'FINISTERE' A
JON KAHN
logistical challenges of managing a remote boat in a pandemic finally convinced us it was better to just get her close to home so we could have more time to enjoy and get to know her. We learned what we could and looked for a date on the calendar. Since we've planned our life around monthly deadlines for more than 30 years, we find it easier to change the weather than our deadlines. We've become pretty good at making sure the weather is right from around the 25th to the 5th of each month. So we made weather arrangements for the end of March and then called around for crew.
Just in case, Randall made sure the anchor was ready for quick deployment as we cruised the Santa Barbara Channel.
We were lucky on that front too. We reached out to our friend and frequent Friday night racing crew, Michael Rossi, and connected with friends and fellow Corinthian Yacht Club members Randall von Wedel and Jon Kahn. On short notice, they said, "Let's go!" Despite our knowing them all for years, life can get funny when you're suddenly out in the middle of the ocean swapping bunks with a bunch of unshowered guys you know from the club. And it was funny. We laughed the whole way north.
Early morning arrival with full moon as we tied up at the Morro Bay YC guest dock. Page 66 •
Latitude 38
• May, 2021
RANDALL VON WEDEL
fter purchasing a 1989 Sabre 38 MkII we're renaming Finistere (after the cape in Brittany, France) in Long Beach last fall, we'd been waiting for the right moment to bring her north. Beyond looking for a favorable weather window was the importance of learning more about the new-to-us boat before pushing off for the approximately 500-mile sail north to San Francisco. The boat, under prior owner Matt Humphries, had done the 2017 Transpac, so she'd been upgraded and wellprepared for ocean passages in 2016-17. The three-ring binder aboard, with pages of Transpac requirements, had us feeling confident the boat was ready. In addition, our pre-purchase survey by former Santa Cruz resident and sailor Jim Wallace confirmed the boat was in good shape, with a couple of small issues to handle. The primary concern was our learning how the new boat works. Despite our lifetime of sailing, the gadgetry on updated boats leaves us with more unknowns than the features on our iPhone. One of the reasons we loved our former Ranger 33, Summer Sailstice, was its simplicity. The primary instrument aboard was yarns in the rigging to help us see which way the wind blows. We find that electronic wizardry is often a big distraction from the joy of sailing. But then there's convenience, safety and comfort. When working, pressurized hot water, chartplotters and autopilots can make great contributions to sailing life. As we looked through the systems, it only increased our respect for delivery skippers. They jump aboard boats of all sorts on a regular basis and have to learn their systems, look for their weaknesses, and quickly confirm that the professed integrity of the boat and systems are all up to snuff before pushing off on a generally tight timeline. We had hoped to spend more time exploring Southern California, but the constant COVID warnings kept us from feeling free enough to do much visiting. The
We knew we had a good crew before leaving and learned even more as we sailed north. Michael has strength, thousands of miles of racing, cruising and delivery experience and, as a contractor/event producer, an amazing array of can-do, technical skills. Randall also has thousands of miles of cruising experience on his boat and others, plus having enthusiasm for boat safety and the galley. Continuing on the safety side, Jon is a retired Kaiser doctor with ample sailing experience, so he was trusted with our box of Band-Aids, and we all shared equal watch duties. Prior to our all meeting in Santa Barbara, we switched out the big SoCal #1 for a good northbound NorCal #3. My wife and I then sailed the boat 25 miles from Long Beach around Pt. Vicente to the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey. We passed through a school of 300-plus leaping dolphins, which we took as a good omen. Then Michael and I took the boat on a rollicking 85-mile sail from Marina del Rey to Santa Barbara. We Northern Californians like to thump our chests a bit about the blustery, challenging conditions in which we sail while imagining Southern California with benign conditions. Fortunately, when learning of our limited SoCal experience, Marcus Crahan of the Hinckley 52 Dauntless had generously reached out to offer some local cruising tips. There were many, and we paid attention to two of the helpful ones for this trip. First, when experienced SoCal sailors head toward Santa Barbara, they often leave very early in the morning (like 3 a.m.), knowing the afternoon winds in the Santa Barbara Channel can blow hard on the nose. Second, if you leave at night, stay well offshore of Pt. Mugu, about 35 miles west of MDR, because there are unlit offshore mooring buoys. The westerlies died down in the evening and we decided to go for it at 11 p.m., looking for a calm, early-morning arrival in Santa Barbara. The calm soon turned to a brisk 20-plus-knot northerly with choppy seas for a quick, main-only motorsail west. We didn't see or hit anything off Pt. Mugu so we must have been far enough out and arrived at about 9:30 a.m. on a sunny, chamber-of-commerce morning in Santa Barbara. It was here we found the only problem with the boat. In preparation for the Transpac, all the lockers had been clearly labeled with their contents: safety gear, manuals, etc. However, the one labeled
