Earlier this year I was contacted by a gentleman preparing for a passage to Hawaii on his, new to him Amel Maramu. The boat was getting new sails from Ballard Sails and undergoing a refit for the cruise. The owner and I discussed options and we discided that the best plan would be to spend a week in the San Juans going over the fundamentals of cruising and then see how far we could get the boat down the coast to its temporary berth in SD.

Port Townsend to Bodega Bay

On June 18th I met the crew of the 1986 Amel Maramu “Della Sue” in Port Townsend at 20:00. Unfortunately, after the pizza place with the best pizza on the peninsula, Waterfront Pizza had closed. I had waited three hours to get on a ferry from Whidbey Island to get there and had been looking forward to a slice. Life can be hard but enough about pizza. A month prior I had sailed with Greg and Eric the owner of the boat in the San Juans to do a little shakedown and cover some of the fundamentals. I had not met Justin the other member of the crew. After we did a round table discussion of everyone’s goals, sailing dreams, and background they told me the story of their somewhat eventful docking in the Port Townsend boat basin’s Commercial docks; explaining that the 30 kit gusts caused them to lose control in the near fairway and make contact with a few other boats. Not a great start

The plan was to sail down to SF and drop me off before they went on to San Diego and then later to Hawaii. Justin was the only crew member with offshore experience having done a South Pacific passage years ago. We had planned to cast off a few days earlier and having looked at the weather, we decided it would be better to push our departure date back for a better window.

Dead Reckoning. 24 hour days in red and ports in green.

Saturday’s GFS forecast promised 15 knots from the west and an opportunity to shake the wrinkles out of Della Sue’s brand new sails on the short hop to Port Angeles and our last fueling opportunity before our journey down the coast.

I should know better than to trust the GFS model inshore and in this area as it is consistently less than what it should be. Saturday we saw 27 knots and not 10 miles from PA when looking in the chart table for the Wagners cruising guide to contact the harbormaster a wave dipped the rail and Justin lost his balance and stumbled across the cabin. In the fall he bent the rail on the ship’s range with the small of his back and broke his pinky finger.

We furled our sails and motored in, the call to the harbormaster going straight to voicemail we tied up at the pump-out dock. Before we started dinner we did another round table discussion. The question was whether to continue with the trip as planned. We now were one hand short with an already small and inexperienced crew. Justin said he had broken the finger before and was fine to go on but wouldn’t be able to handle lines and offered to do all the cooking and cleanup associated then next issue was how would we change the watch schedule with only three. We decided on a four-hour solo rotation where the remaining capable hands would split the days into two four-hour watches per day and Justin would take on all the cooking.

our 9 fingered chief ruining my future expectations for food underway on future passages.

Cooking under power allows for some flat working surfaces. Note the stone inset in the table rendering its fiddles almost useless.

Sunday the wind was 5 knots and less so we motored to our next stop; Neah Bay to anchor for the night.

Monday the HRRR forecast and the QTVLM weather routing had us motoring offshore for 8 hours before we would get into 15 knots of Northwest wind. Nine hours later we were further offshore than I like to be on deliveries but into enough wind to sail at 7 knots and get the engine off. This wasn’t a delivery though. In our discussion regarding the shared goals of the crew, the time we were spending on the boat and the primary focus was to be to gain the experience necessary to continue on south and beyond to Hawaii without my help and we needed the wind to do that. Unfortunately, to get to that wind we burned a significant amount of fuel to do so. The boat we were on, a very well thought of and thought out French ketch designed to be a passage maker had a range of 250 miles under power and we were going to have to be careful watching the weather for wind holes.

More motoring had us heading to Coos Bay for fuel and dinner ashore a significant notch below what we had been accustomed to eating when Justen was cooking on the boat. The broken finger hadn’’t got in the way of his culinary skill.

(some motoring later after fueling in Eureka)

We are 30 miles south of Cape Mendocino and the engine has discharged 4 quarts of oil out of the oil vent. We know this because it takes four quarts to fill it back up. The forecast is for the wind to build to 15 to 20. It's 17:00 (5 pm) after a brief attempt to start it I'm certain that it will not run without risk to the engine.

The options as I see them are

1- sail back to Eureka into the wind, get a tow or short tack up the channel.

2- Sail south 130 miles to Bodega Bay where we could either anchor in the lee of the bay or get a tow into the harbor (the channel being too narrow to short tack up)

3- Sail south to San Fransisco. This would put us there at…. AM and there is a chance it will be in reduced visibility and in a high traffic area with large unmaneuverable vessels transiting the area. With the additional chance that there will be little or no wind.

