S/V FLYER’S Crew Blog

I appreciate a little subjectivity in cruising guidebooks, so I love the Dreamspeaker series which includes hand-drawn charts of most of the anchorages in the Salish Sea with notes on where to find rope swings and blackberry bushes. Now that we’re outside Dreamspeaker territory, I find myself Googling “favorite anchorage [our current location].” Of course, any anchorage is only as good as the weather you have there. At Yellowbanks, we had it all.

We’d been circumnavigating Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands for a few days and knew a strong northwesterly was approaching. We decided to ride it out at Yellowbanks, an anchorage on the southeast end of the island with a sandy bottom and good holding.

The Friday we arrived was perfectly warm and calm. We were swimming almost before the anchor was set, no wetsuits needed. We spent the afternoon with Kevin (a different Kevin!) and Melissa of Dark Star, joking about the crazy winds that never materialized and the boats that arrived after us and anchored awkwardly close. They told us about a night they spent in Echo Bay on Sucia Island when a rare thunderstorm rolled in after dark, half of the 50 plus boats in the bay dragged anchor, and frantic yelling rang out through the night. We remembered a 4th of July we spent in the very same spot during the early days of COVID when the only sound that broke the perfect calm was a lone trumpet playing America the Beautiful at dusk. Which experience would we have tonight?

By Saturday morning, we could finally see white caps to the south, but couldn’t feel much in our cozy anchorage. The remote cliffs of Anacapa Island beckoned. We hailed Dark Star on the VHF to see if they wanted to join for a day sail. Kevin, a pilot, sounds pretty professional on a radio, but his natural enthusiasm comes through: “Copy Flyer. I don’t think I need to check with the rest of my crew. We’re in!” Before long, Kevin and Melissa arrived together on a single paddleboard.

We didn’t get far before we felt the wind, 20-25kts and building. And more westerly than expected. It looked like we weren’t going to make it around Anacapa after all, but we got far enough to say we’d seen through its iconic rock arch. It was a rough ride, and even more so when we turned back into the wind to beat our way home. The adults, who had knowingly enlisted in this jaunt, laughed through it. James, who had no say in the matter, emerged from his cabin wearing seasickness wristbands, curled up miserably in the cockpit, and delivered his catchphrase: “This is NOT a vacation.”

By the time we got back to the anchorage, we were in a full fledged gale and every boat other than Dark Star (unoccupied, but looking solid) had fled the scene. Wind gusted down the famed yellow banks at 40kts — no need to back up on the anchor to set it — and whipped sea spray into the air like smoke on the water. The sounds were incredible. There was no chance of getting Kevin and Melissa back to their boat until things calmed down.

Steve predicted that the katabatic winds charging down the hills would die around sunset. We laughed pretty hard when they seemed to pick up after 6pm. By the time the cops showed up (actually the flashing lights of TowBoatUS securing a boat with torn sails to a nearby mooring ball), the three-hour tour had become a slumber party.

Steve and I found this turn of events delightful. We had plenty of food and drink to share — though only half a green cabbage left as far as vegetables go — and were happy to lower our salon table to bed height. Kevin and Melissa, an emergency vet, could have entertained us for days with stories of “dead” turtles come back to life and back woods plane crashes caused by full bladders. But the kids, who have a sixth sense for parental distraction and a Starlink signal, holed up in their own cabins to be entertained by screens.

The next morning, we woke up to a completely different anchorage: calm and sunny. Kevin greeted Steve with a “Morning, Dad!” and paddled back to Dark Star to grab their dinghy. We checked out the forecast, decided to stay put, and headed out in our dinghy with wetsuits and snorkeling gear. We puttered around and debated the best spot to drop in: good visibility here, but close to waves breaking against the rocks; a little milky there, but nice kelp. The further we got from Flyer, the more forcefully Paul pleaded to go back: “I hate when kelp touches me!” Totally unable to reach consensus, we rode back to Flyer and grumbled while unloading all the gear from dinghy again. Paul, now exuberant, talked Steve into rigging up a spinnaker pole rope swing and then talked the rest of us into swimming too.

That night, the seas picked up shortly after we got into bed. Unlike the previous night, when the gale pushed us in one direction, these waves seemed to came from everywhere. From our bunk in the bow — the farthest end of the boat seesaw — it felt like trying to sleep in the Jurassic Park ride at Disney Land. For hours and hours, Steve and I tossed and turned. We were still fully awake (and grumpy) at 5:30, when James came forward to use the head. “Oh wow,” he said, “it feels so NICE up here!” 

