It’s been a big week, and it’s hard to process as we try to figure out what our next week looks like.
First, we left Port Townsend, enjoyed a bouncy first night shift, and made Sekiu by 5 am. We enjoyed pancakes and a slow morning at anchor while we waited for the tide to rise. Apparently their fuel dock is shallow. Tide rose, we got terrible instructions from their marina and motored in confused. We tied off to a random dock, shuffled jerry cans to top off our tanks, and got back underway.
We rigged up fishing gear, and motored out the straights. We landed a beautiful 22 inch Coho Salmon! We felt like that was a good omen for our first stretch of the Coho Hoho Rally.
Leaving the straits we encountered the largest waves I’ve ever seen on Scooter. Probably 8+ foot swell with a few more feet of wind waves on top. The waves are called square waves when the waves leaving the sound are about perpinducular to the waves running along the coast. She behaved admirably. We saw a whale. Taylor saw it breach and splash so that was special, plus it was about 2 minutes before she barfed from seasickness.
The wind turned in our favor the following morning and we put up sails. Finally, after years of prep, we were sailing on the open ocean. Aside from seasickness, the next 24 hours were without incident.
We kept sailing, being sick, reading, having fun, and not sleeping very well. However, it was everything we had hoped for.
Evening of the third day out, the winds built to 25 knots, and Scooter flew south. We were screaming along at 10 knots. Nelson and I listened to podcasts calmly while we drove down each 10-foot swell. I got jealous of the autopilot having all the fun surfing our 14,000 lb boat so I disengaged the autopilot.
That’s where the fun went from type 1 to type 2.
At 10:30 pm our steering cable broke. We lost control of Scooter and began to spin in 30 mph gusts and 12-foot swell. Fortunately, this happened last summer in the sound so we were somewhat prepared.
We were able to have the emergency tiller (trusty rusty, the 18 inch steel pipe) engaged on the rudder, and Taylor pulled down the sail. She fought like hell, didn’t have feet touching the deck of the boat at times, and hauled the sail down in a minute or two.
At the time we were 50 miles off the coast, northwest of Newport. Our tiller sits about 8 inches off the deck of the cockpit so the most efficient location to steer from is laying on the floor of the cockpit. We took turns laying on the cockpit all night. Every 12 seconds a wave hit and knocked us off course. We also coudln’t really see the map from the floor, so we’d get a course dialed in, gage our direction using the stars and the moon, then go back to our ‘celestial navigation’.
At some point we hailed on the VHF radio that we were limited steering and vessels in the area should use caution. The Coast guard responded and asked for more info, and got our phone number, and offered to monitor our situation.
After a 10 hour slog, (probably the hardest 10 hours of my life) dawn arrived and we were approaching Newport. We reached out to the coast guard asking for bar crossing advice, and they suggested they had a lifeboat in the area and could tow us into Newport. We said ok, as long as it was free. Their definition of a “lifeboat” is loose. It was a 40-foot twin-engine aluminum boat, designed to be rolled and self righted in the worst ocean conditions.
We’re pretty sure they used us as a training exercise. There were mostly rookies on board, a few repeated orderers, confusion, and lots of overkill. They had a second lifeboat come block traffic around the jetty as they pulled us in.
They also apparently had to tow us in at 12-14 knots. much faster than Scooter is designed to go, and I was convinced everything on the old girl would be torn off. She held thankfully.
Once in the harbor, they delivered us to a slip at the marina, inspected our boat for safety requirements, and were impressed at our preparedness. The captain called us ‘the most prudent sailors she’s seen’. That was a hell of a compliment to our recently blemished pride.
Then the formalities were dropped and they let us tour their boat in exchange for letting them hold Eunice.
Next, we began the long process of putting our house back together. In the 10 hours of fighting back to land, we had been pounded by waves on our beam. Everything inside was on the floor or out of place. The evening’s stir fry was sprayed on the interior, the TV screen had slammed into a wall and exploded everywhere. It was like everything we owned was tossed into a saltwater washing machine and dumped into the boat. The only clear spot on the boat was a 3-foot section of the couch where we slept for 30-minute shifts with our foulies/harnesses/life jackets still on.
Things to fix as always, but we’re happy to be in a safe harbor.