So the adventure begins.
Wayne
This is a description of our sailing trip from Victoria to San Francisco with a few other interesting episodes tossed in. I’ll try to leave out all of the boring parts so as not to lose your interest, but don’t get the idea that we had whales and storms all the way down.
We left Brentwood Bay on August 17th at 11:26 am. Since we were supposed to leave August 15th, we were feeling the pressure and our neighbours were starting to make jokes about another Bon Voyage party. As a result we were up early and trying to finish a few more jobs before we left. We had scraped some loose paint off of both masts the night before so we were up the mast painting at 7:00 am. With that and filling the tanks with fuel, we had no time to tidy the boat or put away the tools before leaving but we figured we could finish up on the way. Just one mile from the dock, with zero wind, we had to stop the engine so that I could work on the propeller gland. I had replaced the packing just a couple of weeks before and had gotten it so tight that the shaft was overheating. Tight is good as this packing keeps the ocean on its own side of the hull, however too tight can overheat the shaft to the point that it will distort. We worked on it for a while until we finally decided that we needed new packing material. This necessitated a stop at Canoe Cove marina which is all of 12 miles from our dock. While at the marina, we decided to get a light bulb that I had smashed while painting the mast. As the marina didn’t have one, one of the employees offered me her car to run into town to get one! We anchored at 9:30 that night near Albert Head having gone a whopping 37 miles.
The next day we encountered very thick fog most of the way to Sooke. We arrived by 1:00 pm and decided to take the rest of the day off.
On the 19th we left Sooke and motored the entire day to Neah Bay. Yeah! We made it to the U.S. Neah Bay is in the Juan de Fuca Strait that is notorious for wind but there wasn’t a breath of it that day. Neah Bay is the last stop before the ocean so we went to the grocery store, made some phone calls and then went back out into the bay to anchor. Naturally the engine didn’t want to start, but we took this as a good omen, spoke nicely to it and eventually coaxed it into 5 minutes of effort.
The next morning we were up bright and early at 10 am. We motored out to Cape Flattery and turned left. In this part of the world, the wind is almost invariably from the north-west. That would have been perfect for us, however, this day it was from the south-west, which is exactly where we wanted to go and there was very little of it. We sailed when we could and motored when we couldn’t until about 3 am on the 21st when the wind finally became strong enough to consistently sail. Early in the morning, during the thickest rainstorm in history, Susan was visited by 40 or more porpoises. They seemed to enjoy swimming alongside the boat. Later that day we saw three ships well to the east of us and guessed that we had crossed the shipping lane and were safe to head straight south. Late in the day when we went to start the engine to cool our fridge, it chose to stage a lie-down strike. This occasioned some rather rude remarks from a certain short blonde person about the quality of the engineering staff on the cruise. After an hour’s work on the starter solenoid we were back in business, with a renewed belief in repairing things at the first sign of trouble rather that when they are irretrievably dead.
By early on the 22nd the wind was from the west and consistently up to about 10 knots. This was the highest wind we had had since leaving the Juan de Fuca Strait. By now we had figured out the rudiments of getting the boat to steer itself with the windvane. We were starting to see boat speeds of 6 to 7 knots, which is pretty decent for our boat under any condition. Every night from the 23rd on we seemed to get more wind and bigger waves. At 5:30 am on the 23rd, we had 20 knots of wind from the north-west and big square waves about 8 feet tall. This was just about the first time that we had ever sailed downwind and we were surprised by how difficult it was. The basic problem was a lack of expertise, however, we are learning how in a big rush! The windvane was having a hard time steering the boat and that meant extra work for us. Our boat speeds were the highest we had ever seen, averaging around 7 knots with the occasional surf off of a wave up to 8.8 knots. To top it all off, the boat was rolling from side to side through about 60 degrees. All day long the wind continued to build until by 8:30 pm we had 30 knots of it. At this point we were down to a double-reefed mainsail and the boat was still near hull speed. The noise was really incredible! Besides the 35 MPH of wind whistling past, there were twelve foot tall waves occasionally breaking near us. The boat was going over, through and falling off of the waves several times per minute. The propeller was freewheeling and adding its own multi-toned whine to the proceedings. Every single thing that we owned was working desperately at every roll to smash its way out of the cupboards. We finally decided to take down all of the sails. Because we were going downwind, we knew that we could easily maintain speeds of 4 or 5 knots even without them. However, without sails, the motion was even worse and I figured that nothing in the cupboards would last the night.