As soon as it was light, we pulled up our anchor and made a break for it, but not before taking a picture of a perfect sunrise over Anacapa. We felt like we’d experienced the extremes of Yellowbanks over the course of a few nights, but we shouldn’t have been surprised. The Channel Islands are known for dramatic weather, and I guess our family is too. 

At any given time, the four of us are likely to be living four completely different experiences on the same 44’ boat. One of us may be contentedly trimming the sails while another is cursing every damn thing that fell out of the refrigerator again. One is asking his online English teacher about her other students while another suffers a bout of FOMO as the friend group text chain blows up. One is joyfully playing online with a cousin while another complains about the kids playing Minecraft when there’s a literal National Park outside. One is curled up whispering sweet nothings to the cat while another sees an open hatch and despairs that we’ve really lost her this time.

I try to notice then, when by some alchemy, the four of us find ourselves in sync, making up songs about Pelle over dinner and gleefully vacuuming flies right out of the air while anchored at a particularly beautiful anchorage. One we’ll probably add to our list of favorites.

Returning from the comforts of Philadelphia to our boat in Monterey was a little deflating — and not just because we’d accidentally left some Brie out on the counter for a week. Maybe that explains our sense of urgency to get off the dock and on our way to the Channel Islands, “The Galapagos of North America.” (Though I would have loved more time to explore all the historic buildings from Monterey’s time as the capital of Mexican California, especially the lovely Cooper Molera Adobe.)

We snuck out of the marina early on a Saturday morning. With all this time ashore and dock-bound, it felt good to get going again. Unfortunately the forecast was for boringly light winds the whole way — a forecast that was projected to hold for the coming week. Motoring out into a confused northwest and southwest swell, we all felt a bit woozy rounding Point Pinos. Within a few miles the seas moderated and our left turn helped smooth things out. We were moving south again!

After a quiet overnight trip, we anchored at Cuyler Harbor on San Miguel Island, the westernmost of the five islands that make up Channel Islands National Park. Already in the anchorage were a few boats who had sailed from Seattle to San Francisco as part of the Coho Ho Ho rally. They were quick to dinghy over and invite us to join them the next morning for a hike.

Once settled, it was time to take Pelle’s collar off, get the toys out, and answer the burning question: is the electric outboard strong enough to pull the kids up onto a foil? (Answer: no, but it was fun to try for a few hours!)

In the morning, we managed to land the dinghy through surf without going for a swim, and got to know our new friends on the hike up to the ranger station. Maxi, an entomologist, helped identify the flying ants that had died all over our boats overnight and Melissa, an emergency vet, pointed out footprints of the house cat-sized island foxes who’d been snacking on a seal carcass.

San Miguel is owned by the US Navy and was used as a bombing range, so visitors aren’t allowed on hiking trails without National Parks staff due to unexploded ordnance. We were lucky that — despite the government shutdown — a volunteer ranger was on site. We were even luckier that it was Chuck, a photographer, writer, and general badass who thinks nothing of kayaking 30 miles around the island one day, and hiking 16 miles from one end out-and-back the next morning.

San Miguel is exposed to harsh weather from the Pacific and was overgrazed by sheep in the 1800s, so the views while walking the island’s plateau are wide and barren. James spent most of the hike talking through his E*Trade investment strategy — he bought one share of Advanced Micro Devices and made $70 in a week — but paused to take some photos of the Caliche Forest, an otherworldly landscape of fossilized trees.

Steve and the boys turned back to get to the boat in time for school, but I continued on to Point Bennett, a rookery and resting site for thousands of California sea lions, elephant seals, and northern fur seals. The constant barking from this crowd might have been even louder than a car full of middle-schoolers.

After a few days of perfect weather, a strong northwesterly was approaching, so our mini-fleet dispersed in search of more protected anchorages. On Flyer, we decided to head to Santa Barbara to reprovision and, more importantly, to see LMN’s Interactive Learning Pavillion at UCSB.

While Steve was working on this project, he told us stories of the magical land with a climate so perfect that classroom doors open directly to the outdoors and building specifications include surfboard racks. Somehow, reality actually surpassed our expectations.

The day we visited, Steve’s clients in the department of Design and Construction were having a fall office party, so we got to reconnect with them and even hear Ernie — a former bass player for The Beach Boys and a University architect who worked with Steve on the ILP — serenade the group with his acoustic guitar.

