Category: Going Home

And so our 2016 – 2019 South Pacific travels came to an end during the early morning hours of August 29th, 2019, in Port Townsend Bay, in Washington State. We unceremoniously put the transmission into neutral and drifted with the tide. We did not shut the engine off even though we had earlier been concerned about being low on fuel. It no longer mattered.

There wasn’t much to say. We were cold and exhausted. Completely drained, there was no more adrenaline to go on. Trying to anchor near shore and wait for daylight seemed like too much work—and too risky. We’d already had enough fun for the day. The only thing lifting our spirits was the fact we had made it here at all. Few people understand how close we came to losing the boat and everything we carried on board.

Maybe two hours earlier, a young-sounding voice had hailed us on the VHF radio, saying she was United States Coast Guard, and asking if we had arrived at Port Townsend yet. We had not, we said, but expected to before sunrise. The Coast Guard had been requesting periodic status reports via our Garmin InReach for a week. This was the first time they had called us by voice on the VHF. For the past 500 miles of open ocean and another 100 or so of protected inland sea, we had been steering the boat by controlling the tension on two ropes. These lines, on either side of the cockpit, ran over the side and back to the rudder where they were tied to the Sayes’ Rig tiller arm which we had had reconstructed last February, and had taken back to Fiji with us. Pulling on either side of that tiller arm was the only viable means we had of controlling the direction of the boat. Even then, it was a clumsy and imprecise process, often requiring a coordinated effort from both of us to affect even a small change in direction. One of us would let out line on one side while the other pulled it in on the other. Once the turn was made, the process was reversed to return the rudder to neutral. It didn’t always go so smoothly, and in big swells, it was mostly an exercise in frustration.

For years, we had looked at a big sailing adventure to the South Pacific as kind of a culmination of a lifetime of varied experiences. It seemed like we would have opportunities to draw on just about every past interest we had (and a whole lot of interesting new things to learn) and put them all to use during a sailing trip of this magnitude. And, after successfully reaching our “stretch goal” of spending time in New Zealand, the final leg home from Hawaii would be the victory lap of perfect sailing conditions around the top of the stationary “North Pacific High” of gentle summer winds and seas that would take us north from Hawaii and then east, all the way to the entrance of the strait of Juan de Fuca, which lies between British Columbia, Canada and Washington State. That was the expectation of how this would be wrapped up.

The problem however, was that for at least the second year in a row the summer high-pressure ridge appeared more imaginary than stationary. Still, the passage started out with high hopes. Our pleasant stay in Hawaii had taken a little longer than planned, but we weren’t really complaining (key word being Pleasant). The blown-out jib had been repaired, Costco runs had been made, and two successful trips to the Honolulu West Marine store had lightened us of plenty of cash. We even stocked up on cheap paperbacks from Walmart. The trade winds filled in nicely with a steady 20 knots, gusts to 30, and were forecast to continue for at least several days.

The winds did cause a slight problem while we were still in the marina: we could get our jib onto the deck, but couldn’t raise and furl it. The wind was too strong with respect to the direction we sat in the slip. The other problem would be getting out of the slip if a 30 knot gust hit at the wrong moment while trying to back out. We spent a lot of time watching the action of the gusts on the movement of the boat in the slip, and timing how often the gusts occurred and how long they lasted. We noticed that right around sunset, and just before sunrise, they seemed to calm some, but otherwise it was constant all day and night. The marina allowed us to stay until evening if we wanted to. So at sunset on July 17th, we chose our moment and backed out of the slip without major incident. So far, so good.

Once we got out and around the point and into the channel to head north, we thought we’d be in the lee of Oahu. Maybe we were, but the wind was still a steady 20 knots. We’d already loaded all the sail slides into the Reef-Rite furler so raising the jib was just a matter of cranking up the halyard while the boat motored into the wind. When the jib was up, we took off like a rocket. We were doing 7 knots on the jib alone. All indications (and, perhaps, wishful thinking) were that this would be a quick and easy trip home.

