CHANGES
With reports this month from Pono's stop in Malta; Joel Sorum's sabbatical from his Compañera to help friends on Exit Strategy cruise the coast of Africa; and Pamela shaking off some cobwebs for a summer cruise to Hawaii — followed by fo'c'sles-full of Cruise Notes.
Cruising with a purpose — Claudia and Capt. Homer are combining pleasure cruising with a plan to help save the oceans.
true than ever. In the first year, we put in five months of boatyard work, 10,000 sea miles and a five-month charter season while running our rentals at home and volunteering for Clean Oceans International. A bit much. After buying the boat in Spain we replaced the rigging in Canet-en-Roussillon, France. The food made the work much more tolerable and I've had enough garlic to quell any fear of vampires. In September, we met a new family member. Jack Giacomo is a 28-year-old Italian exThe 'Pono' crew retrieves an errant fishing net in the Atlantic.
plorer who traveled from Australia to Europe without using air travel. We looked like a decent taxi to the Americas and he put out his thumb. He thought enough of his time with us that 'Pono' is tattooed on his shoulder, and in his first 5,000 miles he went from novice to salty sailing, with stops in France, Malta, Italy, the Canaries and Virgin Gorda. I was invited to the Our Oceans Conference October 4 in Malta to discuss our organization's efforts to reduce plastic waste in the ocean by creating smaller versions of simple technology that cooks plastic to create diesel fuel. The idea is that if we can impart a monetary value to plastic waste, then humans will be more inclined to manage it more effectively. Sailing on a schedule is not always possible or even prudent. Weather calls the shots always. So we did our best to be ready ahead of schedule and watch the forecast. This went well, except . . . We shipped our miniature portable plastic-to-fuel converter to France so it could ride to Valletta (Malta's capital) to "talk trash" with kings and presidents. It got held up in French customs for import duty, and we were fortunate to liberate it from the local FedEx terminal before the paperwork for seizure arrived. Down to the dock in a taxi, start the engines and out the door before someone said no. I'm betting that most voyagers have experienced that when you are ready to go, the wind is not. Although we did not have perfect sailing wind, we did have a safe window to travel, so we took advantage. Pono gets along at six knots at slow idle on one engine. We made good time and enjoyed the warm Mediterranean vistas. On day two, we stopped to let a small sperm whale and calf cross about 40 feet in front of our bows. There are notoriously few fish and mammal sightings in the Med, so we felt as though the sea had blessed our mission to reduce plastic pollution. But not the weather. Our arrival coincided with a tropical disturbance that was said to be the worst in a generation, PONO
PONO
Pono — Fountaine Pajot Eleuthra 60 Jim ("Homer") and Claudia Holm Mission In the Med Santa Cruz It frequently feels like our life with and on boats is so much more full than at home on land. Aboard our new-to-us catamaran Pono, that's been even more
and our marina was closed by high surf. The Valletta port captain demanded that we leave the harbor immediately after clearing customs, and with a fuel problem causing one engine to stutter, we were fortunate to pirate a commercial mooring for two more days of 35-knot winds and rain. The harbor opened to us 30 minutes prior to the start of the conference. Getting our 28-ft-wide cat in the marina, making the turn and getting tied up with one engine faltering was a rush the likes of which I had not experienced in 40 years of driving boats for a living. Waves broke into and over the 15-ft-tall seawall not 30 feet abeam and the cauldron was boiling as we made our turn to actually enter the basin. The harbormaster asked me to turn around and I politely declined. We were fortunate that it was not as bad
