Delivery 2005

Shanghaied from Santa Cruz
By Captain Jeff McConnel

As always, picking a crew for a trans-pacific crossing is important as having all the right gear aboard, maybe even more important. I recently invited my nephew, John Peter Whitney, to join me on a delivery from Anacortes, Washington to Kona, Hawaii. Having just graduated from M.I.T. as a physicist, I figured he could figure better than myself. As I have so aptly stated, he has all the brains and little sailing experience and I have lots of sailing experience and only enough gray matter to get along, a good pairing. Brains do not always guarantee wisdom. Peter made this clear, as he bluntly announced he was going with uncle Jeff across the big pond. This went over like a lead balloon with his parents, especially his mom, who abruptly stopped talking to me for sentencing her son to what must have seemed like a certain watery death by sailing!

With one crewmember secured it was only a matter of finding the second mate, which as it turns out, is not always so easy. Putting the word out amongst known friends and sailing mates is always high on the list. As the list dwindled for various reasons why one couldn’t leave next month, week, year, this lifetime etc., it became apparent I would have to put up notices around the harbor hangouts in Santa Cruz, Pete’s home town. Within hours we met one candidate who was keen to go with us. We met a couple of days later, made plans to meet in a few weeks up in Washington.

Plans don’t always work as planned. As it turned out, after flying the second mate up to Seattle, spending a few days together getting acquainted with the vessel and each other, it was apparent that the mix just wasn’t right, no one’s fault, it just wasn’t going to work. I made the difficult decision of “just saying no”, and again was on the search for another crewmember. This time with all the provisions aboard, including the fresh food, I was not quite desperate, but would say “very ready” to find the right second mate. As any captain would do I put up notices around the docks and town of beautiful Friday Harbor, Washington. Did I mention that one of the notices was attached to my chest with blue 3m tape? This effort elicited many responses, most of which were from those who have always dreamed of sailing past the green buoy, and the others, were the qualified, experienced ones who would love to join us if it was only last month, next month, or next spring. As it went, after a few “almost able to go” crew were interviewed, a guy named Dave Gunn, a Boeing engineer currently off the payrolls and owner of a Westsail 32, walked up and introduced himself. Within a day all plans were set to sail to Hawaii. He sailed his vessel back to her mooring near Seattle and made plans to meet us in a couple of days at the entrance of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Neah Bay.

Long time friend and sailing captain, Samantha Garl, of Friday Harbor joined Peter and me for the cruise out to Neah Bay. She was a great source of local knowledge, especially those 4 and 5 knot currents. We departed at 0015 from Friday Harbor, by 0045 I located the nearest 30 foot long by 24 inch diameter log, drifting in the darkness, I hate that noise of hull colliding with the unknown, but the adrenaline is as good as ten Starbuck’s Grandes with extra shots! No damage done, thanks for the little things in life! We motorsailed with a decent current the rest of the night and early morning out of the Straits. By 1400 we rounded the entrance buoy to Neah Bay after passing numerous salmon fishermen and a lone humpback whale inshore of us.

Our neighbors in the next slip at Neah, Capt Russ and his friend/crew, were aboard the vessel “Tamara”, a salmon trawler. We asked if they might sell us a little fresh salmon to take onboard our cruise, sure as gold, 15 pounds of filet later we asked how much…..Capt. Russ had a deal for us, if we would remove the old ice from his fish hold, the salmon would be ours….
Peter and I donned our foul weather gear and proceeded to remove a ton or so of ice and toss it overboard into the sea. I’m sure the harbor temperature must have declined a couple of degrees! An hour and a half of shoveling and tossing we finished up, Capt. Russ felt sorry for us and filleted a halibut to toss into the bargain. Now we were set for a gourmet crossing.

We were delivering the vessel “Jonathan” (a 36 foot S2) for owners Bob and Jeanette McClean, residents of Kona for more than 25 years. They purchased the vessel new in the early 80’s, and sailed the Great Lakes, North Atlantic crossing, the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic again, visiting South America and the Caribbean. Jonathan was well founded having successfully cruised over 100,000 miles. After a generous sprucing up with new rigging and various other repairs in Anacortes, the vessel was crossing yet another wide ocean, the Pacific.


