It was all a big misunderstanding, this claim that we have made that we enjoy ocean sailing. I say this having got very little rest since the day before we left Neah Bay, that date of which I have no idea. Two days ago? Three? And then there is the fact that so far on this entire trip starting on August 4 when we slipped the lines at Swantown Marina in Olympia, all the way up to Princess Louisa Inlet, and all the way down to where we currently sit in Newport, Oregon listening to the wind howl, we have spent just a few hours with our sails raised.
To be fair, this is almost to be expected in the summertime Salish Sea if you have an actual destination and are not just out for a daysail, whichever the wind blows (always always always on the nose, as all Pacific Northwest sailors know). As a rule, we kind of shrug that off. Navigating the interior waters, we will be going from port to port, enjoying flat calm anchorages and beautiful scenery, on the lookout for whales and their kin, maybe picking up the occasional rock for the lifelong collection. We got a nice sail across the Strait of Georgia so we know that the sails will draw wind.
Murdock beach on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We saw an actual Sea Otter here. But what is this little guy?
But we were kind of thinking that once we got out on the Pacific we’d be sailing. And that would be where we were wrong and where the misunderstanding lays. Until this current situation, whereby we actually have a little too much wind, but also have great swells (14 feet at the NOAA buoy) coming from a couple of different directions (again, to be expected) it has been a mighty fine motor boat ride. An exhausting one. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The plan was actually much different than what we are doing. The plan, at least in our minds, was to recreate the trip we had the first time we turned left, and this time do it better. We’d go about 100 miles offshore and then sail down the coast, this time just skipping San Fransisco altogether. I think maybe we were thinking we could get back a little of what we lost when that passage from Hawaii to home was cut off so abruptly by the demise of our backstay. We had been having such a good time. Until we weren’t. Could we get that back?
We could almost watch the butter melting in our minds’ eyes. So our operating principal was flawed from the get go. Why? Because we were not ready to leave in the summer. We just…weren’t. We were delayed until mid-September by things like important boat systems and apartments that needed renovating. Not to mention the fact that is is not, by any stretch, Hawaii. By the time we could make the big left turn into the Pacific Ocean, we were threading the needle between summer and the inevitable weather changes fall brings to the North Pacific. And still, our denial was strong on this. We hung on.
What broke through the denial of good sense? What shattered the seal of our irrational minds? What broke through our conviction that we would make one long passage to south of Point Conception, where the weather changes for the better? A man named Jamie.
Anchored in Neah Bay
When we sailed from Mexico to Hawaii and then from Hawaii to home, we hired a professional weather router out of Honolulu to offer some guidance about waypoints and help us make good decisions that would preserve our comfort, if not our lives. Well, maybe also our lives. It seemed a small price to pay for on-the-ground professional support on something as important as weather. I think it was that first passage to San Fransisco that stood out in my mind as one that probably would have gone better for us had we realized what rubes we really were. Certainly we would maybe have been less exhausted when we pulled into Drakes Bay by San Fransisco, otherwise known as Bay of the Thousand Flies, at the end of that passage. This time “knowing” we would be well offshore again, we wanted a professional with whom to talk over options. Our Honolulu guy never got back to us when we contacted him, so we hired one Jamie Gifford, of Sailing Totem fame (if not infamy) to fill that bill. If you are in any way connected to the cruising-by-boat community, then Behan and Jamie Gifford need no introduction. We joined their cruiser coaching group so we could have ground support in terms of weather. It’s nice to have someone to talk things over with. And, again, we were going well offshore… LALALALALA!
During our consultation with them, over a sketchy zoom connection via Starlink in Princess Louisa Inlet, Jamie said one word that cracked the code of denial for me in an instant. That word was this: gale. Excuse me, what? Did he say GALE? That would be wind 34-40 knots. Oh hell to the NO! What he said was that if we went that far offshore at this time of year, it would greatly increase our chances of being caught in a gale with no way to get out of it but to go through it. And as he said it, I noticed the air around him shimmer with the ring of truth and felt my Plan A dissolve into thin air. Of course, he was 100% correct. We both knew that. It’s not like we haven’t lived in the Pacific Northwest for over 35 years. We are practically natives. We know the wind never stops blowing at Ocean Shores. We hired Jamie to say the hard part out loud. I like to think we would have stopped ourselves before heading that far offshore this time of year. Probably we would have. At some point.
Flesh-footed Shearwater with his friends, the Sooty Shearwaters.
He offered us the less desirable, in my book, option of harbor hopping down the coast, or at least staying close enough to shore that we could tuck in to avoid weather systems like the one we are currently avoiding. That’s right. We are in port. Option B. B for the ‘best we an do’.
