This American Life

Boat travel is all about cultural immersion. Actually, it’s all about finding grocery stores, Laundromats, boat parts and cheap showers. But along the way we do get immersed in culture. Or, in the case of Southern California, a reasonable facsimile of culture.

 It started with Disneyland. I have Disney issues. It might be because my parents opted to go without us when we were kids because my dad thought it would be more fun that way (who does that?), the fact that every movie seems to have a dead mother as a plot point, or simply the rampant consumerism, but honestly, the magic is sort of lost on me. But we went anyway, twice, and as Maia said, “If I had to chose between this and surfing, I’d go with surfing. Providing the water was warm.”

 Then it was back to Newport Beach, where we were greeted by a billboard that read, “Get her something you both want for Christmas – New Breasts!” Which was almost as hard to explain to Maia as the Disney Princesses…

 Christmas in Newport Beach is spectacular, in an utterly over-the-top Disney kind of way. Between houses that take weeks to decorate and a boat parade where owners spend up to 30k decking their decks we were treated to more twinkling lights and holiday cheer than we thought possible.

  But just when we had reached Santa saturation, our friend Sarah arrived and we headed out to Catalina Island where it was us, the bison and a handful of boats for a peaceful Christmas.

 Peace on Catalina was destined to end though and now we’re in San Diego, doing what every sailboat that’s perched on the precipice of heading into Mexico does: we’re soaking up the culture, shopping at Trader Joes, stocking up on decent chocolate and buying the odd boat part or two.

Pirate at the San Diego Big Bay Parade

California Dreaming

"When can I learn to surf?"

 "Whenever you like."

One of the joys of cruising is we get to make our dreams come true. Maia's been wanting to try surfing for ages and had her first taste of it today. It was unplanned and unexpected and she says it was better than anything she ever imagined.

Not Quite California – Aka this coast hates us.

We’re not quite in California – despite the fact it was our goal. Our idea was to get passed the Washington/Oregon coast (also known as the graveyard of the Pacific…) as fast as possible, not because it isn’t lovely (at least from a landlubbers perspective) but because the last time we went down this coast it spanked us, hard.

Last time we followed convention and set off for San Francisco in a nice north westerly. Within a few hours the wind switched to southerly, the seas steepened and our tacking angle made it seem like we would be out at sea indefinitely. Finally, after 3 days of unrelenting wind, very little sleep and a whole lot of being tossed about (and a small leak which caused us to sink a bit) we headed for the coast – only to find the river bars were closing and we were about to be hit by another storm. After discussing our predicament with the Gray’s Harbour Coast Guard they escorted us in through a river bar that was sporting 15’ breaking seas into an isolated little harbour where we waited, shopped for flannel clothing and hoped for another weather window before the snow came.

It was almost enough to make us give up cruising.

It took us several months to rebuild our confidence after being bashed about on that trip. So this time we both wanted to avoid the whole miserable coast and just get to California.

We didn’t.

This trip started out like the last one. A nice NW wind carried us out the strait and around the corner into long rolling swell. Then within a few hours the wind died. It came up every so often but rather than sailing, we were motoring to California and it didn’t take many calculations to determine we don’t carry enough fuel to motor to California…

Despite the fact we weren’t sure how far we were going to make it, the motorboat ride was mostly nice. The swell was running an uncomfortable 10-12 feet from a westerly storm in the far off waters, but we saw perfect sunrises and sunsets as well as marine life including dolphins, sea lions, a shark and a humpback whale – which gave us a whale of a show.

Every so often we’d get a bit of wind and manage a few hours of sailing. Slowly we crawled our way down the coast. On the third day it looked like we might actually make California.

Then, just off Cape Blanco the wind came up.
And up.
From the south east, which was exactly where we were headed.
And the seas grew.
And then something went dramatically wrong with our rig and our mast bent way over and began to oscillate in a way that a mast shouldn't move. Which for you non-nautical types is a bad thing.


Bad things always happen at 4am and always on the darkest nights, which tends to make them bad, bad things. But as the wind howled and the boat rocked, Evan wrestled down the sails and worked to stablilize our mast. I tried to reassure Maia who was awake inside and then tried to find a safe direction to steer.

The only thing we could do was head back to Oregon, which meant crossing a potentially dangerous river bar with a destabilized rig. As I spoke with the coast guard and outlined our plan, the situation brought back every single memory of the last time we did this.

And the realization that this coast is cursed for us.

So now we’re in Coos Bay, which is lovely and friendly. The mast is still wobbly and we’re working out theories of what happened (which we’ll cover in another post.)

We’re both surprisingly calm and confident though. I guess dealing with things and getting into harbour safely is a sign that lets us know we’re more than capable of handling what comes our way.

Or it’s a sign that we just shouldn’t be out here at all and we're just too stupid to pay heed…