We decided to try putting up just the jib, but discovered that at some point our spinnaker halyard had escaped and in falling down had wrapped itself around the jib. Fortunately, we were able to free the halyard and set about half of the jib. This helped with the motion and as the sun came up on the 24th, the wind dropped to about 25 knots. During the night of the 24th, we were having trouble getting the boat to steer itself, and we were both too tired to steer, so we decided to heave to. There was 20 plus knots of wind so we used only the double reefed main. Although the boat stopped and was quite steady, each time that she turned up into the wind, we would launch off the top of a wave and slam into the trough. We could have improved the motion with a little bit of jib, but we were too tired to figure it out. We stood it for an hour or so, then put out about 1/4 of the jib and continued on. We were now averaging over 6 knots with occasional boosts up to 8 knots.
Early on the 25th we decided to stop in Eureka, California for some rest and food. We turned toward the coast and when we were about 40 miles from shore we had a small electrical fire behind our electrical panel! This gave us a bit of a scare and required more lovely maintenance work. At about 6 pm we crossed the Humbolt Bay bar and anchored in the bay.
The 26th was spent at anchor, shopping, eating and sleeping. We had a visit from the Coast Guard. They were very nice, friendly people who complimented us on our trip, our boat and welcomed us to Eureka. There were no nasty inspections or requests for documents.
On August 27th we were ready to go at the crack of noon. It was a little chilly and there was almost no wind. What there was, was from the wrong direction but we put up the sails and toughed it out until 5:30 pm. During this period, Susan discovered two uncharted rocks, which on closer inspection, turned into humpback whales. We guessed that they were 100 metres away and approximately 15 metres long. As we were down to two knots of wind and near the rather dangerous Cape Mendocino, we motored off and on until 10:30 am the next morning. During most of the night we had the thickest fog that we’ve seen so far with less that 1/2 mile of visibility. The radar, autopilot and GPS worked overtime all night long. Susan says that she saw an orca heading north but I suspect it was a wayward rock.
Around noon on the 28th, in 5 knots of wind, we took in the jib and put up the spinnaker. Our speed went from 1 knot to 4.5. There wasn’t enough wind for the wind vane to steer but the autopilot did quite well. The spinnaker stayed up until sundown when the wind promptly began to build until it was up to the low twenties. Our speed was back up to between 6 and 7 knots and the ride became fairly rough again. At 2:00 am on the 29th I woke up to retching noises. I found Susan paying tribute to the gods of bumpy oceans and long parties. I offered to finish her watch but she said I should go back to sleep, and she finished it herself. All day we averaged about 7 knots in 20 to 25 knots of wind. We were buzzed by a Canadian DND helicopter and several U.S. armed forces’ helicopters and planes. They looked like they were out fishing, but it was probably legitimate exercises. We decided to stop about 10 miles north of San Francisco as we didn’t want to enter in the dark. As we were heading for Drakes Bay, under full jib and double reefed main, the wind began to gust to 30 knots, bringing the boat speed to 8.8 knots. Since this is about 1/2 knot over the theoretical maximum speed of the hull, we decided that it was time to reduce sail. Finally we were anchored in the bay. Thankfully there were no waves but the wind blew at 30 knots all night long.
On the 30th we were up and on our way at the crack of 1:00 pm. The wind was only 6 knots so we put up the spinnaker to encourage it. It worked! Soon we had 17 knots of wind! Down with the spinnaker and up with the reefed main and jib. The wind went up to 25 knots and down came the main. We were sailing dead downwind and doing 7 knots heading for the Golden Gate. We had to hand steer as we didn’t want to put up a spinnaker pole. Two miles from the bridge we had 25 knots of wind and about 7 foot waves. We were in a channel that is only about 1000 feet wide and 30 feet deep. That feels awfully skinny after having 5000 miles of water on one side, 85 miles on the other and one mile below. We passed two huge ships while going under the bridge. Finally, we were in San Francisco!
Since we arrived we have had a couple of amusing experiences. We tied our dinghy up to a pier and had a long discussion about whether or not it would be crushed underneath if the tide came up. When we came back hours later, we found it dangling 6 feet up in the air. Needless to say, quite embarrassing..
Even worse, one morning we started the engine to charge the batteries and cool the fridge. After a few minutes, I went up above to look around and found that the boat was in gear and doing donuts around its anchor at top speed. Our neighbours are now all anchored a long way away, so perhaps it was a good thing.
