May people ask, “don’t you get bored out there?” or “what do you do all day?” Well here is a timeline of an average day at sea…

 Sunrise: 0700

 0600-0615 Boil water and make coffee

 0615-0645 listen to the weather and talk on the SSB radio (eat fresh homemade flour tortilla)

 0645-0715 enjoy the sunrise while preparing to hoist the anchor

0715-0745 hoist anchor, remove sail cover and secure the cabin while motoring out of anchorage

0745-0830 make breakfast, oatmeal with honey, nuts and soy milk: enjoy in the sunshine

 0830-0845 clean up galley and do any dishes

 0845-0915 hoist and set the headsail making sure we hold the course

 0915-0945 clean yourself, teeth, face, hair, day clothes (eat fresh homemade flour tortilla)

0945-1000 get out fishing gear and set for the kill

1000-1115 watch dolphins play in the bow wake, take pictures, sun and stretch on the bow

 1115-1145 catch and bring in first fish, celebratory tequila shot

 1145-1200 read the fish book to figure out the catch, fillet

 1200-1245 make fish tacos and enjoy a delicious lunch in the sunshine (eat lots of fresh tortillas)

1245-1300 clean up lunch mess and wash down boat from bloody massacre

 1300-1315 pick a new lure and reset the line

 1315-1330 engine starts to loose RPM’s, Micah troubleshoots and fixes

 1330-1400 pull out more sail, watch the wind pick up

 1400-1415 chat with a passing sailboat on the VHF as they head north

 1415-1430 transmission wont engage in reverse, Micah troubleshoots

 1430-1500 catch second big fish, line fouls in rod so I slowly hand pull in the fish while Micah fixes trany

1500-1530 fillet and clean the big fish for tomorrow’s lunch

 1530-1630 make a cup of tea and enjoy rest of daylight (eat fresh homemade flour tortilla)

 1630-1730 watch the sunset and take more pictures of dolphins playing

 1730-2200 sit on watch while Mom and Micah nap: read my Kindle, look for passing ship lights, monitor navigation station, GPS, charts, wind speed, make minor adjustments

2200-2230 Mom and Micah wake up and we bring in most of the head sail, wind had picked up and we were flying at 7 knots! Brought it back to 5 for the night

 2230-2300 teach Tilly how to shake, successfully

 2300-0600 sleep, wake, repeat

 This is a typical day in the life of a sailor, I think. Maybe eventually the engine will run flawless, the sails will set automatically and the fish will fillet themselves. Not likely and that’s why we do what we do. The only thing we can ever expect is to expect the unexpected.

How it began…

After a spontaneous idea, the need for a new adventure, and a quick search on craigslist I bought my first sailboat. I showed up at the dock and this cute 24 year old guy had the engine running on a little Cal 25. Six months earlier when Matt had bought the boat he had never sailed before. Over the summer he made several surf trips to Santa Cruz Island and taught himself to sail. If he could do it so could I!

“Toss the lines, she’s ready to go”, he said as soon as I arrived. We motored out of Santa Barbara Harbor and hoisted the sails. When he handed me a Heineken I was hooked! All I could think was, where do I sign? Looking back towards land from two miles off shore was the most life changing moment of my life. Thoughts of island adventures began to run through my head.

Throughout the winter I sailed that little old Cal 25 out to the islands every change I got. Her sails were worn and her paint was faded and her crew was enthusiastic. The little 5hp outboard started every time after about 106 pulls. Nonetheless she sailed like a champ as 20 knots of wind pushed us into the unknown. The more wind we had the more excited I got, although I can’t always say the same for my crew. We would anchor next to these beautiful expensive looking sailboats but somehow I felt we always had more fun. We would jump in the icy cold water and barbeque at sunset. The bow of my boat served as a perfect dance platform. We were good entertainment for the geezers next to us sipping their chardonnay. It wasn’t long before I fell in love with my new life as a sailor.

After six month it was time to upgrade to a budget blue water cruiser and live the cruiser lifestyle. I wanted a boat that could safely take me beyond the islands. With a little bit of hunting, a 1963 Pearson Vanguard 32 became available in the Latitude38 Classy Classifieds. I scraped together $7000 and bought the perfect boat. She came equipped with almost everything I needed to leave the dock and even a few extras. She had GPS, radar, solar panels, 25hp diesel, an oven, refrigeration, and the main selling feature, a flopper stopper! I didn’t even know that that was. She’s not the prettiest boat on the dock but who wants that in Mexico anyway?! SeaYa is the perfect cruiser in camo.

Our first time leaving the dock was to sail out to Santa Cruz Island. What better way to learn your new boat than out in the ocean. We had so much fun figuring out all of the systems along the way.  Anchor gear? We’ll see if it works when we get there. Radar? What does that button do? Why was the bottom of the boom vang attached to the stanchion? Oh, so it doesn’t shade the solar panel while at anchor. Tillermaster? Yes this thing really does work! The previous owner had her dialed in with big plans to sail to Mexico but gave up and walked away. I would continue sailing her where he left off.

