Log of Sloop Redwolf
5/17/31

After 6 straight days and nights of beating to weather I safely crossed the reef @ 17:25 hours to enter South Fluke Bay at the SW end of the big South Island, first of the Spontoons at this heading. Tide will be running against me soon, but the land breeze is from a good quarter to see me through the channel to Heleuma Moku’s harbor. Their café may not be the best, but right now even a poor cheeseburger is a lot better than another can of cold hash!

 It had been a hard few days sail, as the weather had turned foul for the Spontoon Islands earlier than I’d expected. I usually wait until I’m inside the archipelago’s sheltered waters before deciding where I’d want to drop anchor after a trip, but this case the first harbor I could reach looked like the best! The village of Heluma Moku seldom sees vessels other than native fishing boats and outrigger canoes, but Red Wolf has a shallow enough draft to make it into their harbor once I make it through the channel between mud flats and old coral heads that stands outside of the anchorage.

 I was about halfway through, and making a fair headway against the ebbing tide, when this lime-green seaplane I’d been vaguely aware of buzzing about the area, took it into its head to take a closer look at the “pretty sail boat”! Whoever was flying that damn thing came in low over my port stern, smiling and waving, and making a wind that all but set my sloop over on her side! I loosed all sheets and worked the tiller for all I was worth! With coral to port and mud flats to starboard I had little choice but to run her bow first into the mud!

 It’s a true saying among sailors that it isn’t the deep sea that a sailorman’s ever afraid of…it’s that hard stuff around its edges! And, while being hard aground on a mudflat may not be all that much fun, it was still better than breaking her hull open on that coral. I lowered my dingy and set some hooks out so I could kedge off once the new tide had lifted her out. Once that was done, there was nothing to do but wait for the tide to turn. I went below and reached into my galley stores for another can of hash!

Log of Sloop Redwolf
7/25/31
Hanamahina Bay, Moon Island, laid alongside Crashboat Dock.

 I was on my way back from an evening at “Grinning Jax’s” and noticed the lights were still on in one of the facility’s repair hangars. The pilot of a lime-green seaplane and two mechanics were busy tearing the engine apart for what must have been the fourth time in the last two days! For some reason the poor fellow just couldn’t keep his engine from dying out on him about a minute-and-a-half into his take-offs! Odd how a little mud could ground a big, powerful machine like that as easily as it could a little sailboat! Well, eventually the pilot or one of those expensive mechanics would think to check the air vent on his fuel cap. Or maybe that little daub of mud would dry up and fall out of its own accord? In any case, it was a fine evening and I could hear my bunk aboard the Red Wolf calling to me.

G.