It’s midnight plus one minute on July 30 and I, Melissa, am on watch on this crisp clear night as we pass Cape Flattery off the starboard side. Hugging the coast of Vancouver Island, we decided to do an overnight passage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca in order to stay ahead of winds that would be against us on Friday. I am surprised when I look out over a glistening silky sea, bright with the light of a half moon, and see lights in the distance. I realize I am seeing Washington State for the first time from my boat in over 3 years.

The lights are faintly glowing far off on the other side of the mouth of the strait and I want to stare intently at them, make them bigger and brighter and more real. There is our waypoint on the chart, a gem shaped mark chosen to represent the completion of passages from Mexico and Hawaii. Did we really, in fact, sail all that way? The coastline of Vancouver Island is so familiar, so usual a pattern in my experience that it could be possible to believe, sitting out here in the cold night air, that the past three years were somehow a dream, maybe even someone else’s life entirely. I want to freeze frame this moment in time and sit with it for longer, this feeling of accomplishment mixed with both anticipation of being with family again and getting back to some new kind of life for a bit and with sadness that our full time adventure must pause for awhile. I want to take a photo to hold for the rest of my days. I want my kids and potential grandkids to be told the story: they
did a long journey by boat. And it completely changed them in all the best ways.

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Things have gone wonky out here and I know exactly when it happened. It began when someone, I can’t remember who, asked me our estimated time of arrival at Cape Flattery and I forgot to hedge my bets and gave a firm answer. I said we would be there Monday, July 27. I didn’t even put a qualifier in there like ‘god willing’ or ‘if the weather holds’ or ‘if all goes well`. Just a definite date. Man, you would think I knew better by now.

Neptune got on the horn with the north and west wind gods and took a meeting about this hubric opening I had just handed them. They have thrown some higher-than-we-like winds between us and Cape Flattery. And the worst day for the wind and seas will be, yes, that’s right, Monday. Really, it’s like they have thrown down a gauntlet and said Take That, Galapagos! They have chosen gusty winds up to 36 knots and seas to match. Um. That’s not how we roll if we can avoid it. To stay our rhumbline course to the cape at this point would take us right through the widest part of the low. Hmmm. No.

So we have changed course to the Brooks Peninsula area of Vancouver Island to take cover. Our final destination there is still up for grabs because we want to wait to see what conditions are before deciding. It’s 150 miles and we should make that by tomorrow morning, if it pleases the gods, God willing, if all goes well, and all the other qualifiers I can think of. I may need to make some kind of sacrifice to the gods of sea and wind. I better make it count. A coil of hair from my hairbrush will not cut this mustard. Maybe a token gift of some of our last good rum from Mexico. That might do.

We haven’t decided if we will anchor or not. We are in disagreement about that. So we will see. But I have alerted Canada Coast Guard that we may seek safe harbor from wind and I have a direct number to call if we do decide to land. The issue is that we don’t want to check into Canada because even though that would probably be easy, then we would have to go check back in to the US and our own country makes it harder. We don’t know if we would be required to quarantine. We can check in by phone but we would just like to not have to deal with that if possible because they can then require us to meet them somewhere to interview us in person, especially as our trip originated in Mexico and it’s just a pain in the ass.

Meanwhile we played ‘Dodge that ship’ for awhile in the foggy morning mist. I had blocked the memory of how much I dislike that game. Especially in fog. Oh didn’t you know? Our radar, never a great unit in the first place, gave up its slender hold on life somewhere in Mexico. So we don’t have radar, which I HATE. Really, that is not too strong a word to describe my feelings about sailing without radar off the coast of Vancouver Island. My hope and dream is that we get to the protection of the island and then anchor every night to avoid traveling in the dark among fishing vessels we cannot see. Two shots of rum will go overboard with a fervent prayer. Guess what is on our list of things to spend money on? We did get on the radio with a ship named Galapagos because we had to change course to avoid it. That was neato.

In other news I have been reflecting on all the reasons why I like ocean sailing and have determined that it’s because it’s the closest thing to an athlete I will ever be. I was the bane of the existence of all of physical education teachers throughout childhood. Really, kids know when they are wasting your time. In high school I ran track. Yeah, well the word ‘running’ here generally meant a bold sprint, followed by walking the rest of the way with my asthma inhaler in my hand. I was that kid. But by the gods I finished that season. I was no quitter. Well, In. Your. Face! PE teachers! Sailing is an Olympic sport. Ok, maybe not the kind of sailing we do where you have time to write blog posts, but the general public doesn’t know that! I can say I am a sailor and they will look at me with wide eyed wonder, never knowing that I spent the better part of yesterday on the settee stress eating Maui Onion Potato chips right out of the bag because I was worried about heavy weathe r and
didn’t have a plan yet. I also get the added benefit of being permitted to completely ignore the general fashion uniforms of other women my age. I do not have to do nails, hair, makeup, or wear expensive jewelry. It’s great! I don’t have to be on a big team, or suffer coaches’ drama and yelling, or get up for practices or wear ill-fitting uniforms like the gold striped onesies we had to wear in 8th grade gym. And it’s the perfect sport for the mildly social phobic like me. Yes, I have decided that sailing on oceans is my Mount Everest, even with fickle weather gods. Today we have a good plan and the chips are back in the cabinet.

Now where is that rum? I have a sacrifice to make.

