Some Background on S/V ‘Ishi,’ From the Captain’s Friend

In mid-March we shared a story about a Coast Guard notice regarding the 55-ft sloop Ishi. The boat had reportedly left Oahu on October 3, 2022, with a possible plan to sail to Maui, then the Pacific Northwest. The story elicited numerous comments, many from readers sending good wishes for the crew’s safety, but there were, of course, those who chose to analyze and judge without a ton of information. On Friday we received a comment on the story from a reader named Brian who says he is a friend of Ishi’s captain, Don. We felt it was worth sharing … (The comment has been edited for punctuation and grammar only.)

Don’s boat is a Hatfield 48, but when it was being built they added an extra two feet to the middle of it. making it a 50-ft boat. I’m not sure what the year was, but this boat has actually been featured and had an article written about it in Latitude 38 while it was sailing around the South Pacific for many years.

Don has over 60,000 bluewater nautical miles. A book about him is called The Water in Between. He is a more capable sailor than 99% of the people reading Latitude 38. That boat is overbuilt. Don has any and every sort of part or supply known to man. He has three GPS units and an EPIRB also on board. He does not use social media or talk to a lot of people. He has sailed from Vancouver Island, Canada, to Hawaii and back multiple times. One of the times was in a 20-ft plywood boat, with a wristwatch, a sextant, a compass, a bucket for a toilet, and a wind vane made out of 2 x 4s nailed together.

Don had over a year’s worth of food and water on his boat before he left. He had to leave the harbor in Waikiki because his temporary four months was up. The U-joint in his V-drive was in need of repair, so he couldn’t motor the boat around and was going to be unable to make it into any of the other harbors on the island without an engine.

It was October 12 or 17 when his time ran out and he was forced to leave the harbor. He wanted to head west, but he didn’t want to do that until the transmission was fixed, because it would have been a way harder thing to get parts and fix somewhere in the South Pacific compared to here on Oahu.

I talked to him when he got towed out of the harbor in the early morning. He was right by Diamond Head and he had to get off the phone because he said he was trying to get a hold of someone to come and pick the lady and her kids up in a dinghy or something, because they ended up saying they weren’t going to be able to handle the waves and everybody was getting seasick.

That was the last time I talked to him, but he didn’t have a plan where he was going. He told me he most likely was going to just float out in the ocean for a couple of months till January 1 and then he would be coming back to the harbor on Oahu.

I don’t know who reported him to the Coast Guard, but he would not be happy about this. We have talked about this many times and he always said if he ever went missing, to never call the Coast Guard on him because all that does is end up creating more regulations for all of us boaters, from the more people that have problems and call the Coast Guard. If he doesn’t want to be found that’s his choice.

There is no way he would have gone up to Washington back in October. We have talked about this many times and he would never take any boat into the North Pacific in the middle of the winter. Anyone who knows anything knows that is a terrible idea.

I would have been with him but I was in Thailand when he left. I didn’t know that I was coming back. Now that I am back in Hawaii I made a few posts on Facebook months ago, just asking people if they had seen him and telling them if they see him to tell him to call me, because I wanted to help him fix his V-drive, because he is my friend.

Thanks to Brian for this informative comment. We expect this will again draw reader comment, which is welcome, but we ask that you please do so respectfully.

You can read the original story here.