44. Honolulu - Hilo

6. April - 17. April 2007

After a couple of days at waikiki, the major tourist area in Hawaii, I met up with Christopher, a photographer from Michigan, on Thursday.

The next 11 days I flew him around he islands to take photos of marinas, light houses etc. to be used on the web site www. marinas.com and by Garmin.

First we moved to a hotel in a less interesting area near the airport,. We were starting with the main island of Oahu. We were grounded for a couple of days though, due to cloudy conditions. But that gave us a chance to do some sightseeing.

It was also an obstacle, that the Honolulu airport is a major airport, with a busy airspace. They would just not allow us to go were we wanted to go around Honolulu.

After doing Oahu we went to fly around Molokai, Maui and Lanai, and then to the island actually called Hawaii, The Big Island.

Again we were bothered a lot by cloudy conditions, which does not allow for pictures. The sun had to shine to get it right. We were waiting again in Hilo for better weather, but on he 17th Christopher was called back, even though we had not finished the project.

The winds were not right for me to continue my trip, with he major leg from Hilo to San Diego, some 2200 miles. So after waiting in Hilo for a couple of days with the rain pouring down, I flew back over to the west coast. Waited for another 5 days here with the winds still coming in from the east, meaning headwind on my way.

I decided to ship some 40 kg. of gear by UPS ahead to Texas, and to purchase another 4 jerry cans to hold extra fuel. Now I had 8 jerry cans with 44 gallons of fuel as an addition to the 102 gallons in the ferry tank and 87 gallons in the wing tanks.

I could now get going - even with some head wind, and I returned to Hilo he 24th of April to be ready to go, when the weather looked right.