It doesn’t take much money to buy a boat that will get you into the cruising lifestyle. Find someone who has worked for 7 years preparing a boat but for one reason or another has given up the dream. Someone who has never actually sailed further than Catalina and on that trip realizes their wife gets seasick. These boats are out there and that is where I found mine. You can spend the rest of your life preparing a boat or you can buy one and just start sailing. The people on the Cal 25 are having just as much fun as the people on the Beneteau 42. The only difference is how long it took them to get to off the dock and how much it costs when something breaks!

My parents are also cruisers but have yet to leave the dock. They have been ‘fixing’ their perfectly good cruising boat for 7 years now. To their credit and thousands of dollars their boat is a masterpiece and a work of art. It’s eye candy to anyone walking down the dock, but that is the problem, it’s still at the dock! In my opinion all they’ve accomplished is weighing down their boat with too much ‘stuff’, making here a beautiful target for theft in Mexico. I believe they have lost out on a good five years of sailing time. Thankfully this year, right before their 60^th birthday, they just might leave the dock.

Buy any boat you can so you can get out there and sail sail sail! Be your own captain and teach yourself. One of my favorite saying is, everything you prepare for won’t happen and everything that happens you’ll deal with. The sooner you buy a boat and take your first sail the sooner the adventures begin.

So, lets just say I pulled off another trip “the Heidy Way”. Found the best crew possible in line going into the costume party. The other girl crew member is a Flight Attendant and thats just one of our many similarities. We couldn’t possibly have more in common! The Captain is fun and safe, perfect combo. The forth crew member Geoff is the perfect balance of fisherman, deckhand, and comedian  . We all did not stop singing and dancing on the bow, in the cockpit and down below the entire first three days. The boat is a luxurious Beneteau 42 with a water maker, unlimited hot showers (2), microwave, oven, huge freezer, blender, and anything else you can imagine from ‘at home’ amenities. Oh, and patchy Internet within 6 miles from shore. We do yoga and exercise daily with resistance bands as a crew! SO FUN!!! And spoiled for sure!! OH, and eating things like fillet mignon, home/boat made pesto chicken, eggs Benedict, fresh baked bread daily, frozen fruit smoothies… the list goes on.  The menu is five star! I feel like I’m back on a Tradewinds Cruise.

The second morning I woke up to the engine being started (we were in a sailing race so this was a foreign noise). We were responding to a distress call in the opposite direction. Another boat in the fleet had a huge three inch line wrapped around their prop. They had been trying to free it all morning but were defeated and were thankful we had dive gear! We were about 50 miles off shore and in water too deep for the depth sounder to register, so over 600 feet, water was 61 degrees freezing. The other boat didn’t know how to use the dive gear so I volunteered without thinking and went for it.  Wearing a thin spring suit I jumped in, swam over to their boat, and set them free by unwrapping the line.  Our boat’s name is Set Me Free, love the irony. Then I made my entire crew jump in naked but it didn’t take much convincing!

The next morning we hooked both fishing lines at once. The rod I grabbed and reeled in had a 15lb yellow fin tuna attached! We ate sushi for two days and had enough left over to bring ceviche to the boaters potluck in Turtle Bay, 360 miles south of San Diego.

What can I say, all good in my world… I may never leave this life;) !

SMILE
She smiled at the sorrowful stranger.
The smile seemed to make him feel better.
He remembered past kindness of a friend.
And wrote him a thank you letter.
The friend was so pleased with the thank you
That he left a large tip after lunch
The waitress surprised by the size of the tip
Bet the whole thing on a hunch
The next day she picked up her winnings
And gave part to a man on the street
The man on the street was grateful
For two day he’d had nothing to eat
After he finished his dinner
He left for his small dingy room
He didn’t know at that moment
That he might be facing his doom
On the way home he picked up a shivering puppy
And took him home to get warm
The puppy was very grateful
To be out of the storm
That night the house caught on fire
The puppy barked the alarm
He barked till he woke the whole household
And saved everybody from harm
One of the boys that he rescued
Grew up to be president
All this because of a simple smile
That didn’t cost a cent.

– Barbara Hauck

Having just returned from the Baja Ha Ha ’09, I could not get myself to go back to work. After spending 12 days crewing from San Diego to Cabo and losing myself in my new-found love for the ocean, I had to get back out on the open water.  As a recent first time boat owner, I was excited to try out my confidence as an ‘experienced’ and fearless sailor.  It was time for my first venture out to the Channel Islands.  I had been day sailing in my Cal’ 25 over the previous two months and I grew up day sailing with my Dad, a retired sail and snorkel boat captain in Key Largo Florida. Now I had the Ha Ha behind me and was ready for anything!

Anacapa Island is the closest island to the Channel Islands Marina, and my first choice for my Maiden overnight voyage on my vessel Night and Day…  Left a little late Tuesday afternoon.  My friend Tony came with me and asked me what’s the latest we can leave, I said 1pm, we left at 2pm! Had perfect wind on the way out, completely heeled over to the side, waves spraying over the bow, and going Mach 4.5knots. I was having a ball!  Before we left dry land I had asked him if he was ready for an adventure, warning it could be the best or worst experience of his life. Now most people tend to toss the word adventure around carelessly.  Ha ha, not me!! And he soon found that out in spades. Tony was freezing-cold and wet from the spray so he went below to sip some Whiskey.  Emerging one minute later, he turned green, gave me a look of death (wanting to kill me, having never been on a sailboat before), and abruptly lost the shot over the side.  After that he was a fully initiated sailor!

