Author: mlmlyrae

04:15 am, N 28d 55.9’, W 116d 03.2’

Clear skies, stars, a huge moon. We are no longer just going to Baja, we are there. What we’ve planned is playing out. We are closing in on Bahia Tortuga, our first stop down the coast of Baja, where we get to lay up for a few nights to relax, enjoy a party or two with the other rally boats, eat some restaurant food and hopefully play with some other boat kids. Tacos, cold beer, sandy beaches! Tacos, gold beer, sandy beaches! We still have the last 100nm to go today, but we’re chugging away waiting for the winds to come up. This trip is about 330 nm direct, and more like 400 nm if you don’t just run dead down wind. I’ll note that some of the fleet got a good start, went hard with their spinnakers and were able to stay on the end of what seemed like a passing wave of wind this entire passage. We started only 90 minutes behind the pack and I opted to swing out to sea while the seas were calm so that if/when the seas come up, we would be able to run with the waves behind instead of abeam, a much more comfortable point of sail for the entire crew. Think less puking kids.

Yesterday we got about 6 hours of sweet sailing in the late afternoon / evening. Not enough for anyone’s taste, but enough to keep you coming back for another day. It’s like hitting a great drive on the 18th hole. LJ’s still under the weather but she’s tireless, cooking all meals, doing school, entertaining the kids, cleaning the boat and still sitting her night watch. Adam is great crew, taking trustworthy watches so LJ and I can sleep and entertaining the kids like a fun uncle. The boats doing well so far. We’re clean, warm, dry, plenty of water and plenty of electrons. And when the wind goes over 8 knots, she’s an easy sailer. We can make 6 knots overground in 9 knots of wind with just the jib and main, and we could make 7-8 if we unfurl the code0 (today’s plan after researching predicted conditions). For now the crew is settling in and getting comfortable. It’s our kids’ first multi-night passage. The seas are very calm, nothing like the PNW passage, and the weather is warm. Hot during the day and I’m thankful for shade.

Seeing the photos from Orcas over the last week has given me the first real homesickness since I left in August. Orcas on a sunny fall day is beautiful. I miss those crisp mornings, the smell of freshness that comes with fall, the community’s relief as the tourist season fades and the locals return from their summer travels. I miss going to Chris’ gym to workout with my friends. I miss my little office in town. I miss waking up and looking out over the cove. I miss drinking a cup of coffee staring down East Sound to Blakely island. I miss bumping into neighbors on the drive to school. I miss eating lunch at the market. I really miss the Halloween party in town. What a tradition! I miss coaching soccer with Brian and sitting quietly in the Oddfellows hall through the girls’ ballet class taught by his wife. I miss golfing with my friends. I miss fall racing with the J Pod. I miss the satisfaction of finishing a fully stocked woodpile. I miss playing pool at Bruce’s and planning next season’s boating adventures north. I miss soaking in our redneck hot tub with LJ looking at the stars.

Maybe I’m getting older? Maybe I’m getting more honest with myself? Maybe a decade of investment in making a new place home is paying off? I don’t know. We have an incredible life there, and it’s one of a kind place. I’m enjoying this adventure, I’m surrounded by family and friends this whole time. I’m so lucky to know that we have found our home, and to have a place to return to with smiles on our face instead of the dread of reality. We aren’t coming home anytime soon, but I look forward to the day we do. Onward!

The worst wounds are often self inflicted. We’ve had a slow freshwater leak from our plumbing in the starboard hull all season. On a monohull with a bilge sump it would go largely unnoticed. The water would pool in the sump and be pumped out every few hours without you noticing. On a flat bilge catamaran it’s totally different. Every drop of water sloshes around but it would take tens of gallons to get high enough for the bilge pump to suck it out. So until we get really motivated, or until the leak worsens, I’ve just been sponging it up occasionally. Think one gallon a month maybe. But, we have been suspicious of a mixing valve that lets us select saltwater or freshwater for toilet flushing. Fresh is way better as you don’t have dying sea creatures in your plumbing and holding tanks, but it’s nice to have saltwater as a backup in case the watermaker dies on passage. And the saltwater system is one I never use, so I usually just leave it in it’s winterized state, which means full of red rv antifreeze. So when we see red or pink in the bilge it’s a hint of where it came from.

