According to all accounts, the Big Sur coast can be a dangerous place.  There are one or two little hiding places from strong NW winds that a North-bound sailor can take refuge in, but the dangers of approaching those places in high winds may exceed the protective value — especially since the anchoring depths in those places exceeds 60 feet.  For most, the prudent plan is to find a weather window and move up or down and past the entire Big Sur coast before stopping.  On the South end, there is the protective bight of San Simeon.  On the North, there is Monterrey Bay and in between there is about 80 nautical miles of coast.  On our May passage North, we motored non-stop from Santa Cruz Island near Santa Barbara — way far South of Big Sur — all the way to Monterrey in a wonderful weather window with virtually no wind and extremely small waves.  Ideally, I would have preferred a sail up the coast, but a safe motor North can not be over-appreciated.  The predominant Northwesterly winds almost ensure that one can sail South.  The catch is finding a weather window where the winds are strong enough, but not too strong, and the waves are not too big.  Since the winds tend to be strongest in the afternoon, most guides suggests rounding capes and points on the Pacific coast — such as Point Sur — in the morning, or at night.

Carmel is South of Monterrey Bay and is ideally suited for an early morning South-bound rounding of Point Sur.  It is a place I wanted to see from the ocean since it is the final resting place for a large number of my family members.  I remember it being beautiful from land, but the kelp infestation made the view from the ocean much less so.  We made a few turns near the entrances to Pebble Beach and Stillwater Cove.  I think we could have made it into Stillwater Cove, but we might have tangled in the kelp and there wasn’t much room to anchor even if we made it into the cove.  Just outside of the cove, a trawler was anchored in the best place.  Had we anchored nearby, it would have been a rolly uncomfortable night.  Brenda and I decided to press on South.

We knew there was little to no wind, so we raised the mainsail and staysail and sheeted them in tight mostly to control the rolling caused by the waves.  The other reason is that we expected some wind as we got offshore and then we could set the sails rather than having to first raise them when it would surely be dark.  Brenda wanted to reef the mainsail, but I felt that the dropping winds would remain light all night long and we would want to make some speed and distance overnight.  I left Brenda at the helm and took a short nap since I knew that once it was dark, I would probably be doing most of the steering.

Just after sunset, Brenda signaled me with the throttle to come up on deck.  We had a nice breeze and Brenda said that we should probably set the sails for the wind.  Apparently, it had been almost calm for almost two hours and suddenly, the wind had come up.  I set the mainsail on starboard tack with preventer and vang and steered a course that just kept wind in the staysail.  This wasn’t easy since the waves were becoming quite large.  The important thing was to not back the mainsail.  The resulting course was almost due South.  I could see the lighthouse on Point Sur and I knew that the coast South of the Point was much more easterly.  Thus, our heading was taking us further offshore.  Both Brenda and I knew that a gybe would be necessary and the only question was when.  If we gybed too soon and couldn’t hold a course that kept us off the coast, we would have to gybe again — no easy matter at night in rough seas with high winds.   Passing a point, the winds sometimes turn to follow the coast, so if that happened, we might gybe and not be able to stay off the coast on the new tack.

I could make out an ominous black blob near the lighthouse, but could not tell how far away we were.  The pitching and rolling and yawing of Mahdee was taking almost my full effort to control.  I asked Brenda how far offshore we were several times and got no answer.  When Brenda did talk, I could tell she was extremely frustrated.  It seems that she was having a really hard time just staying still enough to see the chart, let alone make an estimate of distance.  She suggested that we could gybe, but cautioned that shore looked really black and evil and still too close.  I said let’s wait, but we should reef the mainsail because Mahdee was becoming very hard to control.  I’m glad it was dark or else I’m sure I’d have seen in Brenda’s eyes “I told you so” with that.  We have never reefed Mahdee under such conditions with a loaded up sail.  Anticipating such a need, I had set up that capability as one of the projects completed in Brisbane before our trip South — along with the well-lighted compass dial that was making steering in these conditions remotely possible.

We have a boat rule that at night on the ocean, everyone on deck is tethered in.  In the current situation one can add to the hazards — short-handed sailing, a water temperature around 12C, 25+ knots of wind on a broad-reach with Mahdee surfing over 12 knots and 2+ meter waves coming from at least two directions with huge hand-like wave spikes all around us — and the possibility of a man overboard rescue is nil.  To live, it is imperative to stay on board.  And with Mahdee being tossed all around with hard rolls, just staying inboard would be a challenge, let alone doing something we have never done before.

We have jacklines strung along the deck for moving about and padeyes at key locations such as the helm to clip into while steering.   There are three jacklines that one can clip into before leaving the chart-house depending on which way one intends to go.  For the gybe, Brenda needed to leave the chart-house and take the helm.  We believe in tethers with two lanyards so that one is never untethered.  I was clipped into the starboard helm padeye with my short tether, so Brenda clipped onto the port jackline and came aft and clipped into the port helm padeye with her short tether.  I stuck around the cockpit while Brenda got the feel of the helm.  Once she had a working technique, I literally crawled the 10 feet forward from the cockpit to the mainmast.

