New skipper reaches
Kauai with green crew

Honu, my 37-foot sailboat, currently swings at anchor in Hanalei Bay while I sit below, writing and listening to rain rinse the salt off her decks. Yes, this captain-in-training and her novice crew took the leap last week across the Kauai Channel.

It was a long leap on several levels.

First, the channels between our mountainous islands are wind funnels that can turn the stomachs of the saltiest sailors and make waves the size of King Kong.

Kauai remained independent because of this channel. When King Kamehameha planned an invasion of Kauai in 1796, wind and waves overturned several canoes, forcing the king and his warriors back to Waianae.

Still, there's a positive point to sailing from Oahu to Kauai: It's a downwind trip, meaning the wind pushes the boat from behind.

Unless the waves are 30 feet tall, this creates a pleasant ride. In mild to moderate breeze, sailboats heading downwind scoot down waves like river otters and turn into giant rocking cradles.

This happened to us. The wind was strong enough to push us across but not so strong to scare us. The waves also behaved, rolling beneath the boat with few quarrels.

As a bonus, the sky threw a party.

During our voyage up the Waianae Coast, the sun put on a pink and purple light show while the full moon appeared over the mountaintops like a glowing pinata.

I'd been readying this boat for offshore sailing for months, and at that moment, all the work I'd done, the money I'd spent and the hours I'd fretted became worth it. Here I was, captain of my own boat, cruising through some of the roughest tropical waters in the world, enjoying a fine Hawaii sunset with devoted friends.

Life doesn't get better than that.

This was by no means my first channel crossing on this boat. In fact, I have sailed on her for more than 10,000 miles -- but never as captain, always as crew.

"It's the difference between watching surgery and performing it," my physician husband, a lifetime sailor and previous captain of this boat, explained to a colleague recently.

"Being the captain is an entirely different experience."

How right he is. Of all the responsibilities a boat captain must assume, the weightiest is the welfare of everyone aboard. If someone gets hurt, it will be my fault.

Safety, safety, safety has become my new mantra.

It's also my job now to fix any of the thousand things that can go wrong with this sailboat, which sometimes feels like a miniature Waterworld.

This boat has most of the systems I have in my house (electricity, water, appliances, computers), all the systems I have in my car (engine, transmission, batteries, alternators) and a rat's nest of ropes, poles and wires supporting several huge, cumbersome sheets of cloth.

Moisten this mass of machinery, pound it soundly, add a little salt and the menehune go wild.

Fixing things has never been my forte. I'm slow to diagnose the problem, and my repairs are often inelegant. Still, I'm here in Hanalei, the boat's afloat and my crew flew home with no splints or bandages. They're even coming back.

"Being in charge is quite different, isn't it?" my husband, mentor and sincere supporter said the day I left.

"Yes," I said. "It's better."

Next week: Sailing home upwind, or why they call it beating.