Tales of a Blue Water Cruiser: 50,000 Miles of South Pacific Sailing

By: J R Williams

Tales of a Blue Water Cruiser is a true story of J R Williams, a man from the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania who ended up as a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines and was talked into buying a sailboat by one of his early captains when he was about 30 years old. From there he ventured into the open ocean and eventually taught himself celestial navigation and sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti, the Marquesas, and back to Hawaii. He continued open-ocean sailing over the years, ending with a five-year retirement cruise.

This is proof that if you try hard enough you can accomplish anything-even if at first you never considered doing it.

About the Author

Prior to becoming a pilot, J R Williams was a mechanic and a racecar driver. He had to give up his professional racing career when he was hired by Hawaiian Airlines in 1964. Once he began sailing and decided to cross the ocean, it was necessary to learn celestial navigation, as sat-nav and GPS were still 20 years in the future.

J R’s father passed away in 1973 and his mother in 1985, but he still has a brother who is still living in Pennsylvania. He met his first wife, Carolyn, in Hawaii, as a flight attendant for Hawaiian Airlines. She is of Filipino extraction and sailed with him to Tahiti on his first cruise. They had one child, a daughter named Bronwyn Moeata, who was born in 1975. Bronwyn received an electrical engineering degree from UN Reno and is married and is living in South Lake Tahoe with two of her three daughters; the oldest is in UA, Phoenix. Carolyn and J R were divorced in 1985 and he married his current wife, Jaslyn Noelani, in 1987. She was born and raised on Molokai, and together they have no children.

J R used to fly to Tahiti almost annually after first sailing there and has numerous friends there. While visiting what he considers his Tahitian family on the island of Tahaa over the years, he learned their lifestyle as well as the Tahitian language. He is still a life-member of the Hawaii Yacht Club and for many years belonged to the Adventures Club of Honolulu.