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Jesse and his pal Paul and I – Capt. Dan – set out on an ASA 104 training cruise. We all learned a lot. The story below starts with the lessons.

No point in having “incidents” if you don’t learn something, right?

Here’s what we (all) learned followed by the narrative of the events that taught us so much.

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Lessons learned
1. The most important quality we must develop as skippers is to stay calm. Our decisions will be more thoughtful, our actions more careful, and the crew will respond in kind. Of all the things we accomplished on this trip,
I am most proud that we all took the events in stride. While at times the prospects were scary, those fears served no purpose, and were forgotten so that the tasks at hand could be attended to.

2. If you’ve been sailing in any kind of heavy weather, and especially if the boat has been knocked down, take a minute to go around the boat or at least have the crew eye the sides of the vessel to check that no lines have come loose and all topside gear is where it should be. Even if you haven’t been in heavy weather, the minute it takes to pass an eye along both sides and the stern of the boat can tell you whether starting the engine is safe or not.

3. Though we never needed to use them, it was critical for us to continue recording known positions. The possibilities of fog and the loss of the GPS would have left us with quite inaccurate positions to give to Vessel Assist or the Coast Guard.

4. Don’t let your guard down. Every decision we make that far away from help can be a decision that keeps us safe, or one that casts us into danger, even if that danger doesn’t manifest itself immediately.

5. Bring more food and water than you think you’ll need. If we had needed to stay offshore for another few days, we had brought enough food and water to do so.

6. Get out there and practice sailing in rough weather as well as light air. Turn off the GPS and use those DR skills for a daytime passage. Go sailing at night and try identifying lights and other ATON’s. They may seem like distant tools, but the more we sail, the more likely it is that we’ll need to use them. And when they’re needed is not the time to break out the notes and try to remember how it’s all done.
ASA 104 circumnavigation of Santa Cruz Island

We have jewels just off our coast. From afar the Channel Islands glitter, they are magnificent to behold, and for the adventurous few, they entice. But as most jewels, they are well protected. I don’t mean the legal protection they well deserve, but rather for the sailor wishing to experience these natural treasures they are protected by the great responsibility we bear to transit them in safety.

This is perhaps the most important change we must adapt to as we move from day-sailing along the coast to truly cruising, far from home, miles offshore. We can’t simply turn around when the weather starts to foul and head home. We have chosen to take our home with us. Our ship and our skills are all the safe harbor we have. It is a different kind of experience, and being faced with its stark reality is something all sailors will face if they persevere. I just got my taste sooner than expected.
We had planned for three days of sailing to navigate around Santa Cruz over Easter weekend for my ASA104 practical skills class, with as many anchorages as we could fit in comfortably along the way. We left Saturday morning in light winds and motored along until the wind freshened. By the time we made our turn at Platform Grace and began to cross the shipping lanes, the wind was near 20 knots, and the larger gusts and growing whitecaps let us know it was time to reef. We made excellent time across the channel, and motored close to shore, investigating the many beautiful anchorages along the northern side of Santa Cruz.

Pelican Bay struck me as a particularly gorgeous anchorage, but it had four boats already snugged up against the western cliff, safely out of the winds. We continued to motor along the coast to the west until we got to Fry’s Anchorage, a deep valley facing north east and well protected from the stiff winds that were forecasted for the evening (up to 25 knots).

Fry’s is a small anchorage, and we needed to set two hooks: bow and stern. It took us three tries before we really felt comfortable that the bow anchor had set. We settled in, not about 30 feet from the cliffs.

Captain Dan and I slept in the cockpit that night on a never-ending anchor watch, while the friend I brought to crew slept carefree below.

The wind blew hard down the valley and around the western, twisting the boat back and forth all night.