Tony brought up a very good point on our final approach of the island: where do we anchor? Rummaging through the boat I found a tourist map of the island from the previous owner that says, ‘These maps are not suitable for navigational purposes’. There was a picture of the island and a little symbol of an anchor about half and inch from a lighthouse, so that’s where I went. Pulling in behind the tall rock island we were in the calm. We got there with just, and I mean just, enough light to see where we wanted to drop anchor before it was pitch black, with no moon. I didn’t know the depth so guessed on how much line to through out.  My hand-me-down anchor has been around the world twice on another boat so I was rooting for it to hold. If it didn’t the results would not have been pleasant with the current drawing us toward the unknown jaggedness of the cliffs.  We could hear the barking of the sea lions and the crashing of the waves but distance and depth were a big fat “?”. Tony steered us in to position like a natural at the helm and I set the anchor, feeling like a pro, for the first time on my own.

Down below looked like a disaster area with everything that had once had a place, now in a pile on the floor.  Tony curled up in a sleeping bag for defrosting while I cleaned up and started the BBQ wearing a wool shirt and two hoodies.  Thanks to Mom I had two kerosene lanterns on board and a candle that provided enough light and heat to warm the cabin. I put on some mellow music and began to unwind. I must say that food always tastes better out at sea.  We gorged on roasted chicken stuffed with asparagus, roasted peppers and cheese, portabella mushrooms, and a fancy salad.  It’s five star out on this little boat, let me tell you! We were even graced with a meteor shower to watch while we dined.

Sleep was hard to be found while afloat captaining my own ship. All of the horror stories I had heard during the Baja Ha Ha about dragging anchor replayed in my head. The first disruption came from the sea lions. They were so loud as they broke the surface it sounded like we were surrounded by hundreds.  Looking out into the blackness we realized we could see them darting through the neon phosphorescent water under the boat. They were having a field day playing in the glow!  One feisty sea lion came at us so fast it tried to take a leap of faith onto the boat, but we scared him off with our shocking screams!

Finally in my sleeping bag outside I started to drift off into a dream when I realized it was happening to us! We were dragging towards the rocks! The barking and crashing waves were louder, my only warning sign as it was really pitch black, but I read it loud and clear! This easily could have been my imagination but was not a chance I was willing to take. I fired up ole faithful and headed offshore for another go.  After that, at about 1:30am, with the anchor reset, one eye open and my ears perked up on high alert, I waited for the next part of this adventure. I learned in my sailing class that the job of a captain is to come back to shore with the same number of people they left with. That meant it was up to me to stay awake and make sure we stayed alive! I watched us swing on the anchor 180 degrees throughout the night but the hook stayed in place; success!!!

Sunrise was perfect as to be expected, ‘tiz The HeidyWay! The ocean was glassy and the temperature warmed up to a perfect 75 degrees. Sea lions surrounded the boat, clearly annoyed they could not land on the new island we continued to steadfastly defend. The rock island was showered with what looked like white snowflakes, and it ain’t limestone!  Anacapa is the largest breeding and fledgling area for the California Brown Pelicans. Also noteworthy, it’s a breeding ground for leopard shark. Anyone care for a swim?

Fresh fruit and cereal for breakfast, yoga on the bow. There is no better way to stretch than with the motion of the ocean pulling on your muscles. We put a little 2hp engine on the dingy and gathered a life bag for a closer look. I recently heard a story of a guy who’s engine was too small to make it to shore in his dingy against the wind and he ended up floating 400 miles offshore until he was rescued by a fisherman.  The wind was nonexistent at the moment, but you never know! I packed my water proof hand held VHF radio (aka lifeline), my recently won binoculars, waterproof Olympus Stylus camera, one paddle (it’s all I have), two life vests, and beer.

We were so excited to see the 100′s of sea lions on the beach up close and personal I almost forgot about the waves coming from behind us pushing us toward the rocks.  Then we heard the crash of a large wave and saw the whitewash pound ten feet up the rock! Needless to say the fight or flight response kicked in! Luckily my engine is a one-pull- wonder and we were out of there in a flash. We went way up current, killed the engine and had a celebratory beer as we drifted past all the seal covered beaches. The water was crystal clear and I could see where the kelp gardens attached to the rocks in the sand. I couldn’t take it another second and jumped into the shockingly cold water. Believe it or not, once I caught my breath it was more refreshing than anything. After getting out and feeling the warm sun on my skin, I looked at Tony and said, “you do not want to miss this”.  And that was all the convincing he needed.

With light wind I was not going to make the same mistake twice. We left the island at 1pm and motor sailed all the way back to the safety of the harbor. Tony docked the boat perfectly and when he stepped off the boat he looked around longingly and said, “being on land is suddenly so boring”. I could not have said it better myself!!!

As goes another adventure, The HeidyWay!!!