The current system is gusting to about 25-27knots with sustained speeds over 20 here in the anchorage. That means it’s probably bigger wind outside the port. It’s a little more sporty than we are ready to deal with. But it’s really not the wind that is the issue. If it were only wind we had to consider, 25 knots is pretty good sailing for our big boat. The issues are twofold: first it would be a downwind run with swells that were already really big before the wind came and whipped them up more. They are currently at 14 feet and 15 seconds between them. That makes for an uncomfortable ride unless you can sail a course that keeps swells on the aft quarter and not directly behind you. (Think: sailing fast and rolling side to side, a large blue weeble on the open sea. It’s just not fun. )
We can do without that kind of stress on the boat and on our tired bodies.
This guy was so huge. Mind boggling.
The other problem is this: There is another, much bigger weather system, taking shape south of Port Orford, Oregon and that system is going to be larger and nastier with, yes, gale force winds, and we definitely do not want any part of it. I don’t like even looking at this on a chart, much less thinking about myself out there dealing with it. Port Orford is literally the only place that is not a river bar to tuck in on this part of the coast and get protection from north winds, or if you need to for any reason. Like rest. And you cannot always cross a river bar safely. The right timing can make the difference between it being a reasonable, if challenging, ride and it being a call to the Coast Guard.
For example, even crossing into Newport this morning, when there were zero bar restrictions to vessel traffic and when we were following local boats into the channel, reminded us that the swells are huge, the forces great, and the timing of such an entry is critical. As I write, the bar is restricted to recreational vessels over 36 feet long and the waves are 10-12 feet high. Absolutely no thank you. We are 47 feet, but we are not as powerful as a fishing boat of the same size with a bigger engine. We would not chance this. It was not lost on us that we passed a grounded fishing boat on the way in. We were grateful that we spent that uncomfortable night last night rolling around going dead slow so we could time our arrival in Newport this morning just at daylight. A little discomfort. A lot of safety.
Get a load of those clouds. This is the entrance to Newport. That wave wraps around the jetty on the north side. At least the fog lifted.
So if we were out there sailing in this weather system and something happened to the boat, or to one of us, then maybe we would be able to time a bar crossing, but maybe we wouldn’t. And that is the very risk we are unwilling to take. The North Pacific is difficult even on a good day. It’s not just about the wind out here. Back home 25 knots of wind would be great sailing, especially for our big, heavy boat. But here? We’ll just be happy with our fine motor yacht and look for sunfish in the glassy swells on a windless day while Hiram chugs us south to better weather.
We accept this, but it is a little disappointing, not to mention expensive, not to mention loud and over-stimulating. I don’t remember Hiram the Beta Marine engine ever being run for this many continuous hours. We were so very glad to drop that anchor today and get some sleep. And turn that blessed engine off. And pretty much that’s why we were not jazzed about doing the harbor hopping that so many people love to do and why that plan wasn’t even on our radar. These short passages are absolutely brutal. No one really gets any rest at night and the passages are too short to get into any kind of routine. I had maybe 3 hours sleep total in two days. Mike had about the same. My ribs hurt from being upright for too long as the boat rolled around in the great swells, trying to go slow enough that we didn’t arrive at Newport in the wee hours of the morning.
Flat water in Newport, with plenty of time to get settled and have a nap before the winds came.
We may consider having crew at some point in order to share the workload, but we are not there yet. We like having the boat to ourselves and as a rule, we work like a pretty recently oiled machine. Still, that matter of rest hangs heavy.
This passage so far has not been an entire loss in terms of entertainment, though. Wildlife Bingo is back on the table at last! Woo hoo! I’m here for it! Yesterday we motored over large, rolling swells like liquid mercury in the sun, that calm before today’s little storm. We saw many sharks, who we think were confused that we are not a fishing boat. We discovered we were trailing a piece of kelp and I believe one shark was hoping it was a crazed sailor being dragged behind the boat, trying to get clean. (That is not happening on board Galapagos. We have hot showers for that, thank you.). We saw breeching humpback whales in the distance ( KEEP YOUR DISTANCE, MISTER!). We had Orcas to port.
Also what is this guy? Identifying seabirds can be daunting.
The first night we had dolphins, torpeedoing through the phosphorescence like glow-in-the-dark toys. And yesterday had a pair of small sunfish! This was a true bucket list item. It’s funny how much pleasure it brings to pass something at 7 knots and have only a split second to realize what you have just seen. We actually turned around and tried to find them again, to no avail. I have a watery photo, taken on the fly, and only recognizable by the eyes that saw them first.
So here we sit safely at anchor. Flat water, howling wind, gusts to 26 knots here in the anchorage, the boat tugging at her anchor. I would say we made the right choice.
S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16 in Newport, Oregon. We live here now.
Here sharky sharky.