The anchors held us snug within a few feet of our initial position. Next morning found us underway around 8am after a pot of coffee.
We headed out close hauled to the wind, and made a fast pace of it, averaging 6.5 knots in 16-18 knots of wind. We were about 3nm off the coast of the island when we tacked back toward the island, again close hauled, and managed to clear the West Point on Santa Cruz. Rounding the western end of the island, the winds built to 18-22 knots, with gusts of 25. The seas grew to 6 to 10 feet, with whitecaps and the beginning os spindrift all around us. The Santa Cruz – the lane between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa – was an exciting transit as we worked into a rhythm controlling Rainbow on a broad reach in following seas. It was just about 11 am when we rounded the south-western point of Santa Cruz and came around a short rock reef and a gap in the kelp to anchor in the shallow’s of Forney’s Cove. The cove was almost completely unprotected from the wind out of the west-northwest, but it was blowing offshore, and the water was well protected and calm. We ate bacon and scrambled eggs for a late breakfast.

Out of Forney’s, we were ripping down the southern shore of Santa Cruz, with large following seas and 16 to 20 knot winds, we were on a dead run, often wing-on-wing and averaging 7 knots boat speed. The knot log neared 8 in several gusts. We were having a blast until…

The wind stopped. In a matter of minutes we went from gale conditions to nearly dead calm, then increasing to 8-10. Captain Dan, having gotten such poor sleep the night before headed below for a nap, leaving my friend Paul and I to drive the boat eastern end of the island when we were to wake him.

As luck would have it, not five minutes after he went below, the winds shifted astern, making our course one long Jibe-watch. I decided to tack around 270 degrees and move farther offshore. Not 15 minutes later on this new course, the wind went from 10-12 knots to 25+. I told Paul we needed to tack again and he made ready to handle the Jib sheets. As I turned Rainbow into the wind, a big gust hit us at just that moment, knocking the boat down on its Port side.

That managed to get Dan up out of the cabin, wondering what in the hell had happened. I got control of the boat after a tense minute and pointed it into the wind so we could reef the main. Once everything was stabilized, we headed back east towards our next anchorage in Smugglers Cove.

It was perhaps 30 minutes later when the wind died entirely, leaving us drifting at 2 knots. We decided it was time to fire up the engines and charge the batteries while we were at it.
Captain Dan started the diesel and I went below to switch the batteries from “1″ to “Both”. Just as I threw the dial to “Both”, Dan engaged the engine, and it made a horrid chunking sound and died. It was completely seized in gear, and could not be disengaged to Neutral. We were dead in the water with no engine. Because the engine had died while the battery dial was being changed, we were convinced it had to be some kind of electrical problem. This was the most unfortunate coincidence, as it kept us from seriously considering more likely problems for quite awhile.

While the crew chef, Paul, made his pork ribs on the BBQ, we puzzled over what to do. We could try to sail into Smuggler’s, but there was no wind and we would likely arrive at night, without an engine, at the mercy of the weather, and anchoring with many boats nearby didn’t sound like a safe idea. We could continue sailing east, past Anacapa Island, until the weather freshened, at which time we could sail back to Channel Islands Harbor and try to anchor there.

Because it was imperative we stayed away from the coast and other obstacles, we decided against any tactic that would put us nearby land when the wind was so light. We listened to the Weather forecast with some trepidation. The forecast called for a Small Craft Advisory, 15-25+ knot winds, 8-12 foot seas – nothing like the still winds we were experiencing, but as we knew, those conditions could change quickly. It was going to be a long night, and Captain Dan urged us to get sleep if we could…

By nightfall (7:30 or so), we had cleared Santa Cruz and drifted into the outer waters of the Anacapa Passage. Our heading was going to take us well south of Anacapa. We turned on our running lights, and as Dan checked them, we realized that the forward running lights and were inoperative. Night had come and we weren’t going to be the most visible boat on the seas…

The only forward-facing light we had was the steaming light and, though we were not underpower (no matter how much we wished we were) we turned that light on.

