I’m sitting in the warm glow of a lamp, the cat on the rug playing with a feathered dangly toy, and the wife is reading in bed. The cat is particularly interested in his toy tonight because it’s just been brought to new life by two feathers we found in Dead Man’s Cove (true name) before leaving Ilwaco. Harmony fixed a really good chicken and veggie goulash on the grill, and we listened to Humbolt County NPR over dinner and a shared Eastern Oregon IPA.
For those who’ve never heard Northern California NPR, let me tell you that it’s a little more . . catered to its audience. Suffice to say that we really got a kick out of it.
Outside it’s dark, and Serenity bobs in a small cove on the Pacific called Trinidad Head. Within 100 feet in any direction are respectably sized haystack rocks, and overlooking us is a 400 foot bluff on the north and a bay of nice homes stretching along the land a short way toward the south. The sky is clear and starry, somewhat diminished by floodlights on a pier 100 yards away, and there is occasional lightning over the hills.
Finally, this doesn’t suck.
I’m being bombastic. There have been many parts of our voyage so far – from Ilwaco overnight to Newport, an extended stay, then a two-nighter to Crescent City and now a daytime trip to Trinidad – that have been interesting, or wondrous, or sometimes even relaxing. The problem for me was few of them had to do with the sailing portion of our travel.
I can say with confidence that the second passage was far less awful than the first. The first passage felt wild, scary, tense, and generally weakening.
The winds were at our back, but too eagerly at first for a green and rusty couple of sailors. We had still yet to get used to our leashes and jacklines, which are like glorified dog-runs that go from the back of the boat to the front in case we lose our footing and fall off. With how much the boat would pitch and weave over waves and swell, it was a credible enough possiblity to leave me content to slide on my knees and butt clutching the rails and shrouds to adjust sails and lines on deck.
Once we’d established our sails and our heading, the real endurance test began: tedium on a seasickness ride. The rolling was ever present, but inconstant. It was hard to keep our feet, especially with the rug sliding across the floor of the cabin and all of our pantries flopping open to spill their rolling contents.
Sitting inside to put on more clothes or try to find something edible started a timer – a short timer – on when you’d need to come up for fresh air or else leave the consequences in the trash can.
Sleep was never enough.
Time at the tiller (or rather the autopilot) would never end, in addition to being bone chilled and freaked out that [-skip ahead Mom-] you can’t really see anything directly in front of you in the dark.
You worry about the cat, who has spent over 16 hours mostly in the shoe bin in the locker or spooned up against you or your wife, and you haven’t seen him drink much water or use the bathroom yet. This, strangely, is one of the greater worries that occupies your mind.
The requested photo of Serenity arriving under the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport. You’ll notice the raggedy state of our sails. They got tossed around a little while riding 10-foot swells through the jetty in the fog. Good thing we had Harmony’s iPad with charts to guide us in. Purchase totally justified.
But it ends. Morning broke over our destination, and by luck of the unattractive weather reports we had almost a week in port to work out the kinks we’d discovered in our sailing system, buy more easy snack foods, and just rest and prepare for more passages to come. This rest and preparation involved the hot tubs at the Embarcadero. Still easing into the whole rustic living.
Like I said though, the second passage was much less terrible. First off I remembered that we had meclizine onboard to combat seasickness, something that hadn’t even crossed my mind as I lay on my stomach hung over the transom a few nights before. Like magic the pitching above and belowdecks stopped feeling like a twisted squishing of the world and became just more moving scenery with no effect.
This could also be because the seas were much flatter, but I don’t want to dispel any placebo effect so I’m going to say it was the drugs.
Second, we added all kinds of locks, latches, and netting around the cabin to keep all the surfaces clear. This had a monumental effect on our ability to maneuver and locate things in the glow of a very dim red LED at night.
Third was to wear more layers. At one point I counted six layers on my top and four on the bottom, with a balaclava, a fuzzy Russian-style hat, and laboratory goggles to protect my head and face. Crawling into bed involved removing the outer jacket, my boots, and one of the hats. Everything else stayed on, for two days and nights, but darned if I wasn’t warm enough. I mean I could have been warmer, but.
The cat also fared a little better, making it out to be social a few times, including into the cockpit to have some Bro time with a bag of turkey jerky at 4 in the morning.
Apropos of nothing, view this picture of us in the Redwoods a bike ride out from Crescent City. Sometimes we have to remember that this is travel as much as it is sailing.
So the second passage got better, with the notable exception of the boredom. When it’s the dead of night and you’ve been up in the cold for two hours, not actively driving and watching for nothing, it takes a hell of a lot of wonderment to keep you feeling awake.
The glowing phosphorescent trail behind the boat worked for around three minutes. The orange moonrise over a small hilly coastal town provided another 15. The halogens of fishing boats offered little jolts every few minutes as you checked to make sure they weren’t heading your way. The constant drone of muffled metal hammers inside the diesel, however, slightly wore the edges of all these moments.
But no, really, the second passage was more okay, and I think it has to do with starting the radical adjustment of expectations that will have to occur as this new life starts. This life so far is not comfortable, and I come from a long line of comfort seekers. If I can change my expectations of comfort, I will have a much greater chance of actually enjoying this thing that I’ve been building up to for the last couple years. That, or we just need to get out of the Pacific Northwest already.
The coast coming into Trinidad Head. Notice that Serenity’s clothes look much smarter.
Tonight in this cove, for example, has been a pretty perfect evening, and it comes at the end of a painless and entertaining third passage complete with whales off our bow and porpoises playing under our nose.
Except if only . . .