On November 30, the day the sale was finalized, we flew down to Santa Barbara and slept on our boat for the first time. Not only were we there to say hello to our soon-to-be home, but also to get ready for our first big trip… to sail her back to Seattle, in the middle of December.
Chris had delivered another boat up the U.S. coast from San Diego to Seattle the year before, so we already had a solid idea of what to expect and what to plan for. Most people boating from San Diego to Seattle or boating up the California coast do so during the summer, when both wind and waves are gentle. We didn’t have the luxury (in time or money) to keep the boat in Santa Barbara until the spring or pay for a professional boat delivery service.
So, we kept a close eye on the weather. When we saw a long enough window between storms that looked do-able, we went for it to make the trip ourselves.
We sailed from California to Washington in the middle of winter when the days are darkest, and the weather is temperamental. Was it risky? Definitely a little. Did everything go smoothly? No, not at all. Did we learn a TON? Oh yes.
Our first leg from Santa Barbara to San Francisco was exhilarating and as close to perfection as we could hope for. But leaving San Francisco and making our way further north is when things got really exciting.
OUR ROUTE
Santa Barbara, CA –> San Francisco, CA (three days, approximately 289 nautical miles)
San Francisco, CA –> Anacortes, WA (four days, approximately 776 nautical miles)
Honorary mention for the emergency pit stop we made in Humboldt Bay near Eureka, CA (an additional 30-ish nautical miles)
Getting the boat ready
The first three days were spent getting our new-to-us boat ready to sail nearly 1,100 nautical miles up the U.S. west coast. This was without question the biggest trip our boat had seen for at least the last decade – probably twice that long.
We tirelessly prepped the boat, gathering spare parts, repairing anything obvious, familiarizing ourselves with the systems, picking up our crew/buddy from the airport, and provisioning food. It would have been easy to spend weeks getting ready, but at some point you just have to go.
Sailing from Santa Barbara to San Francisco
On a beautiful California day, we cast off the lines, sailed out of Santa Barbara, and turned north to start our journey home.
I’ll never forget that first day.
Within hours we found ourselves surrounded by dolphins as far as we could possibly see, with humpback whales weaving through the pods. It was like a scene straight out of Planet Earth that lasted for hours. Now, I like whales just as much as anyone. But in our new boat… 15-miles offshore… with a humpback crossing in front of us… I realized I most appreciate them from a distance. I mean, have you seen the videos of whales breaching on boats?
That first night, the three of us took rotating shifts keeping watch, with two of us always awake. As Chris and I huddled on deck in the dark, the clouds opened up, revealing an uninhibited starry sky. We watched the stars with no rigging obstructing our view, and we knew we picked the right name for our boat, Constellation.
Another day and night passed, and the only dramas we encountered were leaky hatches, the gaskets all dried out from the California sunshine. That is, until we started our approach into San Francisco.
In the middle of the night, we heard a loud bang and the engine aggressively shuddered. Little did we know, we had entered a mine field of crab pots, and the sound we heard was a set of floats hitting our propeller. Fortunately for us, the line didn’t wrap around our propeller or cause any other major damage. We spent the remainder of the night shining a spotlight off the bow to spot and dodge hundreds of pots as we made our approach into the bay.
24-hours of rest and repairs in San Francisco
We spent our short time in San Francisco sleeping, showering, refueling, and making minor repairs. We generously duct-taped the hatches, hoping that would help remedy the leaks (spoiler alert, it didn’t.)
Sometime along the way, the chart plotter that came with the boat stopped working. We took advantage of the time on land with WiFi to download two backup chart options, one for our laptop and Navionics for my phone.
Our friend that sailed with us from Santa Barbara flew home that day, and we waited for two other friends to fly in that night to join us for the rest of the journey. They hopped on board around midnight, and we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge by 1 a.m.
Sailing from San Francisco to Seattle
Our spirits were high as we sailed into the night from San Francisco, our friends excited and maybe a little nervous about the journey ahead.
The start to this leg of the trip wasn’t nearly as idealistic as our experience leaving Santa Barbara.
Within the first hour of leaving the bay, the wind started to build, the waves turned bigger, and the sea state got more confused. Right out the gate, our massive main sail, still fully hoisted, split from leech to luff. We wrestled the sail down a bit, reefing it so the tear wasn’t under any load. After all the commotion, we settled in for an exciting night. We monitored the bigger weather and once again dodged hundreds of crab pot floats as we made our way out to deeper water.
In consequence to a demanding first night, our poor crew were both cripplingly sea sick for their first 24-hours on board. Sorry, fellas.
Some sailors savor the night watch experience, using it as a time to relax, trusting their boat to carry them onwards through the dark. I hope to one day reach that kind of comfort. For me, the darkness lets my mind wander to too many fears of what might be in front of us but not seen.
It was during a night watch, somewhere off the northern California coast that we witnessed a torpedo-like light careening through the water, right towards our boat. Seconds later, another torpedo followed. After a few seconds of panic, we realized we were being escorted by a small pod of dolphins, their movement activating the intense bioluminescence of the water that night. Dolphins are an omen of good luck at sea and signal a sailor’s safe return to land – they were welcome company that night.
As the end of my night shift neared and the sun started to come up over the California coastline, we heard “rummm rum rum rum rummm rum rum.” And no, that wasn’t the sound of anyone breaking into our celebratory bottle of rum first thing in the morning. Our engine started to have uneven RPMs, and within a minute our engine died completely. We bobbed in glassy water, with no breeze to carry us the 20-miles to land.
A turn of events…
In our preparations before leaving Santa Barbara, we bought eight spare engine fuel filters. We knew we would likely need to change them at least once during our trip. Of all the spare parts we packed, the one item we needed and the one item that didn’t actually make it from the store on to the boat was our extra fuel filters.
After an hour troubleshooting and coming up with a band-aid solution, we had our engine up and running again, but with the same RPM fluctuations as before. We limped our way toward the nearest bay where we knew we could pick up some filters.
The trouble was, most small towns along the coast close to boaters during the winter. It’s this time of year that bigger swells make crossing the shallow bars into the harbor particularly dangerous.