First Offshore Passage

Last August I was lucky enough to crew on one of the vessels in the Coho Ho fleet heading from Port Townsend to San Francisco. This would be my first overnight and night passage on a beautiful Tayana 37. I would like to take the same trip on Karuna in the future.

A few things I learned from the passage:

• This was a challenging passage, but it was also a trip most people could perform safely with adequate planning and experience.
• The vessel needs to be well prepared for the passage. About half the days we had fairly light winds. The other half was 20 – 30+ knots with fairly big seas.
• We were 50 – 100 miles offshore most of the trip. We only saw one boat, and you need to be self-sufficient.
• The autopilot and a good preventer setup were critical.
• We had an expensive Predict Wind plan but ended up primarily using NOAA forecasts.
• I’m not prone to seasickness and wasn't seasick during the passage. My balance was really off when returning to land.
• Even in August, it's cold offshore.
• The trip took us 10 days. We spent three days in Crescent City, and we were reefed conservatively most of the trip.

We anchored in Neah Bay to get some sleep before making the big left turn south on August 26th.

Rich was one of the crew and took the video below.

Shortly after leaving Crescent City we saw a large humpback whale pod. There were at least 50 whales and we spent at least 30 minutes watching them.