For the next several days we experienced some rough seas, but not too bad. We experimented with the jib and staysail, sometimes furling the jib either partially or totally. On day number 8, we finally raised the mizzen sail. We were going a little slower now, which the mizzen helped to offset, but not a bad speed at all. By day 9, everything was about as laid back as it gets. It seemed we didn’t need to change a thing. In fact, we hardly even needed to do anything. The boat just kept sailing by itself. The air temperature was a little warm, but comfortable. We took turns sleeping, watching the stars, reading, listening to music. I finished the fourth book and started looking around at some of the books Robyn had left behind to see if I could stomach reading any of them, many being what I would call teen girl fiction, or whatever. We decided we had crossed the halfway point, and celebrated.

By the start of the third week we ran out of wind. Those excellent trade winds, and maybe whatever the winds are called that came after them, had just up and quit. Our friend Joe, from our Baja buddy boat, Slainte, had been keeping in contact with us from home and became our weather router, checking various internet sites to supplant what little weather data we could get ourselves. By July 31st, we decided that the stationary North Pacific High was nowhere near forming as expected. Even worse, the weather had become cool, cloudy, damp and depressing; we had fog, even. We went for days without seeing the sun at all. The weather put a damper on more than our spirits. Without a steady 24-hour wind to spin our wind turbine generator, or all that bright sunshine on the solar panels, we consumed more electrical energy than we generated. We would need to burn diesel to recharge the batteries. Since the center fuel tank was left empty because of the rust, we only had half our usual fuel capacity. We motored through a dead air patch for eleven hours, using it as an opportunity to recharge the batteries, but still had only found a light wind.

On day number 20, we ran into a strong thunderstorm. Unlike the many tropical convergence zone squalls we sailed through closer to the equator, this one was different. It didn’t follow the same pattern and was more stressful just because of that. It was an unknown. Lightning seemed to be close all around us. By the time it had passed, one of the three GPS units we use was having difficulty. It showed our speed over the ground as being impossibly high and erratic. This particular GPS feeds our SSB radio and Pactor modem with our position and time of day, which is used to help determine distance and radio propagation to the nearest Sail Mail stations. Fortunately, after turning it off and allowing it to re-boot, it seemed to work normally again. That one lightning storm was the only one we experienced between Hawaii and home.

When the GRIB files from the SSB, and the spot weather forecasts from the InReach, both predicted areas of wind ranging from the low 30’s up to the 40’s and even into the 50 knot range, we consulted Joe to help us find a way to avoid them. We ended up going in different directions only to decide a day or two later that we needed to go back the other way. The forecasts seemed to change daily. We tried to get weather fax’s from the Point Reyes, CA transmitter for more detail, but had trouble receiving them. We eventually learned the station was experiencing technical difficulties. We could not move fast enough to get around the predicted winds. We ended up choosing to sail into rough seas in order to get ahead of what was supposed to be an even rougher area with stronger wind coming later. We wondered if a seasonal weather window was closing, and rather than trapping us at home, this time we would be left on the outside and unable to get back in.

The winds hit us exactly when and where predicted, starting in the middle of the night. Oddly, I could hear them coming across the water before they reached us several seconds later. At first, it was refreshing to once again be moving at full speed over relatively smooth seas. But over the following 24 hours, the winds increased, and continued. The waves grew to substantial (and impressive) size. Steering was difficult. We went into a kind of storm-survival mode. We made a decision to continue trying to sail and make progress rather than heave-to or take more defensive action, not that there was a lot we could do anyway. We were back on track toward home, even if the actual speed over the ground was much reduced due to the large seas. We had been through worse before, after all.

We convinced ourselves that the wind was abating. We saw fewer high gusts and the waves appeared to be getting smaller. But as soon as we would convince ourselves we were almost through the wind field, it would increase again. I had gone below to try to get fresh GRIB files to see how close we were to the predicted calm zone that was supposed to follow right after the wind, when Julie yelled down that we had lost steering. I heard her, but of course asked what she meant. She said that it felt like maybe a cable had come off. The steering wheel turns a sprocket, over which is a chain—like a bicycle chain—which moves as the wheel is turned. Attached to either end of the chain are steel cables which run over several pulleys, down through the deck and back to a quadrant attached to the rudder post. Turning the wheel moves these cables which turns the rudder. Over time, they can loosen up, or conceivably pull out of the fittings at the end. Convinced this was the problem, we looked for the lose cable, but found the steering system to all be in order. Turning the wheel turned the rudder post but not the rudder itself. Therefore, the failure must be internal to the actual rudder. We were out of control, 500 miles off the Washington coast.

