Setting up our website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Delorme inReach services/accounts has been an education. Just two days ago, I set up a RigneysKandu Facebook page. Yesterday, I started working on getting our inReach SE satellite GPS coordinates to show up on a map somewhere on our website, so viewers will know where we are and where we’ve been. Still working on this feature, so bear with me. This morning I set up an email subscription feature on the blog page that allows readers to sign up to receive an email notification and link to our most recent posts. This application will do the same with our Twitter account. If you’re following us on Twitter, a similar notice and link will appear. (I’m actually testing these features with this post!)
And if I can get it going, the inReach SE satellite device software, in addition to location mapping, might allow us to post text updates regarding our status from anywhere in the world to both our Twitter and Facebook followers (I think . . . ?).
So there’s a lot of upgrading going on. Hope to start producing and posting videos soon too.
Kandu’s stay at the Oceanside Yacht Club has been generously extended through Friday, when we plan to sail south to San Diego, where we plan to stay for about 10 days before leaving California for Ensenada, Mexico.
Bryce and Trent in the oldest standing portion of Mission San Juan Capistrano
Some party favors don’t do favors for our ocean friends. Leaving Alamitos Bay for Dana Point early Tuesday morning, miles off the coast, we noticed several helium deprived polyester balloons resting atop the metallic grey surface. From a distance, their forms resemble hazardous lobster pot buoys. It’s only when getting within 100 yards that we begin to make out the heart-shaped Valentines or the faded Disneyesque birthday wishes painted across the debris’ surface. Bryce, an intrepid thrill-seeker and do-gooder, mounted our dark blue soft-top longboard with bright yellow tow-rope in hand, like a cowboy with a bridle, and swung out to round up the soon-to-be turtle food, a fatal mistake for turtles and any other jellyfish eating marine creature.
Bryce, jellyfish imposter round-up
There’s not much Kandu can do to stave off the multitude of plastic jellyfish imposters, but on this early overcast morning, Bryce rescued two: an infinitesimally small, but no less noble, effort, in the battle to minimize our harmful impact on this blue marble gem of a spaceship we call Earth, our only home. Good job, Bryce!
Don’t make Bryce sad. Keep a tight rein on those potentially lethal balloons.
Kandu arrives at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club (photo Dave Terman)
Tying up at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club’s guest dock for a couple nights, a welcome couldn’t have been more endearing. Firstly, ABYC member/ambassador and new friend, Yon, greeted us with an exuberant smile and two cold beers, making available his stand-up paddle board and surfing kayak. Within minutes of shutting down the engine, Bryce was paddling around the marina atop Yon’s paddleboard.
A former work colleague, Dave Terman, having videotaped our arrival, greeted us with gifts of fishing lures and rum. He explained all that was reachable by boat in Alamitos Bay.
I had no concept as to how much Alamitos Bay is a boater’s paradise, more a mini-Venice, Italy than a mini-Naples, the namesake of the island contained within the middle of the bay. Grocery stores and a farmer’s market, marine hardware stores, restaurants, movie theaters and live entertainment are all accessible by dinghy. There is even a canal reportedly teaming with jellyfish. For the active, there’s lots of open water space for small craft to explore: dinghies, outrigger canoes, kayaks, paddle bikes, paddleboards, sailboats, Jet-skis, and recreational fishing boats abound within and just outside the bay’s entrance. Outside the marina and along the beach thrive world-class surfing, sailing, and kite boarding. What an awesome discovery!!! We could hardly sleep.
Sunrise at ABYC’s Guest Dock
The next morning, we woke Bryce and Trent up early to surf Seal Beach. Arriving at the nearly empty parking lot, we learned that the waves were small that day. Bryce felt he’d been lied to. I quickly explained the difference between a great surf spot and a great surf day–no spot, no matter how great, offers 24 hour, 365 day guaranteed excellent surf. Leslie declared that from now on, it would be his responsibility to investigate locations and conditions for great surf: wave height, frequency, and direction; wind speed and direction; tide height, ebb, and flow; and which way the beach faced. “Study these factors and you’ll have a better idea as to whether to wake up or not.” We suggested he keep a log of the factors, comparing it to the discovered reality of the circumstance, to develop his skill in surf conditions forecasting.