4- Sail 300 miles to Half Moon Bay

We haven’t been able to charge other than minimal solar but it is keeping up on the instruments but not sure it would with radar on if we get into the fog for too long.

If we anchor off the bay we would need to use the batteries to pull up the anchor. The windlass is meant to be operated when the engine is on so there is a risk of not having the amps to pull up the anchor and if we drag the only recourse is tying a retrieval line to a fender and the chain’s bitter end.

There is also the risk that if we use the dinghy to tow the boat up the channel to the harbor the outboard that has not been tested will stop running sending the ketch aground as it would drift out of the narrow and shallow channel.

The watches are running 4 on 8 off with a crew of 3 in rotation. Jibing close to the shore down the coast would mean single-handed jibes or waking the off-watch every jibe.

Instead, we sail offshore and follow the forecast and route our routing software suggests. This puts us out of cell range until we are 15 miles out at 19:00 (7 pm) A few crew calling all the towing companies on the west coast we learn that there are no towing companies in Bodega Bay. The last company we speak to says call the USCG. With great reluctance we do. We rendezvous with a 45-foot aluminum Coast Gaurd lifeboat off Bodega Rock at 21:00 (9 pm) the wind does not abate in the lee as much as I was hoping and we are told to “drop sails” so we roll in the main and jib and begin drifting under bare poles. They are to weather of us when I yell across the water between us that they may be better off coming along the starboard side in the lee when they choose to tie on our hip. For better or worse my experience skippering a Vessel Assist boat has me having ideas on how to do the tow best. My past experience being on the other side of the maneuver also reminds me that there is only one captain when boats are connected and it’s the one on the boat with the power.

The skipper of the Lifeboat agrees and calls for the fenders to be put out on the port side. At least 3 of the 6 teenagers on the deck start at medium speed to deploy fenders as the boat drifts down to us. The skipper sees what’s going to happen and puts both 435 hp engines in reverse hard and pulls away. We are almost a mile downwind from where we met them and I change the plotter to night mode as the light is beginning to fade. Once clear astern we see the CG boat speed back upwind of us at 15 knots and slow to throw a having line to me on the bow. The kid throwing the floating rubber ball to me on the foredeck throws it straight into the rigging where it gets tangled. As I try and untangle the heaving line to begin pulling the tow rope to our bow the lifeboat begins to drift down on us, eventually hitting the just aft of our beam. Then the skipper puts his boat astern and the much higher freeboard of the CG boat hits our stainless railing. There is a terrible scraping sound of aluminum against stainless and as the boat hits the outboard on its rail mount the railing is pushed in and the outboard is all but ripped from the railing. It looked like the next thing to go would be the dinghy on the davits. The skipper apologizes and comes back now with fenders on his starboard side realizing the distance we have traveled downwind and the time that has passed. We run lines on for aft and begin heading in. It is dark now and the skipper of the CG boat turns on the work lights on their beam. We can’t see much now that our night vision is gone but based on the jockeying of the throttles it sound like the skipper is having problems lining us on our approach to the narrow harbor entrance.

Our bow is not as parallel to the towboat as I would have it…

Eventually, we are dropped at the fuel dock and they wave goodbye.

The next day I speak to every fisherman that comes in to fuel up and ask if they know of a slip or a mechanic. We find a slip and a mechanic and launch the dinghy and by pushing from the port hip before the wind fills in the next day we are tied up in a more respectable spot.

Like a semi amphibious hermit crab person, I make my meandering way back to home waters. It takes three days but I get that slice of pizza in Port Townsend.

Take away

In retrospect I should have been more adamant about the vessel needing an oil pressure alarm before we left. It wouldn’t have change the outcome with the Coast Guard but it would have saved the engine (still no word on what and why a month later)

Also we should have been more serious about changing the plan after Justin had his fall. It would have been fine to continue but when the key pieces of the original plan begin to fall apart you have to reassess. We should have stopped pushing for San Fran or looked for last minute crew to fill in or pushed our departure back.

It is very important to know when its necessary to tough it out and when you just have to ether call the whole thing or revisit the goals.

The go no go call is the most important call a captain can make. The pressure of the schedule and commitments of the crew all push us on and out where we may not have many options. As captain you have to be constantly assessing and reassessing the condition of the boat crew and weather and remain prepared to wait or bag it. The option of not going is the most important thing you can take with you and the most dangerous thing you can have on board is a schedule.