Santa Barbara was very good to us. The harbor marina is bustling with friendly people. The sand spit at the harbor entrance has a sweet mini surf break — about a 30 second dinghy ride from our spot on the dock. The poke bowl from the sushi place near the marina office is incredible, and you might get to watch an octopus chase crabs in the water below while you wait for your order. The local skate shop has a finger skateboard park, and the surf shop has a room full of used boards. Paul visited it five times before spending his life’s savings on his first fiberglass surfboard!

After our three nights at San Miguel, we knew we wanted to spend more time in the Channel Islands. It was exciting to push off the fuel dock in Santa Barbara with poke bowls and new surfboards in hand, clear skies above, and hundreds of dolphins leading the way south across the channel back to the land of kelp forests and tiny foxes.

The West Coast of the US is peppered with family. Of course we knew this when we departed Seattle, but it has been such an unexpected joy to reconnect with them in the midst of this adventure. And our arrival in Monterey was no exception – my cousin, her family, and family friends followed our progress down the coast and helped connect us with local authorities to arrange for moorage. When we pulled in, they all met us at the dock, bottles of wine in hand and eager second-cousins excited to meet their counterparts.

Our time in Monterey was replete with luxuries of local family and new friends, including guest passes to the Aquarium! There was an early morning surf at Asilomar, a fully guided real-estate tour of Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Carmel, and more family meetups for sushi and mini-golf. We were chauffeured to the farmers market, went for a run along the trail to Pacific Grove, and got into the groove of life aboard while in a working marina – floating dead baby sea lions and all. We even did a mega-load of laundry at my cousin’s house during a not-to-be-missed smoked ribs extravaganza. It was so fun to watch the cousins bond while frolicking in the hallway with Poppy the dog.

When checking in to the marina in Monterey, the harbor master mentioned that we could stay up to two weeks at our given rate (relatively low compared to Seattle and Santa Barbara). Realizing the Monterey airport was only a 5 minute drive away, we took the time to make an impromptu visit to see family in Philadelphia. Despite the offers to look after Pelle aboard Flyer in our absence, we decided to bring her with us. And we were glad we did! She seemed to tolerate the 8 hour trip better than the rest of us, given our 3:15am wake-up time, and she enjoyed the five-star cat accommodations at my brother’s house in Manayunk.

Our trip to Philadelphia reminded us of the luxuries we have left behind – long hot showers, large and cavernous refrigerators full of fresh food, and outdoor space with trees and grass for Pelle to explore. We enjoyed the warm early fall weather and walked Washington Square Park and the Manayunk Bridge Trail in search of Geocaches. We celebrated Paul’s birthday in style with a double-header: a trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods and a session at Top Golf.

There are many reasons to believe Philadelphia is paradise, but in my mind it’s without a doubt the soft pretzels. I’ve been back to Philly several times in the past couple of years, and every time I have canvassed the local roach-coaches in center city in search of soft pretzels… in vain!

The Philly soft pretzel is a thing of beauty – soft, doughy inside with a firm crusty outside, covered in what appears to be sidewalk salt. And they’re cheap. When I was a kid they were 25 cents each. My brothers and I could eat lunch for a buck.

Today – if you can find them – I think they’re $1.25 each from a reputable vendor. But when you go straight to the source – the Center City Soft Pretzel Company on Washington Avenue, you can get a box of them for $33. It took us the better part of the week to work through them, and a few may have become still-life objects for my brother’s paintings, but it was a box of heaven-on-earth for a hot moment.

Cruising is often described as ‘fixing your boat in nice places’ and on Flyer I like to live that adage every day. In San Francisco, our urgent project was to install an improved seawater pressurization line to our shaft seal, to prevent our engine flooding with seawater again as it had to us far offshore the coast of Oregon. This will be another technical post and apologies for its dry nature and poor diagraming. You should expect more from an architect!

The system was originally installed by the previous owner to replace a dramatically ruptured PSS seal that reportedly sprayed seawater all over the engine compartment when it failed! He was very passionate to me in his rejection of the PSS design given this experience, and he chose to replace it with a different system, by a company called Tides Marine.

This seal is different than the PSS seal in that it keeps a seal using a tight fitting and replaceable rubber ring that creates the seal to prevent water from entering the engine compartment. It also requires positively pressurized seawater (red arrows in green line shown above) to the shaft seal, using the engine seawater cooling line when the engine is in operation.

The goal of this seawater system is to keep the shaft seal lubricated and cool when spinning. When the engine is not on and we are sailing, the shaft is not spinning and therefore the seawater is -in theory- static in the seawater line.

