Since the only way to get to the wives and Mai Tais is to find some wind, we’ve become nocturnal squall hunters.
The drill is that we start looking for a squall line (which looks like a series of mushroom clouds marching along one horizon) around sunset and make for any one that’s close enough for us to intercept without heading away from Hawaii. Inside and in front of the squall is a converging 20kt wind that we plant ourselves in and start gybing across until we lose the wind, or our nerve. Behind the squall is a calm area that we try to time our final gybe to put us outside of.
We are doing mostly double-handed gybes now, so the off watch can sleep, but over 20, we pull someone else up on deck.
The main problem with this theory is that there are not enough squalls (or nerves) that you can ride at night to make up for a full day of slogging along at hull speed.
-JE