Flashback: Seattle to San Francisco Retrospective
What’s it like to sail offshore from Seattle to San Francisco? It’s not easy to capture the sights, sounds, smells. These are my impressions, some snapshots from memory, notes, logs, and from pictures. It’s taken me a while to fix up my notes up and make them readable. Memory being what it is, some impressions may be incorrect, but the winds, boat speeds and other technical details are taken directly from our logs. I hope this helps build a pictures of what it was like for us on our journey.
Our goal was to sail directly from Port Townsend to San Francisco with just two stops (we ended up making just one stop). First stop, Neah Bay, at the western edge of Washington state, to set us up for a daylight entry into the North Pacific, and the second stop, perhaps at Drake’s Bay, near Point Reyes to set us up for a slack current and daylight approach under the Golden Gate Bridge (as it turned out we didn’t need this).
Day 1 – Wednesday, August 18, 2021 – Port Townsend to Neah bay
Fog; Ocean Swells; Current (good and bad); Occasional breaks of brilliant sunshine; light winds, medium winds; heavy winds (none of it good for sailing where we wanted to go); Pillar point (WA) looked lovely; Seiku looked way too unprotected and shallow; An alarm; delicious diner; an Amel 53.
0545 —> 1932
82 Nautical Miles covered during the day
Noon Position: 48º`12.9 N 123º37.6 W
The morning ebb promises a four knot push out of Port Townsend and towards the ocean this morning. It will be a great start out of Admiralty Inlet and towards Port Angeles before the current turns against us. Rachel prepares a tasty breakfast, the whole crew is up early and ready to go, we end up being 15 minutes behind schedule and we leave the dock at 0545.
We catch the ebb (current with us in this case), and we are in the “river” almost immediately, with 10 knots of speed over ground (SOG). As we get into the Strait of Juan De Fuca, there is occasional fog, and the ocean swells get to us almost right away. The whole crew is in the cockpit and excited. We fire up the radar and start practicing with it to make sure it’s working and that our skills are sharp. Lots of small boats are cruising around fishing and most are invisible on the radar, almost none have AIS. We have to use all of our senses to keep track of other boats. Just one of the reasons I prefer an open cockpit, to feel the environment and to be able to hear, see, smell. The wind is light and we are motoring. Occasionally the fog banks part to show us the beautiful blue sky and the “back side” of Olympic mountains (from a Seattleite’s perspective).
NOON: ALARM! ALARM ALARM! Something is blaring. There are about 20 things that can generate an alarm on the boat, it’s a bit astonishing and it’s not always easy to tell where the alarm is coming from. In this case though, I smile. The crew is worried, “what’s alarming??” Rachel and I know exactly. It’s Noon on a Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard runs weather radio tests at this time (if there are no other weather events happening). We shut off the alarm and put the crew’s mind at ease, not only is it normal, Rachel and I demonstrate some additional competence to the crew.
We get a lot of practice with radar and after lunch the crew starts to get into the watch schedule. Naps are taken. Motoring continues. Sailing would be better for comfort, but not for time, and as the wind comes up in the afternoon, it is, predictably, directly on the nose. Tacking up the Strait will add time and distance to an already long day. We debate if we should really go the 82 Nautical Miles (NMs) to Neah Bay or to stop at Port Angeles, Pillar Point, WA, or Seiku Harbor. I maintain that starting the turn around Cape Flattery, and into the ocean, in the morning, being well rested and more ready, is worth it, and the crew agree. We push on.
The current shoves us past Port Angeles early in the day, and while Pillar Point looks inviting as we get near, we are too near (relatively speaking) to Neah Bay to stop at this point. We want to have a nice calm night at anchorage and still want to make the turn around Cape Flattery in the morning, we make another unanimous decision to keep pushing for Neah Bay. We are communicating well as a crew, analyzing our decisions and things are already forming an easy cadence.
It’s a long, long day of motoring. As we get into Neah Bay we see an Amel (52?), our crew John’s sister boat. We are all tired and excited about the next day. Rachel makes an amazing pasta dinner and we all pass out. I set the anchor alarm and sleep soundly with all the sea room we had around us (huge bay, only a handful of boats all spread around nicely), there are zero worries.
