Sail Chandelle

Sept 11 – 17, 2024

In the serene morning hours we waved goodbye to Karma, and headed out of the protection of Ucluelet Inlet, and were quickly greeted with large and confused seas left over from the southerly weather over the weekend. Getting our small stay sail rigged and flying helped steady the boat some but there wasn’t enough wind to sail by. We’d left before breakfast, and Alex was already starting to turn green, so I quickly scrounged up a quick snack for him to eat while he kept his gaze on the horizon. I was nervous and uncomfortable too, but as I took in the contented smile on Jim’s face, I told myself all was well and I just needed to get used to the motion. Still not feeling great, Alex went below, and laid down in the berth we had set up with a lee cloth, to see if he could sleep away the nausea.

My first night watch felt wild, alone in the cockpit, surrounded by nothing but ocean, clouds, and stars, while watching out for other boats and keeping our course. Trying to sleep was a whole other matter – I’d never spent much time below on our day sails – and the noises I wasn’t yet used to sounded catastrophic below the deck. The sheets hitting or rubbing the rigging sounded like tiny explosions. The dishes I’d thought were well packed, slid back and forth, clanging in their cubbies. I went about shoving towels in every crevasse I could find but couldn’t seem to fully quell the incessant racket. Nothing was breaking so I tried listening to music to help drown out the noise, and keep my anxious thoughts about our safety at bay, but it wasn’t until our third night out that I was finally exhausted enough to get much sleep.

We took four hour watches at night and three hours during the day so each person had ample time to take a break. The cooking was mainly left to me as Alex struggled to even use the bathroom below without getting nauseous, and I was thankful I’d prepared a decent amount of meals ahead of time so mostly I just had to reheat them. For six days and nights our whole world was in constant motion. No task could be done without holding on or keeping a wide stance and propping yourself against a wall to be able to use both hands. Our third night out the winds grew to 25-30 knots with following seas up to four meters – we were flying down wind. It was exciting but I was still nervous with the amount of rolling back and forth in the large swells. Once Jim went to bed, I focused on the incredible amount of stars I could see including a clear view of the milky way and a little bit of phosphorescence in the water, and encouraged Alex to do the same when he took over in the early morning hours. It’s a magical slice of nature most people never get to experience and I wanted to soak it up despite the stress of our floating house tossing about in the open sea.

By day four I think we were all a little frustrated with the close quarters, small decision making disagreements, and our whisker pole breaking in the night, but that afternoon we were welcomed to California waters by a bunch of dolphins, and our worries seemed to melt away for a bit. I stood at the bow and watched them play for what felt like at least twenty minutes til I got too cold in the misty fog, and it was my turn for a nap.

During my watch the next morning before the light of dawn, something flew straight into the cockpit – I couldn’t see it at first, it was small, and had landed between our canvas and piece of teak trim. As I shined a light toward it, it started to crawl to the side, and I realized it was a bat! It continued to crawl into a small wire basket housing some outdoor supplies in our cockpit – so I had to pick things out to find it again, and then helped it out of the cockpit. After a few minutes of crawling slowly along the back deck it took off into the early dawn.

As the sea state continued to calm south of Cape Mendocino, more and more sea life visited the surface surrounding us – several humpback whales, tons of dolphins, and sea birds, and a few sun fish. We put up all sails to get the most of the last bit of wind we’d see before reaching our destination.

On day six at 0810 in the morning we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco Bay. It was a strange and surreal feeling to have finally made the passage we’d been planning for so long. That sense of achievement I expected eluded me at the time – maybe it was exhaustion, or knowing I still had a very full week immediately ahead of me, or how frustrating the process was trying to get ourselves checked back into the US. Whatever the reason, after ten days, a flight back to Seattle, a wedding, and a road trip back to the boat – that sense of accomplishment finally hit as Alex and I celebrated our tenth anniversary on our sailboat home over 750 nautical miles from where we started. Phew!