MORNING STAR —
It had gone airborne, its flight from port to starboard interrupted by the side of my head. the rest of Thursday, all of Thursday night, and into Friday morning — the epitome of 'fair wind and following seas'. By Friday afternoon, however, the conditions were getting sporty — fully living up to the small craft advisory in the forecast. By mid-afternoon, the wind was NNW at Page 70 •
Latitude 38
• January, 2019
KAUAI PHOTOS LATITUDE / CHRIS
T
his was not how I expected it to end. My summer had been planned as a three-legged adventure: Deliver my Valiant 32 Morning Star up the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco; compete in the 2018 edition of the Singlehanded Transpacific Yacht Race from San Francisco Bay to Kauai, Hawaii; and then sail back to San Diego. Legs one and two went pretty much according to script, but the return did not. Between the wanderings of the East Pacific High, the appearance of a low-pressure system dropping down from the Gulf of Alaska, and a lack of wind off the Southern California coast, I ended up sailing back to San Francisco rather than San Diego. Having left Morning Star at a marina in Alameda for a couple of weeks, I was back aboard for the unexpected fourth leg of my summer adventure — singlehanding once again. First I waited out three days of light conditions while troubleshooting the autopilot, which had failed early in the race. I knew, from hard-won experience in the race and the return sail, that the Monitor windvane could handle the steering — as long as we had any appreciable wind to work with. Whether we had wind to sail on, wind to motorsail into, or wind on the nose to motor against, the vane would steer like a champ. But in calms, with little or no apparent wind, motoring would require hand-steering. And years of sailing out of San Diego told me we might well encounter light air from San Clemente Island to Point Loma, with dead calm likely at night. Alas, the effort to revive the autopilot failed, so with plenty of wind forecast off the Central California coast for the coming days, we set out again with only the Monitor for self-steering. We had an uneventful getaway the morning of Thursday, August 30, and were out of the Gate and southbound off Pacifica's Pedro Point by about 11 a.m. The wind filled in, and the sailing was delightful
Spread: 'Morning Star' arrives in Hanalei Bay. Above, left to right: Lee Johnson receives his SHTP belt buckle at Nawiliwili Yacht Club; starboard rail solar panel after the near-knockdown; companionway hatch boards at the end of the trip — one of these things is not like the others.
20-25 knots with gusts to 30; seas were 7- to 9-ft on an 8-second period. Sitting on the starboard settee riding it out, I was just thinking, "Gee, the boat has a pretty comfortable ride in these conditions," when we got bombed. We were about 65 miles west of San Simeon, and we got hit broadside on port by a massive wave that put the boat over hard — throwing everything off the shelf behind the port settee across the cabin, where most of it landed on the shelf above the starboard settee. In the immediate aftermath the cabin looked like an earthquake zone. One item that had been hurled through the air was the wooden case holding the sextant. The box had ridden on that shelf all the way to Hawaii and back, with some pretty exciting conditions during both trips, and never
budged. And here, on the final coastal transit, it had gone airborne, with its flight from port to starboard interrupted by the side of my head. On the list for the next ocean crossing: a helmet of some sort. Looking outside, the only damage I found was to the support for the solar panel mounted on the starboard stern rail. The one-inch steel tube, which had been level to the horizon, was bent down and aft a good 150 degrees. We had been pushed over so far that the face of the panel had hit the sea with enough force to bend the steel support like a drinking straw. But the panel was still attached and still working. There was no reason to think the masthead had hit the water, so I don't know if you would call this a knockdown. But the mast had to be close to horizon-