Day 2 – Thursday, August 19th, 2021 – Neah bay to the Pacific Ocean
Fog; “Ship”; The big left turn; US Navy; Whales; Sloppiness; Sailing; Blue water; Moon
0825 —> 2359
82 NMs covered during the day
Noon: 48º25.47’ N 124º56.7’ W
The morning finds us rested and excited. The winds have predictably eased overnight and we are sitting in flat calm conditions, the fog looks like it is lifting, but then doubles down and we are in a thick, less than 1/4 mile visibility condition. This isn’t going to hold us back. Rachel works on a hot tasty oatmeal (gruel as we liked to call it, in jest (the best gruel ever!!!)) breakfast for us all. We have a number of tasks ahead of us before leaving while breakfast (and coffee) are prepared.
First, we deflate all eight fenders and store them in the front anchor locker, all but two fit (those two go into the cockpit locker). This gets the fenders out of our way for the rest of the trip. Next, the inner forestay is attached and tightened to the preset we’d picked the day before. This means that to gybe or tack, the Genoa has to to be furled in first, then unfurled on the other side, but in contrast, it means that we can hank on the storm sail more easily if needed (more on that later). And finally, we have our high lifelines all set up and ready to roll. High life-lines are the lines we clip into anytime we are on deck (these are similar to jack-lines but we prefer the security and ease of higher line.)
After breakfast, armed with hot gruel and with plenty of radar practice from the day before, we fire up the engine and motor out of Neah Bay. The little fishing boats are out, we can hear them. As usual, none of them are on AIS, the swells are already 5 to 10 feet high, but organized, and there’s still no wind, so we are just motoring, headed west, bobbing up and down in the swells, out the Strait, on the ebb. Everything is going well, nothing on radar but the occasional blip when we came on top of a swell.
“SHIP!!!!!!!” Scott screams from the helm. All of us are in the cockpit, excited and hoping for a break in the fog. I see a small fishing runabout, the kind you see all over Puget Sound, directly on the top of the swell in front of us. I can see the outline of the man’s face. He is going from left to right in front of us. We accelerate up the swell, he accelerates forward to the right. We miss each other by a few feet.
All the previous day we had been blowing signal horns at two minute intervals, but the exercise seemed pointless really, all the little boats were fully enclosed. None of them were running signals, none of them had AIS. This was all just incredible stupidity on everyone’s part. We would have had a terrible collision if the angles, timing or anything else was off even by a few degrees. The little boat would have taken the worst of it. Unbelievable.
Leaving the strait, the fog does abate eventually, but before it does, we can only see a large target on AIS, even though it’s close (within 5 miles). This ship coming into the Strait, traveling in the shipping lanes. We are well clear-of the ship and the lanes.
“Sailing vessel Pasargada, this is US Navy Warship 122” Ooh, we love being hailed, but it’s not usually by US Navy Warships. The big AIS blip is military. A very professional radio operator answers my response to his hail. We agree not to get anywhere near each other, he further receives my full agreement that I will keep heading west and south. I assure him we will not be making any turns towards him. He is satisfied. We never see him on radar, and who knows where the AIS signal really is, but the whole interaction is excellent. I love a good passing arrangement. Kudos Navy!
By mid morning there’s still no wind. I leave after my watch to take a nap and leave instructions to sail if the wind comes up. In my bunk, as I nap, I can feel wind, the motion of the boat has changed, but we are still motoring. I try to sleep, but I finally drag myself out of my bunk, come up to see what is going on and why we aren’t sailing. The crew is relived to see me “finally, there you are”, they all seem to say in unison. They say I left instructions to not sail until I came up. Love miscommunication! The wind had been up for an hour to more. D’oh. With laughter and joy that there’s wind we put up sails and become a sailing vessel for the first time since Port Townsend.
Full main, full Genoa, 18 knots of breeze. The boat is going 6.4 knots through the water and 9 knots over ground at times! What a current. There is a beautiful moon, earlier in the day Nigel spots two humpbacks (they could’ve been something else, but humpbacks is what we’re going with). The seas are a little sloppy, but it is already blue water and blue skies.