On Flyer, the installation of the new shaft seal featured a low-lying pressurized line (green) that appeared to be at, or just above, the boat’s loaded waterline. After inspecting it with Kevin in Newport, it was our hypothesis that the low profile of this line, with no loop or vent in it, could have created a siphon when sailing on starboard tack.

So on that lovely day of sailing, unbeknownst to us, the green seawater line remained pressurized enough to create a back-siphon towards the seawater cooling line, which in turn filled the exhaust elbow and wet-box.

As we kept sailing this siphon didn’t stop, and filled up the wet-box, mixing elbow, and then the engine’s exhaust manifold. The water then made its way in through the cylinders, slowly filling our engine oil pan with salty water… raising the apparent oil level on the dipstick to 150% of it’s maximum. I was either incredibly brilliant or, more likely just plain stupid lucky to have checked our engine oil level that evening, before attempting to restart the engine.

The good news was that we caught the problem in time and were able to save the engine with several sequential oil-changes, ridding the engine of salt water. The other good news was that the fix is a relatively simple one. It turns out that all we needed to do was modify our pressurization (green) line to meet the shaft seal manufacturer’s specification, something that the original installer failed to do.

It was a relief to learn the spec reinforced our hypothesis, and all but guarantees that this was the source of our engine flooding. Our re-designed system would not only add a vented loop (anti-siphon) to the pressurization line, but we would make this new loop as high as possible to ensure a siphon would never occur again.

In this fix, I also replaced the older, barely translucent 3/8” hose with new, clear reinforced hose, to allow us to visually inspect the revised line and ensure the new anti-siphon vent is doing its job when sailing.

Since we were raising this line to form a loop, it was also important to make sure this didn’t depressurize the water supply below the specified 1 gallon/minute required to keep the seal working. Through some testing of various heights emptying the line into a bucket, I found the highest possible elevation for the loop that achieved this specification.

Despite some long searches, I failed to find an antisiphon loop/valve for a 3/8” hose. The smallest I could find was 1/2”, and I even had one as spare already on board. But if I used the loop as designed and mated the 3/8” hose on either end, the water supply line would experience a further pressurization drop due to the increased cross-sectional area of the wider diameter loop. To mitigate this, I used a T fitting to allow the vent to join the loop at its high-point, effectively using it as a dead-end one-way valve for the system by adding an end cap fitting to the black vented loop component.

This is by no means an elegant solution but for now it’s doing the job, with a few hundred miles of sailing to prove it. I’m hoping to find a better vent option for the longer term, so please send me any thoughts if you have them!

The lessons learned here are many:

1. When buying a boat, do not assume that mission-critical systems have been installed correctly. In this case I had assumed that the previous owner had installed the shaft-seal system to specification and had initially overlooked it when trying to diagnose a source of the water intrusion.
2. Bring fresh eyes to every problem. We were wandering down the dock in Newport, still uncertain of the seawater source in our oil, when I mentioned to our new friend Kevin that I’d appreciate his mechanic eyes for a few moments. That 15 minutes with him in our engine compartment was invaluable. Thank you Kevin.
3. When sailing in sporty conditions, particularly offshore when boat heel and pitch can be more extreme, always check your engine oil before starting the engine. You just might just save yourself an engine re-build.
4. When sailing offshore always have at least 5 changes of oil (and required filters) on board. You just might need to flush seawater out of your engine.
5. Maintain good humor and flexibility. I am indebted to my patient and understanding crew for the quick pivot to head to Newport and all that detour entailed. Flyer is better off for it and you helped it become part of the adventure and not an ordeal!

After almost three years of stewardship of Flyer, we are continuing to learn more about her every day, attempting to stay ahead of the multitude of boat maintenance and repair projects. And I’m trying to keep my expectations reasonable (or low!) and remain flexible for whatever fate has in store for us. As my mother always says, “He That Expecteth Nothing Shall Not Be Disappointed.”

Remember Kevin from our detour to Newport, OR? We met him on the dock and bonded over being towed in by the Coast Guard after engine trouble. He came aboard to survey our engine and exhaust configuration and helped Steve crack the code. We had a feeling he was special.

Kevin had a job delivering a powerboat from Puget Sound to Sausalito, where he lives when he’s not sailing in Central America. Before he left — headed home to wait for some heat-exchanger parts — he gave us his phone number and a bag of fresh food, including some little pears he’d bought from a kid with a roadside operation. That detail was another clue.

By the time we got to Sausalito, Kevin was back in Newport, but he hooked us up with a boat engine mechanic who made a house call to the Sausalito Yacht Club. Kevin also gave us the keys to his 1990’s era Suburban parked right next to the Yacht Club. We were starting think there was no end to Kevin’s kindness.

