really um it really likes to go fast. I'm not sure if I'll be able to maintain that kind of speed. But what's your cruising speed roughly? You know like four or five four or five knots. Yeah it's kind of what we do. Um and uh how like uh you got your wind vane right? Yeah it's the Pacific Light. It works really great. It likes I need to reef the main real early. It doesn't like a lot of weather home but um. So it needs a real balance. Yeah but but once uh it's set up well I'm able to take naps and stuff and it keeps the course really good even downwind. And then you got your is that called a torpedo? It's a torpedo. Yeah I think it's a German motor. Um it's kind of seemingly expensive for the amount of power it puts out but uh it's really convenient because you don't have to flush it out like uh and there's a lot less maintenance. I was able to clear up a hole. It's electric right? Yeah it's electric. Um. Does it have its own battery or run up your? It runs it's got its own batteries and I'm able to charge it with these uh solar panels I've got up here. So I've got two on the back and one. Total solar do you have? I've got a 350 watt panels. 150 watts total. Oh cool. Yeah. And you don't have a lot of systems right on the boat so that's plenty? No just the running lights and um really basic stuff you can charge in my phone and a little water pump for my my sink. It really uses hardly any electricity. The biggest thing is the motor. I can charge that off solar. It takes about two days to top the motor batteries off but I don't really use that that often just to get out of the port really. Yeah and then um what's your mode of navigation for this trip? Um I've got uh it's really electronic you know GPS. Uh I'm using I've got like lots of GPS's. I've got uh one of my radio I've got the Delorum GPS and then the Delorum hooks to the phone so I can use the the charge and I have a I can plug my radio GPS into my computer and use open cpn or to get the. I like that program. Yeah it's nice you can do a great circle route real easy. Yeah and then um let's let's can we can you take us downstairs? Yeah let's go take a look. Um it's kind of a mess. It's all right as it should be. I took so there was a bunk over here originally there's a bunk on each side but I took this bunk out and I'm using that for all my my my provisions and stuff so I'm I got just the sam akia samla bins with all my food and some spares. I got a little bit of scuba equipment a lot of canned foods so you know some fresh fruits uh for the the beginning of the voyage and some you know stuff that shouldn't go bad you know powder a little bit dehydrated food and then I kind of like I was trying to figure a way to kind of cinch that down in case the boat rolled over. Seems like seems like it should hold it. That's your fancy new E-PRIV there? Um no that's a vacuum. That's the E-PRIV and I had a co-worker who was kind of concerned about me he got me extra E-PRIV and the beacons. And then you sold your electronic yeah and then I've got another beacon I got the DeLorme inReach here you know I can message back that and use that um for emergencies. We're going to be tracking you on your DARM so right so that's online. Yeah so you can see like along the way every two hours it should send a uh a waypoint back. Yeah and I'll go ahead and put that link in the description for this video. And then so I had a backup uh self-steering system which is the electronic uh autotiller you know autotiller in the port but you know if that thing stopped the wind vane cuts. Well the wind vane's best because there's no draw on your electricity. Yeah this doesn't use a whole lot but yeah I really prefer to use that wind vane it's just quiet and it just keeps the boat on the course according to the wind. And then forward is that yeah so that's going to be mainly storage up there um it's kind of had to empty it out because I spilled a little bit of water filling up my water tanks. Um but yeah. And then yeah how much water did you bring? Yeah so I've got I think it was 10 gallons in that forward tank but I don't usually drink out of that because it's kind of like funky. Um and then I've got a lot of these uh I think I've got six of these I think they're one and a quarter gallon bladders and they're kind of placed strategically about the boat to kind of like get the weight they're right in the right spots. I had to kind of push them a little further back uh recently. I really like this little heater too because like when you go out yeah like and you just like you have to do some sail change in the middle of the night and you're just like freezing you get like splashed with some spray it's just really nice to kind of warm up and this is like really overkill for this type of boat. Yeah but it's like it's a small space so it probably heats up pretty quick. Yeah it heats up really quick and it's just really nice. Makes a difference and when you're out there and you get wet and stuff you're gonna want that. Yeah definitely. I thought it was I wasn't kind of debating