As I got myself settled under the main boom I had to smile.  This was sailing!  Mahdee was screaming along well over hull speed as waves broke at her stern and foamy froth engulfed both gunnels amidships.  Occasionally, due to the strong quartering sea Mahdee would do her Luke Skywalker snap=rolls from side-to-side.  All this while I figured out how I was going to hold onto and slack the main halyard on the port side of the mast, while cranking the starboard mast winch with the tack reefing line.  Ideally, I would also crank in on the clew reefing line which feeds to a winch just above my head on the main boom.  Alas, I didn’t have three hands, nor any self tailing winches.  As I set myself up, Brenda yelled out to know if I was still aboard and OK.  Chances are, she would not know if I were swept overboard and she couldn’t see me where I needed to be (sitting rather than standing) for this reefing operation.  So I yelled out that I was fine and set to work.  Joy, the tack was coming down and all was under control.  With the second reef tack in position, I set to cranking the boom winch to set the clew.  That was real work since I was fighting the main sheets, but it worked OK.  I reset the main halyard to tighten the luff and then crawled back to the cockpit where I could see that the sail had been blown under the number four port main shroud.  I probably could have left the sail where it was especially since we had a known gybe coming up, but I was concerned with chaff.  A little work at the mast and out the leach popped from under the shroud and all was exactly as I wished.

Well OK, I could wish for smaller seas.  These were tall and close together.  They were fast building — probably because we were still heading away from shore on this tack.  I was at the helm again and Brenda was trying to make measurements on the charts, but she couldn’t even get a pencil near chart or paper because a lurch would cause the pencil to hit hard and break the lead.  It was none to early to gybe.  So, Brenda worked her way back out to the port helm, clipping in all along the way.  The first step (actually second step as I later realized) in the gybe was to release the preventer and vang and that required me to take a trip forward.  This time I had to go forward on the port side of Mahdee which was the lee-side.  Further, I had to switch jacklines to go forward of the mainmast.  I spent much of the journey on my butt with feet braced against the toe rails and watching with fascination the foam come up to and sometimes over the rail.  Eventually I got to the preventer and released it and worked slowly aft.  Bringing the line outboard around the main shrouds was much more difficult while managing tethers and jacklines.  Turn one way and the tether wraps around your legs, turn the other and you have an acrobatic move to get the tensioned preventer line over your head.  The six-foot tether on the mainmast-to-cockpit jackline was just a little too short to let me pass the preventer around the main shrouds.  In time, however, I got the preventer lashed up against the main boom and set to work routing the vang back to the cockpit where I could manage its tension while hauling in on the mainsheets.

A controlled gybe requires that the sheets be hauled in before the boat is turned.  As the main sheets are hauled in on Mahdee, the center of sail effort moves farther and farther aft.  This tends to make Mahdee round up into the wind.  This is a problem since the end objective here was to turn away from the wind and gybe.  During The Great San Francisco Schooner Race, we had three crewmembers hauling in on the mainsheet just before the gybe.  The winds were a little higher in San Francisco, but the waves where nothing like what we had to deal with now.  But now there was just me hauling in on the sheet and I was also trying to pay out the vang so that the boom would stay rock steady.  I worked as fast as I could, but I think even the trio of senior citizens during the race would have been faster.  Brenda had her hands full keeping Mahdee from rounding up, but had to help when the vang jammed.  In between hauling, I was noticing that Mahdee’s boomkin was being buried in wave faces that were very steep and coming within inches of the aft deck.  Finally, I couldn’t get an inch more of sheet in, even when the sail unloaded the sheets while Mahdee was being banged by a wave.  Brenda turned the helm and the boom came across.  I started to let out sheet to reduce Mahdee’s tendency to round up in the new direction, but I realized that I had forgotten the REAL step one for a gybe — move the running backs forward!  The jib was also backing, so I quickly tacked the jib while Brenda yelled out headings as Mahdee turned further and further up into the wind.

Without the ability to let out the main boom until the running backs were pulled forward out of the way, despite Brenda’s best efforts, Mahdee was still turning up into the wind and as she came up to a beam reach, she accelerated like a banshee and beam on to the very, very large waves, she rolled hard from side to side.  We were screaming along like a surfer in the curl of a wave.  I was clipping and unclipping tethers to get myself onto the jackline nearest the starboard running backs.  I released the running back and was hugging the mainshrouds to avoid being thrown overboard despite the tether while trying to secure the running back in its forward position when I heard a loud bang followed by a scream from Brenda.  Mahdee was still running straight and true–so I had to laugh since I figured Brenda was now very wet.  The view into the wave troughs was spectacular in the moonlight — or maybe more like something from an old black and white horror flick.  We were flying and I had to get back to the cockpit and ease the mainsheet in order for Mahdee to fall-off to a better heading.  Boy, was the cockpit wet.  Water everywhere which explained the scream, but the details of how the water got over Mahdee’s port quarter are still murky.

After getting Mahdee settled on the port tack, we could see that our heading would be good all the way to Piedras Blancas Point, the southern point of the Big Sur coast.  We had a spirited run for a few more hours and then the wind slowly died until just before dawn when they went to zero.  We started the motor and powered into the rising sun and into San Simeon.  It was beautiful there, but after anchoring, both Brenda and I took a much needed nap.

Looking back, pulling up the saved weather data, and comparing it to our gps track, I am pretty sure that we coincidentally hit the biggest winds and waves on the coast.  We ended up farther off the coast than planned and as one moves offshore, the wind and waves tend to increase up until a point.  If we had been further offshore, the wind and waves probably would have been less — not that I would have wanted to find out.  Also, if we had arrived at that offshore point even and hour earlier or later, the wind and waves would have been less.  These last few days have had bigger winds later in the evening and than normal.

All in all, it was an adventure.  As usual, Mahdee was fully up to the task.  Brenda and I work as hard as we can to keep up with Mahdee and her abilities.  I am sure that it is our capabilities and experience that are the biggest limitation.  Life is best experienced in contrasts.  The contrast between the stark night of big wind and waves off of Big Sur was in wonderful contrast to the beautiful and peaceful anchorage at San Simeon.  We rewarded ourselves with an additional night there before continuing our journey South.