We drove Kevin’s car all over town looking for flip flops, as Paul’s feet had apparently grown a full size since leaving Seattle. Steve ran errand after errand to Worst Marine to get yet another part he didn’t get that last time. We drove the beautiful, winding road to Bolinas to meet cousin Keoni for a dawn patrol surf session. And we happily filled the car’s gargantuan tank with Californian gasoline, which still didn’t seem like enough of a thank you. Everywhere we went, people honked and waved, assuming we were Kevin.

When we parked the car back in its lot, a guy stopped to check us out and noticed we weren’t Kevin, but quickly realized we were the family on the aluminum boat Kevin had told him about and offered us “Anything you need. Really, anything.” We wondered if Kevin might be the mayor of Sausalito.

Several days later, we took Flyer to an open slip in a nearby marina to meet Ron, a 77-year-old man in a diving suit. While Ron was underwater, we asked his wonderful wife, Lisa, how often boats come to the marina where they live aboard for bottom cleaning and she said: “Oh never. Kevin asked us to.” Is Kevin our guardian angel?

Who is Kevin??

Our best guess is that Kevin is a regular guy with exceptionally good karma — and also, pretty emblematic of the people we’ve met while cruising around on Flyer over the years: people with enough practical skills to take a boat to remote places and the curiosity to want to, generous enough to share whatever they can, with the good humor to figure they’ll be the ones needing help before long.

Of all the reasons to shove your family into a small boat and spend a year sailing around the Pacific Ocean, meeting the Kevins of the world is top of our list.

* Kevin’s Car is the name of a song by our family’s favorite band, Everything Everything. We listened to it while we drove around in Kevin’s car and sang along with the windows down. If that isn’t nice, what is?

This was James and Paul’s first trip to San Francisco and they arrived by sailboat under the Golden Gate Bridge with family waving to them from shore. In keeping with the non-traditional entrance, we did not see the typical tourist sights. We didn’t visit Alcatraz, Coit Tower, or Paul McCartney’s photography exhibit at the de Young Museum. We did spend an hour using the public exercise equipment in the Panhandle.

After two weeks of sunny Bay Area Fall, some of us were ready to just stay put for the rest of the year. We loved it all, but mostly the warmth of the welcome we received.

So, here are our top ten non-tourist attractions in the Bay Area:

1. Lea the Dog

With apologies to the human relatives who made our arrival feel like a homecoming, Lea the dog was the highlight of our time in the Bay Area. Lea is a certified therapy dog and enthusiastic pool lifeguard, and we all felt better after being with her.

2. Waymo

Robot taxis you control with your phone! James was in heaven.

We found any excuse to ride in a Waymo, including searching for the oldest Geocache in San Francisco County under a big lemon tree in the Fort Mason Community Garden where a clutch of birdwatchers were discussing a hummingbird in hushed voices.

3. Youth Sailing at the Sausalito Yacht Club

Paul’s loud voice and gearhead tendencies have served him well over the years, and maybe never more so than at the Sausalito Yacht Club. After hauling us onto their dock in a gale, the youth sailing coaches heard Paul drooling over their fleet of Fevas and invited him to go out sailing. These kids are not afraid to capsize halfway to Angel Island and neither was Paul.

4. Cruising Club of America

Steve recently joined the Cruising Club of America and his first meeting was a lunch with the ‘San Francisco Station’ in Sausalito. There he received anchorage and mechanic recommendations, copious support for this questionable adventure we’ve embarked upon, and even met my personal safety-at-sea idol, Chuck Hawley.

5. Maya, Jay, Izzy and Talia

I remember when friend’s parents came to visit in college and took us out to dinner at the nice restaurant across the bridge in Vermont. In San Francisco, some of my oldest college friends, Jay and Maya, became the parents. Maya picked us up from the boat in Sausalito — cheerfully hopping into the dingy in her nice work clothes — and drove us to their house in Berkeley where we met their kids for the first time, ate cannolis, and climbed Indian Rock at sunset. Maya dug out 30-year-old photos, our kids laughed at how young we looked, and I felt — despite cold, hard evidence to the contrary — that no time had passed at all.

6. Keoni

Steve’s cousin, Keoni, a genuine good time, met us at Bolinas Beach with a surfboard and spent a morning pushing everyone onto waves. Paul, who had been preparing for this moment since October 2016, was PSYCHED.

