This year was just the right timing for us, however it was not right for the company we work for and after resigning in April, hoping to leave in July, the company convinced us to stay on until later in the year. The deal was we would get time to move the boat down the coast during the coming months. Sounds good in principle, however no matter how prepared you think you are, you still need a month of solid time at the end to get ready. We jammed this into 1 week. So when the pitch on the new feathering prop was all-wrong and the cross over filter and new fuel tank system didn’t work we knew we should have said no, and gone in July.

Hindsight is great and we have a big bag of it onboard right now, but things are moving along almost to plan. On Saturday August 4th we took “Breila” and our crew of six from her nice safe dock in Portland and motored for 12 hours, the 100miles down river to Astoria, no wind and very low water in the river this year made for a boring start to the trip. Until we got to Astoria, Astoria is famous for only getting about 30 days a year when it’s not cloudy or raining. We got the clouds, rain and 40kn winds as we practiced our MOB drills. It was not a good time to cross the notorious Columbia River Bar, so we tucked up for the night in Ilwaco, WA. Ilwaco is hidden behind Cape Disappointment and used to be a salmon fishing Mecca, its now a sleepy town with a huge marina and good cheap beer and burgers.

We crossed the bar early the next morning at the end of the ebb (if anything goes wrong, you want the flood to push you back in the river !!) we set sail and ran with a full main and #2  heading about due south. The NW at 15-20 lasted for 24 hours and then started to build and build. First we reefed the main, then furled the #2, finally the #2 came down and we put-up the new high clewed #3 we had just received from North Sails in Vancouver. Not long after that the main was taken in entirely. So there we were broad reaching with only the #3 in sustained 35-40kn with the odd gust to 50. The monitor vane steered exactly on course downwind, but we were going too fast. The forecast was for another 24-36hrs of the same, so we decided to head inshore to Coos Bay. Coos Bay was about 35lmls away and we were about 30miles offshore so we had to harden quite a bit, what a wild ride. Again the vane steered better than any of us could in 15-20’seas. We made it to Coos Bay after contacting the coast Guard to see if the Bar crossing was ok. The Coast Guard will not tell you if its safe to cross the bar at any of the west coast they will only give you the bar conditions. Don’t get me wrong, they try to help in anyway they can short of telling you to come-in. They had closed the bar to all boats 30’ and under at mid-day, we got there at 18:00hrs, one hour later they closed it to all shipping, commercial or pleasure. The river  was in full ebb and had standing waves big enough that even the biggest fish boats could have trouble. Luckily the fog held off until we got in.

We spent the next 36 hours in Coos Bay jammed in with fishermen from as far away as Nanaimo. (they get a 10 day permit to fish tuna in the US territorial waters)

It was a good time to rest as the previous 12 hours had really been a strain on the crew. As we tied up, a tuna fisherman came over and handed us a big plate of freshly BBQ’d tuna tips and said welcome to Coos Bay. What a welcome.

We spent our time resting and paid a visit to the Coast Guard Station. They gave us the Royal tour and an inspection of their newest cutters shouldn’t be missed.

When we finally left on the 8th we had no wind for the next 12 hours and then light winds out of the south building to about 15kn, not fun after the seas and swell have been running as high as they were. We sailed out of the south wind North of Cape Mendocino. This Cape is the one most feared by most mariners and their insurance companies. Take a look at a map of California, it’s the closet part of California to Japan.. It is notorious for high wind bending past the Cape and rough seas. We must live right, for the 2nd time passing this Cape we motored past about 2 miles off in 0-5knt winds, by now the seas had flattened off so it was an anticlimax.

By now two of our crew of 6 were getting anxious for their flights back home. Spence and Colleen had flights departing out of SFX on Saturday night, not much chance of catching them as we passed Cape Mendocino at about 02:00hrs Saturday morning. Thru the wonders of e-mail they managed to re-arrange flights for Sunday mid-day. It would still be tight to get them there without some decent wind. We decided to head into Ft Bragge and drop them off. Ft Bragge is about 100 miles up the from Sausalito on the old Hwy 101. They managed to sweet talk someone into driving them over the mountains to the nearest Greyhound station, they made it to San Francisco that day and easily made their flight back to Toronto. Catharine and I, and our friends Ken & Linde had an uneventful motor all the way to the Golden Gate. We arrived Sunday morning and as we neared the Gate the wind picked up. We did get to sail in to San Francisco after 2 days of motoring, in fact the sun came out for the first time in 5 days. We had a great sail almost all the way to our berth at the Encinal Yacht Club in Alameda. Looking back at the Gate we could see the marine layer just sitting out there blocking out the sun.

We tied up at 14:30, 7 days and 685 miles after leaving Portland and a lot of fuel lighter on board.