Fast forward to Monday when we moved the boat from the Long Beach YC dock across the fairway to a safe spot we could leave her while we went to Disney. We filled the fuel tanks on the way to be ready to depart to San Diego. And we took the time to top up our aft storage tanks. Lyrae is a specially outfitted Outremer that has double the fuel storage of standard. We carry nearly 200 gallons of diesel and, at 0.6g/hour per engine; that’s quite a range (we use one engine when on passage to run at 5.5 knots). So after fueling, tying up and getting ready to leave the boat for a Disneyland hotel earl the next morning, I did a final check of the bilge and saw just a tiny bit of liquid in the usual spot. Sierra asked “why is it pink?”, to which I smugly answered “that’s because we have a small leak and it’s coming from the saltwater plumbing.” I’m extra smug now because that’s a new mixing valve that LJ installed, not me 😉

Fast forward a week and we’re back on the boat after an amazing time at Disney. We saw friends from Orcas (4 different kid families!) and even had a sleepover party Friday night. Saturday morning we said a sad goodby to Long Beach and our friends and headed out to make the 30 nm run to Dana Point. We motored about half the time and after dropping the sails and turning towards port I went below to check a few things and I found … traces of red liquid in the port bilge. Note, this bilge has been dry since I fixed a holding tank leak this spring. The symptom of that was red antifreeze leaking from the holding tank over the winter into the bilge. “Dammit”, I thought, “do I have another poop water problem?” After staring at the small puddle of red liquid, I did what I should always do. I touched it. Slimy. But I know at least 3 red liquids on the boat that are slimy: rv antifreeze, yanmar engine coolant, and diesel. So I tasted it. DIESEL IN THE BILGE!! Oh boy. There are diesel fuel lines running all through the deepest darkest unreachable corners of this boat. If we have a diesel leak it means a week of tearing the boat apart with a few mechanics. Think ‘pull the couch and fridge and sink out of the salon’ style tear up the boat. More than we’ve ever done before. So I start pulling up floorboards and working my way to the deepest part of the bilge. Ugh, a serious puddle. A gallon? A few gallons? Dammit. Panic. Breathe. Panic some more. Dread telling wife. Breathe. Think. Huh. Remember when Sierra noticed the starboard bilge water was red? And I smugly told her it was antifreeze from MOM’s mixing valve?! Uh oh. Head to starboard. Pull up the bilge board. Red slimy liquid. Taste it — diesel. Ok. Panic starts to subside. What are the odds of blowing a line on both sides at exactly the same time? That’s low. So now my analysis moves into the dreaded zone — what have I touched? What did I do differently? Think…. The fuel transfer system. I have been chasing a slow vent on the aft port tank and the forward starboard tank. I’ve had luck leaving the transfer manifold that connects tanks open in the past, and when the tanks are full that allows air to transfer between the tanks. But I’ve never left it open to the aft storage tanks until I refueld Monday, precisely the day Sierra noticed the pink bilge liquid. Aha. So I peel up the beds that cover the aft storage tanks. They’re full, like overfull. And dribbling out around a fitting or two on the top. Where do that extra fuel come from?! Huh. Check the front supply tanks. Starboard is full, and port is — half empty?! WTH, that should be full! Ok, then I finally inspect my fuel polishing and transfer system that I’m so proud of and realize that the diesel return line for the port tank has an easier path sending the fuel to the aft storage tanks than into the port supply tank like it’s supposed to. And if some idiot leaves those transfer valves open, my yanmar engine has been happily overfilling the aft storage tanks. It’s doing exactly what I told it to do, I was just an idiot. Diesel plumbing is just like computer programming. It does exactly what you tell it to.

So after buying 100 absorb pads at Westmarine, getting half naked and mopping up the bilge while listening to MSU get annihilated by UM, I couldn’t help but think how the worst wounds are often self inflicted. To her credit LJ didn’t freak out, and to be honest I don’t think she can even smell diesel as it’s in her blood from a childhood on boats. There’s still more after-mess to deal with (some of the bilge is inaccessible). But I understand what happened, I don’t think we caused any lasting harm (my kids brains are already mostly developed, what’s a day of benzene fumes really gonna do to them…), and I’ve learned yet again not to be so damn smug to say I know an answer to a question before stopping, thinking, listening and … tasting.