7. Cousin Andrew and Soon-to-Be-Cousin Benie

My ridiculously interesting nephew, Andrew, is an engineer at Astranis and gave us an “office” tour that included a fancy espresso, a control room of people communicating with geostationary satellites in high orbit, a vacuum chamber the size of our boat, a giant block of titanium, a Pier 30 real estate history, and fun facts like: goods exported to Space receive refunds on tariffs paid on Earth.

Andrew and his fiancée, Benie, also joined us for a sail around the Bay and have been kind enough to organize a wedding in Berkeley so we have a reason to come back.

8. The Internet Archive Tour

Every Friday at 1pm, there is a free tour of the Internet Archive’s HQ in a former Christian Science church not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. The tour starts on the main floor with a summary of the non-profit’s work archiving websites and other digital material (including video games from your childhood that you might be invited to play in front of the whole tour group), proceeds upstairs to the former sanctuary where humming servers sing to an audience of sculptures modeled after the organization’s employees, and ends in the basement where one of those employees serves you ice cream. Worth a visit even if you barely understand the questions your 13-year-old is asking the tour guide!

9. Apple Park

Every September, James watches a live stream of the Apple Event and gives us a summary the newest iPhone features. This year, according to Apple Maps, we were only 52 miles away from Apple Park on the day of the Event, but — being mere mortals and not tech YouTubers — we were not invited. Also, it was the kids’ third day of online school. We rented a car and drove down to Cupertino that afternoon anyway. The closest we got to the ring building was an AR tour in the Apple Store just outside the company gates, but it was pretty fun to be part of the of the buzz there that day. Like all pilgrims, we bought some merch.

On the way back, we stopped at Stanford to visit LMN’s recently completed Computing and Data Science Building and to give the kids the first in a series of extemporaneous lectures on college campus design. Next up, UC Berkeley and LMN’s Undergraduate and Academic Building.

10. Berkeley Bowl

One of the best parts of traveling is visiting foreign grocery stores and Berkeley Bowl is the Notre Dame of produce. If our boat refrigerator were bigger than a carry-on bag, I would have bought the whole section of Washington apples.

Time feels a little more elastic on the boat, especially during overnight passages when we sleep in our clothes and eat a breakfast of peanut M&Ms at 3am. We keep an eye on the clock because of the watch system and our hourly log entries, but I’m constantly surprised when an hour has passed and I’ve spent the entirely of it watching a curious tern try to navigate around our wind instruments to land on the mast.

We record the dry stuff in a basic three-ring-binder and printer paper logbook: latitude, longitude, course over ground, boat speed, wind speed, wind direction, engine hours, sky conditions, etc. If you’ve wondered how Steve remembers every detail for his technical blog posts, here it is:

What we don’t log is how magical some of these passage hours are. Moderate sleep deprivation has something to do with it, but being surrounded by water as far as the eye can see has a strange effect too. Our screens show massive container ships miles to the west, but our eyes say: you’re the only human awake on the only boat in the ocean. When, just after sunrise, a whale breaches a few hundred yards away, heaving its massive self into the air and crashing back down over and over and over, we might get to thinking that we’re more part of the ocean than whatever is happening in the news.

We’ve now seen hundreds of whales spouting, hordes of cormorants running goofily on the water to get up and away as we approach, and packs of sea lions swimming past us like porpoises. But, by, far, the most surreal and wonderful offshore experience was the midnight watch change when Steve and I caught a pair of dolphins racing Flyer through bioluminescence, trailing blue light as they swam out and back. Another sailor we met calls these Cosmic Dolphins and watching them from a boat in the middle of the night feels like a dream.

Afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about the children’s book, Amos & Boris by William Steig, about a romantic mouse who goes to sea. I read this page out loud at least twenty times in 2018 during one of Paul’s boat phases and still love it.

“One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all. Overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of everything, he rolled over and over and right off the deck of his boat and into the sea.”

And that brings us to the #1 priority of this trip, higher even than finding a cosmic sense of oneness with the natural world: SAFETY.

Our primary goal while offshore is to keep everyone on the boat. At night and in any daytime swell, we wear inflatable PFDs that clip into jack lines running the length of the boat. (Even Pelle has a life jacket!) If we need to leave the cockpit while underway, we let someone else know. We put a reef in the mainsail in the daylight before it gets dark, or one more than we’d normally have if already reefed. If we ever have to try out our life raft, we have procedures laminated and posted near the VHF.

