LandfallVoyages

We left Half Moon Bay after a couple of days to recover. The weather looked OK. Not good, just OK but we’ve been feeling some urgency to get souther before winter fully sets in.

Out of Half Moon Bay we again had the wind and the swells behind us but the waves were very close together and the wind was just all over the place again requiring a lot of steering and a lot of attention to maintain a course. We motored for the first couple of hours until we got enough wind to begin sailing and (thankfully) shut the engine off. Through the middle of the day we had plenty of wind and even hit 8 knots, a good speed for this boat. There was fog in our desired path so we headed SW for 20 miles and then SE for 20 miles to stay in the sun and keep the swells on our aft quarter.

Just after sunset we were about even with Pigeon Point and the wind stopped like they’d turned off a valve. We started the perfectly reliable, noisy engine again and motored for about an hour whereupon the perfectly reliable engine revved up for a few seconds and died. Dead, dead. Wouldn’t start at all. We cranked until we were afraid that our batteries would die but the wind picked back up again, straight out of the North. We had great wind for an hour and we were edging closer to Santa Cruz and edging closer to the realization that we probably couldn’t tack  upwind into the harbor entrance that’s only 200 feet wide and pretty shallow. We really needed an engine.

As we neared the point off of Santa Cruz we decided to call for help. We tried to raise the Santa Cruz Harbor Patrol so that we could ask them to tow us into the harbor but they didn’t answer, the Coast Guard did. After some complicated communications the Coast Guard informed us that they wouldn’t help us but that they could call a commercial salvage operation that would. Some of the boat towing operations are very tricky and we’ve heard horror stories about them offering a tow but getting funky with the paperwork, turning it into a salvage situation rather than a tow and then they are owed a percentage of the boat’s value, much more than a few hundred dollars for a tow. Still, it was irrelevant because we couldn’t really afford either.

To add to the entertainment value, the wind died and the fog drifted in.

Bobbing around in circles in a ten foot swell in the dark and the fog, in the middle of the night.

The GPS started crapping out.

The radar hasn’t worked yet.

Lost and bouncing and cold.

The Monterey Coast Guard continued to call us about every three seconds for more information. Position update. Course and speed. Position update. Amount of food and water on board. Put on our lifejackets. Position update. Course and speed. What kind of radios did we have? Battery levels. Position update. Crew member’s names and ages. Health conditions. Course and speed. Dog’s weight. (OK, not really, but it felt like that.) We did put a life jacket on her, though, and duly informed the Coasties that the dog’s safety gear was totally squared away.

Meanwhile we were drifting closer to the coast and almost unable to control the boat. Trying hard to make sail adjustments and trying hard to fix the engine, upside down in the bilge with the boat bobbing and rocking like crazy and the damned Coast Guard peppering us for more information over and over and over.

Around the time the Coast Guard demanded an inventory of our safety equipment, we decided we were pretty fed up. I finally told them that if they weren’t going to help us, and they’d already made it clear that they wouldn’t help us, to leave us the hell alone so we could deal with the situation. The watchstander answered that it would be helpful if we could inventory our safety equipment and I told her that a fucking tow would be helpful.

We were on our own.

The only sensible thing to do at that point was to continue trying to fix the engine. I’m a professional mechanic, I should be able to do something, too bad it took me so long to realize it.

Head and shoulders through the floor and into the engine compartment, sliding around, diesel fuel everywhere, bleeding the fuel system. The engine coughed and started, sputtered out again. And again.

Slow to realize important things, it dawned on me that we had installed twin Racor filters for things like this. I switched the valves over to the second Racor and bled the fuel system yet again. There’s a thumb lever on the side of the fuel lift pump. You must pump it down and down, over and over again, one the starboard side of the engine while you loosen a tiny and poorly located bleed screw on the port side of the engine on the side of the injection pump. After fuely bubbles spew out of there it’s time to bleed the next tiny and poorly located screw on the top of the injection pump. Next you have to loosen all of the injection lines on the top of the engine and crank it over for 30 seconds, then tighten them while cranking. If you’ve been thorough and you’re still conscious, the engine will probably start as you tighten the 3rd injection line so you should hurry up and tighten the 4th one quick because you’re almost out of batteries.

It kicked, it sputtered, and it purred!

Purred.

We motored at a leisurely 4 knots in spite of our anxiety and exhaustion to preserve the prop shaft bearing. We have a bent prop shaft and it kind of wants to vibrate things apart. The Monterey Coast Guard station didn’t bother me anymore but they switched us over to San Francisco after I refused to answer Monterey’s calls. San Francisco’s watch stander was calmer and less flamboyant than Monterey’s, if you can believe that.

In the dark and the fog and without radar it can be difficult or impossible to locate navigation aids such as the “lighted” buoy that’s about a mile away from the harbor entrance to Santa Cruz. The first time by we missed it. I learned later that the light is actually just a 5 watt car tail light bulb.  We also missed the green light in the lighthouse on the end of the breakwater. I found out the next day that it wasn’t really working the night before when I saw the repair trucks drive out the jetty and open the doors and start dragging tools inside the building.

When we were pretty sure that we’d gone quite a ways past Santa Cruz and almost past Capitola we turned around and it wasn’t long before we saw the buoy and the lighthouse’s flashing green light.

Still motoring, we approached the shallow, narrow harbor entrance very carefully. I figured that if we went aground at 1/8th throttle that we should be able to back off at full throttle successfully. We cruised through the jetties and right up to the fuel dock without issue and tied up at 4:30am, glad to be in port.

A couple minutes after we had stowed our main sail a dude with a badge and a gun came walking down the ramp towards us. I though oh shit, we’ve been in Santa Cruz for five minutes and we’re already in trouble. The dude smiled and said “Hi, I’m Greg and I’m here to welcome you to Santa Cruz”! He said that he was glad that we had made it in safely and that he had been concerned when he heard our call over the radio. As he left us he mentioned that he would leave a note in the harbor office asking that they leave us alone and let us sleep in.

What a cool guy he was.

Santa Cruz is awesome.