Possibly the worst moment in the last decade of my life was the five seconds about 3:00 Sunday afternoon, after the 2004 SHTP start, when I went down below and watched the hull of my boat flexing in and out about 6 inches every time we pushed into a wave. The bow sections would flex in and pop out, about every 20 seconds or so. It must have been doing that for the last 30 hours.
I stuffed sailbags...anything I could to pad that motion, and it sunk into my head that my TransPac was over. The gale was easing, but the seas were still big. If I kept going I'd probably die. I tacked over and headed back to California, putting the load on the other side of the hull, sailing for Morro Bay.
It was getting dark when I realized that the two waves that had broken in the cockpit saturday afternoon had leaked into my ignition key opening, shorted the ignition circuit and flattened both the batteries. I had no electricity. What I didn't know until two weeks later was that somehow it had also screwed up my alternator, which was shorted out and ALSO was draining my batteries. I was 180 - 200-odd miles out with no juice and I had to sail back into the gale I had almost sailed out of. That night was horrible. it was WORSE than the gale we sailed out into after the start.
That night I was almost run down by something big. I remember the lights. I found out that I couldn't go aback with two reefs in and a storm jib, the storm jib wasn't big enough to balance the helm. I wound up lying ahull. The next morning was flat-dead calm by late-morning. I sat and went nowhere, about 30 miles off the coast. I used one armband strobe for SOME sort of light that night. Still, no wind, and the battery on the armband strobe died. I had extras, I could have shown that armband strobe for 4-5 mights, but I was getting in close enough that I didn't want to be using strobes if I could help it. I spent about 5 hours trying to resurrect my gasoline DC generator to get some charge in the boats batteries. The motor wouldn't start. I disassembled the whole thing, it refused to start. I finally broke down and cried like a toddler for a good hour. I finally used the sat phone to call Coast Guard Group Morro Bay. They came out in a flat-dead calm and hauled me into Morro Bay. I've never been so humiliated in my life.
About four days later, after replacing the ignition switch and sort-of beefing up the hull I decided to try for Monterey. I didn't realize that the alternator was shot and was draining my batteries. I figured that I'd charged them up on a battery charger, really topped them off and I had lights for at least 3-4 nights. In fact I had lights for half a night. I left around noon. That night it blew 30 knots, easy and the fog was so thick I couldn't see 50 feet.
For three days it was whisper quiet all day long and blew 30 knots on the nose all night, with pea soup fog. I had no lights and no autopilot and was always on edge, not trusting the structural integrity of the boat. It was fucking MISERABLE to not trust the boat. Thank god for the Navik. I finally got past Point Sur, about 4-5 miles off the point, not by sailing by it, but because the waves were SO steep in minimal wind, that for about 8-9 hours we slammed around and the the kinetics of the boat drove us forward. The boat was so thrashed around that the wind had no effect, the sails couldn't catch any of it. It was the longest day I have ever spent on the water. There were ghosts of breeze....and
t...hen we finally got a few miles north of Point Sur and the wind totally died off of the Bixby Creek bridge. It was millpond smooth and we were about 4 miles out. I watched another sailboat go by me about a mile to seaward, heading for Monterey. I just cried my eyes out again, I was so tired and discouraged. I finally broke down and called the Coasties on the sat phone again. I wasn't very nice to the Coasties. I didn't cuss them out but I wasn't exactly pleasant. They refused to get me, so I called Vessel Assist. A couple of hours later I got picked up for the 5 hour tow to Monterey. That cost about $1,200. AGAIN, towed into Port.
And now I had to get on an airplane and fly to Hawaii and hang with my friends from the SSS who had completed their races, and put on a brave smile for my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. They had all gone to Hawaii because I was going to sail there. I almost lost it in the Awards Ceremony when Bill Charron gave me the Transpac belt buckle, though I coughed out a memorable speech if I remember rightly. I kept the vest and the little plaque, but I quietly left the belt buckle on the table.
Joan and I spent another week on Kauai, and had a nice vacation. When we came back I went back down to Monterey and spent the rest of my allotted time off repairing the boat so that I could sail it back up the coast to San Francisco.
Those days, from the moment I went down below and saw the hull flexing, to the morning after the tow into Monterey, were horrible. They were a nightmare, and some of the worst days of my life. I have not been the same person since then, and the truth is that sailing is no longer a joyful thing for me. It's unfinished business, a challenge, something I have to do, but not so much something I WANT to do any more. I am sailing to Hawaii so that I don't have to listen to the word "failure" in my head when I look at myself in the mirror. I've written this before.
The truth of all this was driven home to me this past year when I wasn't spiritually and psychically able to hang tough and finish the 2007 LongPac. It wasn't dangerous out there, it was calm and quiet and easy. But I couldn't do it. I spent the entire race waiting for some horrible thing to happen. I managed to enjoy one sunny afternoon, but the rest of the time I was just sick with worry, waiting for whatever god-awful thing was gonna happen. Having a malfunctioning VHF radio didn't help. When I sat becalmed for 8 hours I just packed it in.
I'm glad I managed to re-qualify later. My head and heart have settled and I'm not a bundle of nerves offshore any more. But the 2007 LongPac was no fun.
I am hoping that when the TransPac is over, and maybe during the sailing of it, I'll find some real joy in sailing again, but the honest truth is that I just want it to be over. I want to cross the finish line, earn the belt buckle, and have done what I set out to do fifteen years ago. I don't care where I finish, I don't care where I place or who I beat. I just want it to be OVER; Start the race, do the race, finish the race. To get there, I have work to do.
.....Not the usual reason for sailing to Hawaii.
Last edited by AlanH; 02-14-2008 at 03:23 AM.
1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"