We are fortunate that Flyer is designed for heavy-weather offshore sailing. She’s got a snug cockpit, a manageable sail plan, simple systems, and a doghouse that keeps us comfortable even in the worst conditions. When things get ugly, or we just want to take it easy, sitting in the doghouse is the place to be. We can keep watch with an almost 360 degree view, monitor all the sails and steer the boat using the autopilot from there.

In general, we avoid adventure in favor of hours of quiet offshore reflection. (Ha! Just kidding, the kids still want to spend their quiet hours playing Minecraft.)

For our first offshore leg from Friday Harbor to San Francisco we had set an ideal departure time of the 23rd to the 28th of August. As that timing neared, the weather was looking good for a possible departure around the 25th. By many measures this trip down the coast could be the most unfriendly passage; it’s known for confused seas, strong winds, and minimal safe harbors along the 800 nautical-mile stretch. So we were thrilled that our friend Cameron was game to join us for the leg, to help share the watch keeping load and lend an extra set of hands when the conditions piped up.

Cameron arrived Sunday evening on 24 September in typically fashionable style, on the Kenmore Air float plane that docked about 50 steps away from Flyer on the breakwater. A few last minute accoutrements were procured, we had a last meal at San Juan Brewing, and got to bed early.

We had a perfectly still dawn exit out of San Juan Channel with the glow of the rising sun over Lopez Island on the morning of August 25th. The clear and calm conditions persisted until about 20nm before we reached Cape Flattery where it seemed everyone wanted to be that afternoon… seals, whales, porpoises, and the wind, all decided to hang out to the north of Neah Bay. At one point, the local breeze hitting the water just north of Waddaya Island hit 30 knots out of the WSW… almost on our nose. Then it was suddenly into the fog… which lasted for the next 10 hours or so.

Our first night was quiet, foggy and really damp. We motor sailed in a building NW’ly breeze with an ugly, sloppy leftover confused swell that made us all extra sleepy. As dawn broke the fog lifted to show more low level clouds. Over the next 24 hours the breeze built and the seas regulated a bit. We shut down the engine around 0800 and sailed all day through clearing skies.

Around noon, Paul deployed our first fishing lure off of the big rod and within a couple of minutes we had a strike! The fish put up a solid fight – it required Cameron and me to take turns to fight it while Flyer was rolling along at 8 knots, not to be stopped. But when the fish was within half a boat length it let go! This same event then repeated itself about 4 times again until we decided to give the fish(ing) a break and lick our wounds.

That day grew into a great day of sailing; partly sunny skies, a solid 25 knots from the north west, and gentle following seas. Flyer really hits her stride when the breeze is over 20 and aft of the beam. Just over 24 hours in and it felt like we had already seen quite the variety of conditions.

By 1900 local time we were about 80nm offshore, and due west of Manzanita, OR. I decided I’d do my daily checks around the boat, and checked in on the engine. I pulled the dip stick to check the oil level and discovered the oil to be over 150% of its maximum level! The oil looked normal in quality but obviously way above the required amount. It was last seen at about 90% just a day and a half earlier…

I extracted a small sample of engine oil and found seawater in it. Major bummer. But it was a good thing I didn’t try to start the engine prior to checking the oil level! With water in the cylinders, it’s highly possible that one can break critical components of the engine just trying to get it started, since water won’t compress nearly as easy as aspirated diesel will.

I promptly got on the phone to a few trusted advisors (thank you Jeremiah and Dad!) and did an oil change while underway to try to begin evacuating the seawater and replacing it with good oil. After that oil change I was able to turn over the crank shaft with a wrench, so we deduced there likely wasn’t much seawater (if any) left in the cylinders, and we felt good enough to give the engine a try at starting. (Normally one would pull the injectors at this point also to evacuate any water from the cylinders, but when able to hand crank the engine the amount of force required to turn it over will likely mean that using the starter won’t be a destructive act). We got the engine going after a couple of brief tries, and quickly shut it back down.

Another oil sample a few minutes later showed milky looking oil (a sure sign of water ingress) and, confusingly, a higher level than I had filled it to. Given the possibility of a crack in the components, we decided to sail direct for Newport OR.

The other good news at this point was that there was still breeze. Before the sun set, we gybed to port and made our way at 8 knots towards Newport, about 100nm to our south east. We kept blasting along that evening but slowly, as forecast, the breeze started to die.

We felt a bit like the crew of Apollo 13, except instead of being stuck inside a tin can with the almost certain end of death awaiting us, we were stuck on a bobbing tin can with warm food aboard and many cold beers awaiting us.