While the boys surfed, Leslie and I went to partake in a favorite Sunday morning ritual of mine . . . eggs benedict. A beachside breakfast café in the parking lot where we’d dropped Bryce and Trent off offered eggs Benedict, Caribbean-style with fresh-made Hollandaise—aaaaah . . . .
We returned to the ABYC with our surfers to find that a neighboring boat had sunk! In keeping up with a leaky thru-hole (remember, I replaced all of Kandu’s thru-hulls over the summer), the vessel’s bilge pump drained the boat’s battery before quitting. With nothing to counter the encroaching water, the boat succumbed to the forces of the sea, submerging completely her two large outboard motors. Only her dock lines kept her from resting on the sea floor. With help from a County Fire boat, she was raised, drained, and towed to safety, presumably to a trailer or boatlift.
With little time to spare, we cleaned up Kandu for that afternoon, my brother, Nick and his fiancé Gita planned a gathering of friends and family to bid us farewell. And we would provide the guests a tour of Kandu. Although in the midst of winter, it was a gorgeous summer day. It was encouraging to share with friends and family the result of 2 years hard work and the future plans for the voyage.
ABYC Clubhouse at Sunrise
Making arrangements from Marina Del Rey, it was touch and go getting a slip in Alamitos Bay during the Valentine’s Day weekend, but somehow ABYC, the smaller of the marina’s managed to find us a place at their well maintained guest dock. Meeting Yon was the best part about landing at ABYC. His zest for life and generosity are infectious. The evening of my brother’s gathering, from Pretty Penny’s cockpit, Yon offered us sausages for barbequing and gave me a specialty ring, worn on a finger to pry open bottle caps—pretty cool. Yon even invited us to stay an additional day, stating that their club supports the sailing community and loved that we were leaving to sail around the world. Because of Yon’s hospitality, we spent an additional day at the ABYC guest dock, giving us time to deal with an unexpected repair.
With his infectious smile in the cockpit of “Pretty Penny”, Yon, ABYC’s most generous prince of hospitality, reminds Bryce how good life is.
We could have easily spent a fantastic week or more in Alamitos Bay and been thoroughly enthralled in the experience. But we must shove off if we are to be in French Polynesia by June. I hope for a next time. ‘Til then, here’s to the ABYC, Yon, and the yet-to-be-seen Alamitos Bay jellies.
When we arrived at the Del Rey Yacht Club, we pulled into their guest slip as prescribed, Slip D-289. We quickly settled into what was to be our base for three days, setting up power, draping our cockpit and setting up the cushions, configuring dock lines to keep us still, straightening up our deck, etc. An hour later, the club apologetically informed us that we would have to move a few slips over so that they could accommodate a larger guest boat: better now in the late light of day when we’re all awake than in the dark of night before bed. Trent was especially peeved, even after I explained that we’re guests and that we’re fortunate to have had them so quickly find a solution for us.