The wind was definitely calming down now. The sun had set and it was dark. We felt that the Coast Guard should be made aware of our situation but we weren’t completely ready to ask for assistance. I knew that once the Coast Guard was contacted and the situation explained, we’d likely have two options. They might divert a commercial ship to our location to standby, or they might want to evacuate us, likely scuttling Mysticeti. Since we were well out of VHF radio range, I wasn’t sure which SSB frequency to use to try to contact them, or if a helicopter could even make the 1,000 mile round trip.

We drifted all night. The compass showed we were pointing south and the GPS showed our speed at up to 2 knots. We were going in the wrong direction, getting farther away, back in the direction we had come. It was a rough night, trying to deal with all the ramifications, possible outcomes and make an appropriate decision. So many tough decisions.

In the morning we realized something unexpected. We were actually drifting backwards! Although pointing southwest, we were moving northeast, toward our destination. While I had spent the night unable to not think about losing the boat, Julie had been working on ideas. We tried putting in the vane for the Sayes’ Rig since it takes control of the rudder directly, but that didn’t seem to work for some reason. Although, the Sayes’ tiller arm bolted to the rudder made it possible to drop two lines through the opening at the end, grab them with the boat hook, and tie them off so we could pull the rudder from either side. We ran the lines to the port and starboard jib winches. With the staysail and mizzen, and our jury-rigged rudder control, we managed to turn the boat around and head off in the right direction.

In the meantime, Joe had done what we had been reluctant to do: contact the Coast Guard and describe our situation. Working with them, we established a direct communication channel using our InReach. We could now text directly back and forth with the Coast Guard. They asked plenty of questions, including the amount of fuel we had, our fuel burn rate and our cruising speed. We asked about our options once we reached the straits and the town of Neah Bay, just inside Cape Flattery. We knew we wouldn’t be able to maneuver into the fuel dock there with our current steering arrangement. The Coast Guard reported that they had contacted a Canadian research vessel in our area who could supply us with some diesel if we needed it right away. Another decision. Transferring fuel from them to us in ocean swells seemed risky. We opted to go with the wind we currently had and head toward the strait as directly as possible, dealing with fuel if the need came up later. The weather looked good to get close to shore without unnecessary delay.

We watched the miles remaining to Neah Bay tick downward. 365, 360, 355… We cheered each significant step closer that we still had some steering ability. Eventually, some dark shapes on the horizon, which could go either way as being clouds or land, solidified. On day 42 since leaving Ko Olina Marina on the island of Oahu, at 4:00 PM local time on Tuesday, August 27th, on a clear and cloudless typical Pacific Northwest late summer afternoon, 62 nautical miles due west of Cape Flattery, we declared that land was in sight! The dark shapes on the horizon were mountains on Vancouver Island, at least one of which had a large snow patch clearly visible through binoculars. The next morning we were close enough that the cell phone pinged a Canadian cell tower. We could start making phone calls to arrange where we would go and what would happen next. We still had plenty of fuel remaining to motor all the way in.

Ideally, we wanted to be hauled out immediately at the Port Townsend Boat Haven yard, but the marina office said they were booked up out two weeks. They promised to find a space to tie to if we could call them after they opened at 8:00 in the morning. Vessel Assist could tow us in to whatever dock the marina indicated. We needed to call them three hours before we wanted them. But it didn’t take long to decide that at 3 AM, cold, tired and drifting, we were in actual distress and needed them immediately. This thing wasn’t over quite yet. We still had work to do with the tow lines, etc. But the light at the end of the tunnel was definitely brightening. Joe said he was coming to help tie us up.

We met Joe at the Port Townsend fuel dock, where Vessel Assist had taken us. By the time we arrived, it was about 8 AM and the marina was opening anyway. We left the boat and went to breakfast with Joe. While at breakfast we learned that a scheduled haulout had been canceled and the time slot was available to us. Vessel Assist was called back, and by the time we paid for our meal the boat had been moved from the fuel dock to the haulout pier. Our presence had not been required. Everything was pretty much a groggy blur anyway. Once the boat was clear of the water, the problem with the rudder was plainly evident. It was broken just behind the rudder post, nearly all the way through. We had been extremely lucky it happened so close to home, and had held together the rest of the way in.

