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The big left turn

Writer's picture: danbdanb

Even though we've been cruising since April, our trip down the west coast was really our first long overnight & offshore passage.

Leaving the Strait of Juan de Fuca

As Jeanne had some family visits, and projects to do ashore -- and we weren't sure about Leia's sea legs, so my friends, Dan, Josh, Patrick and Bill agreed to join me down the coast. We left the Edmonds dock on a calm and sunny Saturday morning. We'd provisioned as a crew and each crew member was prepared to cook two dinner meals. That made things easy. As we pulled away from the dock, everyone had a little nervous energy that is typical the first day of a voyage. You hope that all your work and planning will pay off and that things will go smoothly, or if they don't that you can figure out solutions.


For us, we were prepared for pretty much anything. Winds from all directions, big seas, whatever would come our way. But we were definitely not prepared to motor for the first 4 days. We had plenty of diesel, but it was a lot of motoring. We headed offshore hoping for wind. But alas there was none to be had.

The big left turn

We maintained a rolling watch schedule. Each of the 5 crew members would be on watch for 4 hours at a time of which they were primary for 2 and support for the second half. This worked well and we were able to get plenty of sleep in our 6 hours off.


The watch schedule

Each day one of the crew was the ships "Mother". While our spouses all objected to this terminology, with a bunch of guys on board -- this stuck. This person had the honor of caring for the crew for the day, cooking the dinner meal and ensuring that the boat interior was ship shape for the day.


Our course was about 85 miles off the coast of Washington & Oregon. As we got closer to Cape Mendicino and had visibility to the 3 day forecast we made the decision to pull into Eureka California to sit out a gale force wind just south of the Cape. We stayed in Eureka for 48 hours and then continued our progress to San Francisco.


We only had a few things that didn't work as planned on our trip -- our alternator that charges our batteries, broke again and we had some trouble downloading the weather via the Iridium Go. But we were able to send/receive texts without any problem and so could get things relayed from 'shore support' (also know as Jeanne). The biggest 'loss' of the trip was our drone, which I donated to King Neptune somewhere off the Oregon coast. Jeanne was able to retrieve the low-res copy from the controller...watch the video here.


Shot from the drone

After leaving Eureka, we were able to finally get some sailing in and around the Cape and had a few days of rolly seas. Amazingly the crew wasn't too bothered and we pulled into San Francisco on day 8, completing 817 miles from when we started. The Golden Gate bridge was partially hidden by fog, and the wind was strong, but we tucked into Richardson Bay (Sausalito) and got a good night's sleep. We had eaten well along the way and slept well -- so really by all counts everyone had fun.

Downwind smooth sailing

Going under the bridge

Crew headed out the following morning, and Jeanne flew in with the cat a few days later. The trip was a success and we are now ready to spend the next 6 weeks exploring the warmer sunny California waters.


Happy crew arrives in Sausalito


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1 Comment


Guest
Sep 12, 2023

Dan,

Your chronicles of the days are quite interesting, I feel like I'm voyaging with you.

Stay safe,

Randal Mickels

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Dan & Jeanne

After life on land for 22 years, we've decided to simplify, soak up nature and travel.  We look forward to sharing the adventure with you. 

 

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