Our new spot was within “Battleship Row,” the unofficial term the club members use to describe the dock finger that houses their members’ shiny fleet of large motor yachts: Kandu was dwarfed. Battleship Row enjoys a prominent position directly in front of the clubhouse’s bar and lounge, a frequented part of the club. Of course, with our “Loud Family” Ventura West Marina reputation (read our earlier post, “The Loud Family?”), I carried a stigma that when combined with our cargo-laden decks packed with jugs of fuel and water, exposed dinghy, surfboards, kayaks, and paddles, . . . plus it didn’t help to have our laundry of beach towels, wetsuits, and bathing suits drying on the forward lifelines for all its membership to enjoy. The only things missing were empty beer cans and grandma rockin’ in a chair on the foredeck. So it was no surprise when later the next day the commodore and again, the dock master, explained that we would have to move one more time, but that we could stay there as long as a week (at the customary reciprocal rate of $1/boat foot length per night, after the third night, which is better than what the city charges for its municipal guest dock, $1.50/ft.) I asked the dock master if he could show me where we were to dock so that we could pre-set Kandu’s dock lines. He said, “It’s a walk,” looked at my shoes, “but sure, let’s go.” As we walked to the furthest corner of the club parking lot, and then down a ramp and a walkway that took us even further away from the clubhouse, we turned down the full length of E Dock, as far from shore as possible to its end-tie, Slip E-901. It was immediately apparent that we would be as far away from the clubhouse as any boat could be, while still remaining on club property. This would be the third time we would be docking at the club, equaling the number of days we would be staying at the club. This is where I think I’m over-sensitive.
Kandu in all her cruising glory within “Battleship Row”
From the very first, the club welcomed us without issue, providing us complete access to their wonderful facilities, including high-speed Wi-Fi and recreational equipment for the boys, basketball, Ping-Pong and tetherball, . . . and laundry. They provided us with a parking pass for our car that Uncle Bill drove down for us. As stated, the boats they said were coming, came. And the view from our end tie was spectacular, with the Marina Towers and Ritz-Carleton facing us across the way. The Del Rey Yacht Club staff were courteous and accommodating. So I don’t think cutting us off their WiFi was intentional.
Plan to leave Marina Del Rey tomorrow for Alamitos Bay, Long Beach; then off to Dana Point, Oceanside, and San Diego. Once we’ve completed our last requirements of paperwork, we head off to Mexico, Galapagos, Easter Island, Pitcairn, and then enter into French Polynesia via Gambier.
“Now that the trip has started you must be ecstatic?” a phrase heard a lot once we arrived in Marina Del Rey. That’s not the feeling I have. Relief is the greatest feeling, followed by pressure to remember what needs to be done between now and leaving the U.S. for Mexico. But not far from the surface creeps anticipation of wonderful adventures to come.
During these past few years of preparation, I couldn’t allow myself the ‘distraction’ of imagining the future fun. It would have pulled limited time away from preparation, for knowing me, I would have started researching the possibilities and basking in glorious anticipation of experiences to come. With too much to do to prepare the boat and learn about social media and video production, I couldn’t afford any diversion—vegetables before dessert. It’s only in the past couple of days that I have begun to allow myself the pleasure of envisioning some future experiences: seeing calving grey whales close up, catching pelagic fish during passages, snorkeling in the bountiful aquarium that is the Galapagos, hiking the ridge of an equatorial volcanic crater, collecting water samples and Secchi disc reports, watching and recording the boys surfing, touching the Moai of Easter Island, enveloping the people we meet and immersing in their culture, meeting the descendants of the HMS Bounty Mutineers, seeing long-time Marquesan friends, and placing the boys in a French school. For two years I’ve been in a chrysalis of preparation, shielded from exposure to future joy and excitement. That makes for a grumpy dad, but it was what I felt I needed to do in order to stay on task, getting the boat ready for lengthy open-ocean voyaging and extensive stays at some of the planet’s most remote islands. Self-sufficiency and safety were at the top of the list. With just a few loose ends to tie, I allow joy to get a little closer, but not quite enter my psyche: still much to do during this period of transition from boat preparation to international travel. But Tuesday night, Leslie’s birthday, for the first time in 18 months, having safely and comfortably motor-sailed 8 hours from Ventura, lounging in Kandu’s cockpit with a glass of nigori sake while securely moored at the guest dock of a yacht club that is not located in Ventura, I felt I could afford to feel some sensation of the satisfaction that begged to be experienced. Significant relief, the absence of stress, was truly the only sensation that I felt I could reasonably allow. Not complete relief, but great relief, about 75% less. We had made the first tangible step toward the benefit side of what, until now, had been the exceedingly high financial and emotional weight of our journey’s scale. Leslie and Bryce had big smiles. Trent was immensely pleased he had not gotten the least bit seasick. Seeing their happy faces was my greatest reward.
