Back on the Water

I'm back out on the water! I’d tell you all about the wind direction and all of that, but seeing as I'm in a 97ft power boat, none of that matters much. We left from Newport yesterday afternoon, and are on our way up to Portland, Oregon. Its been a smooth trip so far, got a little choppy last night but everything has been going well. As nice as it is to be down in a warm boat where you never have to change sails, there is something somewhat enjoyable about the discomfort and rough parts of sailing. I am little sad to say that if things keep up this way, I won't have to pull on my foul weather gear or get soaked or even crawl into any small dark spaces to repair anything. I have spent a good amount of time on power boats, but not much since I've been back. I would have to say that I think I like them even a little less than before. For a whole day straight now we have been listening to the constant roaring of the engine and I think this is driving me a little more crazy than cold lonely nights on a little sail boat.

Needless to say, I'm missing Wild Eyes and endless days on the ocean. Once we get this big boat to Oregon we’ll hop on a plane and fly back home and get back to school again. I did actually bring a few school books along with me... in fact I have a backpack filled with books. I should probably go get them out and get to work. I also remembered to bring a hairbrush this time! Although, had I not, there is a good supply of forks on board, so no big deal if it goes missing during this little trip!

Well, I wrote the last part of the blog hoping to find some WiFi during one of our fuel stops to post it, but that didn't happen, and then things on board took a bit of a turn.

The trip started out great. We were all a little tired after the first night, you know how it is the first few nights, even with a few crew you don't sleep too well. The first day and night passed uneventfully which I suppose was a good thing. All that didn't last long though.

The second day we started to have trouble with the auto pilot. I managed to fix it as it turned out to just be a problem with the settings. Later that night, I was off watch trying to get some sleep in the cabin down below when I felt the boat turning in circles. It felt so familiar I was almost happy jumping up to go take a look and see what had happened. Up on the bridge, my dad was on watch and he was hand steering. I messed around with the auto pilot settings some hoping that it was the same problem as before. It wasn't the same problem as before and after a good half hour I was out of ideas (This auto pilot could have belonged in an antique shop I might add. It was so old, I had never seen one of them before!)

Looked like we were going to be hand steering, at least until the morning when we could get a better look at the thing. Luckily, there was myself, my dad and Peter, so hand steering wasn't all that bad a thing as we had plenty of people to take turns. The weather was picking up, it had been all day and we had 6-10 foot swells coming right from behind us. Now normally this would be great, especially considering that we were going north. But in this boat, it wasn't great, in fact, it was down right awful. A ten foot swell isn't much to complain about, but Travoto wasn't exactly designed for any type of weather. The swells would catch up with us and Travoto would go sliding down the front sending us down sliding all over the place. We were surfing down so fast that the boat was plowing into the swells in front of us one after the other. You had to steer hard either way to gain any control of the boat as she went flying down.

After four hours on the helm I was pretty exhausted and good and ready for a break. The next morning we pulled into Crescent City to fuel up. A bit tired and worn out, we got a weather report, fueled and had a mechanic come out to take a look at the auto pilot and the steering. It's still under debate between the three of us why the steering was so bad. Anyway, the mechanic wasn't able to sort out the auto pilot, and didn't have much to offer on our steering problem either. We considered staying there a little longer, but we had a short weather window, and we weren't going to be finding any more help in Crescent City. We headed out again.

The day went on, the conditions picked up more and more. We decided to take one hour shifts during the night, and to keep two people on watch all night. We were in for a rough night and none of us planned on getting much sleep. It got later and the chit chat and joking around stopped as the night dragged on. We were all up through the night taking our shifts. My watch was for an hour, but things seemed to be dying down some and I was pretty wide awake so decided not to hand over the wheel quite yet. About two hours later, I handed the wheel over to my dad. He had just gotten off the phone with the Coast Guard to check on the conditions in the Columbia River.

We planned to reach the Columbia River around three in the morning, we had timed it to be with the tide so we could make it in over the sand bar. But the Coast Guard had closed down the bar due to a small craft advisory. There wasn't a whole lot we could do about that. The Coast Guard reported 14 foot swells going over the bar, not much, we had had a few swells at least that big out at sea. It was just managing to keep enough control of the boat through the narrow channel.

We started to turn around, planning to just head into it until day light. The Coast Guard called us again saying that they had a small boat out there and if we wanted to give it a try they would lead us in. It would definitely be easier having the other boat to follow in as part of our steering problem was that there was no compass on the boat. We were going off a computer hooked up to a GPS that had about a 40 second delay.

Well, we decided to go for it. We all pulled out our foulies, and headed out into the pouring rain to the bridge. It was too wet outside to bring out the computer with the chart of the marina on it, so Peter and I ran back and fourth yelling which direction my dad needed to go to stay in the channel. Surfing along, we made it over the bar and on into the marina. It was an intense few hours as we wound our way up the river. About six in the morning, we came to an anchorage where we dropped the hook planning to wait until daylight to continue on up the river.

After the engines had been turned off we all sat down below, tired, wet, cold and somewhat dazed. We eventually all made our way down below and slept for a little bit. We woke up around 9 the next morning all feeling a little better after getting some sleep. We had some breakfast and made a few phone calls and then around 11 we headed off up the river. We had a good six hours to go!

Those six hours passed by somewhat uneventfully. The steering had improved quite a bit with being on the flat river. We got up river to where the boat was going to be kept and at first we couldn't see where we were going to have to put the boat. It was like putting this huge boat through the eye of a needle. We looked at the tiny space that the owner wanted my dad to wind the boat into. I thought it was impossible, in fact, I thought it would be slightly crazy to even try and get it in. My dad did it though. Not only did he get the boat in, but he decided to back it in, and did so without Peter or I needing to fend off the other boats and docks even once. I was thoroughly impressed by that docking job. I don't know any one else that would have been able to pull that off.

It was over. We gathered up our stuff and headed off to the airport. Sitting in the airport all pretty much exhausted from all that had happened in the past few days. As Peter said, it was like living a lifetime in just four days. It was true, we had been through so much, yet we all somehow managed to bring away only the good from the challenges we experienced. Even sitting in the airport not yet recovered, we were all looking forward to the next trip.

So, that's what I’ve been up to lately. Now that I'm home for a bit I'll be back on the school books and looking forward to the next adventure, even if it is only four days long.

Abby