Hi!
Sorry for the lagging blog update. So the trip that started on Monday in San Diego did not come to a close until very late friday evening, and I have spent the last day or so recovering - so exhausted! All in all, Alisa and I had an extremely fun albeit hairy time coaxing BOBBIE up the coast. Had we been filming with some sort of focus or consistency we probably would have had enough footage for some high-dramz TV show.
We shoved off from San Diego late Monday afternoon, after finishing some last minute work with the mechanic and pitstopping at the fuel dock. It was a pretty windless afternoon so we motored for a couple hours before shutting the engine off and letting the sails take over. We went to recrank the engine not long after but it refused to fire. Phoned Nico, the mechanic, and he agreed to come out into the bay to take a look at it. Alisa and I ran the boat in circles for a couple hours waiting for him to arrive. I guess for some reason we thought he’d be coming in a a small little speedboat but it turns out he was abaord another sailboat so for him to get to us we had to sail side-by-side in order for him to make the jump aboard! After a bit of tinkering he was able to get it restarted but advised us to return to harbor in order to change out a few of the injector washers he thought were problematic. Better safe than sorry, we obliged and were dockside again by 1 AM. After an immensely restful bout of sleep we woke and began to get things rolling again. Another adorable mechanic, Martin, came over to do the washer swap while alisa and I grabbed showers and breakfast. We pushed off again for the second time round noon and had a fantastic day motorsailing up the infamously light-wind stretch of coast. We started watches around 9 PM that evening and when i awoke at 1030 for my turn i nearly choked as the cabin was filled with the dense smell of sulphur. I hopped up on deck with Alisa but our attention was nearly immediately drawn to a couple of cargoships off our stern. A few minutes after I took the helm I noticed the engine’s temp gauge was running extremely high so I immediately shut down the engine. as i crawled below into the battery well it was evident the source of the strench - the main house battery was being fried! I cut all power to stop the steam and so i could attempt to reroute the wires through some smaller spare batteries onboard. Every combination of re-connections available was tried but with no luck - we were electricity-less, and at nighttime this means lightless. so with no engine and no lights to differentiate our tiny boat from the great black night we found ourselves faced with an extremely dangerous situation. I armed Alisa with my LED headlamp and had her direct it towards the mainsail in hopes of putting out the best signal of our position the approaching ships. After a handful of very tense minutes we got a response - the ship has seen us and signaled with its spotlight that it would re-route. To say this was a sleepless night would be an understatement. you really cant imagine how nervewracking sitting in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes in southern California with no communication or mobility can be. I really dont recommend it. So we made it though the night and the sunrise was a welcome sight.
The following morning was also fraught with zero wind, so we effectively just bobbed in place for hours on end making no progress towards our destination. But the quiet was a nice gift - we were able to hear much more clearly when there were animals around the boat. All in that one morning we saw a pod of mini-dolphins, a finback whale, a friendly seal, and couple of flying fish pass by - not bad! Later that day, with little progress we decided to reroute and head for catalina island, a harbor I’ve been many times and a place I knew we’d be able to address some of the problems we were having. The winds picked up early afternoon and we made great time arriving into Isthmus Cove by 6PM. We made for shore and gorged ourselves on fish and chips and a couple pints. We grabbed some showers and hit the sack. The next morning we phoned harbor patrol for a jump that would bypass the electrical system and get the engine up and running. We motored out of the harbor around 1 and had a terrfic day tearing acorss the pacific back towards Marina del Rey. It was a pretty incident-free stretch until the engine choked about 10 miles out so we arranged for a tow once we arrived outside of port. After an extremely wild ride bridled to the back of a speed boat, we were safely tied up in MDR in time for dinner. Alisa was a real trooper for hanging in through all the madness, it definitely was alot more harrowing than what she signed up for…but she really handled it all like a pro! In retrospect I’m really glad we had so many problems on the trek - after all that’s what shake-down cruises are for. Now I feel a lot more confident in what works and what needs some serious revisiting. That said, back to work for me now. We took heaps of photos and videos which I’ll get up here asap, for now here’s a couple quick snaps from Catalina Island:
I’m still at sea.
This post is from my first voyage, sailing alone around the world from 2009 to 2015. These days I live aboard El Dorado in France and send dispatches from the boat.
Get the dispatches on Substack →
Or get real mail from the boat: the Foreign Correspondence Club.