Bryce expresses in image the crew’s feeling of leaving Ventura Harbor after a year and half of delay, Santa Cruz Island in the foreground, the autopilot set for Marina Del Rey.
In 1990, a different crew of mine and I had planned to sail out of Ventura Harbor aboard Getel, my uncle’s 32-foot sailboat, for the Marquesas in French Polynesia, where I was to conduct research for my thesis study. The date we chose was February 9th. Having waved good-bye to family and friends, we motored out of the marina with the intention of “swinging our compass” (calibrating it). The seas proved too rough to perform the operation so we returned to execute the maneuver inside the marina. Once complete, we felt it too late to head back out so we spent one more night in Ventura, aboard Getel. We left pre-dawn, after I made a pay phone call (remember those?) to wish Leslie a happy birthday. With calmer seas, we successfully departed and 25 and half days later, arrived in Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas.
Flash forward 25 years, my mate and I planned to leave Ventura Harbor for Marina Del Rey on the 9th of February, initiating our “slow start” to our world cruise. The morning of our planned departure, with better technology available, we could read that the seas were high, 10-15 feet, and that a Small Craft Advisory was posted, warning smaller boats like ours of the challenging conditions. Taking advantage of the forecast, seeing a window of benign weather for the next day, we postponed our departure one day, leaving again on Leslie’s birthday.
My cousin-in-law, Scott Landry, not one for coincidences, believes we contrived this circumstance in order to create an interesting blog post. He would not be convinced otherwise. That’s one of the take-aways I find so interesting about the cruising lifestyle: it provides an abundance of unbelievable stories, events that are difficult for non-cruising families to fathom. Delaying our trip the one day, having just delayed it two days because of a forecasted rainstorm (which came as predicted), brought great disappointment to the crew. Bryce and Trent moaned when they heard the news. Leslie was incredulous when before dawn I told her we’re not leaving. I had to prove my case, offering NOAA weather forecasts, real-time weather buoy data, and the red-lettered small craft advisory atop the NOAA Marine Weather Forecast page. Then there were the sneers from yacht club members who felt that if we couldn’t handle uncomfortable conditions for a brief, 10-hour trip to Los Angeles, how could we expect to handle the rigors of the open sea, across much longer passages? There was significant peer pressure to leave that drizzly morning, with the sound of waves breaking over the detached breakwater, the barrier of stout guano-covered boulders that protects Ventura Harbor’s entrance. But I held my guns, which leads me to the other take-away I get from the blue-water cruising lifestyle: philosophical perspective development.
This past year, one lesson keeps popping up time and time again: whether to live a life of avoidance or a life of purpose. A cruising sailor can plan routes to avoid hurricanes, or he/she can plan to arrive during the region’s prime weather windows. It’s a subtle but significantly different approach. The first means a sailor is willing to skirt the bounds of the worst weather, knowing they can survive what’s in between. The second means a sailor is aimed at enjoying the experience, knowing full well that difficult, unforeseen circumstances can occur. The difference is that the former, in avoiding disaster, is willing to survive the experience of cruising, whereas the later, seeks benignity, accepting the unforeseen hardships that inevitably arise with any venture. Sailors know that even though regions close to a hurricane belt may not experience the full force of 70+ mph winds with enormous surge and seas, they will experience stormy weather with winds of 50 mph, heavy rains, and thunderstorms (lightning): an unpleasant experience at best. I can’t afford that. If I want to sail around the world, I have to manage two things: 1) our costs; we spent well over our preparation budget, pulling from our cruising kitty, potentially shortening our trip, and 2) our enjoyment; if Leslie, Bryce, and Trent aren’t having great experiences, they’re not going to want to continue. So, if I want to sail around the world with my family, I must find inexpensive ways to create positive experiences. One simple principle is to allow weather to dictate your schedule. It is often said among cruising sailors that the single most dangerous threat to the wellbeing of a vessel and her crew is a schedule. Keeping a schedule, trying to depart from or arrive at a particular location at a specific time is what gets most cruisers into trouble.