“She’s sailing with a bone in her teeth!” Scott exclaims, very correctly. We are on our way, it seems to us now, for real.
The engine is off and the sails drawing, the waves and swells are organized, the boat truly enters “The Zone”. All is right with the world.
We see the occasional puffin fishing on the seas. They’re so colorful. An amazing contrast to the dull fog earlier. In the distance I occasionally see water spouts that are surely whales.
Near midnight, it occurs to me, sometime in this day we made the big left turn, but it was so foggy that none of us gave it much thought.
Day 3 – Friday, August 20th
Traveller issue; reefed sails; Passing the mighty Columbia; Logs; Rain; Offshore; Routine
0000-2359
133 NMs covered during the day
Noon: 46º07.9’ N 125º27.6’ W
The routines on the boat are pretty set already. My watch is from midnight to 0400, perhaps this was a bad idea to have the Captain with a tough watch, it made an already tough set of duties much harder, I will have to rethink this later.
Each crew member has an assigned duty for the day, “Headmaster” (in charge of cleaning below decks), “galley and health” (in charge of helping with the kitchen and monitoring water and food consumption), “Navigator, entertainer, and Archivist” (in charge of helping with navigation and taking pictures), “Keeper of the deck” (in charge of cleaning and inspecting above decks). The duties rotate daily.
We are sailing along nicely around 0100, John and Noj at watch, with Noj at the wheel. Suddenly, slam, the boom car goes sliding down the traveller track to leeward. I reach back so see if the traveller cleat has slipped or what, and my hand comes up with the end of the traveller line stopper that I had just replaced the previous month.
“The traveller just parted!!” I exclaim. Crap. The main car has slid down to the other end of the traveller track. It’s now loaded up with tremendous force on the leeward traveller cleat. How long before that blows up, I think. I have a vision of an uncontrolled main flailing around. Not good. We have about 20 knots of breeze and the main is loaded up. John and I try to push the main car up but it’s clear there’s not much we can do without rigging something up. I turn my attention to the line, trying to think how a brand new, properly sized, double braid line that I just replaced could have parted. As I feel around, in the dark, I feel the nicely whipped end. “Wait a second, this didn’t part, the knot came undone.” I tell John. I had made the tail of the traveller stop too thin and with all the bouncing it had come undone. Oops. A convenient outcome! I know exactly how to re-run the line and how to tie the stopper knot properly this time. Within two minutes we have everything back to normal. If someone else had been on watch when it happened, by the time I got to the helm to see what had happened there could have been damage. Again, someone was looking out for us or luck was on our side.
By morning the wind has started to come up a bit more and the seas are more rolly. We put in a reef and furl the headsail 10%. It is turning into the predicted sleigh ride. Our speed through the water around 6.7 knots and our speed over ground between 7 and 8 knots.
As we pass the mighty Columbia river, the water starts to get really warm, about 65 degrees. Very strange, it seems to us, this far offshore, but apparently normal. And then we start seeing logs, a lot of logs. And by logs, I mean trees, essentially full sized floating trees, some of them with many years of growth. Truly disconcerting.
We are about 69 Nautical Miles offshore at this point, beautiful sailing now for one day and one night.
We run the engine about 1.5 hours a day to charge the batteries and make water. The water tanks are full each day. We are keeping up with water usage aboard, but the solar panels should be making more (later i realize one of the panels had lost connection because of corrosion. Something Nigel and I fixed quickly in Sausalito).
Day 4 – Saturday, August 21st
Bright moon; Fog banks; Peachy sailing; More reefing; seas getting more wishy washy
0000-2359
130 NMs covered during the day
Noon: 44º30.35’ N 126.04.12’ W
By day four we are in a nice routine. The crew all gets together in the morning for breakfast, we are not all crowding into the cockpit when it’s not our watch, and people are sleeping when they are not on watch. The boat doesn’t feel crowded. We gybe once in the morning (heading east during the day) and we gybe once at night (heading west during the night). This routine proves pretty effective to minimize danger and keep us moving in the correct direction overall (south). We are sometimes sailing more distance than we need to, but we are pretty safe this way, and we are avoiding all the in-shore issues (other boats, fishing fleets, etc).
