Every year, hundreds of boats in California turn left like a rite of passage, setting their course for the cruising grounds in Mexico where tacos are cheap, the sea is warm, and tequila flows like water. So why would anyone turn right and sail the “wrong way”—north against the prevailing northwest winds and seas, potentially risking it all around the infamous Point Conception? For my husband, Chris, and me, the answer was simple: Before heading down the coast, we wanted to explore our favorite places up the northern California coast in our 1979 Cheoy Lee 41, Avocet.
We’d spent the past four years in Ventura, California, refitting Avocet, preparing for the day we would sail out of the breakwater for the last time. When what looked like a perfect weather window appeared—Could it be true? A southerly predicted to blow for a week along the coast from Ventura to San Francisco?—the time had come, and we were more than ready.
We made a short hop to the familiar port of Santa Barbara, and after a night in the anchorage took off the next morning on what would be our longest passage yet together on Avocet, 301 nautical miles from Santa Barbara to San Francisco. It would be, like so many ocean passages, full of problem-solving, log-keeping, long watches, and magic.
Rainbows and Repairs
I’d never seen a more spectacular sunrise than on the morning we left sliced through the small swell, her sails full of the promised southerly winds. We had departed at 6:30 a.m., but an hour later the magic of the morning had faded into gray skies saturated with rain, soaking us in a freshwater shower. So much for treasure at the bottom of the now-vanished rainbows.
