McCall, Idaho USA …
Back in February last year we left Idaho in the midst of a mild winter (only ten days of below zero Fahrenheit) and headed back to join Kailani in Simons Town in South Africa with grandiose plans to sail some 9,000 miles crossing the Atlantic Ocean and spending the summer months gunk holing along the east coast of the US and Canada. Well, plans drawn up in the sand at low tide have a way of washing away…but more on that later.
After a couple of weeks of readying Kailani for passage and waiting on a break in the gales to get around the fabled Cape of Storms we headed out on a beautiful morning sweetly sailing south. The wind died as we tacked around the Cape so we started the diesel and motored along waiting for the sea breeze to fill in and resume our planned three-day passage to Namibia under sail. During a routine engine room check we discovered that the bilge was full of water. A quick taste confirmed it was salty and further investigation found a seal was leaking with each turn of the prop shaft. With Cape Town ten miles ahead on the starboard bow we made a bunch of calls with a fading cell signal and arranged a berth, a mechanic and a haul out at the Royal Cape Yacht Club.
The next day was spent languishing in the RCYC bar with Kailani on the railway haul out and us fending off a conversation with an inebriated local who insisted that the world was flat. After he staggered off following a half hour of trying to convince us that we had actually not sailed around the world, but merely sailed in a circle on a flat plane, Sophia wondered aloud if the guy had ever heard of Galileo and his jail time for proving that the world was, in fact, not flat. Another front arrived just as we were launching following the repairs so we tucked back into a berth in the V&A Waterfront and spent the next five days waiting on weather and enjoying South African urban life. With only a limited amount of time to get north of latitude 20N before hurricane season we crossed Namibia off our list, the first change in plans.
Ten days out of Cape Town we made landfall in St. Helena, a rock in the middle of the South Atlantic best known as the place where Napoleon lived out his days in exile. We caught up with some cruising friends, did some sight seeing, celebrated Easter in the oldest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere, saw a whale shark and managed to track down enough eggs to get us through the next 3,000 miles on our planned passage to Barbados (but only by begging every chicken farmer on the island). Jen celebrated her one year anniversary of knee replacement by climbing up (and more significantly, back down) the historic 699 steps of Jacobs Ladder in Jamestown – 600 feet seemingly straight up with over 40% incline!
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean we enjoyed some of our sweetest sailing in years – light trade winds, sunsets enjoyed in the cockpit, nights calm enough to lie on the foredeck stargazing. In total we spent almost 6 weeks at sea, each evening paying homage to our familiar southern hemisphere constellations as they waned in the night sky, making room for the northern hemisphere sky that we have been away from for years.
The passage from the southern to the northern hemisphere involves crossing the dreaded doldrums (technically the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) where in the days of old a sailing ship would be becalmed for days as the fickle equatorial winds or lack thereof kept them clocking around and rolling to the gunwales. Thank goodness for the diesel engine. Now modern cruising sailboats have only to fire up the auxiliary engine and in 18-20 hours motor through the calms to intercept the trade winds on the other side. So when the wind died we started the engine, put the transmission in gear and…THUNK. After the customary use of words that shall not be put to print it was determined that the transmission had catastrophically failed, was not repairable at sea and that our plans would have to change again. So after much chart work and a lot of emails and sat phone calls to a good friend in the U.S. (thank you Mr. Sullivan) we decided to make for Grenada where we could haul out and effect repairs. Like the cursed sailors before us, it took us almost an entire week to extricate Kailani from the clutches of the doldrums so by the time we made landfall in Grenada (a story in itself given no engine, a narrow reef lined harbor entrance and a crowded anchorage) it was too late to get north before the advent of hurricane season. Scratch off the east coast and Canada.
So as we write this Kailani sits on the hard in St David’s Bay, Grenada, at the bottom end of the Windward Islands, chained down for hurricane season and gathering boatyard dust. The work list we left behind is getting done, but the progress has been agonizingly slow. In hindsight, however, things seem to happen for a reason. We have been able to use this unplanned extended time on land to catch up with friends and family back here in the States as well as deal with some family issues. Sadly, Jen’s mom was diagnosed with dementia and can no longer live alone, so we moved her in with us here in Idaho at the end of summer. While here she has enjoyed snowfall and winter, even taking to helping Harley build and maintain a backyard ice rink (she has earned the nick-name “Zamboni-Oen”!). By the end of January she will be moved in to an excellent memory care facility back in San Diego. This is the longest we have spent in Idaho since building our home here, so we have attacked the Idaho winter with gusto: Jen has taken up classic cross country skiing; when not in school Sophia’s activities include swimming, snowshoeing, skiing, sledding, ice-skating, and even ice-fishing; and in addition to playing hockey, Harley takes every chance to be outside, mostly for the stated cause of clearing snow, but likely motivated by a need for a break from this special house of women: puberty, menopause, and dementia! What a lucky man!
We spend much of our long winter nights (currently 16 hours of dark) discussing where to sail next. The odds are that we take up where we left off, but we all hear the siren song of the South Pacific running in the background. Sophia, who holds the lowest shipboard rank but who often is the sole voice of reason, has declared she would like to go through the Panama Canal. We will head back to Kailani in March … check with us this time next year to see how it turns out.
Our very best to all of you and yours for the coming year.
Anchor Ranch
McCall, Idaho USA
