Once we had finished with Victoria, it was time to start truly heading south and bracing ourselves for crossing the border in the USA and truly begin this adventure.
I don’t think I am alone in feeling minor/major anxiety about border crossings, and I just can’t shake the feeling that I am doing something wrong. But crossing the border by boat was giving Matt and I a bit of extra worries. What if we didn’t eat through all of our apples? Will they make us empty out our stores of food? Will they confiscate my dill pickle chips?!
Turns out we had nothing to worry about. After leaving Oak Bay marina (saying farewell to our fellow Pearson 424 friends who live there), we made the few hour journey to Port Angeles to officially enter the US. After a quick app download and scan of our documents while we were under way, we had a brief video call with a border agent and boom - we were granted access. We didn’t have to go to a booth or have anyone board the boat or anything. We were SO grateful. The first mountain was climbed!
Luckily, Pt Angeles had everything we needed, like groceries and fuel (yay for cheap American fuel!), we topped up our stores and prepared to hop to Neah Bay before making the big left turn south.
The weather was so calm and bright that on the morning we left, we decided, let’s just keep going - let’s not stop at Neah Bay and just do this passage! We were fine with weather being stagnant rather than too windy, and we opted for using the motor over the sails instead of waiting for more wind. This was our first passage after all, and we had nothing to prove.
The ocean swells started right as we were taking in Cape Flattery at golden hour and we were all loving it for a little while. But it didn’t take long for the ocean to show us what it’s really like. The open ocean is very different than our Salish sea and various straights we’d been through. It wasn’t rough so much as relentless and wide. We weren’t surprised but it took some getting used to.
We took it all in stride and all hunkered down for some watches. Matt and I seemed to work best with 2 hour watches,, and we weren’t comfortable with the kids doing overnight watches yet. Nor were they interested. Ha!
We did some pretty serious “mountain sailing”, as our friend called it, that first morning after night watch and it was really something to behold: waves so big they feel like they should swallow you up, but a boat is made to ride those waves dreamily and our boat sure did. She handled so well and we weren’t so much afraid, as in constant awe.
Luckily the weather calmed down and the further we got from shore, the more and more stretched out the swells became. We reached about 50 nautical miles offshore and that seemed to be manageable. We could even still get cell reception at times.
We all had some good moments and less than good moments, but overall, it was an unremarkable passage - and a total success. Some highlights were having a huge pod of dolphins off the bow of the boat (anyone who has experienced this knows how much it buoys the spirit - it’s as close as you can get to magic on earth), and then we reeled in our first tuna (albacore and delicious), we made pancakes one morning and the kids could have a movie night as it got dark.
Some nights it was popcorn for dinner, some nights it was fend-for-yourself. There was a lot of crackers and Gravol consumed (mostly by me), but no one got sick and though we were tired, we all managed to sneak in rest when we could.
My biggest issue was being cold at night. I wore all of the layers I could and it still barely cut it. That was unexpected, but we managed. With the motor running often, we had unlimited hot water so a hot water bottle in the cockpit at night was a special treat.
After 4 days and 4 nights out on the ocean, with barely any land in sight, we finally tucked into Trinidad, California, in a mostly protected bay. We dropped the hook in the morning and Matt and I both slept blissfully until noon when we decided we should explore shore. We all felt the need to celebrate our accomplishments, and found the mostly delicious fries on shore and tried to fight the land-sickness.
We are so proud of ourselves. I know it’s not the longest distance ever, but it was tough and it was a big deal but we made it in one piece with mostly good memories. This really tested us all, and we all learnt a lot throughout - and it turns out, we make a pretty good team.
Now we get to bop our way down the California cost (somewhat inhospitable to sailboats, btw) and aim to hit San Francisco. We look forward to meeting more cruisers heading in the same direction and hopefully feeling some California weather.
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