Although not in the way we expected, our once-in-a-lifetime ultimate sailing dream trip of more than 15,000 nautical miles has completed. Right back where it had started from. We will never forget all those people we met along the way, especially those who educated and helped us, entertained us, and proved to us that although the Earth is big, the world truly is small; and the help and understanding provided by our friends, family and neighbors, including our flexible and understanding mail carrier, and especially Joe and Cathy from s/v Slainte who we trustingly followed out into the ocean on our first day; and the Vessel Assist crew who gave up sleep to come to our aid and take control to get us into the marina; and the US Coast Guard, who kept a watchful eye on us from the time they learned we were in trouble until we were safe and secure. As one of life’s great adventures, it all could not be beat.

See Dad, I told you I was going to sail to Tahiti someday.

– –

I remember a trip years ago where I was flying to somewhere in Asia. My job at the time occasionally sent me in that direction. Near the beginning of this particular flight the captain came on the speaker and described the route we would be taking. When he got to the part where he talked about the expected weather along the way he said, “Well, on a trip of this length we would expect to fly over several different weather systems.” That trip was more than twenty years ago. I don’t remember the exact destination but I still remember the announcement. In fact, it entered my thoughts several times during our 35 day, 2,500 mile passage between the islands of Upolu, Samoa and Oahu, Hawaii. “On a trip of this length.”

At thirty-five days, this was the longest non-stop passage we’ve done yet, but not the farthest in distance. Mexico to Nuku Hiva was probably a few hundred miles farther but also a few days shorter. That passage was downwind. This passage was more upwind. The prevailing wind, especially north of the equator, being generally from the northeast, and the direction of Oahu from Upolu being to the northeast, meant that for the entire trip we had to sail pointing as high into the wind as the boat was capable, while still maintaining an adequate speed. The entire trip was a battle to stay as close to the rhumb line between Apia Harbor and Ko Olina Marina as we could. But still, it somehow always seemed to be just out of reach to the east. Even so, this passage had many days of some of the nicest, most enjoyable, relaxed and lazy sailing I think I’ve ever experienced. Just the two of us, utterly alone in our own private bubble, moving quietly and smoothly across the face of the earth.

As a kid sailing with my dad on Sunday afternoons on the lake, he used to always remind me to “Head up in the puffs,” and, “Fall off before you luff.” That advice was never more true as on this passage. It was easiest and fastest to sail off the wind a little, going north, but that wasn’t taking us where we needed to go. We needed to take advantage of every opportunity the wind provided to keep moving east, keeping the distance between us and the rhumb line as short as possible, or we might end up too far west of Hawaii. We had already clawed our way directly upwind between Fiji and Samoa and didn’t want to do it again as we neared Hawaii. With much patience and determination, Julie experimented with the sails and a locked-down, fixed rudder angle slightly off the wind until finally achieving a balance where the boat pretty much sailed itself. Like magic, when the wind picked up or shifted direction slightly, the boat would follow and point up. When it pointed too high, it would slow and fall off, maintaining the balance. The boat was maintaining a fairly tight course and it seemed we were mostly just along for the ride.

However, it could be a bit of a wild ride at times. We experienced countless lightning storms—always a little unsettling when on a boat in the middle of ocean—and plenty of sudden squalls, especially at night when we couldn’t see them coming. One minute we’d be smoothly sailing along under a zillion stars, and the next we’re heeled over to thirty degrees with the wind shrieking at thirty knots and heavy rain pounding us. Usually lasting only a few minutes, the squalls would then move along and everything would quickly return to normal.

Then came a squall that was different. Somewhere a little north of the equator, sometime around two AM, it hit us just as all the other squalls had, except that the wind speed didn’t top out around thirty knots but continued right on up to the high forties, even the low fifties. Had we ever even seen gusts this high before? The boat didn’t immediately heel to thirty degrees, but went right to forty or forty-five degrees. Off-watch and asleep on the low side of the cockpit, the ocean was suddenly inches away, flowing down the side deck and splashing onto my makeshift bed. It was a rude awakening. But the real difference with this super-squall was in how long it lasted. It didn’t calm down and move along after a few minutes. Instead, it showed no sign of letting up, even forty-five minutes later. Its full fury lasted almost on hour.

