Whew! Alright, here’s another update. But not before I fill up my cup of trail mix, sip it like juice keeps the hands clean (or the trail mix clean if hands are dirty). One sec…okay. I write this from the relative lee of Catalina’s eastern cliffs in Two Harbors. We probably wouldn’t still be here if we had more agency, but it is what it is. Mark Twain said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” I’m inclined to disagree. In our case we are taking action by chilling the f*** out, and letting the lame wind pass us by. Come to think of it, Mark Twain also said, “If you don’t like New England weather, wait a few minutes.” Well, this isn’t New England, but we’ll wait. Maybe a little longer than a few minutes.
The thing is there’s this south eastern wind (otherwise known as The Santa Ana’s), famous for fueling fires in Southern California and turning otherwise chill anchorages into excellent surf spots at 3am when everyone is drunk and asleep. We could ride it south, but it’s fluky, and will leave us bouncing around on two opposing swells with nothing to sail with. So, instead we’re going to pretend that we made it to the California Gulf and spend 5 days or so hiking around, high-fiving island foxes and being non-threatening around bison. We’ll ignore the rain and cold, and continue to mistake the giant metropolis of LA for a permanent Mexican sunrise.
We’ll also, unfortunately, continue to get Agora ready for the voyage that we already started. Many many things, but the most pressing matters are already underway. The speakers have been remounted, for example, and Paul McCartney’s RAM is blasting as I write this, so cross that off. Some random esthetic things. Some more technical things… nothing will compare to the mountain of stuff we already finished.
For example, our new fridge/freezer broke when we plugged an electric toothbrush into its USB port to charge. Leafing through the manual, I discovered that the Italian product is only rated to charge USB devices at 5 volts. “On a 12 volt system?!” I exclaimed, not understanding USB ports and electricity in general. We frantically contacted dealers in the US hoping they’d be open on a Saturday, and left an angry message with the Italian company, making enthusiastic hand gestures to emphasize a point. Luckily, the problem turned out to be simple. The USB port had broken (cheap Italian build), and its tiny pins had bent into the housing, shorting the screen. Morning smoothies will proceed as planned, thank god.
Despite the mountain of physical labor, we charged out of the breakwater at 5:15 AM, and of course by “charged” I mean literally charged our batteries with Mr. Perkins (our faithful Diesel engine, who faithfully overheated about 100 yards from our mooring). We made about 5 knots for about 2 hrs, but to be honest, I really didn’t feel like we actually left until the sails came out. Finally, our trip had begun! But wait no time for celebrating we have to trim the main and the headsail is luffing and whoops forgot to slide the car forward on the track to bring the camber forward in this wind and let me install the gibe preventer for later and gotta tighten the halyard and where are my gloves and damn I finished my coffee and the headsail is luffing again and and and….
It was glorious. We averaged 7 knots most of the time even though I hadn’t sailed in about a year, and had forgotten Agora’s little personality quirks. She’s not entirely setup for single-handing, and a few of her controls are still at the mast. The day therefore became a stumbling marathon between the cockpit and the front of the boat, leading harnesses along Jack lines, over and under various obstacles. Steph helped when she could, but mostly did her part by not being seasick. Semi catatonic and mumbling like a crackhead on her new industrial grade prescription nausea medicine. She managed to catch up on rest almost everywhere she sat down the whole day, and never once experienced any seasickness, even down below in the cabin.
A few highlights: seeing Santa Barbara Island for the first time was huge. Or actually very small. Also, seeing how well the rig was tuned was incredible and assuring. We put a double reef in and slowly sailed along Catalina’s North Eastern shore, pouting that we couldn’t stop to explore sea caves and inlets. The arrival into Two Harbors was quite literally highlighted by a nearly setting sun. Tips of palm trees shimmered at us, and quaint little houses speckled the exotic hillside. We high-fived, and went ashore to drink alcohol at the bar, toasting our successful maiden voyage.
Today, we chill. Tomorrow however, we chill hard. And the following day, even harder. Bad weather has its perks, and waiting for good weather is one of them. I’d say more about our plans, but my trail mix cup has run dry and RAM has looped over 3 times and Steph has asked me to change the music.
Captain Thatch
Sail Agora 