Pete Scudder's ADVENTURE: HAWAII TO CALIFORNIA

Hi all! As promised to many, the following is a recap of my experience on the great adventure of returning West Marine's sailboat "ProMotion", a Santa Cruz 40, from Kaneohe Bay, HI, to Santa Cruz, CA, following the West Marine Pacific Cup race, "the fun race to Hawaii".

BACKGROUND
The race began with staggered starts at the end of June, 2004 with all boats, which ranged from 26 to 144 feet LOA, expected to finish within 14 days or so, and the awards ceremonies scheduled for Friday, July 16th.

PREPARATIONS
Our boat, ProMotion, completed the race later than expected, coming in at 4:15 AM on the 15th, finishing pretty low in the standings for the fleet. - very close to last! She finished with a variety of problems that needed fixing before our return crew could safely depart, originally scheduled for July 18th. By the time the boat seemed safe enough to head out on an upwind ocean passage an extra week had passed. The prop shaft needed to be reattached to the engine, oil and filters changed, 4 spinnakers and the mainsail needed repair or replacement as did the jib foil, halyards needed replacement, spreader boots were installed, the VHF and SSB radios received service and repair, the autopilot compass needed re-calibration, a running backstay was reattached, and an in-cabin leak in the holding tank was repaired to make the cabin habitable. And this was considered a light air race weather-wise!

Given the vagaries of "island time" scheduling, we felt pretty good being ready to leave only about a week late.

In addition to the needed repairs on board, we had to purchase and prepare provisions for 21 days, with some emergency backup rations in case we ran late. The house the return crew was originally provided had no kitchen or freezer capabilities! Once the extent of the repair delays was understood, another house was rented with the proper facilities, and the 2 of us charged with cooking and feeding went into overtime mode. The weather, house and kitchen were hot - at 0730 the house temp was in the low 80s, and just got hotter as the day and cooking went on! A major provisioning challenge was the timing of buying perishables - meat, fruit and veggies, etc. Planning for a 3-week trip was complicated enough, but with the daily uncertainty of when would we leave, the cooking, cooling, vacuum packaging then freezing of the meals became a real challenge. So too was the decision as to when to purchase the wet and dry ice needed to preserve things in ice chests so as to maximize refrigeration temperatures on board. Ah yes, 2 lazy weeks in paradise! We became pretty adept at navigating the Honolulu Costco and a few local markets for items needed in less than warehouse quantities.

We did in fact manage an afternoon of touring including Pearl Harbor and Waikiki Beach.

Finally, on Thursday 7/22 we moved out of the house and on board, but departure from Hawaii was not to be until Saturday midday, as we had to wait on some late repairs and needed to fuel up the internal tank as well as 40 gallons of jerry jugs to allow us to motor through the windless Pacific High if needed. We also needed to refresh our ice supplies to offset the unexpected 3 extra hot days of postponed departure.

UNDERWAY
At last, mid-day Saturday 7/24 we are underway. After motoring out of Kaneohe Bay we raise the main and #2 Genoa and shut down the engine. Trade winds are a steady 20-25 kts from the north and east, sometimes stronger in squalls. At dusk we tucked a reef in the main for insurance overnight. By consensus we decide on a NNE course, choosing a close reach over beating to weather for comfort of the boat and crew in the 6-8 foot swells. The first few hours off shore were entertaining, with a school of dolphins frolicking with us a while and the sighting of a whale tail not too far away. Two crew got seasick so watch keeping became less formal, with the two "able bodied" splitting daytime (me) and overnight watches (the skipper). Even without beating the bouncing around was enough to make using the stove unsafe, even though gimbaled. Our goal was to reach latitude 38 N then head east to sail the most comfortable course to and along the gale prone CA coast.

Often we thanked the deities for adding "Ray" to our crew, as the Raymarine autopilot did the yeoman's share of the steering work. To keep Ray happy and fed, we ran the engine every several hours to recharge the batteries and sustain it. On board navigation electronics were Raymarine, supplemented by a Standard VHF and an Icom SSB, as well as crewmembers personal gear, which included Epirbs, and handheld VHFs and GPSs. Not a sextant to be seen! A scary thought to many purists I know.

Having no set schedule and not being in any sort of a race we tried to sail a less efficient and more comfortable course by not pushing the boat and crew, as noted earlier. The exception to this was our "skipper" John, who seemed obsessed with speed under sail. He has dreams of record-setting Pacific race performances in the future and drove our boat hard, in spite of several requests to ease off. Beating into 20+ knots of wind with 6-8 foot swells is simply not comfortable!

DISASTER STRIKES
3 days out of Hawaii, some 300 miles north of Oahu, disaster strikes shortly after midnight as the mast collapses and comes down in 3 sections - bottom section, from mast step to lower spreaders intact; top section from upper spreaders to top came down first and as it comes it takes down the mid-section between the 2 spreaders. The mid and lower sections are on board but the upper section is in the water and threatening the hull integrity. The noise of the dismasting is indescribable and almost unbelievable; I imagine it similar to a train wreck. Our immediate action is making mayday calls over the radios as we scramble, looking for unorganized and unlabelled disaster tools. Dead in the water in 6-8 foot swells, we finally cut off the jib and part of the main, hacksaw through rod rigged shrouds, cut through halyards and antenna wires, knock out the forestay clevis pin and send the top section to the bottom in 10,000 feet of water before it can do more damage to the hull.

Next we lashed the mid section to the lower section shrouds to stabilize it as it was making serious efforts to bash someone's head, and we were definitely motivated to minimize damage to the crew! While all this is going on, efforts to move the life raft to a "ready" location by the cabin entry resulted in its becoming inflated inside the quarter berth! (We were later able to partially deflate and move it on deck).

RECOVERY
With things stabilized we decided to wait until daylight before doing more; at that time we cleared the decks of rigging residue so nothing could foul the prop, cranked up the Yanmar and reversed course back to Hawaii. 3 days later, having enjoyed going more or less with the wind and swells, we have landfall at Kaneohe Bay but have to motor around the island to Honolulu to repair facilities, where we clean and empty ProMotion in preparation to ship her back to California on a container ship. Local live-aboards got some great cooked meals and local homeless shelters received lots of canned goods, thanks to our local store crew. "Big Blue" shares!

A major reason this trip did not end up a true life taking disaster was the fortunate lack of injuries and that a satellite phone had been arranged for at the last minute; this allowed us to notify authorities and families of our situation. Without the sat phone the rest of the world would not have known of our plight until we got within hand held VHF range or arrived back in Honolulu. We would not have been considered overdue for several more days after the dismasting if we had not been able to get ourselves back to Hawaii!

As anticipated, we had an ADVENTURE! Not what we anticipated but an adventure nevertheless. We had some operational issues with our skipper John, but my crewmates Phil Cowley, a senior at Cal Poly and part timer at corporate, Lynn Neumann, sales mgr at the Ft. Lauderdale store and me from the Sayreville store bonded well and all of us got the boat safely back to Hawaii. It is certainly possible that the race crew's misadventures might have weakened the rig, but that thought never occurred to us. After all, the rigging was new.

An ironic wrinkle to all of this was that we all had one-way air tickets to Hawaii, with the assumption we would sail back to California. Alas, we had to fly back, and then home as originally planned, only earlier..

This is a synopsis of an amazing couple of weeks which put together a geographic and experientially diverse group in a situation new to all. Could better orientation and training and preparation been provided? You Bet It Could! But then, we are all safely home, mildly wounded but wiser. Also ready to help the next delivery crew prepare for their trip!

I hope you have enjoyed this accounting. I'm glad to be home with Liz!

Pete Scudder (2sail)