Dave arrived at Neah Bay as planned and after topping off the diesel and freshwater we said our good-byes to Samantha. We set out in light airs for Kona, Hawaii. All the preparation, provisioning, planning, and vessel repair falls behind us as the land fades across the stern, again we are headed out to sea, the unknown, the excitement and adventure lies ahead, we all share the anticipation.



Our first day at sea found us under fair breezes out of the west at 15-20 knots, sailing with the aid of (Peggy) our Fleming wind vane. Once tuned up she would guide us along with little help needed for hours on end, like having another crew that didn’t eat, drink, talk, or sleep (much!). As on so many times leaving the Washington and Oregon coasts, we intersected with one of those many low pressure systems that approach from the NW. It seems any low that makes the barometer show under 1006 mb is going to make the wind pick up in the 20-40 knot range, no matter what you may be hoping for. It did and we just kept reefing in steps until we were triple reefed and a handkerchief on the headstay. Aside from the large seas that liked tackling the starboard and port bows we just pushed ahead upwind at a blistering 3 knots, all that wind and all against us! We got through the first front OK, no major problems only to see another on its way down due to strike on our course in two more days. We did our estimates using the weather fax on SSB. The weather service is getting better every day with their modeling.
The second front was much like the first one, teaching the ocean how to find all those little pinholes in chain lockers, port lights, and hatches to lubricate the interior with those nagging little drips.

After going against the wind for the better(better?) part of a week we finally had northerlies pick up and give us the direction we had looked forward to. Up with the gennaker and we were on the downhill slide to Hawaii. The weather fax was showing a hurricane forming off the southern tip of Baja so I made the decision to tack direct to Hawaii instead of heading further south and then over, (the normally desired route, head south until the butter melts then turn right to get to Hawaii!). We had a glorious textbook downwind run for the next two weeks with the gennaker up the entire time except for a few hours one night. As always we were catching plenty of fish, tuna and mahihahi, no child left hungry aboard “Jonathan”. Much of the time we ran with the mainsail down, it tended to make the vessel round up during the gusts and also blocked the wind to the gennaker. This made sailing very easy, if the wind picked up over 20 knots, we just pulled the sock down half way (reefing the gennaker!).

One night just after dark we had a squall pick up the wind rather quickly, forcing the “Jonathan” up into the wind and colliding with a breaking wave on the beam. As the boat heeled then got knocked down on her beams end the captain (that be me!) was ejected from his nap on the main salon port bunk to the wooden cabinets on the starboard side, now that is literally a “wake up call”. I hobbled out of the cabin to assist in dousing the gennaker with Peter assisting while David resumed our downwind path. We discovered that the spinnaker pole had rapped itself around the headstay and broke, adding to the challenge of getting the sail down in the gust. Within minutes all was secured. We opted for a more conservative sail plan for the night, the roller furled genoa, and resumed our course to Hawaii.

As we approached Hawaii, another hurricane, “Darby“, formed about 1,200 miles east southeast of us traveling west at 5 knots. This seemed to be no problem as our boat speed was 5.5 knots. Then the unexpected occurred, the storm (115 knots at the core) picked up speed to 15 knots heading NNW. We would now intersect courses just as we estimated arriving near the Big Island of Hawaii! Fortunately as the speed of the storm increased, her intensity decreased from hurricane to tropical storm, to tropical depression “Darby“. We only had a few hours of slightly increased winds and lots of rainfall, the last 3 hours of our cruise. The Kona coast suffered massive flash flooding as we entered Honokohau Harbor at 0330, after twenty-one days at sea. Later that morning Bob and Jeanette McClean and friends met us with leis and aloha at the dock. We headed up to Sam Choy’s for breakfast, a Big Island Classic, shared stories and company and reunited.

It seems like a dream, how the days and time pass while sailing across an ocean, sometimes minutes seem like days and sometimes days seem like minutes. It is always a great experience to make a crossing, make landfall, to feel and smell terra firma once again, and to know how different the TWO WORLDS are.

Footnote: After realizing Peter survived the crossing of the Pacific, his mother is once again talking to me, and has even extended an invitation for me to come back to Santa Cruz!