Overdue Vacation

Seasons don’t fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are

The only footprints on the beach were my own – a single set, trudging forward, placed there in the pitch of night, coming straight out of the sea.

I arose – not sure if I slept on the sand or merely hallucinated that I did. The only other trace on man I could see on the island was the ominous remains of a boat. It was an old wooden wreckage, half-buried in the sand. Which island I was on – I did not know. I could have remained there, I suppose, hoping for a rescue, although I had not seen a boat on the water the entire previous day and night.

Night – that terrifying specter: alone on the open ocean, at times only the whiteness of the surf from the pummeling waves shown through the inky mist before breaking over the bow – sometimes also flooding the cockpit. So this is how it ends I thought: stranded on an unknown beach, cold, wet, fighting hypothermia. Like the horrors suffered by countless sailors before me, referenced obliquely in hushed voices at Naval ceremonies as ‘lost at sea’ – as if they were so many misplaced library books.

This was not meant to be a harrowing sea adventure, but rather a five-day solo southern California sailing trip – an overdue Monday through Friday vacation, not Thursday and Friday ‘away from the office’ that I typically string into an extended sailing weekend with friends.

Hearing of the small craft advisory for southern California waters did not dissuade me. On the contrary, I was eager for the challenge. I had sailed through gales before, but on much larger boats, and never alone. Now I was in the proverbial and literal eye of the storm – a short respite.

I felt so far from home.

Before the storm resumed, and while it was still early morning, I crawled back into the chilly water and swam from the island back to Windsong, my 29’ Ericson sloop – tenuously anchored, as she was, a hundred yards from shore. Didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you? Spearing the first fish I saw, shamefully, I ate it raw, as there was no time to cook it. I sloppily wrapped up its remains; there might be one more meal before this trip ends – however it ends.

Unsure if I could repair the short in the electrical system, but prepared to sail without an engine, running lights, or GPS – just as I had survived these past twenty-four hours at sea, I changed into my last set of dry clothes, then overlaid these with foulies, although they also were wet.

Windsong was battered but still seaworthy. The mainsail was torn by the gale-force winds, even though it had been reefed at the time. I would have to sail back on the jib alone. Working quickly, I dislodged the battery, yanked a wire out of the galley walls, running it straight from the battery to the main panel. When power was restored, the glow plug was operable again and the motor fired up. I prepped for departure.

Nice to have the bilge pump functional once more.

The clouds were setting in and the wind started to pick up, occasionally gusting at forty-seven knots – a strong gale. At about eighty knots the eye of a hurricane will start to form, although hurricanes are almost unheard of in these waters. I figured that this was as bad as the weather would get. With the recovery of electrical power, I discovered my location from the GPS.

I was at San Miguel Island, the most western of southern California’s Channel Islands.

Following the advice I learned from a boating safety class taught by the Coast Guard Auxiliary, in order to run out a storm – in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway, put the wind on the port stern. Weather patterns being what they are, on this bearing, your craft won’t remain in the storm longer than necessary. When the storm subsides, reclaim your bearings and draw up a new course.

The last day and night I was blown forty miles off of my charted route. Luckily I drifted – with a badly torn main and no power mind you, into the backwash of San Miguel Island. The next land on this westerly trajectory would have been Hawaii.

Pretending, naturally, that Windsong and I would have survived.

The weather turned foul again, this time the wind coming from the northwest. Without a working main, I partially unfurled the jenny to uniquely power-sail on a broad reach with just the jenny. Windsong and I cruised a delicate line along the Santa Barbara passage, between the underlying eddies and rebounding backwash from the island.

Fighting six to eight foot wind waves, steady thirty-five knot gale winds at the stern and a nasty following sea, I felt that I had no choice but to completely unfurl the jenny from the roller furling – which now behaved more like a spinnaker, pulling the boat beyond hull speed. Planing the surf now, several times I feared that Windsong might pitchpole.

As it was, the little sailboat climbed the crest of one swell, only to take a pounding when going down the other side – the bow routinely sliding under several feet of water which then rushed aft. The subsequent reverberations of the hull, as Windsong recovered, betrayed the extent of the beating.

The mast and the spreaders shook and twisted with every blow. With each hit – and there were thousands, I wondered if the fiberglass hull might splinter. Maybe the next one. Or the next.

Like playing a game of Russian roulette against a raging sea.

The waves grew to ten feet. I lost the horizon, then could see it again. I feared that the standing rigging might pop loose from the deck; then I would lose the mast. Unable to maintain directionality, the boat would capsize amidst the rushing water.

I had tied together all of the PFDs I could find and lashed them to my harness, hoping that in the event of a sinking, maybe I could drift to shore before succumbing to hypothermia or drowning. Although I lap swim an hour each morning, any efforts to try to swim in this water would have been futile. Better to conserve my strength and hope for a favorable current.

And as northwest gales can blow for forty-eight hours straight – this might be just be the beginning of my problems.

I recognized that the voyage was equally taking its toll on me as it was on Windsong. Even though clipped into the cockpit with the safety harness, several times I was tossed from the helm and slammed against the stern railing. For a while I feared I broke a couple of ribs.

Unsurprisingly, Windsong was the only boat on the water.

The stinging spray of the spindrift across the horizon displayed what I can only describe as a terrible beauty; wave after wave of crushing surf thunderously rolled underneath the hull – effortlessly lifting the boat twenty feet. Wave after wave. Occasionally I found myself directly under a rogue wave – pounded by the brunt of its force as it collapsed over me.

I considered continuing due east. In quick time I would reach the mainland, and from there, find Oxnard Harbor. But I worried about hitting fog, and with the possibility of my jerry-rigged electrical system failing, losing radar and GPS. Better to stay on the open ocean and head to another island – one with a protected harbor.

So I turned due south, shooting between Santa Rosa Island and Santa Cruz Island, through the famed Potato Patch. On this stretch of water, open-ocean currents, originating as far north as Alaska, collide with northwest flowing eddies in a constantly expanding and contracting area.  Due to this inconsistency, monstrous swells unpredictably rise up, creating sudden towering surprises. I experienced several thirty feet high, and needless to say, I was really, really scared. And cold. And wet. And tired.

Heading due south now, way past the Potato Patch and on a course to Cat Harbor, the relentless beating of the waves and wind, going on for several hours had become a steady onslaught. It was now predictable. And it was beginning to bug me. I was no longer afraid; I became angry. Really angry. Not at God, not at myself, and not at Windsong.

The ocean was ticking me off.

So I responded to its terror by singing back at it: the promenade chorus of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. I was giddy now and could not get this tune out of my head. An hour or so later it struck me – I would make it out of this vacation alive.

I kept singing until West End of Catalina Island appeared on the horizon.

I rested one day at Cat Harbor – a protected harbor on Catalina Island that I knew quite well, then the following day, Windsong and I sailed home to Newport.