I had been taking regular Lat/Long positions since the beginning of the trip, but I started doing this every 15 or 20 minutes at this point. We needed to keep a good record of our position in case we lost any more electronics…

Half-way across the Anacapa Passage, the wind suddenly picked up to 16 knots and was growing. We made a split decision to make a run for the harbor, trying to cross the shipping lanes and the channel while the wind was up. I tried to turn on the Radar so we could mark out potential objects in the channel, but it had failed, giving only an error: “Scanner Unavailable”. Nevertheless, for almost two hours we made good time, sailing in the pitch dark, with huge seas lifting the boat and settling us into deep and dark troughs. At one point a particularly large wave broke into the stern of the boat, soaking my feet. The coastline lights, when they finally came into view, would appear and disappear with the swells. Some swells would blot out the lights of Platform Gina, or in a particularly deep trough I would lose sight of the Anacapa lighthouse. About 1/2 way through this run, the GPS began flickering. I turned it off, for fear of losing it entirely and we ran on in the pitch dark, only the stars and the small red light of the compass and the lights of the coast to guide us. At 9:30 the wind died suddenly and entirely. We were drifting at 1 to 2 knots again, just outside of the northbound shipping lanes, about 4nm offshore and 2nm west of Gina. It was time to call in for help…

We powered up the GPS again, and Captain Dan called for Vessel Assist, the tow-company of the seas, but the radio wasn’t working properly. It transmitted briefly and weakly. Vessel Assist couldn’t read us, only but the Coast Guard heard and responded.

Now it was 20 questions time. They called back and asked if we had an emergency. They could not hear our response, so Dan fished out his hand-held and tried again. Though the signal quality on his hand-held was poor at times, Dan answered the Coast Guard questions dutifully (they were insistent about the full two decimals of Lat and Long seconds to get our position) and we were eventually told that Vessel Assist would be out in an hour or so.

About an half an hour later the Vessel Assist folks called one of our Cell phones (a backup we had given the Coast Guard because the radios were so bad). They had been trying to contact us on the radio without luck. Dan managed to get them on his hand-held with some fiddling, and we told them our position. As luck would have it, the position I gave them was N34-09 by W119-13 – I’m sure many of you recognize that position. There was a long pause as the Vessel Assist folks considered the information we had given them. Finally they come over the radio: “Yeah, can you double-check your current position, the numbers you gave look like a waypoint for Channel Islands Harbor.” We all had a good laugh at that…of all the things we had had to deal with that day, I had clinched my FNG-award with the waypoint position. They would be out to us in an hour or so…

So we waited in the dark, eventually spotting a red and yellow flashing light racing towards us. The Vessel Assist captain called on the radio to confirm the contact. To make a long story short, it was a single guy in a very small fishing-type boat who threw a tow line to us while he maneuvered in the swells. The line he tossed was actually a leader that was attached to the tow-line which was itself a “Y” shaped bridal. The crew-chef Paul clipped into the jack-lines and went to the bow to catch the lead, fixing the two ends of the Y to the two bow cleats. The VA boat then let out about 100 or so feet of tow-line and began to head back to the harbor. Once inside the breakwater, he reeled in the tow-line so there was only about 20 feet between the two ships, and brought us into the main harbor area. At this point he came up alongside on our Port and tied snuggly against us, his bow right at our midships. Making it all look too easy, he pushed us right back into our slip. It was 2am Monday morning…nearly 18 hours of non-stop sailing in often challenging weather. We were cold, tired, and feeling beat to hell. That’s when it was clear what the problem with the engine was…

During the knock-down earlier that day, the extra bit of Jib Halyard that had been coiled and tied so nicely on the port side of the mast had come off and flung across the boat and over the starboard side and had gotten caught up around the prop and when we turned her over.

We made a good mess of it. We had been convinced we had a major transmission problem and some sort of electrical malfunction because of the awful timing of the switch to “Both” on the battery selector.

We went home that night and slept for a few hours. Later in the the following day we met at the boat to clean her up and look over the damage. The engine had been given a good yank, and was obviously not seated properly on the engine mounts, as the back access panel would not sit flush and couldn’t be closed. After a dive to free the Jib Halyard and inspect the prop-shaft and struts, it was clear that while the engine no longer was mounted properly, it was something that could be fixed at the next scheduled haul-out.
Of course after any situation such as this, there is much that becomes clear in hindsight. I review what happened in order to learn all that I can from the experience, and offer both these closing thoughts and the story itself to consider in your own adventures.

Finally, I’d like to thank Captain Dan Ryder for his wisdom and experience, and for sharing them both with me on our grand adventure, and a special thanks to Chris Tucker and Sailtime Channel Islands, who have made it possible for so many of us to sail in the first place.– Jesse Dowler, safe in Ventura, CA

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