We reduce down to the 2nd reef and take the Genoa in to 30% before evening.
My watches are mid-day and then midnight to four A.M. We have overlapping watches so during my midnight watch I’m with John and Nigel. During my watch with Nigel (2am to 4am) we are moving along nicely and in the distance I can see a fog bank. The moon is providing lots of light, the fog bank is getting closer. Behind us I can see it’s clear. Overhead, it’s clear. Behind us, clear. But ahead, there’s a major fog bank. We prepare ourselves, getting closer and closer. I never really tell the “moment” we enter the fog bank, but as I look behind me I realize there’s now fog is all around us. It’s eerie, but the sailing is great, can’t complain. We sail along.
In the next watch, we are able to go super deep (head even further south), and the wind has built enough that Rachel and Scott decide to fully furl the head-sail (Genoa). The genoa has not been helping and it’s flapping around a lot. Per our written sail-plan, we should have hanked on the storm jib at this point, but we didn’t. More on how this decision got us into trouble, later on. At this point we are sailing along nicely under just double reefed main, the boat is fast and happy, but the washing machine effect is pretty strong (waves from one direction, swells from another), making things not that comfortable down below.
Day 5 – Sunday, August 22nd
True versus magnetic; Impact; Sailing, Sailing, Sailing; Blue skies and Blue water; Full moon, Lots of wind
0000-2359
128 NMs covered during the day
Noon: 42º28.3’ N 126º27.7’ W
A debate on-board has been whether to use True or Magnetic as the primary compass setting. A friend later describes this as a religious debate, he is not wrong. The Predict Wind weather routing information comes in True readings, which we can then convert using local variation and deviation, or we can just switch the chart plotter to True, it seems easier, so we try this for the rest of the trip.
We are shooting right along at 6+ knots, but heading just as much west as south. We still don’t want to gybe at night with winds in the 20s and gusts higher, so we try to sail as deep as possible. The main is all the way out (prevented) and occasionally one of the swell/wave induced rolls puts the boom pretty close to the water, or is it just an optical illusion, hard to know precisely, but it’s a little nerve-racking. Still, we are making good progress south until we gybe in the morning.
There have been hardly any vessels at all, either on AIS, visibly, or on radar. We have a nifty device on board called the EchoMax which actively reflects our radar reflection and also alarms when it picks up any radar signal from another vessel (it’s like an on-water radar detector). Occasionally we get a blip, and we can scan more closely with our radar, we can radio and we can keep a sharper watch; it’s a comfort to have this device.
Just before 0400, again, on my watch (why did so many odd things happen on my watch?), I’m at the wheel, with Nigel. I’m pretty zonked out, it’s almost the end of my long midnight to four A.M. watch. The autopilot is steering along and I’m at the wheel. Nigel is keeping watch in the cockpit. BOOM. We hit something in the water. We have been seeing giant logs for days, and avoiding some with just a few feet during the day, the fact that we finally hit one isn’t really a surprise, but the odds still seem staggering, the middle of the Pacific. We are doing about 5.7 knots.
I immediately turn off the autopilot and take the wheel after the initial impact. BOOM, I feel and hear the next hit, it feels that we are going over the object. The boat rises on a swell, and I hear and feel the third strike, it feels like it’s under the boat, it’s hard to tell. I await a fourth strike, this would be on the shaft or rudder. I’m gripping the wheel right now. There’s no strike. Silence but for the wind and water. I steer the boat, the rudder is fine, no issues. I turn the autopilot back on, no issues. We are sailing along just fine, the boat doesn’t seem to be any different. I turn the helm over to Nigel, unclip from tether and dive below.
Rachel is up out of bed, Scott and John are fast asleep. “We hit something” I tell her. I dive into the bilges, no water. I dive into the engine room, I turn the shaft by hand, all the way around, it’s turning just fine, no issues. No leaks. I check the rudder stock, autopilot, no leaks, no issues. Unbelievable. There seems to be no damage. OK. That’s good. Later in the Bay Area a diver checked the boat and didn’t find a scratch. Totally amazing.