Those thoughts were running through my confused and foggy brain at 3am as I slowly shook the sleep from my head and sat down to pee (on our boat, everyone pees sitting down, First Mate’s rules). My sea legs were wobbly and I was glad for all the fiddles and hand holds in this amazing boat as I had just made my way up the companionway from the aft cabin into the big bathroom off the salon of this large catamaran. “Where are we? What’s the sail plan? Who’s on watch? What’s the wind? And holy shit, when did we put a bathtub and subway tile in our head?!” Only then did I realize that I wasn’t on Lyrae. We don’t have a big bathroom off the salon. I was in my underwear, on land, in Alameda, CA. Not only were we in the home of LJ’s old mentor, boss and skipper Fred, but I had wandered out of the guest room in my underwear, up the stairs and into Fred and Rose’s private bedroom suite! They were literal feet away and I was peeing with the door open. Oh boy. Shhhhhh.

We were on our way to go backpacking in Yosemite. It had been well over a week since I had sailed under the Golden Gate and tied up in Sausalito. The boat and crew did great, no injuries or real damage beyond regular passage wear and tear. I was relieved. But over the next week I realized just how much stress and anxiety I had been carrying through the lead up to departure and through the passage. We have done a lot of work on this boat, and a lot of it ourselves. I got way outside of my comfort zone with mechanical, electrical, plumbing, rigging, sails, etc. How many hose clamps, ball valves and pieces of plumbing had I touched? And how could those two tiny hose clamps mean the difference between the bilge being clean and dry and the boat sinking from the inside out?! “Does that port sail drive sound a little more hydraulic to you than starboard?” Oh god, I really hope I got that gear lash adjusted properly and the whole thing doesn’t explode (we had to motor for 2+ days of the passage). But more importantly — did I have the right sail plan? Had I interpreted the weather models properly? Could I really reef running downwind if the following seas didn’t allow us to turn up? Did I really know how to sail a catamaran at all?! Why oh why hadn’t I spent more time flying the code0! Just constant low level anxiety. When I sleept it was for 1-2 hours at most. From my berth I could quietly check the wind, weather, speed, chart and everything on my phone, so I didn’t have to constantly run up to the helm to check. There was one terrifying shrill alarm, on the very first night, as we were motoring on the port engine that woke me (and I think the entire boat). After shutting down the autopilot, VHF and engine, it stopped. I still don’t know what it was or where it came from, but the systems all checked out fine on inspection. And yes, it’s the first time I dropped into the engine room in the dark wearing underwear and a PFD while harnessed into the amazing jack lines LJ installed everywhere (thank god for LJ).

And LJ. I really missed having LJ on the boat. Yes we’re married and it’s not always roses. We bicker, we both have pretty strong ideas about the best way to do things, etc, etc. But she is a partner like no other. We bring different approaches to a conflict or a crises, but when push comes to shove, there’s nobody I’d rather have in my corner. There are so many critical systems on this boat that are on her side of the spreadsheet: sails, rigging, provisions, safety, medical. “Oh, you need a new system to take the load of the reefing line? Gimme 5 minutes— I’ll splice something up for you from my spare dynema.” And she does. That, my friends, is very, very rare. And that gives me deep confidence that we can overcome problems. And she wan’t on the boat, and I was anxious.

But overall, I had asked for this. I wanted to be anxious. I needed to stand on my own two feet. One of the big reasons I want to do this at all is to feel alive. I missed feeling a sense of urgency. I want my kids to understand that you can’t always just type on a laptop and zoom all day for a living and pay money to have your problems solved. I want them to end up like LJ, who can fix anything without ever having the right tools or materials, because she grew up on a boat. I want them to understand that adventure means soldering new components onto a watermarker board while in a pristine anchorage, or rigging a temporary ground wire 150 miles offshore for the fuel transfer pump that somehow got miswired right after I tested it in the boat yard this March (ugh). Not so long ago I had a physics lab as a supply of never ending puzzles. Now we have a boat. But this type of living feels more real, more immediate, more exciting, more human and yes — more stressful. Luckily I seem to be coping OK. I’ve quit adventure peeing in the middle of the night, so I’ve got that going for me. Now it’s time to gear up for the next passage, this time with the kids and, thank God, LJ.