Ship Logs

Gidday, as we Australians say. My Name is Ross and I am the First Mate on Kwai for Voyage 50. I heard about Kwai from another Australian, Madeleine, who was Captain of Kwai a few years ago. I love sailing with a purpose and delivering cargo to remote Pacific islands...

Kwai Voyage 50, another milestone in our path to wherever.  Kwai departed on 27 June with a full ship bound for Kiribati and the Cooks. She is not stuffed as full as some previous trips, but this is a relief to us aboard.  There is actual room on deck to stand and...

Kwai is now homeward bound, 2 days out of Honolulu, coming home with a big load of nets on the hatch and a belly full of nets and debris in bags.  We are not full and could easily stay out another month to fill up but this is the end of the charter and we are soon...

Today we got the biggest net of the trip, about 10 tons in wet weight.  This one was a tracked net that had stopped transmitting, then came back on line.  Two days ago we diverted to pick it up and it was well worth it.  We found nets on the way, and are still picking...

Another day comes to an end with half the hatch covers with piles of nets, drying out before they are stowed in the hold tomorrow.  There was one big net this morning which was quite a challenge.  We have been sailing with full sail up making over 6 knots.  To stop...

Blog for 7 June, 2019 Today was the slowest day of the trip.  We are now under all sail except the mainsail which is furled so we can use the cargo gear.  We are making about 4 knots in the general direction of Hawaii after turning around a few days ago.  Up to today...

Tuesday 4th of June Today we woke up closer to San Francisco than Honolulu.  We are at the eastern end of our journey and will now work our way slowly home, hunting all along.  We found tracker #14 right where it should be and used the cargo gear to pull a medium size...

Kwai weekend was spent working our way 500 miles to the ENE to pick up another tracked net.  This route takes us along the southern edge of the Paific Gyre and into prime hunting territory.  Saturday we were still under sail in 5-10 knots of SE wind, moving nicely...

No new nets found today.  The tracker attached to a large bundle of nets failed just a few days before we go to it.  We ran down to the last reported spot and along the estimated track line but never found it.  We did come up on an overturned 18' fiberglass boat that...

This is the fifth day of our 25 day charter to lasso ghost nets.  We are a crew of 11 plus 2 drone operators and are chasing down trackers that have been fastened to net balls floating in the North Pacific.  The charter is to Ocean Voyages Institute who got yachts...