FYC April 2025 Club Cruise

Keith Blodorn

Crew: Manuel Carmona, Bennett Samson, Dennis Smith, Carolyn Stuart Departed CIH at 2100 on Thursday under overcast skies with minimal moonlight. Fleet included Wojo, Big Z, Mistral and Charm. Sailed close hauled tacking to windward north and west past Habitat platform, with consistent 4-6 foot swells and occasional larger waves. Tough to sleep underway in those conditions. At dawn, we turned south along with Mistral, Charm and Big Z bound for Becher’s Bay on Santa Rosa. Wojo was out of touch, and we later discovered they tucked into Santa Barbara for the night. We arrived Friday morning around 110, and anchored in 22 feet in the NW anchorage, greeted by a pod of lazy humpback whales. Most crew went ashore to hike on Friday afternoon. Our very tired skipper retired to bed at 2030. All boats departed by 1000 on Saturday bound for the eastern end of SCI. Sailing along the south side of the island, we found light winds at our stern. We were able to maintain an ESE broad reach for a while, taking us well offshore. On jibing to head back to the island, we decided to motor sail to avoid arriving after dark. At this time the alternator quit working. I ran the generator to keep the batteries charged, and we continued to Little Scorpion anchorage. There we bow and stern anchored in 40 feet just off bird shit island. We discovered that our claw anchor is ineffective as the boat drag the stern around overnight, despite an extended rode lengthened by line borrowed from Dan. On Sunday we departed at 1100 to avoid predicted high gusts and building swell in the evening. We enjoyed another broad reaching downwind sail at 3-4 knots, with a long stretch of wing on wing with the boom to windward. We encountered a large pod of dolphins north of Gina. We experienced a complete power loss when the house batteries ran completely out, with no alternator to recharge them and a lot of autopilot use. We ran the generator again for the final two hours back to CIH only powering up the engine just outside the breakwater. In all, we logged just under 4 hours of engine time on a 133NM voyage.