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“Hand me my camera so I can get a photo of you in that outfit. It’s on the nav station and I don’t want to move.”

It’s not laziness that led me to make this request, not really. It’s more that I was almost warm and didn’t want to disturb the bubble of reasonable temperature that enveloped me here in what I call my hovel, a messy area on the settee complete with a selection of blankets and pillows. Yesterday, when I wasn’t cooking over a blessedly hot stove, I spent the entire day sitting here. All the things I did were done from this few square feet of space, covered in 100% spun polyester blankets, the only things that feel dry on the entire boat. Right now, natural fibers suck. Literally. They suck moisture from the air making us feel not just cold, but wet as well.
I keep the vision of my blessed children encircled once more by my loving momma’s arms firmly in the foreground of my mind to keep the feeling of chumpness for leaving Hawaii at bay. (Since they are both well into adulthood this vision is fleeting at best, but I need to believe my suffering has meaning. Just let me have this without judging, ‘kay?)

I know what you’re thinking: cry me a river, right? Well if you had seen this morning what we awoke to as the daily watery dawn crept in you would be more sympathetic to our plight. Grey gnarly seas, grey skies, even the air is grey. Yesterday we were visited by whales. They were grey. Grey grey grey. Not a blue hue anywhere. Mold has started to take hold on the inside of our dodger from the constant dampness. The mold? It is grey.

The boat was so rolly last night that over time my polar fleece bottom sheet worked its way completely off the mattress and I woke to find it wadded up under my feet. My hair, never my best asset in the morning, looked like a small rodent had made its burrow on my head and claimed it for its own. Honestly if the boat keeps this up my pillow will wear the hair right off of my head due to chafing; like those babies left on their backs in their cribs for too long, I predict the development of a bald spot.

Mike was in the cockpit because he can bear it up there. He had on my foulies, a thick wool sweater, his hiking boots to keep his feet warm, and I handed up his wool cap; an old friend that was a welcome touch to his increasingly heavy, grey ensemble. Today he added his sailing jacket. What’s next? Gloves? I tell you the last few days have given my daydreams of sailing in higher latitudes a bit of a challenge as the reality of cold sinks into my bones.

People who have been on board Galapagos will remember that we have a diesel heater and may wonder why we are not using it. The answer lies in the installation of said heater, which was on the boat when we bought it, a fact which I mention so you will know we were not in charge of that installation. In a word, if there is any wind the installation is worthless. Wind above 10 knots is likely to blow out the flame because someone called ‘Charlie Noble’ is the wrong Charlie for the task. Yesterday Mike did his darndest to get that stove going, only to fill the cabin with choking diesel smoke. A smoke filled cabin is not a good look when you are still 800 miles from land. So we have no heat to speak of unless we keep the oven going. Running the engine charges batteries and heats up the cabin and heats water for us, but we refuse to make way with the engine at this point so other than charging batteries because solar panels don’t do well in fog, it feels wasteful. So we layer on th e
clothes and count the days until we are back in summer temperatures. We understand that the interior of Washington state has finally found its summer legs. Too bad by the time we get there my summer legs will be as of the whiteness of lilies again.

In other news, apparently 17 days is about how long it takes my psychological walls of compartmentalization to begin to crack. Looking back at my journal from the passage to Hawaii, during that passage also day 17 was the day I had a moment of panicky realization. I wrote previously on the blog about how I manage to be this far from everything land based by not thinking too hard about that and focusing on the tasks in front of me. It’s not that I don’t know where I am or that I don’t realize how isolated we are. It’s that it does no good to dwell on that when there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I have to find a way to stick it out and stay mentally strong. Being 1500 miles from the nearest coastline is not a place to allow weakmindedness to creep in.

Yesterday I felt the first rift in those walls as a mild panic crept into my awareness. I could almost see water trickling through openings in the mental dams I have built to be able to embrace the greatness of passage making. We still have about 6 days to go and suddenly that felt like a very long time to be out here. Suddenly the cold water surrounding the boat felt deadly, the sea a malevolent force. I knew I better not allow that feeling to take hold. It wouldn’t do to go down that rabbit hole of dread. It’s ugly down there, with monsters.

These moments remind me of when I was pregnant with Andrew. One day I was resting and had the sudden overwhelming feeling that my body had been taken over by an alien. I was so close to having a real panic over that. Of course what I should have realized was that the baby was a boy, so that’s why it felt alien. But what I did to cope was to take a nap. It worked and I awoke with completely loving feelings toward the little being who kept me up at night.

Armed with that experience and others like it, yesterday I did the natural thing and took a long and impressive nap. There’s a piece of advice there for all the Covid 19 shut ins. When things feel overwhelming a good nap is just the thing. In the past I have been nap avoidant, but out here I have nothing more interesting going on. I awoke in a better frame of mind ready to greet the next week and get this passage under out belt.

Less than a week to go if we can stay away from the light wind areas that are emerging. We are trying to outrun them but we shall see. Our winds have been a little stiffer than we are used to but we are sailing well and really clocking the miles. I’ve got a nice potato leek fish chowder for supper, big chunks of Dorado surrounded by creamy goodness. And a beauty of a loaf of sourdough bread I made yesterday. I have a lovely sourdough starter that has been sitting collecting Wild Pacific yeast over the course of thousands of sea miles. I call it Yeast of Eden (TM, maybe?) Hit me up for some when you see us. We will be the ones with all the clothes on.

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