On the first day of our voyage, I didn’t want to knowingly create an uncomfortable experience for my novice crew, sailing against a small craft warning. Let the negative come unforeseeably. I choose instead to take the peer pressure and depart under a favorable weather forecast. I’m glad I did. Our first of hopefully many more sojourns to come was a benign one. Leslie awoke the next morning, happy and excited for the cruising life we’ve begun—my birthday present to her, but even more so, to myself. I can’t control the weather, I can control when we leave. When possible, I prefer leaving within a good weather forecast window to a questionable one, choosing thriving o’er surviving.
Our first stop, the Del Rey Yacht Club Guest Dock. Note how Kandu is tucked between DRYC mega-yachts and the Ritz-Carlton to the background on the right. This isn’t Ventura any more.
So, if postponing departure for but one more embarrassing day makes for not only a ‘thriving’ experience, but also an historic coincidence, then so much the richer the event, so much the sweeter the story, so much more important it is to follow one’s truer purpose.
This dawn, after 4 decades of dreaming, 25 years of planning, 4 years of preparing, and 1 year of living aboard, we leave Ventura from the guest dock of the venerable Ventura Yacht Club. With many well wishes and a bit of press, we release the cords that bind us to this wonderfully loving place, the birthplace of our departures with many more departures to come. Ventura and the friends and family that occupy her, will be greatly missed. We love you.
With love, the crew of Kandu bids adieu (photo by Pascale Landry)
Now we’re ready to leave. It’s a little like having a baby; the mother is uncomfortable enough that she forgets to be afraid to go through with the birth, she just wants the baby out. In a similar fashion, I am no longer worried about missing my family and friends, not being quite enough prepared, or feeling trepidation for the unknowable future at sea. I’m psychologically ready to leave behind life as I’ve known it and face what is ahead just to get going on this long-awaited adventure.
Lately, in the dark early evenings walking down the dock to our boat, I’ve been looking up at the sky to see the constellation Orion clear as a bell shining down on me. Growing up, I remember only searching for the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, constellations of Earth’s northern hemisphere. But now I only have eyes for Orion, the warrior hunter constellation located on the celestial equator – thus visible throughout both hemispheres. Somehow he feels like a familiar friend that, during our travels, will become much more close. I wonder which other constellations I will stare at during night watches, what friends await me in the southern hemisphere. I have a fantastic app on my mobile phone that shows the constellations from every angle. I’m looking forward to studying them on calm nights. Maybe I should download information about them now while I still have access to the Internet.
I’m also looking forward to researching about the countries and sights we will soon be exploring…learning opportunities for the boys, as well as for Eric and me. I’m looking forward to learning and practicing more Spanish. I’m looking forward to sharing my love for language with Bryce and Trent, especially French. I’m looking forward to practicing my sailing skills, building upon the skills that I learned through last racing season’s Wet Wednesdays. I’m looking forward to living the dream that we have talked about and planned for during these last 25 years. It was 25 years ago this February 10th when Eric departed Ventura for the Marquesas Islands with brothers Nick, Curtis and Uncle Bill – 6 months after that when I joined the crew in Hawaii. Somehow this last year’s ups and downs led us here to this momentous turning point – departing again 25 years later – a year after we moved on the boat.
I’m looking forward to reading great literature, to treasure hunts, to meeting new people, to hiking, to fishing, and actually sailing too. I’m looking forward to living with even less, as crazy as that sounds.
Kandu and sunrise at Ventura Yacht Club
So in a few days, after the rain passes, instead of severing the umbilical chord, we’re casting off our Ventura dock-lines…like true Vagabonds, carrying everything we could imaginably need…including 2 kitchen sinks!
