This travel blog is a repost of a Facebook post I shared with friends and family during my passage from Neah Bay (Seattle) to San Francisco, on S/V Uluwatu, a Jeanneau 409 sailboat. There were three of us onboard; Chris the owner and skipper, Wayne who has the most ocean passage experience of us, and me, on my third weeklong passage.
I started the day with the Middle Watch, midnight to 4 a.m. There is something magical about standing watch on a clear night, alone with the constellations, while the boat chugs along at a respectable 7 knots.
And yes, “chugs” is the right word. The wind isn’t playing ball, so our diesel engine is doing all the work of pushing us south toward California.
A few minutes before 4 a.m., Wayne joined me to take over the Morning Watch. We have a good routine now: wind speed and direction, boat speed, traffic, anything unusual, and whatever else he needs to know before I head below.
I also told him about the most extraordinary moonrise. As the half moon first appeared over the horizon, it looked like a glowing sail from another world. The imagination can run wild when you sit alone in the dark, 60 miles out at sea.
Daylight brought sunshine, warmth, and a gentle 6–8 foot ocean swell rolling beneath us. Not much wind, though.
Then—SNAP!
The sound came from the trolling line Chris had put out earlier. At the other end was an albacore tuna. Chris landed it, prepared it, and later cooked it for us. Fresh tuna in the middle of the Pacific made for a pretty memorable highlight of the day.
Toward evening we decided to set sail and see if there was finally enough wind to shut down the engine. There wasn’t. Our speed dropped to a measly 4 knots, so down came the sails and the diesel went back to work.
There is some urgency to keep moving. A storm is brewing off California, and we don’t want to linger unnecessarily. But we can’t motor forever either; our diesel supply is finite. The forecast says the wind should finally fill in by Monday. We’re hoping it is right.
And now I am back where the day began: alone on watch in the darkness.
This time it is the First Watch, 8 p.m. to midnight. Around me are half a dozen ships and fishing boats, visible mostly as small targets on the radar and AIS and as lonely points of light on the horizon. For the next couple of hours, my job is to guide us safely between cargo ships, tankers, and trawlers as we continue south.
But my eyes keep being drawn upward.
Above this dark patch of Pacific, far from the lights on shore, the sky is astonishingly bright. A hazy band of light stretches from one horizon toward the other.
The Milky Way.
Our galaxy.
And for these few hours tonight, it feels like it’s just the boat, the ocean, the stars, and me.