In the morning, we gybe, we have a nice breakfast, the wind has built to the mid 20s and we were cruising along. Glorious sailing, blue skies and blue water, with even swells.
In the evening we gybe back, per our routine, as it doesn’t look like we will clear Cape Mendocino on the other gybe yet. Most of the evening we are sailing with the wind at about 125º, off our quarter (180º is dead down, so we are 55º away from that a nice compromise between speed, comfort and Velocity Made Good (VMG), making 6.8 to 7 knots at times, really moving along. This is also the night of the full moon
Day 6 – Monday, August 23rd
Slammin’ waves; John’s Wilhelm Scream; Noj’s Soaking; Hallucinating dolphin; Current; S.F. “In Sight”; Mendocino gets its claws into us
0000-2359
146 NMs covered during the day
Noon: 40ª19.11’ N 126º40.15’ W
During my midnight watch, the skies are clear and the moon is full (SO FULL). This is really glorious sailing. The autopilot is doing great, but occasionally we get the side waves, offset from the main direction of the swells. I snarkily describe them as “A-Hole” waves. These waves disrupt our whole balance and 85% of the time the autopilot can’t keep up. The waves slam us off course. If we had the storm jib hanked on, this would have helped the balance, but we were all too fatigued at this point (later in the Bay Area we decide to sew a custom bag for the storm jib so it’s always ready to go instead of needing to be brought top-side and then hanked on). In retrospect, if we had followed our sail plan and hanked on the storm jib when we furled the Genoa a few days ago, we would be in better shape. A learning experience.
At about 0130 with me at the wheel and John keeping watch in the cockpit, we hear one of the slammin’ waves coming. It sounds like a freight train. By this point we know these wave trains can be really explosive. We steel ourselves, their strike usually means the boat will get slapped off course and we will have to correct course by hand, but this one is a breaker, and it looks and sounds like it is going to douse the whole cockpit. At the last moment, John dives to the other side and lets out what I can only describe as a Wilhelm Scream (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio). And the wave does not break over us. It is a relief, and the sound effect hilarious. “Ahhhhhhhhhh”.
John and I are both pretty tired. In one of the wave sets I see a dolphin jump out in a perfect arc next to the boat. “Dolphin!” I exclaim. We look and don’t see anything more. “Or, I’m hallucinating? Well, either way, it looked really cool”. I’m still not sure. With the full moon the visibility is really good but was it just a wave or a dolphin, who knows.
Before John’s watch was over we discuss gybing. But being so tired, and so late at night, we opt not to do it. John calculates that we will add about 25 miles to our trip by waiting until morning, but it is just going to have to do, by waiting until morning we would give Mendocino a nice wide berth anyway. Safety first. Don’t sail on a schedule. These are the mantras.
We gybe at sunrise and are heading for some point between Point Reyes and Half Moon Bay (S.F. Bay being mid-way between two two points), we feel like we were in pretty good shape. Winds remain between 20 to 30 knots, but no problems. S.F. is “in sight” (on the GPS anyway).
Speaking of gybes, we have a pretty strict routine with the gybes. We have it setup to gybe with three people (later in the Bay Area we made this system easier to make it possible to easily gybe with just Rachel and I). The gybe starts with two people clipping into the high lifeline. One goes aft to the stern cleat (on the leeward side, the same side the boom is on). The other person goes forward to the mid deck cleat. The crew at the stern eases the preventer line. The crew at the mast disconnects the two part preventer. One part goes on the mid-deck cleat, the other part clips on the boom. Both crew then come back to the cockpit. Meanwhile, the driver drives carefully to make sure the boat isn’t too deep or too high (each having their own problems). Now the engine goes on, to assist the gybe, since we don’t have a headsail. The boat is put into forward at idle or just a bit above. Now the main is sheeted in, completely. We want the main to gybe from the top to the bottom. We take our time, using the motor to maintain forward motion, steering carefully, we bring in the whole main until it is as close to center as we can possible manage. Now we gybe, nice and easy. Properly done the main just flops over, like a spine adjustment at the physical therapist, from top to bottom, nice and even. We let out the main on the other board, get the main out to the desired point, put the engine in neutral. Now the two crew members clip on the high life-line again, one at the crew at the stern cleat and one at the mid-deck cleat. The preventer is attached again and tightened. The crew come back. And off we go on the new gybe. With our enhancements, we made the preventer easier to attach at the boom end, and we have it setup so the driver controls the slack and ease on the preventer, in this way two crew can do this together.
