July 4th Weekend 2003
Voyage 10, Marina del Rey/Two Harbors Catalina Island, July 3-6,2004
Catalina July 2003
Who knows when the ordinary becomes the extraordinary ? The question becomes even more clouded when the question is judged by a human being who is in the middle of such a situation. A wave can be measured, a breeze can be clocked, but can you measure state of mind ?
All that I can say is that the line was crossed sometime on July 4th. The ordinary was left behind for something more exciting, more dangerous, more extraordinary. In the days since the trip, I have been accused of exaggerating the details—which I freely agree I am guilty of—but what I intend to relate here is my experience. No hyperbole allowed. I will warn you now, it will be long...
July 4th started as a day of anticipation, it was my first Catalina crossing. Almost a forty mile trip to the island lay ahead, with twenty six of those miles being open ocean. And that was IF we made it out of the slip. On all previous successful sails, Ron had been on board to help me. Each time we had made it out without a hitch. On my only time out with Danny, who was with me this time, we had not made it out of the slip. My inexperience with the engine throttle had caused us to lose a battle with the wind and get blown sideways into the dock. But today offered new hope, besides having gone out one more time since with Ron, and getting a bit more comfortable with the engine, I had an all or nothing attitude going. Ron was already anchored off Catalina, to not be successful in getting there would be a pretty high profile blow to my sailing skills. It was do or die trying...
I loaded up with far too much alcohol and food at the Von’s and then headed to pick up Danny. We then managed to get everything packed aboard and the boat setup for a roughly noon departure. I had intended to leave by 10am, but I ran behind all morning, in hindsight, this delay probably exposed us to the gustier winds which come up in the late afternoon. With The Heart of Gold loaded and ready, Danny and I got to our stations and got underway. Getting out of the slip was a breeze—as smooth as my times with Ron crewing. We motored through the harbor, hoisted the main and cleared the breakwater just after noon. Unfurling the jib we cut the engine and proceeded under sail to Two Harbors. From this point on, the sail can be broken into three segments—the smooth part, the hurricane and the aftermath...
The smooth part started as we cleared the breakwater and pointed toward Two Harbors. The wind was a nice steady 10-12 knots, waves were the normal westerly swell maybe 2 to 3 feet, 3 to 4 seconds apart with some larger sets in the mix. This pattern held for about 2 ½ hours, as we passed the El Segundo tankers, Redondo and then Point Vicente. Danny and I took turns at the helm, made a few phone calls and even took a picture or two. Note the smile, it soon faded.
The ‘hurricane’ hit as we entered the San Pedro channel. At first it seemed just like an afternoon in Santa Monica Bay, where about 3pm the water starts to get rough as the wind peaks and starts to break up the swell into choppy waves. The same process seemed to be playing out as we crossed the channel, but both the waves and the wind seemed to increase as the afternoon progressed. And by 4:30—about the time the wind would die in Santa Monica Bay—the wind in the channel had to be blowing a good 20 knots with extremely choppy wave conditions. And as we fought through the conditions, the helm really starting getting heavy. And to add more misery, every 4th or 5th wave would bring the bow out of the water and we would settle with a crash. TO ME ( Ron has a different opinion) it seemed that with the sails set correctly we were going too fast and then launching off the backside of various waves. Therefore my solution was to ease the sails and try to slow us down, but the results seemed to be the same---more crashing through the waves. After maybe an hour of this, I realized that the wind wasn’t dropping like I was used to seeing back in Santa Monica Bay and it just kept up its pace into the 5 o’clock hour. At some point during this time is when my brain’s circuits for fear and panic went dead, due in equal parts to the fact that they had long ago registered readings off the charts AND because they had to go off if I was going to continue helming the boat. At several times I just wanted Danny to take over, but I had to dismiss this thought. After all this was my boat. Why hand it over to him in the darkest of hours ? I also found myself wishing we could just turn this all off, like a video game or something---“alright, that got a little tough, let’s just try it again tomorrow.” Of course that wasn’t going to happen. As time wore on for what seemed like an eternity, I started to try to guess when things would improve. The west end of Catalina was in sight and I hoped that as we got further into the wave shadow of the island that the chop would subside and we would stop launching off the waves. However much to my disappointment, passing behind Westend didn’t see to make things better at all. With that hope dashed, I then started trying to make myself believe that I felt that the wind was dropping—even though we were hauling along at the same speed as before. The ‘believe its getting better’ dream went on for maybe another 30 minutes before I realized that it wasn’t getting better. And at that point I asked Danny to furl in the jib a bit to try to slow us even further. Bobbing in the middle of the ocean I can take, watching my hull crash down into the trough of a wave I couldn’t take. As we slowed further things seemed to get better. The boat was wallowing around a bit more, but there were fewer launches off the backside of waves. This continued for another half hour and during this period the weather started to improve. The wave heights seemed to diminish by half in about a 15 minute period and also the wind started getting really gusty with a lot of dead spots in between. Behavior I knew meant that the wind was about to blow out for the day. As things improved, I asked Danny to completely furl the jib and get ready to power up. Even though enough wind remained to sail to Two Harbors, I’d had enough of sailing for one day. I was ready to go power the rest of the way.
I don’t know when I entered the ‘aftermath’ period of the day. All I knew was that I was glad for two things. First, we were still afloat, second, our destination was in sight. We were able to raise Ron on the radio and he could spot us, “yes, we’re the boat with the sails down, yes, we furled them, we’ll tell you why when we get there.” It took about 45 minutes under power to get to our anchoring spot next to Ron. Originally I thought the anchoring part was going to be the worst part of the day. In fact, it had been my major source of worry over the previous few days. I knew I was going to have to maneuver in close proximity to other boats, and my big fear was running into someone. But as we pulled up, hitting something no longer seemed to matter. I was within 100 yards of land, I could swim it I hit something and sank. An hour earlier in the channel, there was nothing to swim to. I circled in and around Ron, dropped the bow anchor and then let Ron take my stern anchor with the dinghy. As we got set, I killed the engine and then sat back and just stared at the sky. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t sad, I was just...emotion seemed to be stripped away from me at that point.
As the shock wore off, I went below deck and grabbed the champagne I had tossed in the ice chest earlier in the day. However, rather than offering a toast, I shot the cork off and then poured it all down the cockpit drain. I pulled out a pen and then wrote a brief message on the label and then signed it. I passed it to Danny and asked him to do the same. His message: “the sea was angry this day my friend.” A fitting end to the struggle that this day had seen.
The rest of the trip was anticlimactic. We had a good July 4th—a little weary, but good. We enjoyed the fireworks over the isthmus, had a few drinks at the bar and just relaxed. The sail home was uneventful—due in most part to the fact that we motored all the way with only the main up. I had wanted minimize any chances of a repeat, so we left about 10am from Two Harbors and pulled into my slip about 3pm—well before the afternoon weather antics.
Looking back on it, I would have to say this was a learning experience. I learned how to silence that voice in my head that said ‘forget this, jump overboard and let’s swim for it!’ But in all seriousness, I think it strengthened my resolve in dealing with the tough situations that any sailor will have to face at one point or another. And then the final question...would I do this again ? Exactly a year later I did...but this time, I crossed the channel at night...
