This article was previously written by Rachel Messerschmidt for and published by Vancouver Family Magazine in November 2021.
When we left off last month, we had successfully sailed our boat, Mosaic, from our protected home waters in the Puget Sound out the Strait of Juan de Fuca and south to Crescent City, California. There, we rented a car and drove back north to Vancouver to return our crew members home and pick up our kids from their grandparents.
We said some very difficult goodbyes- we don’t know when the next time will be that we’ll visit home. So, with a strange mix of sadness and excitement, we loaded our family into that rental car and drove south. Back to Mosaic, our sailboat, our home, and center of self-reliance and adventure.
Keeping the rental car for an extra day, we played tourist and drove through some of the oldest groves of redwood forest along Highway 101. There is truly magic in those trees, and I reveled in sharing that with our children. They were suitably impressed.
After settling back into our cozy little floating home, we decided to make a quick 10-hour jump from Crescent City down to Eureka. We left at 8am in dense fog and chilly temps, but by midday we’d motored far enough off the coast to come out of the fog and enjoy some sunshine. We played cards in the cockpit and spotted some feeding whales as we approached our destination. Encountering whales while on the ocean will never get old. It was a great sighting and a wonderful way to end the day.
We tied up at the public marina in Eureka. Little did we know that we would actually be stuck there for two weeks waiting for a good enough weather window. Our next step would be to get the boat past the most notorious cape on the west coast: Cape Mendocino.
The gale blew off the cape for two weeks straight. Our dock at the marina grew full with boats like us, waiting. Instant community forms at each of these stopover points. Whenever a new boat pulls in that’s heading the same direction, we’re fast friends ready to recount the adventure thus far and plan strategy together for moving forward.
At one point, we had eight kids from four different boats playing make-believe games on the docks. The friendships made the wait bearable, but the cold and wet environment of the Northern California coast kept all of us anxious for that chance to move further south.
Make or Break: Cape Mendocino
Finally, a sliver of a weather window developed, and we decided to go for it! This would be a big step for our family: our first multi-day passage, non-stop for about 48 hours, with just my husband and I to rely on each other, and the kids’ first time overnight offshore.
Our first day was lovely. We left at around 9am on a Friday, in company with three other sailboats. We had some big swell and waves, but the winds were pretty calm, and the sun was shining and warm. We saw many different groups of whales and spent hours watching their activities. We rounded Cape Mendocino without any drama, as expected thanks to our careful weather routing. But the real test was yet to come.
We knew to expect another weather front the following day, but we had hoped to keep up enough speed to be able to outrun it for the second half of the trip.
I think we did outrun the worst of that system, but we still found ourselves at the leading edge of it. The wind picked up and we spent the next 12 hours bashing into a 15-20 knot headwind. The waves picked up and down inside the boat it seemed like we were inside a washing machine. Plus, the skies opened and rain poured down on us.
The seal where our boat’s mast comes through the cabin top failed. The failure was nothing dangerous but was the source of probably 60% of the awfulness of this passage. With the rain pouring down relentlessly, we had a small waterfall spilling into the boat. The rain drenched the entire mid-section of the boat, forcing us to the forward or aft ends of the boat where the motion of the waves was the most acute. Add seasickness to the mix and the whole day really just sucked.
Thankfully, around mid-afternoon, the conditions eased a bit and we even found a small patch of blue sky. We went into our second night exhausted but at least not totally miserable. The kids were able to sleep in their own beds comfortably.
Brenden and I took our turns on watch, even enjoying the beauty of the full moon’s light on the water. And, as the sun rose the next morning, we pulled into safe harbor at Half Moon Bay. We tied the boat up, alerted friends and family that we’d arrived safely, and set to work getting the boat dried out. Then, it was time for a well-deserved nap. We had made it! It wasn’t pretty, but we’d made it.
Rachel Messerschmidt and her family are Clark County natives living and cruising full time aboard their 40-foot sailboat, Mosaic. Currently traveling from the Pacific Northwest, down the west coast of the US, and onward toward Mexico, Rachel blogs about her life and journey at www.mosaicvoyage.com. She shares her family’s adventures in a monthly column in Vancouver Family Magazine.