Anyway, back to the trip, we are making more “Easting” now, and not so much “Southing” as we do not want to overshoot S.F. Later in the day we will learn this was a bit of a mistake by putting us closer to the dreaded cape than we would have liked.
During my mid-morning watch, it is John and I in the cockpit again. The same wave and swell pattern was prevailing, the occasional “A-Hole” waves coming from the side. At 1111 (so noted in the ship’s log), John and I chatting, with me at the helm, I hear the freight train wave coming. This time, there is no relief, the wave breaks, directly on me. I am wearing my foulie jacket, light rain pants, and then just cotton socks and deck shoes. I am completely soaked from the waist down. It is hilarious, and I may have yelped. I’m glad it got noted in the log. What do I do with soaking wet cotton socks? Ugh. Bad clothing choice on my part.
Later in the day, during Rachel’s watch, Rachel spots a barnacle encrusted tree, floating along, and changes course to evade it. It would have been another collision. These logs along the coast are no joke!
We are rapidly chipping away at the miles left to go, and the wind is building. By 1700 the wind is 25 knots with gusts to 30. 1800 hours, the wind is 28, then 30, then 35, then 40, and by 2000 we are seeing 43 knots steady. We are in a full on gale now and the swells and waves are combining to massive heights, we estimate 5 meter (15 foot) swell/wave combination at this point. The autopilot is not keeping up and we switch the watch to 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off for the rest of the evening for hand steering. We can’t cook dinner (we resort to chopped cooked ham and snacks for the night). The waves are massive, the wind is incredible, the boat is moving along.
I send a text message on the satellite to our weather router who tells us we are firmly in the grasp of Cape Mendocino, even at more than a hundred miles out, there is no escape. The good news he says, “it will only be for the next 12 hours”. Neat! We wonder if we had made more southing after the morning gybe we would have missed some of it, but it seems unlikely, there’s just no way to avoid that craziness without waiting for a calm day.
At 2200 the wind moderates to 33 knots again and it feels like a gentle breeze.
Would I prefer to have motored through a dead calm Mendocino for those hundred miles? Probably not, that has its own set of miseries. But in the five meter seas and 43 knots of breeze, we really wondered what was next, would it get 50 knots? More? How would we do. The answer is that the boat did great and we, the crew, hung in there, and made the best of it. And the seas didn’t get much bigger.
At the time, it wasn’t a lot of fun. But by the next morning we were all happy.
Day 7 – Tuesday, August 24th
Big seas; Beautiful skies; Satellite coms; Steady progress; Shaking out reefs; Drakes bay;
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133 NMs covered during the day
Noon: 38º42.1’ N 124º41.0’ W
After midnight, the wind has settled into the 30s but the seas are still just absolutely massive. My impression is that we are in a whole different part of the Pacific, and indeed, we were in the escarpment of Mendocino, everything just feels different. Like visiting a new city. Everything is chrome colored this night. It is all sublime. The Autopilot starts doing well again, we have to correct it about once every 15 minutes or so as the side waves come. With the 30 minute on, 30 minute off, we are doing okay.
I receive an email from Bob at the Coho, he concurs that we would only be in it for another 1/2 day. Comforting to hear and to know people on shore are keeping an eye on us.
By 0800 the wind moderates into the 20s, and the seas, while still sloppy, are no longer in the 5 meter range. We are through it, in just 12 hours, as we had been told. San Francisco is right around “the corner”. I call the marina in Sausalito on the satellite phone and make berthing arrangements. Knowing we are on the high seas, the marina is exceptionally accommodating and finds us a spot.
