Sailing Ohana

Weather and wind on our Predict Wind app looked good to move from Farmer’s to Lee Stocking today, and maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. All I know is that we did make the move, and today sucked regardless of the weather. I woke up feeling pretty “meh”, and from there things just fell into a line of crap dominoes. I won’t go into the details of my irritation with the rushed breakfast, kids insisting they get “Saturday morning cartoons” on their iPads which were really just dumb YouTube videos, or fact that the boat was hot and stuffy due to lack of a breeze. I opened the hatches to get some airflow through the interior.

We motored off to what was going to be a boring motor sail to our next anchorage. We put out fishing lines and went on the outside through a crazy cut where the current + waves + wind were creating whirlpools and rough water. It was fun to feel the power of the ocean as we pushed through, the boat being pulled and turned with the current. Once we got past the cut it was relatively fine sailing. About halfway to Lee Stocking, the sea state began to change, and became rougher and bumpier. Eventually, the boat was getting drenched with waves, and we were bashing into the wind.

I was at the helm and was surprised to hear Jackson yelling something about his cabin, and Tommy shouting something to me. Then I remembered. The hatches. The goddamn hatches were open. Waves were dumping ocean water over the bow into Jackson’s cabin. Spencer’s got a lot less, just a couple of damp spots on his pillow, because his is the stern cabin. Both of their bathrooms were drenched, but that’s not too terrible, because they are designed to get entirely wet and they have drains for that purpose. I estimate that Jackson got more than 3 liters of water on his bed and floor. He was furious that I had opened his hatch, and I was furious that he didn’t close it when things got bumpy. I was furious at myself for forgetting that the hatches were open when the waves got big. Tommy was furious with all of us for the inexcusable negligence while he was busy at the helm. It truly was an epic group fail.

Emotionally I have had some fairly rough patches so far this season. I thought that with the last year’s experience and knowledge, and with better systems now, it would be a much easier trip. Of course I knew there would be challenges because there always are, on big adventures. However, this fiasco felt like a whole new level, and much harder to recover from without buddy boats to commiserate and decompress with. I pulled all of the bedding, mattresses, and towels out to the stern cockpit just to get the soaking stuff out of the boat, but wasn’t able to properly clean up until we were anchored and no longer bouncing around.

We anchored right off of the abandoned research center which is a different spot from where we stayed last year. It was surprisingly rolly, and that certainly didn’t help the mood of the crew. I began the tedious process of trying to rinse the saltwater out, and hang everything on the lifelines to dry. I laid the mattresses on the trampoline where they would get airflow from both sides, and luckily the sun came out and helped.

Tommy took the boys spearfishing/snorkeling and I really wanted some alone time, so I stayed on the boat, rotating all of the bedding and towels on the lifelines to get things in the best position to dry in the sun and breeze. I was hoping to use the time by myself to chill out and process all my thoughts and feelings, but of course between all of the laundry and clean up, and making bread, there wasn’t much down time.

The boys and Tommy wanted to try night fishing at sunset, so they took the dinghy and some of the lighter poles, and took off to do that for about an hour. They returned with no fish, but seemed to have had a good time. It was pretty bumpy and rough, so they were soaked, and the anchor had come off the dinghy. They were pretty confident they knew where it was, but it was worrisome…. We would really struggle without a dinghy anchor.

The next day we headed back to the cut where the anchor came off, and sent Jackson in to dive for it. Since he was the one who tied the cleat hitch that came undone, he had to be responsible for getting it. Plus, he’s becoming a pretty good free diver. The current was strong in the cut, and fortunately we brought Spencer’s little ocean scooter, which is an electric powered gadget that pulls you through the water. As we traversed the area creating a search field, Jackson had the idea to use the “Water Otter” as Spencer calls it, to assist against the current. We were about to give up when Jackson swam to the surface and announced he had located the anchor. He dove back down and came up with the end of the anchor line, which we were able to use to pull the anchor in. What a relief!

After tooling around in the dinghy looking for good spearfishing spots (which we didn’t find), we stopped at a cluster of rocks that Tommy and the boys remembered from last year. They had found it on a day that I was on shore with Morris. There was still a current because it wasn’t slack tide yet, but we gave it a try and I was really proud of the boys for their strong swimming. The water was a bit churned up from the waves, but still, it was great snorkeling. We saw a lot of diverse fish, corals, a baby shark, and we even collected an empty conch shell for Jackson to use to make his horn.

We have been playing family games, including poker, Cards Against Humanity (family edition), Dominoes, What Do You Meme, etc., after dinner. We had a fun night of poker, and ended our time at Lee Stocking much better than it started.