As I ponder the soon to be cruising lifestyle, it appears that it is about going to a new place, exploring the area, meeting people there, sharing stories and then leaving again. Occasionally, cruisers will reconnect as they sail around to various place. This will be a new and challenging experience for me as I have lived in CT and New England my entire life until about 4 years ago when I moved to Oregon.
We enjoyed our stay in Newport, although I must admit the winters were rather brutal. We met some wonderful people there, many of whom we will be sad to leave. On our last night, our new live-a-board friends Patrick, Julie and Petal of (Sailing Vessel )S/VMan-o-Ku had us over for a farewell toast.
And then there is Chris and his family who are fixing up an old wooden boat to live on year round.
Our new friends, Mike and Angie from S/V Madrone, have already left the marina on the morning of the eclipse and are in San Francisco Bay area now. Funny how the dock feels different once they left. However, I do believe we will hook up again perhaps even in Half Moon Bay, California in a few weeks.
But wait, before we left, another new live-a-board, Ernie and Cindy came over to bid us farewell. Ernie is a missionary who had just completed building an orphanage in Mexico and motor/sailed his boat up from Mexico a few weeks ago. He wanted to give us a blessing and our boat a blessing with oil and to leave a Bible with us. We gladly accepted. Here they are reading from the book of John.
So, these are some of the people we met at the marina. Some we will see again and perhaps others we will not. Time will tell. But for me, it will always be the people I have met and those I will meet along the way, that enrich my life
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| Dan and Bev leaving Newport, Oregon 9/2/2017 |
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| Bev takes the helm. |
What do we do on the boat? A lot of sitting actually as well as watching the waves, birds, weather, and sunsets. We had a full 24 hours of light wind, under 8 knots and it was relatively calm. I like to steer the boat, as it is the best spot for me to be. I have found if I helm, I am less likely to get sea-sick. Unfortunately, on the first night out, this remedy did not help. We had rather large swells coming from behind us as we were sailing mostly downwind. It's a motion that caused me to get an upset stomach and I ended up heaving whatever food I had inside me over the deck. Yuck, not a fun way to start! Thankfully, once that happened, I felt much, much better and managed the rest of the trip with no problem.
We have to be careful to preserve the water storage on our boat. This means washing our dishes on the deck in salt water. Here Dan is fetching a bucket of water for me.
As we sailed south, we noticed a haze in the air and realized this was from all of the multitude of forests fires that are happening all over the West.
We had a few problems on the way down. Two of our rails for the main sail broke. While we were able to sail to Crescent City finding replacements is the bigger challenge. Dan has been researching possibilities for most of the afternoon.
Last night, there was almost a full moon and it was magnificent. I loved watching the reflection of the moonlight over the water. I was on watch, enjoying the moon, and Dan was below deck sleeping as we always have someone on watch, while the other sleeps. Suddenly, the wind picked up to 20 knots, and we were moving. I awoke Dan as I was unsettled by this. We reefed two levels of the sail, making it much smaller in area and therefore has less power. I felt much better.
Below is a picture of his motoring into the harbor at Crescent City. It was a bit foggy but we made it in safely.
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| Malo at the check in dock. |
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| View of the marina opposite the dock we are on. |
The passage to Crescent City took 2 full days with 2 nights at sea. We are both a bit tired, but pleased (other than the problem with the main sail). We got showers! Hurray! Tomorrow we hope to explore a trail in the Jedediah Smith State Park my sister Marji told us about in the Red Wood Forests.
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