And what a change after Mendocino, by 1500 we shake out the 2nd reef. The winds continue to moderate all day, from the 20s to the high teens, then the low teens and finally at midnight, as we are heading to Drakes Bay to anchor, the winds pretty much die all together. We try to drift along with full sails but there is just nothing there. I put up all my Seattle sailing skills (light air work) but we are barely doing 3 knots. The motor goes on.
Day 8 – Wednesday, August 25th
Motoring; Land ho!; Golden Gate Bridge; Scotch; Go right on in
0000-1035
54 NMs covered during the day
John and I do some math during the midnight watch. With the conditions being as they are (no wind), there is no point in going to Drake’s Bay to anchor. Slack current at the Golden Gate is at 0938, by motoring at 6 knots we would be right there at the gate, at just exactly 0930. We adjust course and head for S.F.
The rest of the night is flat calm conditions. Sometime between 0600 and 0700 the call of “Land Ho” is yelled. At 0730 the crew see the Golden Gate Bridge. At 0938 we were right there under the bridge and at 1035 we are tied up at Schoonmaker Marina in Sausalito, ready to eat a hearty breakfast. We made it!
I will add some “color” to the day 6 memories… it mentions that at dinner time the winds were 34 kts and an hour later 43 kts. Because the boat was heeled over and I was tired, we actually started preparing dinner late. I was tired and frustrated, partly from not handling the Scopalamine patch well, and partly from trying to cook from scratch and not having enough prepared in advance. Noj was standing in the comfortable notch in the galley area next to the stove while I sat at the salon table trying to work with him to make dinner. I was chopping up some ham into cubes and he was going to make a sort of impromptu easy-to-cook hot dinner for us. We had some frozen peas, a tetra-pack box of mushroom box, and some couscous ready to go. He had put a saucepan on the stove and the plan was once I finished chopping the ham he would turn on the burner, warm it a bit, then add the couscous and frozen peas and slowly add however much broth the couscous would absorb so that nobody had to worry about hot liquid sloshing. I was already getting mad at our old stove because when the boat took a big wave on the side, the stove gimbaling worked well to keep the pot level and not splashing contents out, but the movement of air in the galley would cause the flame to go out (good news is the thermocouple would instantly stop the propane from flowing, but I’d have to relight it all…). And I was mentally unwell because I’ve learned that scopalamine is not my friend. So I was finally resigned to needing more help in the galley beyond just chopping things for me to cook. Anyhoo… I remember I was just done chopping that ham when Noj saw the 40 kts on the wind instrument reading over in the interior nav table. He declared we’d just have cold chopped ham for dinner along with crackers/chips/whatever other snacks. I grabbed a Kirkland nut & chocolate snack bar and went to the aft cabin to rest because, per the phrase popularlized by the millenials, I “just could not anymore.”
By the time of my regular morning watch, I was well-rested and ready to handle the rest of the voyage. I came up and started hand-steering to help make the waves that auto couldn’t see hit us a bit easier while the rest of the crew were resting. I was eager to hand-steer because it let me have a hand-hold on the wheel that facilitated standing at the helm and my knees were suffering from too much sitting. To have a handhold at the wheel while standing if auto is steering means reaching over the wheel to the bar forward of the wheel which is not that comfy. And not using a handhold in heavy seas means risking being knocked to the side when the waves come…
Thank you both for putting your time an energy into writing such a great narrative! I felt like I was right along with you! ( or maybe it was the PNW rain falling that drenched me instead! 😜). Congratulations on your sail! It sounded like an adventure you won’t likely forget! Looking forward to hearing about what comes next!
Hi Laney! Thanks so much for reading and for your support. It’s fun and encouraging to hear your feedback.
Thanks for the great write up both of you and congratulations on a long tough journey! Made for some great reading. I agree with Laney – felt like we were along for the ride (but kinda glad we weren’t).
Amazing awesome!!! Thank you for sharing! What an experience!!!
Great reading, thanks for entertaining me. 😀
Glad you enjoyed it Todd. It’s a little easier than editing videos for me, and writing is more our speed.