The jib, the sail at the front of the boat attached between the top of the mast and the far end of the bowsprit, has become our workhorse the last few years. It can be fully (or partially) deployed and furled back up again without ever leaving the cockpit. Sailing downwind, it pulls the boat right along all by itself, and even upwind it works well enough, especially if we employ the mizzen as well. The main sail is the most versatile sail but it is difficult and labor intensive to raise and lower, especially with just the two of us, and especially in higher winds and rough seas. It could turn dangerous in a hurry in a sudden fifty-knot squall. With last year’s total loss of the jib and furler off New Zealand still fresh in our minds, we were obviously worried. When the super-squall did not abate within a few minutes as expected, we turned our attention to reefing the jib, or even furling it in entirely. I checked with a flashlight and could see that the jib was still there, and the metallic reflection of light off the furler indicated that it was also still intact. The furling line was already set up on the winch so all we had to do was crank it in after giving the loaded jib sheet some slack. But when I went to slacken the sheet I discovered that it was totally slack already. The sheet is simply the line that holds the jib in against the force of the wind, kind of like a kite string, and having no air pressure on it at all was obviously not a good sign.

It didn’t really surprise me that the line might’ve chafed through and broken. It, and the lazy sheet (running on the opposite side of the boat and not being used on the current tack) had tangled a few days prior and the lazy sheet had somehow tied itself into a knot around the active sheet. With the knot unreachable about twenty feet above the deck, we had decided to just keep using it as it was since we’d likely stay on the same tack all the way to Hawaii. Except that wasn’t the problem. Closer inspection with the flashlight showed that we hadn’t a clew. Really. The lower rear corner of the sail, the part where both sheets attach, the clew, was completely missing! It had ripped entirely off of the rest of the sail and the jib was strung out in the wind, wildly waving like some big banner which we had no control over. That’s when I got the brilliant if somewhat misguided idea to furl up the sail anyway. I mean, we had to get it rolled up or the wind would just shred it. Sails are costly and time consuming to build. But then, realizing that with no sheets attached to pull on and unfurl it, we worried about how we would ever get it unfurled again. It turned out we needn’t have worried about that. Morning light showed that the wind had taken care of that for us. The sail was strung out like a banner again. It was clearly obvious that we needed to get it down safely onto the deck if we wanted any chance at all to repair it in Hawaii.

We formulated a plan and then Julie, being much more adventurous with these sort of things than I, grabbed a handful of sail ties and webbing straps, clipped herself onto the jack lines, and set out on an expedition to the far reaches of the pointy end of the boat. I couldn’t hear exactly what she was yelling about, but I assumed it was something about what a great plan it was that we’d devised. It looked like fun out there, riding the wild gyrations of the bowsprit, but she did manage to get the sail down and secured to the deck. The fortunate design innovation of the New Zealand “Reef-Rite” furler made this so much safer than it would’ve been with our old furler (seriously), as the sail simply lowers on slides in a track rather than coming completely off the furler, no longer attached to the boat at all. The jib, at more than fifty-two feet long, is our longest sail and is unwieldy enough even on a calm day on flat ground. After that little adventure was over, and with our favorite workhorse sail now useless, we had to use all three of our remaining sails—main, mizzen and staysail—to experiment once again before achieving nearly the same self-sailing balance and a mostly acceptable speed. I was sure we were going to be late for our target arrival of sometime during the week of the Fourth of July.

As the days went by, and the farther away we moved from the equator, the more the climate seemed to change. The days became longer. The humidity dropped and there was a new coolness in the air at night. The squalls became noticeably fewer and weaker. I, for one, became increasingly bored. I read the same book twice, after reading two others in between. With June being the start of the North Pacific hurricane season we thought that maybe we should keep an eye on the weather off the coast of southern Mexico, and when we finally did look, it was a bit of a shock to see tropical storm Alvin possibly heading our way. We worried about it for a couple days, then it fizzled out. With that, and the pleasant sailing conditions we were experiencing, we allowed ourselves to become complacent.

