The Passages

Written Dec 2019.

Our first major passage was a grand total of 5 days, 4 nights, starting on Lopez Island and arriving in Crescent City, California which I can confidently say I do not suggest to the beginner offshore sailor. Primarily, because it was a week of firsts, including our first overnight sail, and multiple day sail for both my sister and I, as well as being our first time as a collective family undertaking the multiple day sail. I believe I can say that it was exhausting for all and perhaps, made that much more complicated due to the fact that it is the first time we had spent this much time with each other in close quarters, with extremely limited options for personal space. As you can imagine the conditions and lifestyle took some getting used to, and most of us got sea sick, despite preparing ahead of time and taking the right medication. However, my poor mum got really sick on those first days, as her sea legs didn’t quite come as easily as they did to Paul and Isabelle. We found that when we went below we had, give or take, a total of ten to twenty minutes of moving about the boat before we felt completely nauseous and needed to lie down or head back up on deck. However, we all figured out tips and tricks for getting food quickly or getting changed out of our foul weather gear fairly quickly and were able to manage our symptoms in that way. Our watches were six hours on and six hours off, as we partnered on watches, placing a more experienced sailor (Paul and Jo) with a fairly inexperienced sailor (Isabelle and I), to ensure the safety of the vessel and all. The watches themselves were fairly uneventful and consisted of trimming, raising or lowering the sails, consistently checking the engine temp, fuel levels, radar, and chart and adjusting our course as needed. In addition, on the hour we inscribed the log book with our current location, wind speed, boat speed, barometer reading, conditions of the wind and waves around us and anything else that we feel necessary to write down. When written down, that sounds like quite a lot of different things to be managing but with two people, it wasn’t much to handle and there were quite a few periods of time where we could simply read our books or otherwise engage ourselves. When we were off watch, we spent the entirety of the time, if possible, resting, so as to make sure we were ready and able for our next watch. I hope that description was able to give a sense of how life goes on the boat while we are on passage and I shall refrain from going into detail about the way things work in future posts unless necessary to explain something else. All in all, it was a rather large learning curve for all of us I believe, but an exciting start to this grand adventure we are on. 

For me, it was almost a moment of disbelief and shock that started when we left the dock in Bellingham Bay, with our friends and family waving at us and sending good wishes, and continued to when we were alone, sailing through the San Juan Islands and I had the (albeit cheesy) moment of realization that were finally embarking on this adventure we had been building up to for weeks, months, years even. I confidently say that so far this trip has managed to completely exceed any expectations I might have had but also has provided many unexpected moments that we could not have fathomed before. I am thankful for the opportunity and extremely grateful for all of the hard work that my parents put in to make this trip, the boat, their dream, a reality and that they gave us this incredible, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that perhaps would never had been something that any of us would have experienced had they not made it happen.

More posts and stories to come, playing catch up on sharing all of our adventures right now and giving people a sense of what its like to live and sail aboard SV/Tomten!

With love,

Rosie