Facing Open Ocean Alone, Part 5

BY ADRIAN JOHNSON

I rush out of the cabin as the sails are spinning the boat around, still pinned down. Suddenly the boat frees herself, and I watch a spongy dark form move away in the moonlight. Sea creature? Kelp bed? I'm too tired to care, and try not to think about the trees and logs I've seen floating in the Strait.

Around 01:00 I pass Crescent Bay and realize the chop is substantially less. I'm no longer getting sprayed with seawater, and the pounding of the boat has eased. A wave of relief sweeps over me. I've finally made it to the other side! The winds are progressively lightening up and getting shiftier as I pass Port Angeles.

I'm exhausted and having a hard time staying alert. Dungeness spit looms ahead, invisible in the darkness, and I have a hard time picturing how far it is. The wind is down to a couple knots now. I'm getting disoriented, and the constant wind shifts aren't helping. I try to err on the side of caution, and end up tacking every five minutes to move away from the spit.

The boat seems unfamiliar in the moonlight. It's the same boat I've been on for 5 days, but somehow it's not the boat I left the WAC with. It's slowly morphed into some other boat. I look up at the sail and see the small jib and recognize it as Waka's. I must be on Matt's boat. I only vaguely remember when he loaned me Waka. It must've been a couple hours ago, because I remember at Crescent Bay I was still on Idéfix.

I'm trying to get abeam of the New Dungeness lighthouse before calling it quits. I've had enough of this drifting nonsense. The wind keeps shifting and the autopilot refuses to follow the shifts, and is constantly beeping. I take manual control, and point the boat at the nearest mid-channel mark. I stir awake, and the boat is off course by 30 degrees. I turn back to port, hold my heading another minute or two, and fall asleep again. I do this two or three more times. The spit is slowly drifting by. I look at the log. 13138.8NM. I've gone 565NM over water, and 470NM over ground.

At 06:07 I douse the sails, lower the engine, and after a couple pulls it starts with a puff of blue smoke. I start motoring towards Port Townsend. The sunrise is the most beautiful I've ever seen, the Strait around me is like a mirror, and there is no one around. This is such a beautiful spot, I can see Victoria and the Strait of Georgia to the North, the San Juans stretching out over the west, with the Cascades behind them, and Discovery Bay just south of me. Maybe next summer I should cruise up the San Juans and North a ways. I'm absolutely disgusted with the idea of racing to Hawaii.

My hallucinations are visual now. I'm seeing tree-covered islands out of the corner of my eye, which disappear when I look at them. Voices are coming out of the water again and filling my head. The vibrations from the motor sound like a jazz band with a full choir of singers, repeating the same melody ad infinitum.

Although I'm still damp and a little cold, I'm warming up in the sunshine, and the boat's batteries still have plenty of charge, so I opt to skip Port Townsend and motor straight home. The wind is supposed to pick up at 15-25 from the south and I don't want to have to beat any more. I motor through Port Townsend canal and down Admiralty Inlet while eating, cleaning up, and checking a week's worth of email on my phone.

I run out of things to do and rest against the lifelines. Suddenly a ferry is crossing less than a mile ahead of my boat. I must've been asleep for a while, because I didn't remember getting close to the ferry lanes! This sleep deprivation thing is definitely catching up to me, and I hope I get home safely.

The rest of the motor home is uneventful. I get a call from Peter and he offers me a ride home from the WAC. I go through the locks with a couple seiners and meet up with him at the Ballard dock, where we chat while waiting for the Fremont bridge to open. He mentions the race. I don't want to hear about it. In fact, I've had enough of sailing for a while. After a drink (I give Peter my victory beer and pour myself some fruit juice), I cast off, and am docked at the WAC at 19:45.

After a couple days, the bruises have disappeared, the jazz bands have stopped playing in my head, my colleagues are no longer telling me I look 10 years older, and I'm starting to dream of Idéfix surfing in the tradewinds again.

Thanks to Brandon, Matt N., Kregg, Peter, and several others for helping me prep the boat – you guys rock!