By the time we were about 200 miles south of Oahu and starting to fantasize about what we wanted to do first when we got there, the wind all but died completely. We eked out another fifty miles or so by just sort of ghosting along before realizing that we might be within range of picking up the Hawaii NOAA weather radio broadcast on the VHF. Sure enough, we could. It was scratchy and cut in and out, but we could hear something about hurricane preparations. We heard enough to realize that they were talking about a specific hurricane. What?! So I screwed around with the SSB until finally receiving enough detail to realize that hurricane Barbara, fully developed and at category 4, was located about halfway between Mexico and Hawaii and moving in our direction. Yikes! How did we miss this? And more importantly, what do we do about it now?

We had 150 miles left to go to Oahu. We had zero wind and none predicted for at least the next three days. We had already burned about sixty gallons of diesel out of what had been close to a normal load of 200. We had twenty more gallons in jerry cans on deck. We had about seventy-five gallons of contaminated fuel in our center tank that we didn’t want to even try to use. We calculated that if we started right away we could probably power at six knots for twenty-four hours and make it at least most of the way to Oahu before the storm caught up to us. By this time they were already expecting the hurricane would downgrade to a tropical storm, then dissipate all together before hitting Hawaii. But our best bet was to head for the marina as quickly as possible. We started the engine and motored our way along the remainder of the rhumb line course.

So, why the contaminated fuel? Having put up with a clogged fuel line every time we’ve run off the center tank since before leaving Mexico in 2017, and subsequently having to unclog the line each time by blowing it out with a bicycle pump, then bleeding air out of the entire fuel system, followed by performing a battery-draining, engine-sputtering, re-start ritual—not to mention the question of why we are always replacing so many gunked up fuel filters—we’ve finally grown tired of the entire process and have accepted the inevitable fact that our center tank is likely going the way of so many Westsail 42 fuel tanks after thirty or forty years of use. It’s rusting through, and it is rust particles in the fuel that are clogging the fuel line and the filters. Our boat, like so many before it, will need to have the floor ripped up and cabinets disassembled and removed to get at the tanks in order to remove and replace them. There, I said it out loud. Until then, we need to figure out how to get the roughly seventy-five remaining gallons out of the center tank before it finds a hole and ends up in the bilge which is the last place we’d want that much fuel to be sloshing around or getting accidentally pumped overboard like so much bilge water.

Making really good time over the incredibly smooth seas (calm before the storm?), we arrived at the marina late in the day on the 4th of July. We had been able to make contact by cell phone once we were within range and assigned a slip number over the phone, but our actual arrival was after-hours. We were confined to the boat on the honor system until a bio-security inspection could be done the next day. A Customs officer could not make it to the boat (unofficial four-day holiday weekend?) and asked us to come see them in Honolulu on Monday. The bio-security officer showed up as scheduled on Friday, sealed our trash and confiscated our contraband food, declaring us purged. It wasn’t until she asked us how long we intended to stay that it hit me. I felt like saying, “Forever.” We are citizens here. We need no visa with an expiration date. We need no clearance to our next destination. There is no time limit on exempting our boat from import duties. The rest of the way home is domestic travel. In that sense at least, we are already home. This, in fact, was confirmed on Monday when we drove a rental car into downtown Honolulu, first dropping off our clewless sail at the sailmaker, and then visiting the Customs office in the middle of the container port. After filling out the required myriad numbered forms so typical of the US Government, we asked if there was anything we would need to do after we arrived on the mainland. The answer was, “Nope, you’re home.”

July 11th: Today we had our fuel “polished. The fuel in the center tank was pumped out and run through filters to remove the accumulation of rust particles, as well as some water and algae. Then the fuel was redistributed to the side tanks and the center tank will no longer be used until the day comes when it can be replaced. Until then, we still have to make it across the ocean with only half our normal fuel supply. Hopefully the atmosphere will settle down soon into a more normal summer pattern.

Below is a fax image received through the SSB radio. I missed the beginning of the transmission so it didn’t synchronize properly. We were about 150 miles south of Oahu at the time. It is the first confirmation that trouble could be heading our way. Really a mood changer.

Below is part of an email sent over SSB from SailDocs giving a weather discussion for the eastern Pacific. Describes Barbara as category 4 under SPECIAL FEATURES. Fun stuff.