West Coast Sailing Passage Leg 1: Port Angeles to Neah Bay

August 12, 8pm – August 13, 5am | 9 hours, 60 miles

We left Port Angeles at 8pm on Thursday, August 12th. This was the beginning of our US west coast passage! We’d picked this night passage for the best wind conditions as we motored west down the Strait of Juan de Fuca. My parents, along with Brenden’s parents, had taken the kids for a couple weeks so that we could bring a couple crew members on board for the first part of the trip. So we had Rachel and Brian with us.

This first leg lasted 9 hours, though we had to slow way down for the last hour or so in order not to arrive at Neah Bay in total darkness.

We had very poor visibility for this trip down the strait. Smoke from local wildfires had moved in and that, coupled with no moon, made for a very dark journey. We did have very bright bioluminescence in the strait and shooting stars overhead thanks to a meteor shower, which was really neat.

Around midnight, we hit something in the water, likely a large knot of bull kelp or maybe a crab pot buoy. Thankfully, after just a hiccup on impact, our trusty new engine kept chugging along.

We anchored at first light in Neah Bay and went to sleep. Waking several hours later, we checked the weather and determined that we would be leaving the next afternoon headed for Newport. There were several other boats anchored in Neah Bay but nobody is currently welcome ashore there due to the pandemic closures. We had lots of wind in Neah Bay while we waited for our weather window to open but we were able to finish our final preparations without issue.

West Coast Sailing Passage Leg 2: Neah Bay to Newport

August 14, 4pm – August 16, 2pm | 46 hours, 238 miles

Unfortunately, the past month here on the west coast has been a consistent weather pattern of either too much wind (gales nearly constantly) with a few short breaks in between with very little wind. In order to make way south safely, and without risking a rough ride or damages to the boat, we’ve opted to take the weather windows of very little wind. This has meant motoring down the entire west coast, thus far.

We would love to have the opportunity to SAIL down the west coast, but that hasn’t really been available to us without exposing ourselves to more winds than we want to see. Several other boats heading down along the same timeline have time and again come into port saying they’ve just taken a beating offshore. We’re hoping to avoid that!

So, we left Neah Bay on a Saturday afternoon on what we knew would be a total motorboat ride down to Newport. We routed to follow the commercial towboat lane in hopes of avoiding crab pots along the way. It’s worked pretty well, though we’ve still seen a few crab pot buoys in the lane.

Before we’d even rounded Cape Flattery and turned left, we were surrounded by probably a dozen humpbacks seemingly wishing us safe passage. It was a special moment as we turned south.

As expected, we had very little wind on this leg of the journey. Easy ocean swell from the west the whole way, but not enough even to upset stomachs. We were visited by at least 50 whales along the way! Humpbacks, fin whales, along with sunfish, sharks, sea lions, pelicans, and all sorts of other smaller creatures.

Then, even as we approached Newport’s Yaquina Bay Bar, I was shocked to spot a pod of orcas making their way north a few miles from shore! We were about an hour early for our optimal bar crossing time, so we happily detoured to follow alongside the orcas for a time. Wow, what a way to end the passage!

West Coast Sailing Passage Leg 3: Newport to Crescent City

August 25, midnight – August 26, 9am | 33 hours, 192 miles

We got caught in Newport for over a week. The posse of additional southbound boats coming in increased each day, it seemed, but we all had to sit and wait for a chance to get south past Cape Blanco.

Finally, the window opened, and the dock cleared out with boats leaving for their next southbound port. We left at midnight in order to only have to do one full, and one partial night on passage this time. Plus we had a bright moon with us, which was lovely.

The sea state was still up a bit from all the high winds in the past days. We had pretty big swell as we exited the Yaquina Bay Bar in the dark. Not much sleep was had that night, even when off watch. It was a bumpy ride. At least one or two of us were fighting some level of queasiness, though it settled by morning. Thankfully, nobody ever actually got sick.

The whole passage had bigger swell this time. But nothing that Mosaic couldn’t easily handle. At dawn, we had a couple dall’s porpoises visit. They jumped merrily in our bow wake for just a few minutes. We also saw many more humpbacks during this trip, more sunfish and sea lions which floated on the top sunning their flippers. No sharks this time, interestingly.

During the final night, as we rounded Cape Blanco, we had some bigger winds pick up from astern and we sailed into night with 20-25 knots behind us. Rachel and I took the first watch from 7-10pm and I really got to enjoying the contentment of the boat motorsailing with a double reefed main, wind at 150-160 degrees and just cooking along.

Brenden and Brian took over at 10:00. Soon they had to ease the main off to the side and slow the engine. Mosaic was really cooking along at over 8 knots! They had about 2 1/2 hours of real downwind sailing. Then the wind suddenly clocked around and died down to less than 10 knots. Rachel and I took back over for a settled watch from 1-4am. We were under a nearly full moon.

I woke at 6am to hear the fog horn on the bow. Brian was blowing it as we’d come into a heavy fog bank approaching Crescent City. Through the night, we’d slowly caught up to several other boats. Boats which had left from Newport in the 10-12 hours before we did. Now, we had 5-6 boats all coming together to come into Crescent City at dawn.

It was a great showing of the sailing community as we all worked together via VHF radio to coordinate. Several of the boats had malfunctioning systems: radar and/or chart plotters down. We coordinated who could follow whom to get all the boats safely into the harbor.

My mom and the kids, along with Tamara also, got to watch Mosaic come into the harbor on the city’s live harbor camera. That was pretty cool. We tied up at right about 9am. After checking with friends safely landed, we went to sleep!

Our West Coast Passage Continues: Watching and Waiting

On Friday, we rented a car and drove back up to Vancouver. We’re so thankful that Rachel and Brian came along. I hope they loved the trip as much as they seemed to. It was win-win! Then we stayed the night at my parent’s place and had a joyful reunion with our kids. Boy, I was really missing them at that point!

The next couple days were spent saying tearful, hard goodbyes. This was our last planned trip back to Vancouver for a while. We don’t know at this point when we’ll be back to visit again.

On Monday, we drove back down with the kids. We kept the rental car one more day to take the chance to visit the redwoods with the kids. Now, we sit and wait for our next weather window. We’ll continue southbound and get around Cape Mendocino. We’re headed for southern California!!! Wish us luck and follow our adventures! ~Rachel