The Waiting Game

How many of you play “the waiting game”?  If you do, how long will you wait? We spent the last year plus a few months waiting for weather. In our “business” weather makes our decisions, because we value quality of life, our health, and that of DESERT VENTURE. We “champed at the bit”, wanting to get on with our lives,  but the weather is the reins that held us back.

What do you do while you wait? For us we’re home, because DV is our home. But it wasn’t where we wanted to be geographically. It wasn’t where we wanted to be to move forward with our plans. Basically, we couldn’t plan. For months at a time we watched the weather daily – living at seven days out, hoping the seventh day would bring hope of a weather window. Can you live at seven days out? How long are you willing to wait living seven days from now?

Bruce didn’t sit at the computer 24 hours a day. We continued to eat so there was grocery shopping. We got our medical checkups done. Took care of health issues, too. Several boat projects were done. Being in So Cal did assist in the project category. It meant mild weather that assisted in several exterior projects. So, waiting isn’t fun – sometimes it just plain frustrating, but no sense wasting life away waiting, when work can be done. Right?

There are times I thought it was a “sign”. No, you can not go north. Then reason sets in.  Weather is not a tool to punish just us – to keep US from our plans – certainly there are folks who should keep to their plan. Are our ocean conditions too demanding? I would say yes, but the conditions we expect are conditions we’ve voyaged under consistently. So, they are not impossible. With a couple exceptions we found the conditions way beyond our limits. The couple exceptions came along when we gave up and did a short term Plan B. 

Plan B

How many of you do Plan B? It is our mantra – Plan B.  Keeps us sane. Okay, we don’t get Plan A, so let’s do Plan B. In fact we have gone so far as to fashion Plan ABABABDABBA…get my drift?  🙂

Waiting Game is Over

For the time being, it is over. May I give a loud shout out – Yeah!

We started seeing promise of weather two weeks ago. (Don’t forget you can follow along on weather by checking out our weather sites on the “About Weather” page of this blog.) We saw what looked like a window that would have made departure a week ago. I wanted to let you all know we were about to get underway. But I hated being the bearer of bad news if it was a false alarm. And with our history I didn’t want to jinx us. And a good thing I didn’t tell you. That forecast fell apart. But, then it started building toward good conditions again and we thought we could depart last Thursday, then Friday, then it was Sunday…and here we are – Tuesday – preposition day.

Underway

We are underway, headed to Santa Barbara  (arrived at 1:17 p.m.). This is a great little shakedown cruise of about four hours, and it puts us in position to go around Point Conception tomorrow morning. Going around Point Conception is best done in the morning before the afternoon winds get up to speed. Right now – about twenty-four hours before we plan to arrive at the point – the conditions are 2-3 feet swell from the south and 2-3 feet from the northwest, with no wind. It should be the same tomorrow. Did you notice there is opposing swell? It will be a little animated as we go round the point but then after we get away and move north we should have a southerly push.  And a southerly push, when headed north, is a good thing.

Final Preparations

Santa Barbara is about an hour away. The municipal marina in Santa Barbara requires every boat come to their accommodation dock to check in. They drop red dye into our potties,  insuring that we – and all other boats – don’t do any dumping in their harbor, assign us a slip, and off we go to the slip. I plan to do a final load of laundry, and continue walking through the boat looking for issues that would cause us problems at sea, if left unattended. I keep “sit around stuff” to a minimum, but still occasionally something gets missed – sitting in plain sight!

We have a friend meeting up with us in Santa Barbara. JT will crew with us as we voyage up the coast. One more person to help with the night watches. Perfect!

We’ll take on our final water, double check the already checked, get a good night’s rest, and get underway around 0600 tomorrow.

Standby for updates to our Northbound Voyage!