even bringing this at all but at the last trip I went on it was good to have. Is that your head the bucket? Yeah well actually I have an ostomy bag so I can usually just empty this over the side but um I use this as a head for guests. I have like the the toilet seat um lid which in the past I've used but no one no one's ever taken me up on it yeah well that's probably a good thing it works pretty well that's probably a good thing yeah and then there's your swing out table we saw that yeah you made a video on your youtube channel with that right yeah I like I like the swing out table did you ever install the bracket out here so you can have it no um maybe one day but yeah it works good enough this one here and you need I needed to add the fits everything was always falling off right before yeah and then you got your little fridge which you said works uh sometimes yeah it works marginally and then like the next thing about the outboard is it comes in pieces right so there's the battery so I have the two batteries down here and they just clip on yeah almost like a cordless drill or something they just kind of snap right in like yeah like a power tool and then the tiller is like a separate piece but it makes it really nice because then you can pull the whole thing out um and it's it's a lot lighter and easier to take yeah I just throw it in my cockpit locker once I get out of the port basically awesome and then you've done a number of like kind of way out and back with everything loaded up the last couple of weeks right yeah I've been kind of testing everything and the kind of the most the configuration it's going to be on the trip just to see you know what works and what didn't and I've learned a few lessons but uh most for the most part it's been uh working really well feel like the the biggest kind of thing that's helped me is just just trying to sail as much frequently as possible that's um I kind of made like a like a resolution to myself every time I was down on the boat I would just take the boat out and just kind of sail even if it was just in the port for a little bit that's really kind of helped just kind of uh overcome some of the tripping over yourself uh yeah kind of bits all that stuff will fall into place too okay and um you said you said you did the spinnaker single-handed for the first time the other day yeah that went really well it was my only my third time trying it the first two times I had a buddy helping um but uh this last time I just kind of like took it I kind of realized the pitfalls I might run into I double checked all the lines and it it worked pretty well there was one at one point um I was like you know going down when and the wind was kind of picking up and I kind of like went forward to kind of tweak the pole a little bit and it kind of got away from me and it pulled over to one side and the boat kind of laid on its side yeah um that's the it's like spinnaker will knock you down real quick it's a powerful sail just be ready to douse it if you have to but the good thing is the wind vane will steer the downward course really well and like it gives me enough time to go set up and really take my time and get everything set up um just how it needs to be which I think that's like a really big like safety asset it's just being able to like take the time to go and inspect everything and not having to rush back to the tiller every time like I was before when I didn't have it absolutely and then when do you plan on leaving um I think either tomorrow night I might go anchor in Cabrillo beach and then leave in the morning or if you know the last minute project takes a little longer than I expected I'll leave you know tomorrow morning but either way I'm headed out very soon coming up coming up and then what's your plan once you get to Hawaii um I don't really know yet I'm going to be there at least a few months um I've had this dream of like sailing around the world I don't think this boat it might not be up for it I might try to find a bigger boat once I get there um I might do that kind of like around the north pacific high kind of like go up to Alaska or something I'm not sure if I don't really have a lot of motor power so I think that kind of like going down the coast yeah there might be kind of some problems running into that doing that kind of trip with this type of boat but you know it's kind of up in the air right now it's just kind of playing in my ear you um you're really into paragliding too right so are you gonna do some of that while you're in Hawaii yeah so I've got I've I'm bringing two paragliders with me nice I was trying to get my tandem certification by the time I went there but maybe I'll figure that when I get there um but yeah there should be some good coastal uh paragliding sites that's a lot of fun incredible all right well we wish you the best and we're going to be following along thanks and uh we look forward to seeing you back here safe and sound one way or another all right and uh it's time for us to head out and get sailing but they look like