Day 45-51 of the 2nd Voyage: In which we lose another week, but resolve to resume our journey come hell or high water (transmission be damned).

Richard the Mechanic offered to drive down to Morro Bay—a “mere” four-hour drive—but as his first opportunity to do so would be at least 10 days out, we opted to try a more “virtual” approach. So Richard gave the Captain a list of things to check, settings to tweak, and gear maneuvers to try, and after a morning of back-and-forth phone calls, the signs all pointed to a control valve. The offending valve was removed, FedExed to Richard in Santa Rosa, checked, repaired, FedExed back to Morro Bay, and reinstalled. Total time elapse: three days.

Unfortunately, in those three days, we lost our weather window and would have to wait four more days for favorable conditions to get around our last geographic challenge for this voyage: Point Conception. Known as the “Cape Horn of the Pacific”, this is the place where the Pacific Ocean meets the Santa Barbara Channel so much like Cape Flattery in Washington, it has a reputation for large waves, big swells, and a lot of wind—all ingredients for creating a nasty gale and/or “uncomfortable” conditions. There are no places to duck in should the weather get sketchy so it’s important to watch the forecasts, identify a two-day window of tolerable weather, and then try to time your passage so that you’re rounding the point at night as that’s when the seas tend to be calmer. And you definitely don’t want to make the journey between November and March because that’s when the conditions really deteriorate—so understandably we want to hit this window because Morro Bay is a nice place but we really don’t want to spend the winter here.

Admittedly, we have probably psyched ourselves out a bit but having endured the rough passage around Cape Flattery, the “strong breezes” off of Cape Blanco, and the sh*t storm that was Cape Mendocino, we have come to have a healthy respect for places with bad reputations. Here in Morro Bay, we’ve talked to many boaters who have made the passage around Point Conception and most—if not all—have shrugged it off as being “not that bad” as long as you’re going south, although there were a few that headed out only to come right back in because apparently “not that bad” can still kick your butt.

So we have pinpointed our weather window and have decided that not only are we heading out, we’re going for distance—a 180 mile, 20-25 hour voyage from Morro Bay to Long Beach where we will stay for a couple of days to gather ourselves and wonder what the hell did we just do? We are all hopeful that maybe—finally—this time the transmission will give us zero problems, yet are hesitant to commit to being overly optimistic. After failing so many times, we’ve begun to lose confidence in the entire mechanical system. I think at this point we could put in a brand new transmission and still not be 100% confident that it would work—that’s how bad the juju is in the engine room.

But all there is to do now is get back out there and see. The transmission will either work or it won’t. If it dies, we sail as far as we can and then call Vessel Assist to get us into the closest port. If it lives and gets us successfully to Long Beach, then we may finally—if tentatively—call the transmission “fixed”. Point Conception may very well be where we find out. You see, before the Spaniards came along and renamed everything, the native Chumash people called the point “Humqaq” and believed it was the “Western Gate” where the souls of the dead leave the earth to begin their journey to paradise. Taken metaphorically, this could symbolize our own voyage—the two years of preparation, the shakedown cruise from Everett up through British Columbia where we spent a month in purgatory (dba Campbell River) before returning to Washington, then our passage out to the Pacific and down the coast to this—the gateway to Southern California, San Diego, and our next jumping off point to places unknown but hopefully resembling paradise. Taken more allegorically, it could mean that our transmission is about to shake off its mortal metal coils and go to that big engine in the sky (where I hope they have a mechanic because I don’t think Richard will go there.) Either/or I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. Incidentally, in the Chumash language, “Humqoq” means “The Raven Comes”. And yes, the Raven is coming…whether we’re ready or not.

 

P

Pictured: Our Washington state flag after having endured a hodgepodge of weather in British Columbia, high winds along the Washington coast, a gale along the Oregon coast, and whatever the hell that was along the Northern California coast. We're going to retire old George...he's seen enough.