We spent the next 36 hours sailing our butts off as the breeze continued to die and the visibility went to almost nothing. After staying up most of the night and well into the AM on Sept 27 trying to diagnose our engine issue and make a plan, I was getting tired. Kristen and Cameron were covering for me on deck all the while, which was an extra burden, since we decided to save the boat’s house battery power by shutting down all unnecessary electronics (including our auto-pilot, chartplotter, and sailing instruments… everything, it turns out, other than our AIS and our refrigerator!).

We’ve spent the last two years getting Flyer a full suite of renewable energy sources to power her batteries. She’s got 630w of permanently mounted solar panels, a SuperWind generator, and a Watt&Sea hydro generator. It’s a dream to have such options and flexibility, but, the one scenario this setup does not cover is thick fog, no wind, no engine, and no boat speed!

At 80 nautical miles out, we were hand steering the rest of the way, trying our hardest to get Flyer to move on course in the fickle conditions. As our speeds varied from 3 to 0 knots, the low-pitched moaning of our Watt&Sea hydro generator -induced when the boat reached break-neck speeds of 2.5 knots- captured the mood on board.

All this time we’d been in contact with the Coast Guard, notifying them of our lack of an auxiliary engine and our need for assistance to get into harbor once we were near Newport. (Newport has a tricky long, narrow channel and bar entry, which would make sailing in very challenging.) They initially were very insistent on checking in with us every hour, but we quickly adjusted that schedule as they learned that a.) we had wind and were able to sail towards Newport and b.) we had copious amounts of water and food aboard. Only did we learn later that it was because of an unknown c.)we had kids aboard that they took our case to the highest priority level.

Our check-ins with the Coast Guard were occurring on about a 6 hour cadence by the morning of September 28th. I had successfully told them every time “we’re all doing great, we have tons of food and water aboard, and we want to get ourselves as close to Newport own power so we can make a tow-in as easy as possible.” They were following us with our AIS transponder so they knew our exact location as we approached.

As a sailor I’ve been trained to be as self-reliant as possible, to never go out in conditions that look questionable, to be as prepared as humanly possible, and know how to get yourself out of trouble if it ever befalls you. This is the best part of sailing… that you can get yourself anywhere under your own power, without an engine (well, as long as you have canvas above your deck and water only on the outside of your hull). So we were doing everything we could to do this well, to retain battery power in case we needed to use our windlass, to keep sailing no matter what else happened.

The last forecast we had seen was showing a building southerly within a couple of days so we knew we wanted to get there soon. At around 0630 on the 28th of September I decided to take a nap, and was awoken about 20 minutes later by James telling me that “the Coast Guard is coming!” They had decided to ‘send assets’ at that point, and would be damned if we said otherwise. We were 11nm to the NW of Newport at this point, so they were about 30 minutes away. We quickly got the boat in ship shape, dropping the main and furled the genoa, and within a few minutes we saw the cutter arriving.

We arrived in Newport within an hour, dragging our Watt&Sea propeller the whole way and joyously generating 25 amps of juice at 12v, which was enough to turn our systems back on and reconnect with the world through our Starlink.

After passing beneath the Newport bridge, they brought their cutter alongside Flyer and we secured the boats together, side by side. They then proceeded to drive us with surprising precision into the Newport Marina.

I can’t quite describe what I felt at this time- it’s at once a sense of relief to get in safely to port after a major system failure like this, but also a sense of shame and disbelief that something like this could happen after all these years of preparation.

I’ve never been boarded before by the USCG, but given their role in this recovery they were required to board and inspect Flyer. We had readied our ships documents, collected our passports and ID’s, extracted our grab-bag from the liferaft compartment, and had the heads ready for inspection.

After we had tied Flyer up to the dock, the captain of the USCG cutter and his mate spent an awkward amount of time below inside their cutter readying themselves, and when they emerged from below they were fully armed and covered with bulletproof vests. They apologized profusely for their protocol and wardrobe; I gather we didn’t look like the sort of vessel that might require such fanfare.

We started the paperwork operation with them, sharing our flares (yes, still with valid dates), CO2 placards (right by the engine control panel in the companionway), USCG documentation (in our handy folder kept beneath the nav seat) and other requests at a decent clip. The captain continued to apologize as we checked every box along the way. They were incredibly professional, funny, and even curious about our boat and our plans. When they asked “do you have any firearms aboard,” we said “no but we’ve got a large machete!” Paul sprinted to his cabin to fetch it and show it to them.

When he concluded his inspection, the captain told me “you know, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never come across a sailboat and crew so well prepared.” It was an acceptable consolation for this unfortunate situation we’d found ourselves in.